Paul Samuelson and Piero Sraffa – Two Prodigious Minds at the Opposite Poles

This chapter compares two giants, in the history of economic thought, who stood at opposite poles. Paul Samuelson was one of the main architects – perhaps the main architect, and in any case the leading symbol – of what nowadays is known as Neoclassical economics – i.e. mainstream economics. Piero Sraffa was the most acute critical mind of Marginal, hence Neoclassical, economics and the leading promoter of a resumption of that Classical economic analysis, which – born on the eve of the Industrial Revolution – was (as he claims) “nipped in the bud”, and unduly submerged by the over-flowing of Marginal economic theory.