PRODUCTION OF COMMODITIES BY MEANS OF COMMODITIES PRELUDE TO A CRITIQUE OF ECONOMIC THEORY PIERO SRAFFA VORA & CO., PUBLISHERS PVT. LTD. 3, Round Building, Bombay 2.© PIERO ‘SRAFFA 1960 Indian Edition 1963. Price Rs. 4/- Published by K. K. Vora, Vora & Co. Publishers Pvt. Ltd, 3, Round Building, Bombay 2. Printed by M. R. Sirut, Sirur Printing Press, Khetwadi 82th Lane, Bombay 4,PREEACHY Anyone accustomed to tink in terms of the equilibrium of demand and supply may be inclined, on reading these pages, to suppose that the argument rests on a tacit assumption of constant returns in all industries. If such a supposition is found helpful, there is no harm in the reader's adopting it as a temporary work- ing hypothesis. In fact, however, n0 such assumption is made. No changes in output and (at any rate in Parts I and II} no changes in the proportions in which different means of produc- tion are used by an industry are considered. so that no question arises as to the variation or constancy of returns. The investi- gation is concerned exclusively with such properties of an eco- nomic system as do not depend on changes in the scale of pro- duction or in the proportions of ‘factors’. This standpoint, which is that of the old classical economists from Adam Smith to Ricardo, has been submerged and forgotten since the advent of the ‘marginal’ method. The reason is ob- vious. The marginal approach requires attention to be focused on change, for without change either in the scale ofan industry or in the ‘proportions of the factors of production’ there can be neither marginal product nor marginal cost. In a system in which, day after day, production continued unchanged in those respects, the marginal product of a factor (or alternatively the marginal cost of a product) would not merely be hard to find— it just would not be there to be found. Caution is necessary, however, to avoid mistaking spurious ‘margins’ for the genuine article. Instances will be met in these pages which at first sight may seem indistinguishable from exam- ples of marginal production; but the sure sign of their spurious- v