Sraffa and Modern Economics, Volume I

Hay, carrots, bread and roses

Subsistence and surplus wages in Sraffa’s papers

Antonella Picchio***

Introduction

This paper focuses on the concepts of subsistence and surplus wages as proposed by Sraffa. Wages have a double component: they are both a cost of production and a share of net income — an ambivalence that reflects deep tensions inherent in the nature of wage labour as a commodity that needs to be reproduced, but also can negotiate its own price. This ambivalence conceals a double perspective: for capitalists, wages are a cost, whereas, for workers, they are the entitlement to the means of subsistence. This means that within the definition of wages is hidden a conflict of interests: understood as a cost, workers’ consumption is merely ...