Ah so finally started the actual research in a serious way

[nadinbrzezinski]

And I started at the beginning of the modern political economy system... that means the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. Yep, the same guy many a graduate from your local business school prays to, but has no clue what he actually wrote.

Here is a surprise for you. See Mr. Smith had a soft spot for labor... and I mean a real soft spot. And though he could argue and did argue, against himself, his soft spot was such that Mr. Pitt (the Elder) actually used The Wealth of Nations to argue for a Minimum Wage oh well early in the nineteenth century. To be fair, his arguments were used to argue against it in Parliament, but here is the point. Smith understood that Labor needed a minimum wage. So next time any of these bright boys argue that it is well socialist... I guess the High Priest of Capitalism was a socialist.

Ain't that wild?

Me back to the Wealth... having lots of fun with him. I fear Marx will not be this much fun... ah what a difference a writing style can make...

[RoyGBiv]

1. Question ...

You may have mentioned this before, and if so, I'm sorry for not remembering. I've been distracted by other things lately.

Do you have a specific purpose in mind other than the goal of self-education? I'm not denigrating the later at all, of course. I'm just curious if you have a writing project in mind.

Oh, and, no. Marx is not fun. I had a professor once who half-in-jest claimed the real problem with Marx's thought was that his writing was so dry that his readers got bored and just started making shit up.

OnEdit: Both Marx and Smith are misunderstood by those who idolize them. Their views were far more nuanced than "true believers" would have you believe. That's the irony of placing them at opposite poles. Perhaps they *were* at opposite poles in philosophical thought, but I think they at least could have had a conversation without killing each other.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Publishng a book on the history of labor

for Americans. As you may know by now, and I discovered this by accident, there is little current academic research on this (outside of very specialized journals), let alone a popular history on it.

Once I am well into the writing will start approaching publishers... kind of do what Barbara Tuchman did for the Guns of August.

This means it has to be kept at a basic level.

[RoyGBiv]

5. Ah, cool ...

Yeah, general labor history is not a popular subject right now.

There's a thesis waiting to happen with several facets of labor history, but the political climate, even in liberal arts schools, does not seem to have developed an environment in which pursuing them is encouraged.

Part of the problem, I think, is the popular focus right now among the humanities disciplines that encourages a bottom-up or focused study of some specific group or non-patrician individual. The silent commandment is that we've done the Rockefellers and the Debs and the Marxes and the Smiths and all that this entailed. We've done the industrial revolutions I and II. Now let's look at the little guy, the relationship to civil rights movements, etc. There's not much room for general labor history with that being the driving philosophy.

However, all that work will provide excellent fodder for a general synthesis. I wish you well in your endeavors.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. I met one of my instructors today

he actually said that if this works, I could even write my own ticket with just a masters into the faculty... precisely because there is nothing really done for the last thirty years.

[Omaha Steve]

3. K&R

Keep putting it all together.

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. It is going to take at least a year

:-)