Sraffa and Modern Economics, Volume I

‘Price of wages’

A curious phrase

Christian Gehrke*

1 Introduction

In Section VI of Sraffa’s ‘Introduction’ to Ricardo’s Works, which concerns edition 2of the Principles, the following paragraph occurs:

One group of apparently slight corrections may be more significant than at first appears. In ed. 1 Ricardo had frequently employed the curious phrase ‘price of wages’; in ed. 2 however the expression is removed in several cases, and its elimination is carried further in ed. 3. Although in places he clearly treats this phrase as interchangeable with ‘price of labour’ or simply ‘wages’, it must originally have been related to the expression ‘real value of wages’, which he uses in explaining the peculiar sense in which he is to be understood when ...