Hay, carrots, bread and roses: subsistence and surplus wages in Sraffa's Archive Papers

This paper focuses on the concepts of subsistence and surplus wages as proposed by Sraffa. Wages 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. For capitalists wages are a cost, while for workers they are the entitlement to the means of subsistence. This ambivalence is inherent in the waged labour market as labourers are means but also free citizens.