I'm surprised at how many are willing to grant the premise here, accepting that HET is simply a "history of error." Sraffa's study of Ricardo was essential to his economics. What he saw was that parts of Ricardo's work - such as the search for an "absolute measure" of value - could be profitably read not as terrible answers to the questions modern economists were asking, but as good answers to different questions altogether, questions that moderns might benefit form thinking about. There are alternate possible rational reconstructions of a thinker's work, only one of which is the Whig version. And these alternatives may advance our knowledge of economics. Kevin Quinn