I think it is a good idea to construct networks of heterodox economists, and
Fred's work is legendary and to be supported. [also can I take the
opportunity to direct everyone again to ICAPE (www.icape.org
<http://www.icape.org/) where you will find a new (and revised) Call for
Papers]
It may seem therefore contradictory that I should respond to Christian by
arguing that heterodox lists should should not be open access, nor pass on
their membership to third parties including other heterodox lists. CSE had,
and I think still has, a conscious policy of keeping its sub list private. I
am against changing this policy. I think its benefits outweigh those of open
access.
The left has not caught up with what is really happening on the internet.
The explosion of public rights has produced an implosion of individual
rights, not least the indispensible rights to privacy and confidentiality.
With generalised access to information, the individual is more vulnerable
now than at any time in history. Almost anything that anyone wants to find
out about you, they can get hold of -- and, more scarily, anything that
anyone wants to say about you, they can bring to the attention of millions
of people.
Maybe this can be used for good, but it is also used for harm, as anyone who
has been on this list for more than six months knows very well.
The sharpest expression of emerging new threats is what I have no hesitation
in terming 'Internet McCarthyism'. By this I mean deliberately bringing
together, and broadcasting in a systematic way, a pastiche of gossip,
selective citations, and explicit misinformation aimed at an individual with
the intention of forming an association between her public engagements
(including her employer) and her beliefs, affiliations and
privately-expressed views. This is done in full knowledge that this
information will be available to the general public, including those in a
position of power and authority over the target, at the press of a button,
and will consequently result in detriment and persecution at the hands of
third parties and, therefore the denial of rights on grounds of belief or
affiliation.
Like the McCarthyite testifiers of the 1940s and 1950s, the Internet
Informer has no direct responsibility for the persecution that arises from
his or her disclosure, but knows full well what the effect will be. This is
thus the internet equivalent of torture by proxy: knowing that he is not
empowered directly to restrict the activities of his target, the Internet
McCarthyite broadcasts information which he knows, in the hands of others,
will result in such restrictions.
I think that the list-owner and the C&C ed board (which, from the name of
the list, bears ultimate responsibility for its conduct and for what is
published on it) should take action to secure the following:
(1) protecting members against informers. Members have a right to be
protected against disclosure of personal information, and its malicious
association with privately expressed views, which opens them to the risk of
political persecution. This extends in particular to their place of
employment. Lists should defend basic trade union and civil rights which
have been fought for bitterly over the past two centuries: most
fundamentally, the right to work and engage in public activities free from
discrimination on grounds of belief or affiliation.
(2) the right to privacy and to confidentiality. Listmember names should not
be passed on without consent - as is standard commercial best practice.
Comment made on the list should be respected as having the character of a
draft, and should not be disseminated further without consent - as is
standard academic best practice.
(3) clear list rules protecting the ordinary civil rights of members in UK
law: in particular against harassment, libel, and malicious defamation.
(4) discharging publishers' statutory duties in UK law. If a member is
allowed to breach law (for example by sending a racist or defamatory email),
the list itself is at risk. In the interests of all its members, it must be
able to protect itself against an abusive member placing it in breach.
Breach of statute should lead to automatic exclusion.
(5) C&C should meet Fred's requirements by establishing a dissemination list
clearly under C&C editorial control. This would pass on Fred's excellent
newsletter and any additional communications to C&C subscribers. It would
not forward messages from other list members or members of the public. It
could forward messages from a defined group of networked contact
organisations such as ICAPE and AHE. Looking ahead, Heterodox organisations
should mutually agree the rules which should be respected in order for each
to provide access to the other for its dissemination lists.
Initial members would be given clear instructions on how to leave it and
thereafter the principle of inclusion should be 'opt-in' rather than
'opt-out' for new subscribers. That is, one should tick a box saying 'put me
on the list', not a box saying 'take me off it'.
Global culture and individual rights - a critique
=================================================
Obviously, C&C is not the only list experiencing these problems or it would
merely be a local difficulty which could be sorted out by commonsense and
goodwill. There is a wider problem which is that the internet is changing
the world, and the 'received wisdom' of the left that all such change is
automatically and without intervention Good, is clearly not any more true.
