Euro. J.

History of Economic Thought 9:3 384401 Autumn 2002

Gramsci, Sraffa, Wittgenstein: philosophical linkages*

John B. Davis
In light of Gramscis likely in uence on Sraffa (Bharadwaj 1984; Potier [1987] 1991; Ginzburg 1998; Naldi 1998, 2000) and Sraffas likely in uence on Wittgenstein (Malcolm 1958; Roncaglia 1978; Davis 1988; Potier [1987] 1991; Andrews 1996; Sharpe 1999; Signorino 1999), it is not unreasonable to suppose that a chain of philosophical in uence links the thinking of Gramsci, Sraffa and Wittgenstein. This paper explores one possible chain of in uence across the three by rst identifying three philosophical positions in Gramscis thought, and then outlining the manner in which they, or more accurately, related positions may be said to operate in the thinking of Sraffa and then later Wittgenstein. Of course all three individuals were sophisticated and subtle thinkers, and the possible connections among their ideas are accordingly complex and many-sided. I only attempt to investigate one possible set of connections among their ideas connections which indeed some may regard as not being central to the thinking of any of the three taken independently of the others. It should also be emphasized that my method of argument is reconstructive and interpretive. First, rather than develop an argument around acknowledgements of in uence (of which there are few) and other historical connections between these individuals, and then trace out their implications, I simply analyse the ideas of Gramsci, Sraffa and Wittgenstein in terms of the extent to which they may be argued to share three broad philosophical positions. Second, because these three individuals devoted themselves to altogether different realms of ideas Gramsci to political power, Sraffa to economic value and Wittgenstein to language meaning examining the extent to which their ideas may correspond requires translating those ideas into a discourse removed in varying degrees from their original ideas. This external framework is rst elaborated, on
Address for correspondence Department of Economics, Marquette University, PO Box 1881, Milwaukee, WI 532011881, USA; email: john.davis@marquette.edu
The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought ISSN 0967-2567 print/ISSN 1469-5936 online 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/09672560210149224

Gramsci, Sraffa, Wittgenstein: philosophical linkages

chronological grounds, in terms of Gramscis thought. Thus, the chain of in uence that the paper describes involves seeing the ideas of Sraffa and Wittgenstein in light of those of Gramsci (and indeed in light of Gramscis ideas seen from a particularly modern point of view). This may strike some as doing an injustice to the respective ideas of these three individuals taken separately. The purpose of the paper, however, is to begin mapping out a history of ideas running from the Marxist tradition to Wittgensteinian philosophy. Others have sought to understand this set of connections in broad philosophical terms, but little has been done in the way of explaining Sraffas possible role in this overall development. This paper seeks to contribute to this larger project by focusing on the consequences of Sraffas leaving Italy to become a lecturer at the University of Cambridge. The paper is organized as follows. In section 1 Gramscis thinking regarding the theory of the state and the philosophy of praxis is brie y described, followed by its interpretation in terms of three broad underlying philosophical positions. In section 2, Sraffas 1920s critique of Alfred Marshalls laws of returns analysis and his own later theory of value and distribution are brie y described, then followed by a discussion of parallels to Gramscis philosophical positions. In section 3, Wittgensteins later views about meaning and language-games are described, again followed by a discussion of parallels to the three broad philosophical positions at issue. Section 4 provides concluding remarks about a historical interpretive framework that might support the arguments of the paper.

1. Gramsci According to Poulantzas, the basic problem for the Marxist theory of the state at the beginning of the twentieth century was the nature of ideological apparatuses and their relation to the apparatus of the state ([1970] 1979: 299). The Marxism of the Second International had treated such institutions as the Church, schools and universities, unions, parties, the media, etc. as repressive apparatuses on analogy to coercive state apparatuses, such as the police, the courts, the prisons, the army, and the government, but had still insisted on de ning the state as a class dictatorship based on the exercise of brute force. Gramsci, however, from as early as his Ordine Nuovo period, developed a theor y of ideological state apparatuses based on his concept of hegemony. Exercising state power meant more than just controlling the machinery of government. It also meant organizing class domination through the creation of a world-view within private, non-state institutions. In this latter respect, the dominant class or class fraction

