Melançon Enterprises • a multidivision multinational since 1980

For the new-forming Radical Research Collective, we asked ourselves to share our influences (and the project we want to work on). Here's my attempt.

Influences

Number one largest influence on my understanding of the economy and some other aspects of society:

Jane Jacobs.
I read her in books, though some essays are online (some bad links) http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Jacobs.html
Most usefully http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Jacobsbiox.html

Most of my influences are online. Go figure. They are also white males, so apparently I'm representing my demographic here after all.

Most unique/important especially in a U.S. context:

Joe Bageant - http://www.joebageant.com/

Here's a good essay that touches on academia, and at the same time conveys the particular perspectives that make, for me, Joe Bageant an essential starting point to our venture:
http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2007/04/a_feral_dog_how.html

Douglas Rushkoff - http://rushkoff.com/

Naomi Klein - http://www.naomiklein.org/

And more, in roughly reverse chronological order:

James Herod, "Getting Free" - I have a copy and there's a copy in Encuentro 5 in Suren's office. An older online copy is here: http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Strate/GetFre/C.htm
Currently http://www.jamesherod.info/ is down

Sean Donahue - http://greenmanramblings.blogspot.com/

Al Giordano - http://narconews.com/

Howard Zinn

Noam Chomsky

Seth Godin - http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

Robert Jensen - http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/articles.html

John Melançon, my father, who distilled the knowledge and insight of many on this list

Martin Luther King Jr.

Ella Baker

C. E. Ayres - he wrote mostly in the 1920s and 1930s, I have some of his books, most important among them "The Divine Right of Capital"

A. Philip Randolph

Lucy Parsons

Eugene V. Debs

W.E.B. DuBois (in part through his step-son, David DuBois, who taught at UMass-Amherst)

Ida B. Wells

Thomas Paine

John Locke

(I have never tried to put together such a list before, and I am prone to stunning gaps in recall memory, so I may well have left out a key influence!)

Proposal for the book

Economics for a Better World: Greater Equality of Wealth Brings Greater Economic Growth (this is my never-written thesis, arguing the case for equality primarily within the largely incorrect assumptions of neoclassical economic theory, while alluding to the fuller and more real economic reality).