2025/07/21 by Heinz D. Kurz · 1 voice
Social Sciences · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Political Economy and Marxism #Economic Theory and Institutions #Economic Theory and Policy
paper · doi:10.1080/09538259.2025.2522766
openalex publication_date 2025/07/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/15
The paper reviews a collection of essays of the late Pierangelo Garegnani, edited by Roberto Ciccone entitled ‘Capital Theory, the Surplus Approach, and Effective Demand. An Alternative Framework for the Analysis of Value, Distribution and Output Levels’. Pierangelo Garegnani was a towering figure amongst economists with a critical orientation towards the mainstream. He was an untiring critic of marginal productivity theory of income distribution and argued that the classical economists’ explanation of distribution and relative prices in terms of the surplus approach had prematurely been abandoned because of shortcomings of early formulations of it that hid the fundamental correctness of its substance. It was particularly Piero Sraffa and, in his tradition, Garegnani who in modern times deserve to be credited with rediscovering from under thick layers of misinterpretation the classical approach and putting forward a version of it that sheds its former weaknesses and elaborates on its strengths. They also showed that the marginalist theory of distribution cannot be sustained because of its defective theory of capital.