385

John B. Davis

exercises an hegemony and intellectual and moral leadership (direzione) that complements its exercise of brute force.1 Central to Gramscis idea of leadership/hegemony is the notion that the dominated classes actively consent to the state power of the dominant class, reducing the latters need to rely on coercion. In a period of political con ict attended by a crisis in hegemony, one group or class fraction gains state power when it succeeds in posing all the questions around which the struggle rages not on a corporate but on a universal plane, and thus creating the hegemony of a fundamental social group over a series of subordinate groups. It is true that the state is seen as the organ of one particular group, destined to create favourable conditions for the latters maximum expansion. But the development and expansion of the particular group are conceived of and presented as being the motor force of a universal expansion, of a development of all the national energies (Gramsci 1971: 1812). Here an essential characteristic of the form of the state is its possession of a relative autonomy from the dominant classes. In contrast, for others in the social democratic parties of the time, the state was often conceptualized as a class dictatorship in the sense of an agent or instrument of big monopoly capital able to exclude other dominant groups and class fractions from power (Poulantzas [1970] 1979: 83ff). For Gramsci this instrumentalist conception both obscured con ict between power blocs and fractions of the dominant class within the state, and more importantly obscured more fundamental antagonisms between the dominant and the dominated classes contesting control of the state. This in turn was central to his understanding of the emergence of fascism, or in its general form what he termed Caesarism, in which typically a heroic personality pursues the task of reconciling the social forces in con ict. According to Gramsci, Caesarism takes on different forms according to the speci c historical conditions, but in the modern world of the twentieth centur y it was speci cally the product of a political crisis in which the forces in con ict balance each other in a catastrophic manner; that is to say, they balance each other in such a way that a continuation of the con ict can only terminate in their reciprocal destruction (Gramsci 1971: 219). The earlier Caesarism of Louis Bonaparte had manifested itself in the action of regular military forces and coups detat, and this exercise of force and coercion had allowed the historical forces then in opposition to fuse and unite. In this instance, the existing social form had not yet exhausted its possibilities for development, whereas [i]n the modern world, the equilibrium with catastrophic prospects occurs . . . between forces whose opposition is historically incurable (Gramsci 1971: 222). Thus political equilibrium in the modern world depends on more than just the exercise

386

Gramsci, Sraffa, Wittgenstein: philosophical linkages

of police power and brute force. It requires the organization of a hegemony that operates across the full range of ideological apparatuses of society, successfully enlisting the dominated classes in their own oppression.2 Gramscis critique of the instrumental conception of the form of the state had as an underlying foundation a parallel critique of economism, the notion that there exist objective laws of historical development similar to natural laws that determined the path and character of political struggle. His ideas had grown out of his experience as a leader of the working-class movement in the Turin factory councils and later participation in the Italian Communist Party. Placing importance on linking theor y and practice, he understood Marx to be the founder of the philosophy of praxis that combined British political economy, German idealist philosophy, and French revolutionar y traditions.3 However, he believed (Gramsci 1971: 388ff) that Marxs philosophy had been mistakenly given both an idealist interpretation (in Italy particularly by Croce, brie y a Marxist) and a philosophical materialist interpretation (by orthodox Marxists Plekhanov and Bukharin). Both interpretations exhibited a tendency to rely on metaphysical or transcendentalist explanations, which had the effect of substituting arguments between intellectuals for investigation of the struggle of the working class. He thus called for recover y of Marxs original tri-partite nexus, characterizing it speci cally as immanentist in being based upon a thoroughly historicized understanding of the concrete and material development of history: The philosophy of praxis continues the philosophy of immanence but puri es it of all its metaphysical apparatus and brings it onto the concrete terrain of history (Gramsci 1971: 450). 1.1 Gramscis philosophical positions (1) Gramscis commitment to the doctrine of the relative autonomy of the state and rejection of the instrumentalist conception of the state shows that he believed that causal power was generally communicated through complex social structures in ways that could change its form. For example, though the political power of the dominant classes might maintain its form as the exercise of force when expressed through the mobilization of the police, it might also adopt the form of ideological persuasion when expressed in particular doctrines of the Church. That complex social structures often translate the form of power in this way, rather than simply communicate it without change of form may be taken to imply for Gramsci that causal powers is emergent . Following Lawson, an entity or aspect found at some level of organization can be said to be emergent if there is a sense in which it has arisen out of some lower level, being conditioned by and dependent upon, but not predictable from, the properties found at the

387

John B. Davis

lower level (Lawson 1997: 176). Alternatively, the activity of entities at higher levels or organizations are not reducible to the activities of entities at lower levels of organization. For Gramsci, ideological power is emergent upon economic power in that it is conditioned by and dependent upon economic power, but not reducible to or predictable from it. (2) Gramscis concept of catastrophic equilibrium as characteristic of the modern period reveals a rejection of the holist idea of society as a uni ed totality. The holist concept of a totality implies both that the social whole comprehends its parts, and that the parts acquire their meaning according to their integration within the whole. But Gramscis view of a catastrophic equilibrium is of an unsustainable juxtaposition of opposed and discordant forces, the resolution of which in the form of a new class hegemony destroys one side of this opposition (rather than raises it up and preserves it in the Hegelian sense of Aufhebung). The parts of the social whole consequently do not acquire their meaning from the whole, because they seek to be exclusive of one another, recasting the whole solely in their own image. (3) Gramscis immanentist interpretation of the philosophy of praxis, or his rejection of all forms of transcendence, is a doctrine regarding the nature of generality or universals in the Hegelian tradition. Hegel, following Kants rejection of the idea of bare particulars (intuitions without concepts are blind), similarly rejected the idea of an abstract universal, arguing in favour of concrete universals which require more intimate relation with the particulars they involve. Needless to say, the sense in which concrete universals involve their particulars is philosophically complex and also subject to a range of interpretations within the Hegelian tradition. Moreover, just how Gramsci believed the concept of a concrete universal was to be understood is less than obvious. Nonetheless, his rejection of the idea of transcendence, for example, as expressed in his assertion that man is historical becoming justi es saying that he rejected the idea of an abstract universal.

