Sraffa

["RICHARD P.F. HOLT" <holtri@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

You say I don't see how demand can be said to have no influence on prices,
unless constant returns. I take it that the drama in enacted on Marshall's
stage where claimants for influence are utility and cost of production. Now
utility has made little progress since the 1870s towards acquiring a tangible
existence and survives in textbooks at the purely subjective level. On the
other hand, cost of production has successfully survived Marshall's attempt to
reduce it to an equally evanescent nature under the name of disutility, and is
still kicking in the form of hours of labour, tons of raw materials, etc. This
rather than the relative slope of the two curves, is why it seems to me that
the influence of the two things on price is not comparable"
--Sraffa. letter to A. Asimakopulos, dated 11 July 1971.