ABSTRACT
Ten years ago, when I was teaching in Canada, the Eastern Economic Association decided to have a session at its Montreal meeting to celebrate ninety years of publication of the Principles, presumably on the grounds that Marshall, like many an Australian Test cricketer, might not make it through the nervous nineties and so be able to celebrate his ton. For that occasion I wrote an exploratory, speculative paper (Harcourt 1981a; Chapter 12 of the present volume) on the role of the concept of the centre of gravitation in the work of three incompatible (?) bedfellows from Cambridge – Marshall, Sraffa and Keynes – and on whether the concept was still viably operational today. Whatever the survival power of that topic, Marshall’s Principles have certainly made it through the last ten years without giving a chance. Their 100 years should receive a spontaneous and heartfelt standing ovation which, I very much hope, will last considerably longer than those contrived efforts for Mrs Thatcher at Conservative Party conferences. As my contribution to the celebrations I want to look at how Marshall and his Principles were seen at Cambridge through the eyes of three other great Cambridge economists, Gerald Shove, Dennis Robertson and Joan Robinson. In my view (but not necessarily in theirs, as regards the interpretation of at least one of them) they understood Marshall very well indeed. Their own work was greatly influenced, in one case almost piously dominated, by Marshall’s own. (There are no prizes for identifying who fits what in my comments above.)