2. Sraffa Though the aims and conceptions of Sraffas early critiques of Marshalls supply functions (1925, 1926) and those of his 1960 Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities differ in important respects, they nonetheless share the assumption that interdependence among economic sectors . . . makes any type of partial equilibrium both unnecessar y and unfeasible (Maneschi 1986: 11).4 Indeed, that there are underlying similarities between Sraffas earlier papers and Production of Commodities should not be thought surprising, since, as Sraffa later recorded, despite its long gestation,

388

Gramsci, Sraffa, Wittgenstein: philosophical linkages

the central propositions of his 1960 work had taken shape in the late 1920s, a few years at most after his papers on Marshall (Sraffa 1960: vi). This gives us good grounds for supposing that Sraffas conception of the economy as an interdependent system is generally fundamental to his thinking about economics, though there are also differences in the ways Sraffa thinks about interdependence in his 1920s papers and in Production of Commodities. Marshalls partial equilibrium analysis of industry supply functions had made industries relatively independent in the sense that a change in the quantity of output produced by one industry left the quantities produced by other industries unchanged (Marshall 1920). This proposition, however, depended upon Marshalls understanding of the laws of increasing and diminishing returns. The classical economists had typically seen these laws as arising out of different phenomena (respectively, the nature of rent and improvements in the division of labour), and had not supposed that there existed a general relationship between cost and quantity. Marshall sought to merge the two laws into a single law of nonproportional returns (Sraffa 1926: 537) that would underlie a new general law of supply. Then, if variations in an industr ys output operated directly only on the cost function of the representative rm of the industr y, this affected price in that industr y, which might then affect prices in other industries, possibly further causing changes in their cost functions. These latter in uences, however, were indirect (in the sense that they were conveyed through the change in industr y prices), and were compatible with Marshalls assumption of relative independence of industries. However, were variation in a single industr ys output to operate directly on the cost function of representative rms in all industries, then the industries were mutually interdependent, and Marshalls partial equilibrium analysis broke down. Marshall had tried to argue that increasing and diminishing returns were of the sort compatible with the rst case. In the case of diminishing returns, he assumed that an increase in industry output required more intensive use of some primar y factor of production in scarce supply but only in the expanding industr y. Thus there were only indirect and no direct effects on other industries. Sraffa, however, argued that it was highly unlikely such primary factors were used in but one industry. In the increasing returns case Marshall had to assume that the returns were external to the rm and internal to the industry, so that they only directly affected the cost function of the representative rm of the industr y, indirectly affecting those of representative rms in other industries. Sraffa noted, however, that Marshall had been fully cognizant of increasing returns external to both the rm and the industry. Thus in both cases Marshalls analysis did not support the relative independence of industries.

389

John B. Davis

Marshalls motivation for treating industries as relatively independent from one another had been to provide an account of price on an industr yby-industry basis in terms of symmetrically opposed forces of supply and demand. Essentially, each industry could be understood solely in terms of its own underlying supply and demand conditions, because changes in the supply conditions of any one industr y had only indirect effects on the supply conditions of the others. But when Marshalls highly restrictive assumptions about the nature of returns were ruled out, so that indirect effects of changes in an industrys output on the cost functions of other industries were replaced by direct effects, then the underlying forces determining industr y prices could neither be compartmentalized on an industry-by-industr y basis, nor were they any longer describable in terms of the symmetrically opposed forces of supply and demand. In effect, the forces determining industr y prices were communicated through a network of cross-cutting production relationships between industries that transferred the effects of changes in cost of production in any one industr y to the prices of all industries (cf. Davis 1993). Sraffa goes beyond his critique of Marshall in Production of Commodities to advance an account of how interdependence operates across industries. In contrast to Marshall, Sraffa believed that the explanation of prices did not depend upon the subjective taste factors marginalist theory used to include demand as essential determinant of prices. Rather, returning to the classical theor y of value and distribution of Smith and Ricardo, Sraffa focused on a system of production that generated an economic surplus to be distributed between economic classes. His strategy of analysis, however, was to begin hypothetically in chapter I of Production of Commodities by characterizing economic systems without a surplus. In such systems prices were explainable solely in terms of the technical conditions of production for using up means of production and means of subsistence for workers required to turn out goods. Such systems exhibited interdependence between industries in that the output of any industry is also an input of all other industries. Upon turning in subsequent chapters to economic systems that generate a surplus, Sraffa then shows that an economic systems prices change according to the nature of the rule a society adopts for distributing the surplus. Thus, rather than the cost of production determining prices, prices in economic systems with a surplus are determined in terms of both the technical conditions of production and the rules of distribution. In effect, Sraffas argument in moving from subsistence economies to surplus economies is that technical conditions of production still fundamentally determine an economic systems prices, but how this is the case is in uenced (and perhaps disguised) by the processes of social interaction involved in determining the distribution of the surplus.

