Seymour Melman (December 30, 1917 – December 16, 2004) was an American professor emeritus of

industrial engineering Industrial engineering is an engineering profession that is concerned with the optimization of complex processes, systems, or organizations by developing, improving and implementing integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information an ...

and

operations research Operations research ( en-GB, operational research) (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a discipline that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve decis ...

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science (popularly known as SEAS or Columbia Engineering; previously known as Columbia School of Mines) is the engineering and applied science school of Columbia University. It was founded as th ...

. He wrote extensively for fifty years on "economic conversion", the ordered transition from military to civilian production by military industries and facilities. Author of ''The Permanent War Economy'' and ''Pentagon Capitalism'', he was an economist, writer, and gadfly of the military-industrial complex.

Biography

Seymour Melman was born in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

on December 30, 1917. He studied at the De Witt Clinton High School in

the Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New ...

and received his undergraduate degree from the

City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, Cit ...

in 1939. After graduation he received a travel fellowship and traveled to Palestine and Europe between 1939 and 1940. Upon returning to the United States he served for two years as the secretary of the Student Zionist Federation. Soon after the

attack on Pearl Harbor The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii ...

, he served in the

US Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

as a First Lieutenant in the

Coast Artillery Corps The U.S. Army Coast Artillery Corps (CAC) was an administrative corps responsible for coastal, harbor, and anti-aircraft defense of the United States and its possessions between 1901 and 1950. The CAC also operated heavy and railway artillery ...

. Afterwards he served on the

National Industrial Conference Board The Conference Board, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit business membership and research group organization. It counts over 1,000 public and private corporations and other organizations as members, encompassing 60 countries. The Conference Board c ...

. He became a graduate student at

in January 1945 and received his Ph.D. in

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics anal ...

in June 1949. He joined the Columbia faculty that year and was a popular instructor until he retired from teaching in 2003. Melman was the former President of the

Association for Evolutionary Economics The Association for Evolutionary Economics (AFEE) is an international organization of economists working in the institutionalist and evolutionary traditions of Thorstein Veblen, John R. Commons and Wesley Mitchell. It is part of the Allied Social ...

, Vice President of the

New York Academy of Sciences The New York Academy of Sciences (originally the Lyceum of Natural History) was founded in January 1817 as the Lyceum of Natural History. It is the fourth oldest scientific society in the United States. An independent, nonprofit organization wi ...

, co-chair of SANE (Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy), chair of The National Commission for Economic Conversion and Disarmament, and a participant in the

Reindustrialization of the United States Reindustrialization is the economic, social, and political process of organizing national resources for the purpose of re-establishing industries. The process proceeds as a result of a need to reinvigorate national economies. Interpretations China ...

Project. In 1976 SANE's New York City conference on "The Arms Race and the Economic Crisis" featured Melman, and won an economic conversion plank in the Democratic party platform. Melman died in his Manhattan home of an

aneurysm An aneurysm is an outward bulging, likened to a bubble or balloon, caused by a localized, abnormal, weak spot on a blood vessel wall. Aneurysms may be a result of a hereditary condition or an acquired disease. Aneurysms can also be a nidus ( ...

on December 16, 2004.

Work

Melman was part of a circle of intellectuals with epicenters in various networks. He was associated with the Frame of Reference group led by University of Pennsylvania Professor

Zellig Harris Zellig Sabbettai Harris (; October 23, 1909 – May 22, 1992) was an influential American linguistics, linguist, mathematical syntactician, and methodologist of science. Originally a Semitic languages, Semiticist, he is best known for his work i ...

, which culminated in Harris's posthumous book ''The transformation of capitalist society''. The author's prepublication title was ''Directing social change''. He also fraternized with a group of scholars at Columbia University that included the sociologist

Robert S. Lynd Robert Staughton Lynd (September 26, 1892 – November 1, 1970) was an American sociologist and professor at Columbia University, New York City. He is best known for conducting the first Middletown studies of Muncie, Indiana, with his wife, He ...

