PERELMAN, Michael 1939-

PERSONAL: Born 1939, in New Castle, PA. Education: Attended University of Michigan, 1961, graduate study, 1963-64; University of California—Berkeley, Ph.D., 1971.

ADDRESSES: Home—Route 3, Box 295, Chico, CA95926. Office—Department of Economics, California State University, Chico, CA 95929. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: California State University, Chico, professor of economics, 1971—. Visiting scholar at University of Paris X, 1978. Member of U.S. Department of Agriculture task force on spatial heterogeneity in agricultural landscapes and enterprises, 1973; member of California governor's small farm viability project task force, 1977; member of editorial board of Review of Radical Political Economy, 1981-83; workshop leader.

WRITINGS:

Farming for Profit in a Hungry World: Capital and the Crisis in Agriculture, Allanheld, Osmun (Montclair, NJ), 1977.

Classical Political Economy, Primitive Accumulation, and the Social Division of Labor, Allanheld, Osmun (Montclair, NJ), 1982, revised edition published as The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 2000.

Marx's Crises Theory: Scarcity, Labor, and Finance, Praeger (New York, NY), 1987.

Keynes, Investment Theory, and the Economic Slowdown: The Role of Replacement Investment and Q-Ratios, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1989.

Information, Social Relations, and the Economics of High Technology, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1991.

The Pathology of the U. S. Economy: The Costs of a Low-Wage System, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1993.

The End of Economics, Routledge (New York, NY), 1996.

Class Warfare in the Information Age, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1998.

The Natural Instability of Markets: Expectations, Increasing Returns, and the Collapse of Capitalism, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1999.

Transcending the Economy: On the Potential of Passionate Labor and the Wastes of the Market, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2000.

The Pathology of the U.S. Economy Revisited: The Intractable Contradictions of Economic Policy, Palgrave (New York, NY), 2002.

Steal This Idea: The Corporate Confiscation of Creativity, Palgrave (New York, NY), 2002.

contributor

Huey Johnson, editor, No Deposit—No Return, Addison-Wesley (Reading, MA), 1970.

Ira Winn, editor, Basic Issues in Environment, C. E. Merrill, 1971.

Peter Barnes, editor, The People's Land, Rodale Press (New York, NY), 1974.

Patterns of Civilization: Asia; Changes in Asian Society, Cambridge Book Co., 1974.

William J. Jewell, editor, Energy, Agriculture, and Waste Management, Ann Arbor Science Publishers, 1975.

Norman Chigier and Edward Stern, editors, Proceedings of the International Seminar on Collective Phenomena and the Applications of Physics to Other Fields of Science, Brian Publications, 1975.

Barry Commoner and others, editors, Energy and Human Welfare: A Critical Analysis, Volume III: Human Welfare: The End Use of Power, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1975.

Richard Merrill, editor, Radical Agriculture, Harper (New York, NY), 1976.

Richard D. Rodefeld, Jan Flora, and other editors, Change in Rural America: Causes, Consequences, and Alternatives, Mosby (St. Louis, MO), 1978.

Louis Junker, editor, The Political Economy of Food and Energy: Lectures Given at Western Michigan University, Division of Research, Graduate School of Business Administration, 1977.

R. S. Ganapathy, editor, Agriculture, Rural Energy, and Development, Division of Research, Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI), 1981.

Also contributor of articles and reviews to economic journals.

SIDELIGHTS: Michael Perelman has had a long career as a professor of economics at California State University in Chico. He has penned several books about his area of study, and contributed to many others. Among his titles is the 1993 title The Pathology of the U.S. Economy: The Cost of a Low-Wage System. In it Perelman suggests raising wages to reanimate what was then a sluggish U.S. economy. Critiquing the volume in the Journal of Economic Issues, Brent McClintock praised the author's "survey of economic history and the history of economic thought on a high-wage strategy," and further noted that "the book is written with a clarity of style that makes it highly accessible to both undergraduate and graduate student audiences."

The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation, published in 2000, is a revision of his previous Classical Political Economy, Primitive Accumulation, and the Social Division of Labor, which puts forth Perelman's support for Karl Marx's theory that the exodus of British workers from the countryside to the cities during the Industrial Revolution was not so much a voluntary change as a forced one because gaming laws and other restrictions made it impossible for rural commoners to supplement their subsistence farming by hunting. Perelman takes to task classical economists such as Adam Smith for portraying this sociological phenomenon as one of increasing freedom from serfdom. Jay Carlander, reviewing The Invention of Capitalism in Labor History, felt that "Perelman does a service to call attention to the darker side of classical economic theory." He went on to praise the work as "a clearly written, vigorously argued book."

Perelman takes on the issue of intellectual property rights in his 2002 volume, Steal This Idea: The Corporate Confiscation of Creativity. He maintains that remedying the problems associated with intellectual property rights will require "a complete overhaul of the institutions that handle ideas and information," wrote Joan Pedzich in Library Journal. Pedzich concluded that Steal This Idea is a "timely, thoughtful work."

Perelman told CA: "For me, economics provides a window to the inner workings of society. It appears to relate to abstract quantities. In reality, it deals with the full complex of social relations."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Journal of Economic Issues, September, 1995, Brent McClintock, review of The Pathology of the U.S. Economy: The Costs of a Low-Wage System, p. 963.

Labor History, August, 2001, Jay Carlander, review of The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation, p. 297.

Library Journal, April 15, 2002, Joan Pedzich, review of Steal This Idea: The Corporate Confiscation of Creativity, pp. 106-107.*