390

Gramsci, Sraffa, Wittgenstein: philosophical linkages

2.1 Parallel philosophical positions (1) To understand how the concept of emergence operates in Sraffas 1920s papers, note rst that, in the presence of variable returns, prices can no longer be explained as Marshall had intended, that is, on an industryby-industr y basis in terms of the symmetrically opposed forces of supply and demand. 5 With more realistic assumptions about the nature of variable returns, changes in a given industrys output have direct rather than indirect effects on the cost functions of other industries, demonstrating that prices also re ect additional forces associated with the phenomena of industr y interdependence. Marshalls partial equilibrium analysis, by only allowing indirect effects, had attempted to explain prices reductively as supply-and-demand (scarcity) measures. With Sraffas understanding of variable returns, however, prices also re ect such things as the state of industr y organization, the relative sizes of different industries, and the relative stages of development of different industries. Thus prices are emergent upon supply and demand forces, in the sense that, while conditioned by these forces, their explanation is neither reducible to nor predictable from a knowledge of such forces. The sense in which the concept of emergence operates in Production of Commodities again re ects the issue of what determines prices. In economic systems without a surplus prices are indeed a re ection of cost of production, but in those economic systems with a surplus the determination of the shares of the surplus going to wages and pro ts also contributes to the determination of prices. Thus prices in actual economies are emergent upon underlying methods of production but not reducible to or predictable from a knowledge of those methods alone. Indeed, to understand the determination of the shares of the surplus going to wages and pro ts, one would need to investigate a variety of historical-institutional conditions surrounding the relations between classes everything from systems of banking and nance to labour law regulating wages. These conditions ultimately in uence the determination of prices, and thus preclude their explanation solely in terms of cost of production.6 (2) Sraffa also makes use of a notion of equilibrium not unlike Gramscis concept of catastrophic equilibrium. In his 1920s account of increasing returns internal to the representative rm of an industr y he suggests the development of monopoly to be a likely possibility. However, monopolies develop not only at the expense of other rms, but also at the expense of the system of balanced competition that Marshall saw as the essential characteristic of the market system. Thus the presence of internal increasing returns across industries signalled an unstable and transient set of circumstances in which market power and barriers to entry would

391

John B. Davis

ultimately replace a system of free competition. The equilibrium Sraffa described for Marshall was consequently catastrophic in Gramscis sense of the term in that it characterized forces whose opposition is historically incurable. In Production of Commodities Sraffa characterizes the relationship between the wage rate and the rate of pro ts (via the standard system) as one of proportionality, such that any deduction from the wage rate implies a corresponding addition to the rate of pro ts (Sraffa 1960: 212).7 This re ected his treatment of the classical theor y concept of the surplus, which made pro ts the difference between the social product and that part of social product going to workers (cf. Garegnani 1998: 418). In contrast, in supplyand-demand economics it is generally believed that even though with an inverse relation holds generally between the wage and pro t rate, because proportionality does not hold (since changes in distribution change the size of the net product to be distributed), labour and capital should not be thought to be in direct opposition. The supply-and-demand view also re ects an exchange-based view of the economy in which trade bene ts all, and the market process is harmonious. Sraffas classical vision, however, is one of antagonistic economic classes whose gains come at each others expense. (3) Sraffas critique of Marshalls treatment of variable returns was accompanied by a complaint about his methodology (Davis 1998). The classical economists, Sraffa noted, had understood decreasing and increasing returns to be rooted in dissimilar economic phenomena, and accordingly did not explain them at a higher level of abstraction as instances of one general type of principle. Marshall, in contrast found it necessar y to introduce certain modi cations into the form of the two laws, in order to merge them into a single law of nonproportional returns (Sraffa 1926: 537). This re ected Marshalls conviction that the essential causes determining the price of particular commodities may be simpli ed and grouped together so as to explain price in terms of the forces of demand and supply (ibid.: 535). Clearly Sraffa thought this recourse to abstraction and essential causes unjusti ed. Without saying what his view of proper abstraction was, we can agree that what was objectionable in Marshalls methodology was its recourse to abstraction understood in terms of other abstractions, rather than in terms of the relevant underlying concrete phenomena. Sraffa, then, did have an understanding of justi ed abstraction, though clearly it would be too strong to label these 1926 remarks a commitment to the idea of a concrete universal. Ginzburg (1998), however, does suggest that Sraffa operated with a notion not unlike that of a concrete universal in Production of Commodities. To do so, he draws on Garegnanis reconstruction of classical economics

