Talk:Paul Bairoch

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Contents 1 Non-neutrality 2 Wikistalking 3 Under construction 4 Suspended 5 Get Real 6 A brief study in Kliman's arbitrary behaviour 7 Additional comment on defamation etc.

[edit] Non-neutrality

"one of the great post-war economic historians, a pioneer of global economic history" is non-neutral. I have placed an NPOV warning tag on the article especially because of this, though other aspects of the article aren't as neutral as they might be, either. andrew-the-k 23:33, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

The warning tag was removed, without explanation, and without fixing the problem. I am temprorarily restoring the warning and related ones. Once good-faith discussion of the problems starts taking place on this page, I'll remove the warnings. andrew-the-k 19:46, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikistalking

Jurriaan: I recommend you report a certain editor for Wikistalking. You might want to also mention how that person unethically publicly reproduced a private email from you on Wikipedia and vandalized the David Laibman talk page by removing your comments. It is certainly sad that a Marxist would try to harass you by impugning the integrity of Paul Bairoch. I also note that rather than first ask you for references, Akliman placed the neutrality tag on the article. I guess some people just don't understand principled and ethical behavior. Watchdog07 11:48, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

You know very well, my dearest Watchdog07, that Bendien has publicly announced that any communication from me to him will be regarded as escalation (of a matter I have relentlessly tried to de-escalate). Hence, the option of asking him first was simply not available to me.

andrew-the-k 12:04, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Under construction

This page is still under construction, and positive, valid contributions to its content are welcome. So far I have got not much further than a brief description and a fairly complete list of monographs, plus selected articles, convenient for users including myself (most libraries store only a selection of his published writings). The Kliman nuisance will be dealt with in other ways. User:Jurriaan 17:53 10 June 2007

I'm glad to see that Bendien's latest edit does not restore his original WP:NPOV-violating language. This is progress and, I presume, recognition on his part that my elimination of the bias in the article was indeed a "positive, valid contribution." I would like to remind everyone that no one owns Wikipedia articles, and I urge everyone to adhere scrupulously to the Wikipedia civility policy. Threats are unwelcome and unhelpful. andrew-the-k 17:04, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Suspended

Due to Kliman's interference, which I find irritating, I have suspended work on this article, I discovered what I was looking for anyway. User:Jurriaan 20:20 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Please be civil. Thank you in advance. andrew-the-k 23:42, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Get Real

