While in high school, he learned Russian and a number of other European languages, and his teachers introduced him to the work of Georgi Plekhanov.

[citation needed] He never joined a political party or radical movement, however, and his advocacy remained more theoretical than practical.

[1] Perlman's paternal grandmother, Anna Blankenstein, had emigrated to the United States some years earlier and was employed as a dressmaker by the designer Hattie Carnegie.

Strunsky, buying dresses for the trip from Carnegie, met Blankenstein—who told her to look up Blankenstein's "brilliant nephew" in Naples who "knew everything about Russian Marxism".

Suffering from depression (which he struggled with periodically throughout his life), Perlman traveled to New Hampshire to visit relatives, the Shaber family.

He enrolled in classes taught by Frederick Jackson Turner (who, for most of Perlman's undergraduate career, was his mentor as well), John R. Commons and Richard T. Ely.

Commons was anti-Semitic and reacted negatively to Perlman's strong Yiddish accent and constant poverty.

Unions formed to protect wages, Perlman argued, did not arise (as Marx believed) from the bourgeoisie.

After nearly being lynched by striking workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912, Perlman retreated to the Shaber home in New Hampshire.

[2] Perlman sought and won a substantial salary increase from Commons, and brought his parents and sibling to the United States.

The instigator of the rebellion was Ella Commons, who coordinated a series of promotions, votes and organizational changes which forced Ely out and permitted Perlman to obtain an assistant professor position.

Perlman's theoretical approach was politically detached and relied heavily on data collection, a model which would dominate labor history well into the 1960s.

Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin had argued that unions too often pursued improvements in wages and working conditions rather than advocating revolution.

Perlman criticized this theory by arguing that workers in the United States were not, in fact, alienated as they were in Europe.

Rather, in the U.S., the source of owner-worker conflict was not capitalism per se but the downward pressure on wages exerted by a marketplace free from internal tariffs.

His book, A Theory of the Labor Movement, "left an indelible impression on a generation of teachers and trade union personnel.

Perlman may have held some racist views (particularly toward Asians) which limited his understanding of the evolution of the labor movement.

It is fairly clear that his concept of class was limited to economics, and did not include race, status, ethnicity, or other sociological factors.

Nevertheless, critics agree that Perlman holds a significant and meaningful place in the development of labor history.

In particular, they detail that contrary to mainstream accounts the refusal of corporations to negotiate, government institutions and officials in owners' pockets, and facing the use of legal and military repression workers were forced to escalate their tactics in self-defense.

Selig Perlman was notorious for never attending university meetings, or participating in professional or academic conferences.

Selig Perlman's niece is the writer and etiquette authority Judith Martin, better known as "Miss Manners.