392

Gramsci, Sraffa, Wittgenstein: philosophical linkages

and distinction between the economys core, addressed by the classical theory of value and distribution, and the wider economic system in which this core is embedded, addressed by theories explaining such things as the determination of the rate of interest, the level of employment and output (for example, Keyness theory), and the technical conditions of production. For Garegnani, the important difference between these two levels of explanation is that the former involve a set of quantitative relations which are both general and suf ciently de nite in their properties for rigorous analysis (Garegnani 1998: 419), while the remaining relationships are less susceptible to generalization because are dependent upon a variety of historical-institutional considerations. But the explanation of any actual economy combines both levels. Thus the generalizations we make about actual economies are at once both abstract and concrete, or, we might say that our explanations are effectively in terms of concrete universals (or perhaps historically determined abstractions). While it should be emphasized that these are Garegnanis formulations, they nonetheless provide a plausible interpretation of Sraffas thinking about concrete universals in his later work. 3. Wittgenstein Wittgensteins later thinking developed largely out of his own critique of his earlier thinking.8 In his early Tractatus (1921) he had understood the meaning of a term to be the object that the term names or that to which it refers. But objects are incomplete in that they only exist in relation to other objects. Any possible combination of objects, then, is a state of affairs, while actually obtaining states of affairs are facts.9 This picture (or referential) theory of meaning, however, encounters the obvious dif culty that many linguistic items do not appear to acquire their meaning by referring to things in the world. More generally, saying what language is about appears to explain only part of what is involved in language, since even were we to say that some piece of language is about the world, we would also need to be able to say something about how this has come to be. With this insight, Wittgenstein came to believe that language does not possess meaning simply in virtue of having a relation to the world. What people do with language and how they use it is as fundamental to its nature as its aboutness. Look at the sentence as an instrument, and at its sense as its employment (Wittgenstein [1953] 1958, pt. I, para. 421). This was not an idea that he expected to be attractive to most philosophers, however, since taking seriously the business of describing how language actually gets used meant giving up recourse to metaphysical types of explanations which philosophers had traditionally relied upon. But:

393

John B. Davis
It is not our aim to re ne or complete the system of rules for the use of our words in unheard-of-ways. For the clarity that we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity. But this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disappear. The real discovery is the one that makes me capable of stopping doing philosophy when I want. (Wittgenstein [1953] 1958, pt. I, para. 133)

Thus, for the later Wittgenstein, metaphysics is not a basis for, but rather a barrier to philosophy. And if philosophy must still be understood in terms of metaphysics, then it is best to give up the idea of doing philosophy altogether. Wittgenstein went on to say that the meaning of an expression is tied to its use in terms of the language-game in which that expression is used. The idea of a language-game is the idea of a situation in which language is used in connection with some particular activity and purpose, such that outside of acquaintance with that activity that language cannot be properly understood. In the Brown Book (Wittgenstein 1958) Wittgenstein rst described various different language-games at great length without any discussion of their philosophical signi cance, as if to say that philosophizing had no part in explaining meaning. In the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein further blocked traditional philosophical investigation into language meaning by rooting language-games simply in forms of life Here the term language-game is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life (Wittgenstein [1953] 1958, pt. I, para. 23). One thus knows how a language-game is played and how to use a particular language when one is part of the form of life in which that game is played. But one does not then go on to explain the relevant form of life in terms of some deeper set of principles. A form of life is a set of relatively autonomous practices and conventions structuring human activity that does not itself require explanation. In part this understanding follows from Wittgensteins treatment of the rules of a game. The dif culty involved in understanding rules, Wittgenstein points out, is that anything we do is on some interpretation in accord with a rule, so that if anything can be made out to accord with [a] rule, then it can also be made out to con ict with it (Wittgenstein [1953] 1958, pt. I., paras. 198, 201). His solution to this puzzle involves distinguishing between following a rule and simply being in accord with a rule. Thus, obeying a rule speci cally requires a commitment to a practice, something that one goes about blindly (Wittgenstein [1953] 1958, para. 219), because playing a language game as part of a form of life requires ones full integration into its activities at a practical level. One consequently cannot be said to be following a rule simply by virtue of a decision to do so,

