Misunderstanding Classical Economics - The Sraffian Interpretation of the Surplus Approach

In the last decade or so, disciples of Piero Sraffa have propagated a particular interpretation of classical economics, according to which the classical economists focussed on the 'core' of their analysis on the determination of relative prices in long-run equilibrium, taking as given the volume of output, its commodity composition, the technology of every industry, and real wages; everything else in classical economics is said to belong to the periphery and follows from the analysis at the core.