Dear Colleagues, 

I share the sadness of hearing the news of the passing of John Pullen and send condolences to his friends, colleagues, and family. It no doubt takes not a small degree of courage to write in any laudatory manner about Malthus as the Parson is often reviled on all sides of the various theoretical divides. Pullen was very kind when a decade ago in my own effort to better understand Malthus’s contribution to the theory of value I reached out with queries; his counsel was very useful and with it I was able to explore a side to Malthus and ergo the labor commanded theory of value that my own Marxian proclivities and prejudices had not at that point allowed me to pursue with the openness of mind that such study requires.  

I do regret never having sent him evidence in the Sraffa papers that Malthus was also in the mind of Sraffa when in Appendix D: References to the Literature of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, Sraffa writes of the “surprising” find that the “attenuated function” of the Standard commodity (§43) is close that to that “suggested…by Adam Smith” (PCxC, p. 94). It is an interested fact that it was not until 1959 after the main body of the text was written that Sraffa would pen both the alpha (the Preface) and the omega (Appendix D) of his book around the same time. In the latter, instead of “Adam Smith” Sraffa first writes “Ricardo’s opponents”; see below the first page in the relevant file, second paragraph (D3/12/98:1): 

Ricardo’s “opponents” of course refers to Malthus, but this is only a hint. However in one of the final versions of the various drafts that Sraffa poured through even at the Galley Proof stage, we do find the Italian scholar reveal the debt to Malthus, only to pull it back for whatever reason; the image below is archived as D3/12/107:100):