The evolutionist conception of the Commons-Wisconsin School of Labor History

In response to social upheavals and the socialist movement in the United States developing between 1890 and the 1920's--the social reformer John R. Commons, beginning in 1904, founded "business unionism" as the political economy of the Wisconsin School of Labor History. As a founder of this school, Commons reconstituted the organizing principles of classical political economy amending them to fit the imperatives of the expanding capitalist social order. Commons was very deeply influenced by the German Historical School's critique of classical political economy in general and the evolutionist method of its social sciences in particular. He viewed the capitalist system as fragmented units of economic parts yet continuously recombining as an interacting whole. Commons was also very much influenced by reform-social Darwinist biological arguments. It held that the capitalist classes constituted the natural leaders in a competitive society, and that the working classes were subordinated to them.;The method of investigation is based on dialectical-historical materialism. It is dialectical in so far as it tries to show the disparity between theory and practice as something developing from within the class system of private ownership; it is historical materialism in so far as it tries to show the class system as a definite mode of production having its own freedom and necessity.;In the meanwhile, Commons' "business unionism" viewed labor as a partner in the economic process, but at the same time subordinated it to capital and denied it any theory of which would have afforded it a decisive voice. Business unionism acted directly against the militancy of workers restricting labor's self-determination.