Misunderstanding Classical Economics? A Reply to Blaug

From Professor Blaug's 1999 article (unspecified page references are to it) there emerges the paradox that an interpretation pointing to the basic role of institutional and historical factors in the classical theory of dis-tribution and capital accumulation is criticized as "amazingly narrow" (215), one that looks at those economists ‚‘“through the lenses of the lin-ear production model’ ” (234). Further, the contrast between the seeming narrowness of the interpretation and the evident broad character of clas-sical works induces Blaug to view that interpretation as one that reads “backwards ” into Smith's and Ricardo's texts Sraffa's theoretical alter-native to neoclassical theory (215) as if the contrary was not rather the case, with those texts being the sources to which one had to resort in order to understand Sraffa's terse Production of Commodities (1960). A need for clarification is therefore present. Blaug is critical of the interpretation advanced by “Sraffian ” authors (I may note in passing how such collective references may easily if unwit-tingly result in blurring the issues) because, in his view, the notion o