John R. Commons

John Rogers Commons (1862–1945) was a well-known institutional economist and labor historian at the University of Wisconsin.

Life and career

Born in Hollansburg, Ohio, Commons had a religious upbringing which led him to be an advocate for social justice early in life. Commons believed that carefully crafted legislation could create social change; this view led him to be known as a conservative radical and incrementalist.

Commons is best known for developing an analysis of collective action by the state and other institutions, which he saw as essential to understanding economics. In this analysis, he continued the strong American tradition in institutional economics by such figures as the economist and social theorist Thorstein Veblen. This institutional theory was closely related to his remarkable successes in fact-finding and drafting legislation on a wide range of social issues for the state of Wisconsin. He drafted legislation establishing Wisconsin's worker's compensation program, the first of its kind in the United States.

In 1934, Commons published Institutional Economics which laid out his view that institutions were made up of collective actions that, along with conflict of interests, defined the economy. In Commons' view, institutional economics added collective control of individual transactions to existing economic theory.

Commons was a contributor to The Pittsburgh Survey, an 1907 sociological investigation of a single American city. His graduate student, John A. Fitch, wrote The Steel Workers, a classic depiction of a key industry in early twentieth-century America. It was one of six key texts to come out of the survey.

Commons undertook two major studies of the history of labor unions in the United States. Beginning in 1910, he edited A Documentary History of American Industrial Society, a large work which preserved many original source documents of the American labor movement. Almost as soon as that work was complete, Commons began editing History of Labor in the United States, a narrative work which built on the previous 10-volume documentary history.

Today, Commons' contribution to labor history is considered equal to his contributions to the theory of institutional economics.

Quotes

• "...An institution is 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..."

—"Institutional Economics" American Economic Review, vol. 21 (1931), pp.648-657.

Published works

Soley authored works

• The Distribution of Wealth. New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1893.
• Industrial Goodwill. New York: McGraw Hill, 1919.
• Institutional Economics. New York: Macmillan, 1934.
• Labor and Administration. New York: Macmillan, 1913.
• Legal Foundations of Capitalism. New York: Macmillan, 1924.
• Myself. Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1934.
• Proportional Representation. New York: Crowell, 1896.
• Races and Immigrants in America. New York: Macmillan, 1907.
• Social Reform and the Church. New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1894.

Co-authored works

• Commons, John R. and Andrews, J.B. Principles of Labor Legislation. New York: Harper and Bros., 1916.
• Commons, John R.; Parsons, Kenneth H.; and Perlman, Selig. The Economics of Collective Action. New York: Macmillan, 1950.
• Commons, John R., et al. History of Labor in the United States. Vols. 1-4 New York: Macmillan, 1918-1935.
• Commons, John R., et al. Industrial Government. New York: Macmillan, 1921.

Edited Works

• A Documentary History of American Industrial Society. Vols. 1-10. John R. Commons, ed. Cleveland, Ohio: The Arthur H. Clark Co., 1910.
• Trade Unionism and Labor Problems. John R. Commons, ed. Boston: Ginn and Co., 1905.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Barbash, Jack. "John R. Commons: Pioneer of Labor Economics." Monthly Labor Review 112:5 (May 1989) [1]
• Commons, John R. Myself. Reprint ed. Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964.
• Dorfman, Joseph. The Economic Mind in American Civilization: 1918-1933. Vols. 4 and 5. Reissue ed. New York: Augustus M. Kelley Publications, 1969. ISBN 0-6780-0540-0
• Fitch, John A. The Steel Workers. Reprint ed. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. 1910 (1989). ISBN 0-8229-6091-5.
• "John R. Commons, 1862-1945," History of Economic Thought, The New School
• Thayer Watkins, "John R. Commons and His Economic Philosophy," San Jose State University.

See also

• EAEPE

Credits

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