394

Gramsci, Sraffa, Wittgenstein: philosophical linkages

since to only think one is obeying a rule is not to obey a rule (Wittgenstein [1953] 1958, para. 202). Indeed, were one to think one was obeying a rule of meaning when, having surveyed past uses of a term, one inductively attempted to apply the term in like contexts in the future, one would be sadly disappointed. The continual shift and re-creation of meaning across practical contexts in language-games undermines any induction theory of meaning, and demonstrates that individuals obey the rules of languagegames only by having a commitment to playing those games, however those games may shift and re-develop the meanings they embody. Meaning within language-games, then, is never neatly delimited, such as on the referential theory with its tight correspondence between expressions and things. Rather, meanings are constituted out of a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes over-all similarities, sometimes similarities in detail, all of which have at best a family resemblance to one another (Wittgenstein [1953] 1958, pt. I, para. 66). Thus, determining when an expression is appropriate or inappropriate depends upon how the play of a particular language-game works out something which cannot be predicted in advance. 3.1 Parallel philosophical positions (1) For the later Wittgenstein, meaning is emergent in the sense that, while it is about the world, it is not a simple re ection or picturing of relationships in the world (as in the Tractatus), but is rather the product of how we come to make it about the world. That is, use makes language emergent upon representation, since the way in which we put language to use determines the extent to which it represents things in the world. Meaning is consequently conditioned and dependent upon capturing relationships between things in the world, but it is not reducible to those relationships, since language only has meaning at our instigation. One illustration of this lies in the change in Wittgensteins view of sentences from the Tractatus. There, compound sentences that did not express elementar y propositions were truth-functions of elementar y propositions. Wittgenstein consequently treats compound propositions reductively. But in the Investigations sentences are recognized to have a variety of purposes, many of them unrelated to factstating. Such sentences might be thought emergent upon fact-stating discourse, conditioned by it, but not reducible to it. Another illustration of emergence is Wittgensteins treatment of ostensive de nition. A thing named by being pointed out does not give us the meaning of the name simply in terms of its connection with some thing. Rather, the act of pointing to the thing named determines the meaning of the name. A meaning given ostensively is thus emergent upon the connection between thing and name.

395

John B. Davis

(2) The idea that an equilibrium might be catastrophic seems foreign to Wittgensteins later ideas. But a less dramatic rendering of catastrophic as unstable and changeable might be said to capture an important dimension of Wittgensteins understanding of following a rule in a language-game. Following a rule is not a matter of associating past uses of a term with their occasions of use, and then inductively applying that term in like circumstances in the future. Following a rule presupposes a commitment to participate in the form of life in which that language-game is played. Such commitment on the part of many individuals establishes a framework in which meanings may evolve, as when individuals apply and accept the use of a term in new contexts. Consequently, if we see languagegames as having equilibrium-like properties, in the sense that a collection of meanings within a language-game at any one time possess a set of relatively identi able relationships toward one another, then that these relationships may be transformed and recon gured as this language-game is played makes these equilibrium relationships unstable and changeable. Wittgensteins idea of the meaning of a concept as a family resemblance suggests much the same idea, though in a more static sense. Putting aside change in meaning, a concept at any one time constitutes a combination of applications and senses that stand in uncertain relation to one another, since no central or essential sense unites all the ways in which the concept may be used. Thus, the idea of concepts as family resemblances suggests concepts are like equilibria that contain discordant elements a notion not far removed from Gramscis equilibrium idea. (3) Wittgensteins Investigations rejection of philosophy stands as a monument to the rejection metaphysics as an investigation of abstract concepts. But this hardly implies that he rejected the ver y idea of generality itself. What it seems we ought to say is that for him the form of generality is family resemblance, and that the generality of a concept is produced out of the myriad overlapping and criss-crossing senses in which the expression for that concept is used. This means, however, that since there is no single therefore essential meaning shared by all of the ways in which an expression is used, we accordingly have no way of abstractly identifying concepts. Indeed, it seems for Wittgenstein that the entire business of investigating abstract concepts is suspect. Thus while it may be awkward to use the idea of a concrete universal in connection with Wittgensteins later views, nonetheless his image of a concept as being constituted out of a family resemblance effectively embeds particularity of use in the idea of generality.

