Editing Piero Sraffa (section)

== Early life ==
Sraffa was born in [[Turin]], [[Kingdom of Italy]], to Angelo Sraffa (1865–1937) and Irma Sraffa (née Tivoli) (1873–1949), a wealthy [[Italian Jewish]] couple.<ref name="Jean-Pie Potier 1991">{{cite book|title=Piero Sraffa, Unorthodox Economist (1898–1983): A Biographical Essay (1898–1983: a Biographical Essay)|author=Jean-Pierre Potier|year=1991|publisher=Psychology Press |isbn=978-0-415-05959-6|url=https://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0415059593/ref=sib_fs_top?ie=UTF8&p=S00E&checkSum=8fY3bILg1RprQTrG157uSRuZF%2Bwa8dIsvSKfM%2Fy0Eyo%3D#reader-link}}</ref> His father was a professor in [[commercial law]] and later [[Dean (education)|dean]] at the [[Bocconi University]] in [[Milan]]. Despite being raised as a practising Jew, Sraffa later became an agnostic.<ref>{{cite web |title=Piero Sraffa |url=http://digamo.free.fr/sraffaronca.pdf |access-date=24 July 2012 |last=Roncaglia |first=Alessandro |author-link=Alessandro Roncaglia |pages=22–23 |quote=Sraffa liked walks and bike rides. In Cambridge, he always moved around by bike. He used to get up late in the morning and work late into the night. In Trinity as well as when associated with King's, he regularly dined in the college. As I noticed when he invited me to dinner at Trinity, he took care to arrive after supper was served, so as to skip the benedicite prayer (he was agnostic, with a leaning for atheism).}}</ref> 

=== Early career ===
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Due to his father's activity, the young Piero followed him during his [[Academic mobility|academic wanderings]] ([[University of Parma]], [[University of Milan]] and [[University of Turin]]), where he met [[Antonio Gramsci]] (leader of [[Communist Party of Italy]]). They became close friends, partly due to their shared political views. Sraffa was also in contact with [[Filippo Turati]], perhaps the most important leader of the [[Italian Socialist Party]], whom he allegedly met and frequently visited in [[Rapallo]], where his family had a holiday villa. At the age of 18, in the spring of 1917, he began military service as an officer of the Military Engineer Corps, under the command of the First Army as rear-guard. From the end of [[World War I]] (November 1918) until March 1920 he was a member of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the violations of the right of the people committed by the enemy. The military period corresponded to the "university" one; some anecdotes tell of exams done effortlessly wearing the officer uniform. He graduated in November 1920 with a thesis on inflation in Italy during the period of the Great War. His tutor was [[Luigi Einaudi]], one of the most important Italian economists and later a president of the [[Italian Republic]].

From 1921 to 1922, he studied at the [[London School of Economics]]. During this period, at [[Cambridge]], he met twice [[John Maynard Keynes]], who invited him to a collaboration. This request led Sraffa to write two articles about the Italian banking system published in 1922, the first (''The Bank Crisis in Italy'') in ''[[The Economic Journal]]'' (edited by Keynes) and the second (''The current situation of Italian banks'') in the supplement of the newspaper [[Manchester Guardian|''Manchester Guardian'' (now ''The Guardian'')]]. Keynes also entrusted Sraffa with the Italian edition of his ''[[A Tract on Monetary Reform]]''. The meeting with Keynes was undoubtedly a fundamental turning point in Sraffa's career.

In 1922 Sraffa was appointed director of the provincial labour department in Milan, where he frequented socialist circles. In this period he made friends with [[Carlo Rosselli]] and Raffaele Mattioli, both assistants of Luigi Einaudi at the time.

The [[march on Rome]], with the consequent seizure of power by [[Benito Mussolini|Mussolini]], was an event destined to affect deeply his future. His father Angelo was the target of aggression by a fascist squad and received two very threatening telegrams by Mussolini himself who required a public retraction by Piero on the content of the second article published in the ''Manchester Guardian''. Piero did not write a retraction. In May 1924 his friend Antonio Gramsci, who found himself stuck firstly in Moscow and then in Vienna due to the advent to power of fascism, returned to Rome on his election to Parliament. From now on the relations between the two intellectuals intensified. On 26 November 1926 Italian Parliament approved the law "defence of the state", thus giving rise to the totalitarian state. On 8 November 1926, Antonio Gramsci was arrested. During Gramsci's incarceration, Sraffa supplied books and the material, literally pens and paper, with which Gramsci would write his ''[[Prison Notebooks]]''.