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112 Piero SraffaThe growing remoteness of such analyses from real world issues onthe one hand, and from theoretical rigour on the other, opens theway to the revival of an approach alternative to the marginalists’: theclassical approach, enhanced through assimilation of Keynes’s ideas.Chapters 7 and 8 consider some aspects of, and some contributionsalready made to, such an alternative approach.7Interpreting Productionof Commodities by Meansof Commodities7.1 Interpreting Sraffa: The assumption of given quantitiesNearly 50 years have passed since Production of Commodities by Meansof Commodities was first published, but interpretation of the text stillarouses lively debate. Any particularly concise dissertation – andSraffa’s certainly is – may be open to various interpretations, but theextraordinary precision of Sraffa’s prose should leave little room formisunderstanding. Nevertheless, some misunderstanding did arise froman additional difficulty, namely the radical difference between his typeof analysis and the lines of argument customarily followed by the vastmajority of contemporary economists. Sraffa himself refers to the problemin the opening lines of his book:Anyone accustomed to think in terms of the equilibrium of demandand supply may be inclined, on reading these pages, to suppose thatthe argument rests on a tacit assumption of constant returns in allindustries.(Sraffa 1960: v)Two related themes emerge from this short passage (and from thepages that follow it). In the first place, Sraffa suggests that at least twocategories of economists exist: those who are ‘accustomed to think interms of the equilibrium of demand and supply’, and those who arenot. Secondly, Sraffa points out that a crucial difference between thesetwo groups of economists – or between these two approaches, paradigmsor theoretical frameworks – lies in the role that the quantitiesproduced play in the analysis of prices and their relationship to incomedistribution.113