396

Gramsci, Sraffa, Wittgenstein: philosophical linkages

4. Concluding remarks Because of the wide scope of the discussion here, I have only outlined a set of philosophical parallels that appear to obtain among the ideas of Gramsci, Sraffa, and the later Wittgenstein. A more lengthy argument would examine each of the principle conclusions above in more detail and also attempt to construct a case for the transmission of in uence in terms of biographical and historical evidence. This latter discussion would also involve, as a framework of analysis, systematic attention to comparative historical traditions in ideas from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Though I have not made the case here, I think it is fair to say that the three philosophical positions traced from Gramsci to Sraffa to Wittgenstein are characteristically continental conceptions. Further, the contrasting philosophical ideas of reductionism, self-consistent systems or equilibria and abstract generality draw more on British histor y of ideas and the empiricism of gures such as Hume and J. S. Mill. I would say it need not be emphasized that all three of the gures discussed here had continental origins were it not for the fact that Sraffa and Wittgenstein became so much a part of British intellectual history. In fact it does need to be emphasized that these two individuals came from a continental background which, while not monolithic, was ver y different from that which created individuals such as Russell and J. M. Keynes. At the same time, it is also true that Sraffa and Wittgenstein were engaged with problems and issues in British intellectual histor y Sraffa in his critiques of Marshall and Wittgenstein in his interaction with and responses to Russell. I think that this combination their continental origins and their need to address concerns raised in Cambridge traditions is crucial for explaining the overall character of their thinking. On the surface, the combination is manifest in the particular emphasis they placed on critique a method of investigation largely foreign to British thinking at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. The system of ideas in which they originally operated Marshallianism for Sraffa and logical atomism for Wittgenstein could not accommodate a number of philosophical and theoretical principles they each held that derived from continental sources. But they each continued to engage British systems of ideas forcing with different degrees of success their subsequent evolution toward continental concerns. The revolutionar y character of their ideas was arguably thus the product of their injecting these continental concerns into this British frame of reference. By comparison Gramscis intellectual history was less complex, since he always remained within a domain of activity consistent with his origins. This suggests that his ideas may have had a special directness that enabled them

397

John B. Davis

to be communicated to others with particular forcefulness. In contrast, Sraffa and Wittgenstein operated in intellectual environments in which competing traditions of ideas necessitated more indirect strategies of argument. To advance new ideas, old ones rst had to be dismantled. Again, since these three individuals devoted themselves to quite different realms of ideas Gramsci to power, Sraffa to value and Wittgenstein to meaning transmission of in uence across the three would need to have operated in terms of ver y fundamental principles. Gramsci was able to exercise just this kind of in uence on Sraffa who in turn was able to exercise a commensurate sort of in uence on Wittgenstein. Gramscis ideas, then, to the extent that they were expressed in the thinking of Sraffa and Wittgenstein, consequently took on new forms removed from the way in which they were originally elaborated. Marquette University

Notes
* Presented at the History of Economics Society annual conference, Greensboro, North Carolina, June 1999. The author is indebted to Gary Mongiovi, David Andrews, and the anonymous referees of this journal. 1 For the meaning of leadership and problems in translating the Italian dirigere meaning to direct, lead, rule, see the editor notes in Gramsci (1971: 55n). Direzione and egemonia are often (but not always) used interchangeably by Gramsci, but are translated differently by Hoare and Smith to preserve the original meaning of Gramscis texts. 2 Gramscis concept of Caesarism, in emphasizing the relative autonomy of the state vis--vis the dominant classes or fractions, is closely related to Marxs concept of Bonapartism (cf. Poulantzas [1968] 1978: 258ff). But Marxs texts on the 184852 period in France, for example in The Civil War in France, treat Bonapartism as the circumstance in which the bourgeoisie had already lost, the working class had not yet gained, the ability to govern the nation (quoted in Poulantzas [1968] 1978: 259). Gramsci understood Caesarism at the beginning of the twentieth century as a particular historical circumstance in which the powers of opposing classes were catastrophically balanced in an unsustainable way. 3 The term philosophy of praxis originated with the Italian Marxist Antonio Labriola (d. 1904), an early in uence on Gramsci. An adequate understanding of Gramscis thinking in this regard requires attention to the thinking of not only Labriola but also Croce. 4 One difference was that Sraffa originally seems to have accepted Marshalls idea that for Ricardo most commodities exchanged are produced at constant costs. However in Production of Commodities the method of the classical economists is rather said to assume given quantities (Sraffa 1960: v). Another difference was that Sraffas early papers involve an analysis of rms, whereas the 1960 work is directly concerned with technical conditions of production in industries. See Panico and Salvadori (1994) for discussion of these and other comparative issues. See Mongiovi (1996) regarding the

398

Gramsci, Sraffa, Wittgenstein: philosophical linkages

degree to which Sraffas later methodological stance is re ected in his early critique of Marshall. An exception regarding symmetrical supply-and-demand determination of prices which Sraffa still allowed in his 1926 paper might be a solution to Marshalls problem was the case of monopoly. Thus Sraffa may not have entirely freed himself of the hold of orthodoxy at this time. A related, but slightly different view of emergence in the Production of Commodities is due to Garegnani. He distinguishes between the economys core, which includes the theor y of value and distribution as a whole, from phenomena falling outside of but affecting the economys core, namely, broader social, institutional and political factors, in a word historical factors (Garegnani 1987: 563). Since these latter phenomena in uence the economys prices, prices might be seen as being emergent upon the economic relations within the economys core. That is, for r = R (1 w), where r is the rate of pro ts, w is the wage rate, and R is the Standard ratio or the ratio of net product to the means of production in the Standard system. For the in uence of Sraffa on Wittgenstein, see the preface to Wittgensteins Philosophical Investigations (also cf. Malcolm 1958; Roncaglia 1978; Davis 1988). Wittgenstein did not classify kinds of objects. Bertrand Russell, however, distinguished between particular objects and general objects (attributes and relations).

