Academic Wisdom and Union Reality
As Bernard Nossiter commented in a review of a book on David Rockefeller, 'The subject of power in American life, political, economic, and their intimate relationship to each other, is essentially a mystery. It ought to be a prime area for academic inquiry but only a few of the less timid-Mills, Galbraith, Sweezy, Baran, Heilbroner-have attempted it. Two of the five are dead. One might add that a second major topic on which amazingly little recent work has been done by the academics is the distribution of income and wealth. Notable exceptions Robert Lampman springs instantly to mind-do exist but the most casual of inspections of the A merican Economic Review's annual lists of dissertations, approved and prospective, implies that when a graduate student analyzes inequality it is probably in order to construct a mathematical model elegant enough to earn him his doctorate. All too rarely does the dissertation focus upon the gritty statistics of income and wealth distribution. Still less frequently does the apprentice scholar seek to improve the data or bring them up to date. In so saying, I allege neither malice nor corruption on the part of my brethren. There is no need to be sensational, for elements of technical convenience complement the ideological predispositions of a rather conservative guild as sufficient explanation of the condition. As all know, reputations are made and degrees earned more quickly and dependably by theorists than by quantitative workers. As for the ideological inclinations of the profession, I take as handy illustration the treatment which Samuelson accords to unions in the eighth edition of his Economics. Chapter 7, Labor and Industrial Relations, is the only chapter entirely devoted to unions. In fourteen pages of text, Samuelson says something about union structure; the history of the American labor movement; communism, corruption, and democracy in unions; labor legislation; and current issues in collective bargaining. Unions pop up again in Chapter 29. Here three pages on wage determination explain the four methods by which unions seek to raise the compensation of their members. Possibly with relief, Samuelson quickly surrenders the task of evaluating the significance to the economy of labor unions to accredited experts. He quotes Albert E. Rees to the following effect:
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