Piercy Ravenstone
Piercy Ravenstone was a pseudonym used by a nineteenth-century political economist whose work led him to being variously described as a socialist, a tory and as an institutionalist. His contribution was noted by David Ricardo and Karl Marx and brought to wider attention via Piero Sraffa's editing of Ricardo's collected works. Sraffa suggested that Ravenstone's true identity was Richard Puller (1789–1831). Context It has been argued that Ravenstone was a Ricardian socialist. He contributed to the economic debates of the 1820s in England. Edwin Seligman credits him with being "the earliest advocate of the surplus value theory later adopted by Marx." Identification Joseph Dorfman argued from circumstantial evidence that Ravenstone was a Rev. Edward Edwards. Noel W. Thompson, in reviewing Sraffa's case and other evidence, concludes that there is no compelling reason now to contest the identification with Richard Puller the younger (not his father of the same name). He also views Edwards and Ravenstone as birds of a feather, however, proponents of a physiocratic Tory anti-capitalism. Economics Ravenstone published at least two writings in economic theory, A Few Doubts as to the Correctness of the Opinions generally maintained on the Subjects of Population and Political Economy in 1821, and