Joseph Borkin

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Joseph Borkin (born November 12, 1911 in New York City ; died July 5, 1979 in Chevy Chase, Maryland ) was an American business lawyer and author.

Life

Joseph Borkin studied economics at New York University (BA and MA) and then law at the National University School of Law in Washington, DC He worked his entire life as a lawyer with business knowledge. He published some influential writings on this, but also on non-specialist fiction topics, on Sigmund Freud or on the Indonesian language . A book on the effectiveness of antitrust lawsuits and one on the role of lawyers in the Watergate scandal remained unfinished.

Borkin was married to Pauline Borkin and they had two children.

Professional background

Borkin initially worked for the US Congress and for a US Senate committee of inquiry into corruption allegations against the ammunition industry. In 1938 he joined the United States Department of Justice as assistant to Attorney General Thurman Arnold . At the beginning of 1943 he published a populist pamphlet against German and international cartels with Charles Welsh: Germanys Master Plan: The Story of Industrial Offensive. This book combined the American middle class aversion to big business with a patriotic perspective. The work became a bestseller with several unchanged editions until 1946, and the film rights were even sold.

Borkin and his co-author Charles Welsh delivered the first US major pamphlet against international cartels - before the works of Corwin D. Edwards and Wendell Berge of 1944. This was a radical position of Roosevelt - progressives that dominated 1943 to 1946. It was rejected as unrealistic or imperialist by both conservative and Marxist sides. The 'gray eminence' behind the campaign appears to have been Thurman Arnold , who was removed from his position as Chief Competition Guardian (the Antitrust Division) by Franklin D. Roosevelt .

Borkin remained chief economist in the antitrust authority until 1946 and worked through the German IG Farben group and its international cartel links.

From 1946 Borkin worked as a freelance lawyer and economic advisor and was associated with Lawler, Kent & Eisenberg. He was teaching business ethics at the Catholic University of America . He published his professional knowledge of the history of IG Farben in 1978 with The Crime and Punishment of IG Farben ; this highly dramatic book was also a bestseller and was translated into German in 1979.

Borkin was a member of various professional associations of lawyers and also a member of the American Economic Association and the National Press Club .

Fonts (selection)

  • with Frank C. Waldrop: Television: a struggle for power . Introducing George Henry Payne . New York, W. Morrow and Co., 1938
  • with Charles Welsh: Germanys Master Plan: The Story of Industrial Offensive . Introduction Thurman Arnold . New York: Duel, Sloan, and Pearce, 1943
  • Robert R. Young , the populist of Wall Street . New York, Harper & Row, 1954
  • The corrupt judge: an inquiry into bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors in the federal courts . New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1962
  • The Crime and Punishment of IG Farben . New York: Free Press, 1978
  • The unholy alliance of IG Farben. A community of interests in the Third Reich . Translation Bernhard Schulte. Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1979

Obituaries

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Abramson, Victor (1943): [Review of] Borkin, Joseph; Welsh, Charles A .: Germany's Master Plan. The Story of Industrial Offensive, 1943. In: The American Economic Review 33 (2), p. 437.
  2. ^ De Haas, Jacob Anton (1944): International cartels in the postwar world. New York [u. a.]: American Enterprise Assoc .; Allen, James S. (1946): World monopoly and peace. New York: International Publishers.
personal data
SURNAME Borkin, Joseph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American business lawyer and author
DATE OF BIRTH November 12, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH 5th July 1979
Place of death Chevy Chase, Maryland