I am increasingly doubtful that an 'open list' culture, under the modern
conditions that have bred this abuse, automatically assists the cause of
either heterodoxy or democracy, unless additional specific guarantees of
civil rights are in place. The Internet as such does not automatically
protect rights. It offers no defence against systematic and determined
abuse. We, the owners and members of the lists, ourselves have to provide
this defence.
This puts us apparently in the position of constraining freedom of speech.
But it has never been recognised as beneficial to democracy or freedom to
permit actions that restrict freedom, which is why we don't accept racist or
sexist posts on C&C (I hope). Equally, I don't see it as any part of our
mission to condone or facilitate harassment, defamation, informing,
witch-hunting, and political persecution, and I don't see what 'tolerating'
such activities has to do with freedom.
At present many on the left - usually people in privileged positions who
have never been the target of persecution, and frequently those who
themselves control access to media - treat the protection of identity,
privacy, and freedom from harassment or defamation as some kind of joke,
even joining in the harassment by ridiculing those who stand up against it,
or even intervening to prevent the victim of defamation or harassment
responding to it. The usual rules concerning fish and ponds sadly apply:
Small Influence is no protection against Big Delusions.
Anyone who has had anything serious to do with the victims of racism,
sexism, or discrimination on grounds of faith, sexual preference, or against
the disabled, will be wearily familiar with the long history of joking about
or ridiculing victims, above all when defamation or harassment is involved.
Virtually all persecution starts with jokes. Next time you read an asinine
joke post directed against someone who has had the temerity to ask for fair
representation, think first and laugh afterwards: next time it may be you.
In particular, cast an eye over the landmark judgements now emerging from
the House of Lords, which for the first time provide a practical defence for
employees against harassment, bullying and defamation and which centre on
the precise issue of 'when a joke is no longer a joke'.
Just to focus your minds, the joke in question was 'since you got here from
Somalia, surely you can find your way to Croydon'. I'm not telling you any
more, because I want you to read the source, from start to finish.
The rights established in these judgements, though fragile and conditioned,
are a fundamental blow for trade union and employment freedoms and we should
not only be studying them very carefully but applying them in our own
practice: not to put to fine a point on it, they put much of the left to
shame. Anyone who thinks the law can never be of assistance to civil rights,
democracy, or the left, should study these judgements and their grounds with
great care. Civil rights and trade union campaigners have fought a long
battle to secure them and they should not be implemented selectively.
Esther Thomas v News Group Newspapers (The Sun) [2001] EWCA Civ 1233
(http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2001/1233.html)
Majrowski v. Guy's and St. Thomas' NHS Trust [2006] UKHL 34
http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKHL/2006/34.html
See also: http://www.harassment-law.co.uk/
The fact is that the UK Law Lords (under the enormous and overwhelming
pressure of civil rights campaigners) have finally recognised something
which the left has failed to understand, namely the transformation in the
relation between private and public. This is no longer just the fault of Big
Media. The key issue in Esther Thomas vs News Group (translation for our
transatlantic friends: Rupert Murdoch) is the role played by readers'
letters, of which the 'innocent post' on a blog is surely the archetype. The
destruction of privacy also an outcome of, and is interpenetrating, list and
blog culture.
In effect, private places no longer exist. Consequently, they have to be
*defined*. The loss of privacy is not an absolute human gain. It is not a
Brave New World to stand in a room with six billion people with everyone
either hearing or broadcasting every word you speak. It is a dystopian
nightmare.
If every wall has an ear, then the time has come to start making earplugs.
A discussion list used to be the internet equivalent of a seminar: a
semi-private place where a community discusses its issues informally and
without fear of misquotation or malicious misrepresentation. Now, unless
*explicit* steps are taken to defend privacy and confidentiality against
abusers, they can easily become a stamping ground for harassers, stalkers
and informers.
The left will be the first victim - unless it takes explicit steps to defend
the rights traditionally associated with such quasi-privacy. A list is a de
facto publication medium. An open list is no different to a newspaper, in
fact it frequently reaches many more people - particularly if one includes
in its audience not just its subscribers, but anyone who can read its posts
by googling it.
And just like a newspaper, it is a potential vehicle for abuse.
Therefore explicit steps have to be taken by the publisher. It is not
'right-on' to start up any old list for anyone to join, and do what the hell
they want, if what they want includes persecution, harassment and clyping.
