Today we get a glimpse of the life of Russian-born economist Leo Rogin who died at age 54 after having taught twenty years at UC Berkeley.
A additional brief biographical paper of Leo Rogin that highlights his influence on John Kenneth Galbraith:
Robert W. Dimand and Robert H. Koehn. Galbraith’s Heterodox Teacher: Leo Rogin’s Historical Approach to the Meaning and Validity of Economic Theory. Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 42, No. 2 (June, 2008) pp. 561-568.
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Leo Rogin, Economics: Berkeley
1893-1947
by Robert A. Brady, Ralph W. Chaney, and Malcolm M. Davisson
The greatest tribute to Leo Rogin’s intellectual qualities was the response of his students. They invariably reported his classes to be extraordinarily challenging and exhilarating. Few teachers paid so little lip service to the conventional canons of pedagogy, yet few were able to stir up such animated and continuous reëxamination of fundamental propositions which underlie social theory in general and economic theory in particular. Former students are scattered all over the country who, years after, remember his classes as the outstanding intellectual experience of their entire college career.
Part of this experience was derived by contact with his charming personal qualities: an infectious enthusiasm, a wonderful sense of humor, a never failing delight in new ideas, and a great tolerance in outlook and interpretation. Some of these qualities may trace back to a life of rich and varied personal experience. He was born in Mohilev, Russia, on April 18, 1893. His father, manager of a large Russian estate, moved with his family to the United States in 1902, where in due time they became American citizens. Leo Rogin’s early interest was quite naturally devoted to agricultural subjects. He received the B.S. degree in Agriculture from Rutgers College in 1916 and the Ph.D. degree in Economics from Columbia University in 1931. He began teaching as Instructor in Economics and Sociology at Grinnell College in 1921. The following year he became Associate Professor of Economics and Sociology at North Carolina College for Women. In 1926 he was Assistant Professor of Economics at Lawrence College, Wisconsin. He came to the University of California in 1927, where he was Lecturer (1927-1938), Associate Professor (1938-1946), and Professor (1946-1947).
Interspersed with his teaching were other professional assignments. In 1925-1926 he served as Economist on the staff of the Guarantee Trust Company. In 1934-1935 he was Chief of Staff of the Labor Advisory Board of the NRA. In 1937-1938 he was Director of an extensive Survey of Destitution in Wyoming.
An understanding of the contribution of Leo Rogin must begin with the realization that he held that neither theory nor practice in the social sciences could be adequately analyzed or creatively expanded or refined outside of a frame of reference which was coextensive with the dual role of citizen and scholar. From this it followed that the differentia specifica which separates the social sciences from the natural sciences inheres in the structure, character, and functioning of social relations as such; that there is no escape from the acceptance of the historicity of social science theory, however formal and abstract; and that no aspect of social sciences–economics, political science, sociology–can be looked upon as more than a specific angle of an approach to an examination of the social sciences as a whole.
It is no accident, accordingly, that Leo Rogin felt, as an economist, that this view required that he become unusually well versed in philosophy and history. That this implied a stronger, rather than a weaker, imperative for rigor in his thinking processes is indicated by his systematic and long drawn-out self-education in logic and mathematics. But this very same emphasis also led him to feel that since the significant reality of the social sciences was an ever-changing and perpetually fluid manifold of social relations, it was highly necessary to cultivate a sense for the vagaries of theory by active participation in the social life of his time. Thus his personal as well as his scholarly life represented a quite unusual wedding of theory and practice. He maintained an acute and vivid interest in people, events, and a whole range of current social problems while at the same time constantly pursuing a heavy schedule of detailed and exacting research. This research had just begun to yield its most important results at the time of his sudden death in the summer of 1947. A major work, tentatively titled The Meaning and Validity of Economic Theory, representing some ten years of intensive work, is to be published in 1948. This study, dealing with the major figures in the evolution of economic thought from the time of the Physiocrats and the founding of the Classical School to J. M. Keynes, was prefatory to two other projected works. One was to be a detailed study of Keynes, whom Rogin regarded as one of the great transitional figures of contemporary times. The other was to be a constructive examination of the theory of economic planning.
Thus his work was cut off at the very time when it bore promise of yielding a significant reëxamination of economic theory as a whole. His earlier critical writings reflected a very carefully outlined plan of work and were notable for their penetration and originality. Particularly noteworthy was a series of articles and reviews on the writings of Karl Marx and Werner Sombart. An earlier study, The Introduction of Farm Machinery in its Relation to the Productivity of Labor in the Agriculture of the United States During the 19th Century, published by the University of California Press in 1931, reflects his intense interest in the practical side of economic investigation and forecasts his later concern over techniques and methodology. E. A. J. Johnson said of this study that, “It is at once a set of findings and a method… his methodological contributions are indispensable to economic historians.” His later work would have amplified this statement to cover the significant problems of contemporary theory and policy formation.
In 1923 Leo Rogin married Winifred Ellsworth. His widow, three daughters, and a son survive him.
Source: University of California. In Memoriam, 1947.
Image Source: Blue and Gold, 1922.