. And he was connected to a wide network of national and international scholars and activists concerned with disarmament, economic conversion and economic democracy, including

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky i ...

Marcus Raskin Marcus Goodman Raskin (April 30, 1934 – December 24, 2017) was an American progressive social critic, political activist, author, and philosopher. He was the co-founder, with Richard Barnet, of the progressive think tank the Institute for Poli ...

Harley Shaiken Harley may refer to: People * Harley (given name) * Harley (surname) Places * Harley, Ontario, a township in Canada * Harley, Brant County, Ontario, Canada * Harley, Shropshire, England * Harley, South Yorkshire, England * Harley Street, in Lond ...

, John Ullmann, Lloyd J. Dumas, and

John Kenneth Galbraith John Kenneth Galbraith (October 15, 1908 – April 29, 2006), also known as Ken Galbraith, was a Canadian-American economist, diplomat, public official, and intellectual. His books on economic topics were bestsellers from the 1950s through t ...

, among many others. He was also on the advisory board of FFIPP-USA (Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace-USA), a network of Palestinian, Israeli, and International faculty, and students, working in for an end of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and a just peace

The legacy of Seymour Melman's work continues in a fellowship and research program supported by the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. and through the work of his former colleagues in the Economic Reconstruction network.

Quotations

"The joy of accomplishing production. It's a great thing. The work I've been doing now for some time is writing an article, writing a book, or researching something. It's an accomplishment. It's a great thing. No, more exactly, it's living. It's being alive. To be productive is to be alive." "A bomb equivalent to 20 million tons of TNT would cause an intense fire called a 'fire storm' in an area about around the area of the blast. And in such an area it would be futile, desperately futile to construct what are called 'fallout shelters'".

Publications

* 1956.
Dynamic factors in industrial productivity
'. New York, Wiley. * 1958
''Decision Making and Productivity''.
* 1958.
Inspection for Disarmament
'. Editor. * 1961.
The Peace Race
'. * 1962.
No Place to Hide Fallout Shelters-Fact and Fiction
'. Editor. * 1962.
Disarmament; Its Politics And Economics
'. Editor. * 1965.
Our Depleted Society
' * 1968.
In the name of America; the conduct of the war in Vietnam by the armed forces of the United States as shown by published reports, compared with the laws of war binding on the United States Government and on its citizens
'. With Melvyn Baron and Dodge Ely. New York : Clergy. * 1970.
The defense economy; conversion of industries and occupations to civilian needs
'. New York: Praeger.
1970. ''Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War''. New York: McGraw-Hill.
* 1971.
The war economy of the United States; readings on military industry and economy
'. New York: St. Martin's Press. * 1983
''Profits without Production''.

1985. ''The Permanent War Economy: American Capitalism in Decline'' NY: Simon & Schuster.
* 1988
''The Demilitarized Society: Disarmament & Conversion''. Montreal: Harvest House.
* 1992
''Rebuilding America: A New Economic Plan for the 1990s''.
Westfield NJ: Open Media. * 2001
''After Capitalism: From Managerialism to Workplace Democracy''.
New York : Knopf.

References

External links

MBEAW Seymour Melman
Monterey Bay Educators Against War
Warning against Menachem Begin, 1948Seymour Melman
includes numerous articles.

by Seymour Melman from Bear Left!

1958-1999 at Columbia

By Suzanne Trimel. Includes Video Interview and photo

by Ralph Nader, 20 December 2004 after Melman's death. *http://www.economicreconstruction.org Website of former colleagues of Seymour Melman *http://www.seymourmelman.com Melman article archive

Article on After Capitalism

Seymour Melman talk with Studs Terkel on WFMT * {{DEFAULTSORT:Melman, Seymour Economists from New York (state) Engineers from New York City American economics writers American male non-fiction writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers American operations researchers American anti-war activists American anti–nuclear weapons activists Columbia University faculty 1917 births 2004 deaths DeWitt Clinton High School alumni City College of New York alumni 20th-century American engineers 20th-century American economists 20th-century American male writers