The Wisconsin attack on unions is sadly ironic, given the progressive tradition of the state. One of the progressives who whom I have not seen mentioned was Selig Perlman (1888-1959). He was an important economist at the University of Wisconsin and teacher of the son of Robert LaFollette, who was, like his father a governor of the state. Later, I had the privilege of knowing his son Mark, I wonderful man with an amazing breadth of economic knowledge and experience. Putting information together from Mark and my father, our families came from nearby each other. I always addressed him as Cousin Mark.
In an undergraduate class, we read Perlman's book, A Theory of the Labor Movement. I remember my teachers' explanation of the book more than the book itself, which I have not read in the last 50 years. Perlman was a former Marxist, who saw the unions as a bulwark against communism. I don't know whether he influenced later scholars' ideas that, by giving workers a voice, unions dampened their revolutionary spirit. I suspect that his analysis had some influence on Jay Lovestone's CIA-sponsored project to encourage (capitalist-friendly) trade unionism around the world. Obviously, Perlman was not radical, but he still was sympathetic to the working class. Now that the Soviet Union is gone, unions no longer serve such a purpose. Instead, they are treated as a parasitic force that eats into the profit rate. Hopefully, this nonsense will cause a strong enough reaction to ensure that nothing like this happens again. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 [email protected] 530 898 5321 fax 530 898 5901 http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
