Book Review by Terrie Albano

People vs. Profits
Columns of Victor Perlo: 1961-1999
Volume 1: The Home Front

Edited by Ellen Perlo, Stanley Perlo and Art Perlo

While reading People vs. Profits by Victor Perlo the 
old saying, "The more things change, the more they stay the 
same", kept cropping up in the back of my mind. Capitalism has 
changed quite a bit in these last 40 years, and Perlo's writings 
faithfully reflect many of these changes. Even more impressive, 
however, is how these columns about the basic laws of capitalist 
production and crises retain so much relevance for today.

Perlo, for many years the chief economist for the Communist Party 
USA and a world-renowned Marxist, wrote a weekly column for 
People's Weekly World and its predecessors from the 1960s 
through the late 1990s — totalling over 3000 columns. He also 
wrote 13 books over his lifetime and delivered numerous lectures, 
reports and conference papers, creating a substantial body of 
political economic analysis before his death in 1999.

Here, as in all his writings, Perlo takes very complex economic 
and political dynamics and makes them user-friendly to non-
economists.

The first chapter, "Economic Situation", starts with a column 
written in April 1961 entitled "What Kind of Recovery?" While the 
political situation was very different than today, including the 
leadership of the labour movement, the bottom line that Perlo 
points out is relevant to the current discussion and struggle 
around the idea of a so-called "jobless recovery".

"Not everybody wants the same kind of recovery. For capitalists, 
recovery means the increase in profits above all. For workers 
recovery means jobs for the unemployed, higher real incomes, more 
paid leisure, and social security. The propaganda that the fates 
of labour and capital are automatically joined economically is a 
fiction."

George W Bush trumpeted his tax cuts to the rich for starting a 
so-called economic recovery, but that talk is exactly about 
recovery of profits for his ruling-class cohorts. The "jobless 
recovery" leaves working-class families, women and the racially 
oppressed wondering, "What recovery?".

Perlo focused a good portion of his writing on exposing racism. 
Using Marxist methodology, Perlo combines economic statistics 
with the historical and political situation and the people's mass 
struggle to expose racism in the economic, political, and social 
life of the United States. In the process he demonstrates a 
committed partisanship to the struggles of the African Americans, 
Latinos and all victims of discrimination.

Other areas of thought, analysis and struggle Perlo covers 
include Marxism, labour and industry, big business and 
profiteering, militarism, taxes, Social Security, corporate 
corruption, agriculture, role of the CIA and FBI, education and 
problems faced by cities, states and regions.

People vs. Profits is illustrated with biting political 
art by notable cartoonists such as Bill Andrews, Fred Ellis, 
Ollie Harrington, Huck and Konopacki, Seymour Joseph, Peggy 
Lipschutz and Fred Wright.

Given Perlo's prolific writing, compiling his columns was a 
daunting project for the editors, his wife and partner Ellen 
Perlo, and his two sons, Art and Stanley. They managed it with 
skill.

As former People's Weekly World editor Tim Wheeler wrote 
in the forward: "The contradictions [Perlo] exposed are now 
hitting with devastating force: Enron thievery, a war for oil 
against Iraq, global corporations and the ultra-right running 
amok. I often wish Vic were still with us, hammering away at 
these greedy corporations."

With People vs. Profits, Volume 1, Perlo is in many ways 
"still with us, hammering away" at the ills, evils and corruption 
of capitalism. We look forward to Volume 2, which will cover 
international affairs.

* * *

People vs. Profits, Volume 1 International Publishers, 
2003, Softcover, 372 pp, available SPA books: $15 plus $4 p&p.

People's Weekly World