Surplus Approach and Institutions: Where Sraffa Meets Polanyi

Relying on anthropological and archaeological research based on the notion of social surplus, and on the lessons of Karl Marx, Karl Polanyi, Piero Sraffa and Pierangelo Garegnani, the article argues that the classical surplus approach is naturally associated with institutional and historical analysis. The concept of social surplus is a skeleton which is given muscles by institutional analysis while the latter would be enervated if not anchored to a base of ultimate material interests. Institutions should be looked at in relation to the extraction and distribution of the social surplus and the resulting inequality and social conflict. The article offers a novel Post Keynesian view of institutions in an interdisciplinary perspective.