Melvyn Dubofsky - Labour and Capital

Melvyn Dubofsky (born October 25, 1934) is professor emeritus of history and sociology, and a well-known labor historian. He is Bartle Distinguished Professor of History and Sociology at the Binghamton University. Dubofsky helped advance the field of "new labor history," which focuses on the experiences of workers and social movements rather than institutions. Dubofsky is one of the five major labour historians, who pioneered new approaches to working-class experience in the 1950s and 1960s. Along with Herbert G. Gutman, David Montgomery, David Brody, and Alice Kessler-Harris, Dubofsky researched, wrote about, and taught courses in labour history at a time when the field was not in fashion and there was little appreciation and support for the study of workers and their pasts. Since the early 1980s, Dubofsky has written extensively about the role of politics and state action in the changing fortunes of the American labor movement. Dubofsky promotes the theory that labor radicalism emerged from what has been termed a "culture of poverty," and he stresses the role culture and the development of capitalism play in the American labor movement-particularly in the late 19th century.