In a world culture which is generally reactionary, suppressive,
authoritarian and anti-democratic, these dominant world values will
inevitably in time become the dominant culture of the internet. The fact
that the internet is a public medium provides no automatic protection of
rights.
The line between global internet culture and global identity-card culture is
wafer-thin.
The right to speak is not the same as the right to be defamed. Being able to
say what *you* want is not the same as giving *other people* the right to
say what they want about you. You have the right to be represented fairly
and you have the right to ask your list-owners to protect you. The Nazis'
loss of access to the press does not figure as a civil rights disaster of
the twentieth century.
I think open lists have a place, but I don't think a journal discussion list
is one of them. The C&C list once had the status of a community of
individuals with the limited common purpose of discussing issues of theory
relevant to the journal in an atmosphere of privacy, relevance, and respect
for basic rights. It has lost this status, because this status was not
fought for. This is a sad thing.
There is space on the internet for a rich mixture of private and public
discourse - but *only* if the left becomes vigilant in the defence of
individual and civil rights. The right of privacy, the right to be fairly
represented, freedom from harassment and defamation and not least the right
not to be informed on - these are rights which need to be consciously
defended.
The internet has brought important new freedoms. But Left and liberal
communities have given insufficient thought to the other side of the
internet: to the sacrifice of human and civil rights issues which arise from
the enormous destruction of the private sphere which this new public
resource has brought with it.
Alan
-----Original Message-----
From: To complement the journal 'Capital and Class' (ISSN 0 309 8786)
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Christian Garland
Sent: 16 November 2006 22:29
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: C&C website access
Would it be possible to make the Capital and Class site open acccess, since
its not as far as I know owned or copyrighted by Taylor & Francis, Springer
or whoever...
Best Christian
>From: CAPITAL-AND-CLASS automatic digest system <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: "To complement the journal 'Capital and Class' (ISSN 0 309 8786)"
> <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: CAPITAL-AND-CLASS Digest - 12 Nov 2006 to 15 Nov 2006 (#2006-95)
>Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 00:04:37 +0000
>
>There is 1 message totalling 468 lines in this issue.
>
>Topics of the day:
>
> 1. membership list of CSE
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 16:05:51 -0600
>From: "Lee, Frederic" <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: membership list of CSE
>
>This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
>
>------_=_NextPart_001_01C70902.3723D0E5
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="us-ascii"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
>
>Dear Colleague,
>
>=20
>
>I am engaged in a project of developing a network of heterodox
>economists around the world. This involves identifying heterodox
>economists in various countries through their membership in national and
>international heterodox associations and their subscription to heterodox
>economics journals. Currently I have been able to use the membership
>lists of URPE, AFEE, AFIT, ASE, IAFFE, ADEK (France), PEF (Canada),
>KSESA (Korea), and ASHE (Australia) to develop and put together the
>bare-bones of the network. Unfortunately, I have so far been unable to
>obtain membership list of CSE; and even though I am a member of CSE, I
>have not been able to figure out who I should contact in this regard.
>In addition, I have been unable to convince the publishers of the
>Cambridge Journal of Economics (CJE) and the Review of Political Economy
>(ROPE) to give me access to their subscription lists. Thus I am turning
>to you for some help to fill in the gaps in my research:
>
>=20
>
>(1) if you know, could you tell me who I should contact
>about obtaining the CSE membership list for 2006.
>
>=20
>
>(2) could you tell me if you subscribe to the CJE or ROPE or even the
>JPKE for the year 2006.
>
>=20
>
>(3) if you have any suggestions as to associations/membership list
>and/or journal/subscription list that I should include in my project,
>please let me know.
>
>=20
>
>I should note that the information I receive stays with me and is not
>sent to any third party. In addition, the only information I utilize is
>the last name, first name and country-all the rest I discard.
>
>=20
>
>Thank you for whatever assistance you can give me.
>
>=20
>
>Sincerely,
>
>=20
>
>Fred Lee
>
>=20
>
>Professor Frederic S. Lee
>
>Department of Economics
>
>University of Missouri-Kansas City
>
>5100 Rockhill Road
>
>Kansas City, Missouri 64110
>
>USA
>
>E-mail: [log in to unmask]
>
>Book Series Editor of "Advances in Heterodox Economics"
>
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