7 8 9

References
Andrews, David R. (1996). Nothing is hidden: a Wittgensteinian interpretation of Sraffa. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 20: 76377. Bharadwaj, K. (1984). Piero Sraffa: the man and the scholar a tribute. In Themes in Value and Distribution. Classical theory reappraised, London: Unwin Hyman, 1989. Davis, John B. (1988). Sraffa, Wittgenstein and neoclassical economics. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 12: 2936. (1993). Sraffa, interdependence and demand: the Gramscian in uence. Review of Political Economy, 5(1): 2239. (1998). Sraffas early philosophical thinking. Review of Political Economy, 10(4): 47791. Garegnani, Pierangelo (1987). Surplus Approach to Value and Distribution. In John Eatwell, Murray Milgate and Peter Newman (eds) The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics , London: Macmillan. (1998). Sraffa: The theoretical world of the old classical economists. European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 5(3): 41529. Ginzburg, Andrea (1998). Sraffa and Social Analysis: some methodological aspects. In Roberto Marchionatti and Terenzio Cozzi (eds) Piero Sraffas Political Economy: A Centenary Estimate, London: Routledge. Gramsci, Antonio (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. Edited by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. New York: International. Lawson, Tony (1997). Economics and Reality. London: Routledge. Malcolm, Norman (1958). Ludwig Wittgenstein, A Memoir. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Maneschi, Andrea (1986). A comparative evaluation of Sraffas The laws of returns

399

John B. Davis
under competitive conditions and its Italian precursor. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 10: 112. Marshall, Alfred (1920). Principles of Economics, 8th edition. London: Macmillan. Mongiovi, Gary (1996). Sraffas Critique of Marshall: A Reassessment. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 20: 20724. Naldi, Nerio (1998). Some Notes on Piero Sraffas Biography, 191727. Review of Political Economy , 10(4): 493515. (2000). The friendship between Piero Sraffa and Antonio Gramsci in the years 19191927. European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 7(1): 79114. Panico, Carlo and Salvadori, Neri (1994). Sraffa, Marshall and the problem of returns. European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 1(2): 32343. Potier, Jean-Pierre (1991). Piero Sraffa Unorthodox Economist (18931983). London: Routledge. First published as Un Economiste non conformiste Piero Sraffa (18891983). Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1987. Poulantzas, Nicos (1978). Political Power and Social Classes. Translated by Timothy OHagen. London: Verso. First published as Pouvoir politique et classes sociale by Franois Maspero, 1968. (1979). Fascism and Dictatorship, The Third International and the Problem of Fascism. Translated by Judith White. London: Verso. First published as Fascisme et dictature by Franoise Maspero, 1970. Rongalia, ?. (1978). Sraffa and The Theory of Prices. Chichester: Wiley. Sharpe, Keiran (1999). Sraffas in uence on Wittgenstein: a conjecture. Unpublished. Signorino, Rodolfo (1999). Sraffas Rejection of Methodological Individualism. Unpublished. Sraffa, Piero (1925). Sulle relazione fra costo e quantit prodotta. Annali di Economia, 2: 277328. (1926). The laws of returns under competitive conditions. Economic Journal, 36: 53550. (1960). Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1921). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicu s. Translated by David Pears and Brian McGuiness. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961. (1953). Philosophical Investigations, 2nd edn. rev. Oxford: Blackwell, 1958. (1958). The Blue and Brown Books. Oxford: Blackwell.

Abstract The paper assumes that since Gramsci in uenced Sraffa and Sraffa in uenced Wittgenstein it may be possible to delineate a set of philosophical ideas which they shared in some degree. Gramscis ideas are rst reviewed in terms of his concept of hegemony, concept of caesarism and philosophy of praxis. On this basis three philosophical themes are identi ed in his thinking: the concept of emergence; catastrophic equilibrium; and the idea of a concrete universal. The thinking of Sraffa (both earlier and later) and the thinking of Wittgenstein (later) are then interpreted in terms of these same three themes. These links neither exhaust their philosophical

400

Gramsci, Sraffa, Wittgenstein: philosophical linkages

thinking nor necessarily constitute the only links among the three. But these ideas provide one way of exploring connections among the three. The paper closes with brief remarks concerning two opposed philosophical traditions in modern European intellectual history at the turn of the century one associated with thinking in Britain and one associated with continental thinking meant to suggest the distinctiveness of a line of thinking running through Gramsci, Sraffa and Wittgenstein.

Keywords Gramsci, Sraffa, Wittgenstein, philosophical linkages, continental tradition

401