Speak for yourself Kliman. And get real. I do not want to waste too much time on this issue, but UNDERSTAND what is at stake here. You are in no position to deliver lectures on civility, because many of your own edits are highly objectionable. And people get annoyed. Very annoyed, as the discussion of your edits proves. I do not have that problem myself, because I observe norms, and acknowledge and correct my mistakes, as required. You do have that problem, and everything you do on wikipedia is on record for the whole world, Kliman. If you are so concerned with civility, why publish an edited version of my personal email communication to you on wikipedia, in violation of its rules, to “expose” my lack of civility? That letter must be removed from wikipedia, because it does not belong there. It is in the first instance your responsibility to know that, and remove it from the archives. If you do not remove it, I will appeal to the wikimedia foundation to have it removed. And I may lodge an arbitration request. You can of course publish the unedited letter on your own website, which would indicate where you stand and where I stand. But basically all it says fairly pithily that I do not want to have anything to do with you and your group of co-thinkers. But while I said I wished no further contact with you, yet you try to search me out and stalk my writing. Is that civilized? If you are so keen, come to Amsterdam, and we will settle this war which you are escalating, quickly. I never said you are a worm, I believe you still walk on two legs, but I have no plans for going to the United States until after the downfall of Bush. Paul Bairoch was a “great economic historian”, and "pioneered" new areas of history, global comparative economics and historical demography. This is acknowledged by all reputable specialists in the field, including his closest associates who know very well how many articles he wrote. If you have not read the literature, ring up Maddison and Batou and they will put you in the picture about that. Why do you think that in 1971 Fernand Braudel recommended Bairoch for the post of director of studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, which he accepted? You don’t get there by willy-nilly edits of other people’s wikipedia articles, Kliman. Sure, from your academic office in Pleasantville, NY you can “downsize” Bairoch in wikipedia leisurely, at the stroke of a key, but you have to live with the consequences yourself. I have to write wikipedia articles when I am not working in my paid job or engaged in household tasks. It is true, some of my own wiki articles could technically be better referenced with footnotes. As I said, the Bairoch article is under construction, and there was no single on-line source of all his work. But I do not have easy access to a research library that has all the texts that I need, and often I have to work from 35 years of my memory, or sources to hand. I cite sources, and people can read them if they want to find out more detail. The only proof I have that I have done it correctly, is that most of my articles are still what they were, give or take a small detail. Wikipedia is not the special province of academic status privilege. It is not intended that Kliman be the adjudicator of other people’s talents here. It is a space for people everywhere FROM ALL WALKS OF LIFE, including me. And they all have a right to write articles in wikipedia as long as they stick with its norms, aspiring to quality. Nobody’s waiting around for some pedant whose only point of honour is to find fault with other people’s articles, or introduce his special personal “nuances” favouring his own interpretation, without contributing any constructive addition in the spirit which the author of the article intended. It is false to suggest that wikipedia articles “are owned by nobody” and that therefore you can interfere with them any way you see fit, they are owned by the wikimedia foundation who holds them in trust for everybody, based on norms. You can alter them, but you have to do it with respect and care, honoring the spirit, integrity and intention of the article. That is especially important if you regard yourself as some sort of communist. At this point, Kliman, you take an anarchic turn. Where there is no rule, you seek to impose your own rule. Where there is a rule, you insinuate that it doesn’t apply in your case. In other words, Kliman makes the rules, and Kliman decides which rules will apply. Yeah, everybody wants to rule the world. This is lack of integrity and violates wiki conventions. It is true, there is no rule that can apply to all cases. As they say, “the exception proves the rule. But if there is no rule, you are required to exercise good judgment and as the British say, exercise a sense of “fair play”. Well, how about it? In the latest issue of the refereed British Marxist journal ‘’Capital & Class’’, the scholars Simon Mohun and Roberto Venezani write with polite understatement: “In their use of logic, their reporting of the views of those with whom they disagree, and in their elaboration of their own fundamental categories, Kliman and Freeman leave something to be desired.” (“The Incoherence of the TSSI: A Reply to Kliman and Freeman”, ‘’Capital & Class’’, issue 92, Summer 2007, p. 144). That is the issue with you, for many people, and you have to do something about it, Kliman. If you don’t do that, things will go from bad to worse. Thus I have two suggestions for you, Kliman. One is: be a real pluralist, meaning that rather than editing out and censoring what other people write, you simply insert another point of view, giving people the benefit of all relevant points of view, and permitting them to search things out further for themselves and make up their own mind. I don’t mind if you alter my articles, if indeed the article becomes BETTER in all respects of content, including readability. But I do mind if it is just Kliman gradually insinuating his view of the world in wikipedia, with a veneer of “objectivity” and “neutrality”. The other one is: be a CREATIVE Marxist, and rather than dotting the I’s in other people’s articles, write your OWN articles. You are quite capable of that, you pride yourself on having published in academic status journals, so it should be no problem to write something that everybody can understand. Take a look at e.g. Bottomore’s Marxist Encyclopedia, and compare it to what is available in wikipedia on-line. There must be hundreds of articles and categories you could potentially write on, which you could cross-reference to existing articles. Rather than operating from an “economics of scarcity”, operate from a perspective of unlimited intellectual possibilities. To finish, let me emphasize that if you seek to escalate more, don’t think I am going to exhaust myself replying to you. I am quite happy for you to build up your record of edits for the whole world to see, and evaluate them from time to time. Others will bring you to heel anyway if I don’t do it, and we can settle the war at some suitable time. User: Jurriaan 21:54 11 June 2007

I don't feel like commenting on most of this, which is a personal attack, in violation of WP policy. I'll just say in self-defense that:

(1) Bendien's email message was not private. He sent it to 4 individuals other than myself. It included my message, which I had sent to only 1 of those other individuals. Therefore, if I have done something improper (which I deny) by republishing a message more widely, Bendien did something improper before me. (However, I don't consider his publication of my message to others improper either, because I didn't ask him to keep it private, just as he didn't ask me to keep his message private.)

Bendien's latest message, above, says that I "edited" his message. Yes, I deleted some of what he wrote, inserting ellipses, for his protection. Period. Earlier, however, he claimed that I "forg[ed]" part of it. That was untrue. I'm glad that he has not repeated that charge.

According to the administrator with whom Bendien's colleague Watchdog07 checked, there's no WP rule against my publication of my message to Laibman (that included Bendien's message). My messages to Laibman are very pertinent to the editing of the article on him, since they show an ongoing pattern of attempts on my part to collaborate and arrive at consensus. If I'm shown a policy that indicates that Bendien's message should be removed, I will of course remove it promptly. In the meantime, I will strike it out of my message.

(2) I never challenged the notion that Bairoch was a "great economic historian" who "pioneered" new areas of history, global comparative economics and historical demography. My alleged "stalking" consisted of a warning tag that this kind of language shouldn't be used in WP articles, whether the point is true or not, and then, when Bendien removed the tag without altering the language, I made the language neutral myself. This isn't stalking; it's WP policy and recommended procedure.

(3)Alan Freeman and I intend to respond to Mohun and Veneziani. Let me be politely understated, and just say that I find their piece wanting, including the part quoted above. Lots of physicalists don't like what we say about them, but they haven't found anything we've said about them untrue, as far as I know. We don't like what the physicalists say about us, and we can show that they say untrue things. See the Temporal single-system interpretation article.

