Background
John Commons was born on October 13, 1862, in Richmond, Ind.
(Format Paperback Subject Business Economics)
Format Paperback Subject Business Economics
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(Commons opened Institutional Economics by declaring: "My ...)
Commons opened Institutional Economics by declaring: "My point of view is based on my participation in collective activities, from which I here derive a theory of the part played by collective action in control of individual action." This sentence well summarizes the three key elements of this book--its theoretical intent, the importance Commons gave to his own experience in institutional reform in shaping these ideas, and the focus on the concept of the institution as a collective constraint on individual action.
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(Originally published in 1905. This volume from the Cornel...)
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John Commons was born on October 13, 1862, in Richmond, Ind.
He was educated at Oberlin College and at Johns Hopkins, where he studied under Richard T. Ely. He sat in the same seminars with another fledgling historian, Frederick Jackson Turner.
He did not complete his doctorate.
In 1890 Commons became an instructor at Wesleyan University. He returned to Oberlin in 1891 and taught at the University of Indiana the next year.
Commons's first book, Distribution of Wealth (1894), was based on a Turnerian framework. Commons claimed that a turning point had been reached in the economic affairs of the United States because of the disappearance of easily available land. In 1896 Commons went to Syracuse University to fill a chair in sociology, and the following year he published Proportional Representation. This work reflected his belief in a democratic, voluntary society and in a system where balance was attained as a result of conflicting pressures.
In 1899 Commons lost his chair in sociology at Syracuse and worked for several nonacademic groups before going to the University of Wisconsin in 1904. The atmosphere was congenial there, as Commons shared faith in adult education and in the "Wisconsin idea"; that is, the state government would utilize the expertise of university professors in reforming and running this same government. His interest at this time had moved toward the study of labor movements. This culminated in two important books: Trade Unions and Labor Unions (1905) and his best-known work, History of Labor in the United States (4 vols. , 1918-1935). The latter was written in collaboration with his students. In his study of labor unions, Commons concluded that they had resulted as a reaction to industrial concentration and reflected an American attitude of job rather than class orientation.
Commons's ideas found expression in other books, the most important of which are Legal Foundations of Capitalism (1924) and Institutional Economics (1934). The former portrayed the law as a necessary link to hold society together; the latter held that unemployment was the greatest hazard of capitalism but that collective action could eliminate it. Historical development, Commons believed, came from the bottom up, and the function of scholars was to aid in the reconstruction of society in a classic, progressive way.
Commons died on May 11, 1945.
John Rogers Commons pioneered the study of labor movements in the United States. He was acknowledged as the most significant labor historian of his day, and his ideas were perpetuated by his students, the best-known of whom was Selig Perlman at Columbia.
Today, Commons's contribution to labor history is considered equal to his contributions to the theory of institutional economics. He also made valuable contributions to the history of economic thought, especially with regard to collective action. His racist writing is not well known today, and he is honored at the University of Wisconsin in Madison with rooms and clubs named for him.
His former home, now known as the John R. Commons House, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
(Commons opened Institutional Economics by declaring: "My ...)
(Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)
(Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
(Format Paperback Subject Business Economics)
(Originally published in 1905. This volume from the Cornel...)
Quotations:
". .. An institution is defined as collective action in control, liberation and expansion of individual action. "
". .. But the smallest unit of the institutional economists is a unit of activity — a transaction, with its participants. Transactions intervene between the labor of the classic economists and the pleasures of the hedonic economists, simply because it is society that controls access to the forces of nature, and transactions are, not the "exchange of commodities, " but the alienation and acquisition, between individuals, of the rights of property and liberty created by society, which must therefore be negotiated between the parties concerned before labor can produce, or consumers can consume, or commodities be physically exchanged. .. "
"Other races of immigrants, by contact with our institutions, have been civilized—the negro has only been domesticated. "
"The Chinese and Japanese are perhaps the most industrious of all races, while the Chinese are the most docile. The Japanese excel in imitativeness, but are not as reliable as the Chinese. Neither race, so far as their immigrant representatives are concerned, possesses the originality and ingenuity which characterize the competent American and British mechanic. "
"In the entire circuit of the globe those races which have developed under a tropical sun are found to be indolent and fickle. From the standpoint of survival of the fittest, such vices are virtues, for severe and continuous exertion under tropical conditions bring prostration and predisposition to disease. Therefore, if such races are to adopt that industrious life which is a second nature to races of the temperate zones, it is only through some form of compulsion. The negro could not possibly have found a place in American industry had he come as a free man. .. "
In 1890 Commons married.
