Ben Baruch Seligman

Born Nov. 20, 1912, in Newark, N.J. American economist.

Seligman graduated from Brooklyn College in 1934 and received a master’s degree from Columbia University in 1936. From 1941 to 1945 he worked for the US Department of Labor and the Office of Price Administration. He taught at Brooklyn College from 1947 to 1949. In the 1950’s and 1960’s he was an economic consultant for a number of US trade union organizations. Since 1965 he has been professor of economics and director of the Labor Relations Research Center at the University of Massachusetts.

Seligman’s main works are on the socioeconomic problems of modern capitalism and the history of economic teachings. His Main Currents in Modern Economic Thought (1962; Russian translation, 1968) contains extensive information on the most important schools and currents in bourgeois political economy since 1870. In his evaluations Seligman, a representative of the liberal bourgeois reformist school of American economics, shows a misunderstanding of the social foundations and class character of the development of political economy. He does not hold solid theoretical positions. In several instances, his selection and analysis of particular theories are subjective. In The Potentates: Business and Businessmen in American History (1971; Russian translation, 1975), Seligman defends small business and offers a historical sketch of the development of the American economy during the last two centuries and an analysis of the formation of the basic financial and industrial groups.