(4) As for my "censoring," this seems to be Bendien's defense of his original version of the TSSI article. If I'm right, I'll be happy to explain why I found almost none of it salvageable. I did try to salvage what I could.

andrew-the-k 22:05, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A brief study in Kliman's arbitrary behaviour

I agree that I attacked you personally in a couple of places, and I agree that this is strictly speaking not wikipedia policy. But note the context. I am confronting your sectarianism, where we go from the frying pan into the fire, carrying an off-list correspondence into wiki space. I have published plenty bits on the Internet, and very few of those bits contain any personal attack. The question you should be asking is why I choose to attack you at all, in this way. So let me explain. On your own user page User: Akliman, you cite as your favourite motto a quote from Malcolm X : "We want freedom by any means necessary. We want justice by any means necessary. We want equality by any means necessary." In other words, you are prepared to use ANY MEANS NECESSARY to get what you want, and in your correspondence you use the language of war: “escalate and de-escalate”.

What does this mean? It means that whatever the argument happens to be, the outcome will NOT depend on logic or evidence or context, but on whether YOU are WINNING. And you will stoop to any means which you consider necessary to win. Now I don’t operate like that. I reject some means because they do not promote freedom, I reject some means because they do not promote justice, and I reject some means because they do not promote equality. Not just “any means” will do, sorry to Malcolm X. That’s my ethics. But you are prepared to use “any means necessary” to win the war. In practice, that means that, when there is no procedure, you insist on a procedure, and that when there is a procedure, you insist that it does not apply in your case. You become vague when it suits you, and you become precise when it suits you. This has the result that the dialogue becomes a purely arbitrary monologue, and it invites a direct attack on your behaviour, morals and attitude. You bring this on yourself, but then turn around and make out that it’s other people’s fault.

As regards your (1), if I sent my email reply re David Laibman entry etc. to four people instead of two, the reason was that two other scholars expressed concern about the matter to me, and I wished to make evidence of my position clear to them. This was a personal communication, and private to those four people, not intended for the whole world to see. That is also how it is defined in law. I deal with hundreds of legal documents every day, and must decide who to cc. to everyday. That is part of my paid job. Of course, I know your type, and I know that if I send you any email, that this email will very likely be read by people for whom it was not intended, i.e. by people who think like you, “by any means necessary”. With unscrupulous people who talk in terms of war, I feel my action in regard to my referees was perfectly justified, and you prove its justification, by publishing the letter for the world to see, in a place where it does not belong, i.e. in wikipedia. If I explicitly reject contact with you, your response is to publish our contact to the whole world. You moreover proceed to deny that you did anything improper, which is to say that “anything goes” for Kliman. For me, “not just anything goes” but if you want to pick a war with me, you can get one, and more than you bargain for. However it is my belief that wikipedia is not the place for such a war, as I indicated. But even this does not deter you at all, because you will use “any means necessary” as you advocate yourself, which means that “anything goes”.

You admit that you deleted part of the email I sent (you cannot very well deny that, since it’s there for all to see), but you sanctimoniously claim you did that “for my protection”. Apart from the fact that I do not need your protection, this is hardly credible, in the light of the fact that you see yourself fighting a war against me in which “any means necessary” may be used. A more likely explanation is that you inserted the ellipses indicating omission to make people think that I must have said something to you that is “too terrible to mention”. Quite a clever smear tactic. But all I said was that I did not make threats of violence, which is not my habit anyway – as far as that goes, I use violence if I judge I need to use it, without making any threats - and that I ventured my opinion that somebody ought to “smack your bottom”. I deliberately use the term “forge”, because in publishing this edited letter in the wrong forum you are “subtly” falsifying my communication. I do not believe for one moment that your aim is “to collaborate and arrive at consensus”, precisely because YOU YOURSELF say that you will stoop to “|any means necessary”. It is just that you happened to be losing in your war, so you decided to change tack, and provide a bit of evidence of “collaboration and striving for consensus”. In the end, of course, you know very well that you CANNOT use “any means necessary” on wikipedia, as if wikipedia was a forum for Marxist class struggle. The war talk is your rhetoric, the substance is that “anything goes”.

As regards your (2), you claim that “I never challenged the notion that Bairoch was a "great economic historian" who "pioneered" new areas of history, global comparative economics and historical demography.” Oh no? Why then change the content as you did? All of a sudden you change tack, and you emphasize it is a matter of “form” rather than “content”. You claim that your motive was really different, you wanted to make the language more “neutral”. But what you hide is that in doing so, you change the whole meaning of what was being said! I intended to convey Paul Bairoch’s stature in his specialist fields, knowing as writer that the layperson reading the article may want to have a quick impression of the overall significance of his work. Most likely, Kliman saw it as his point of honour to “correct Bendien” with a feeling that Bairoch was being “over-rated” and that Bendien doesn’t know what he is talking about anyway. Lateron, Kliman realizes that this won’t wash academically, that he is in too deep, so then he starts talking about “procedure”. Okay, let’s take a couple wiki entries at random, and let loose Kliman’s “procedure” on them. In the wiki entry on Copernicus, we read that Copernicus was “Among the great polymaths of the Scientific Revolution”. Perfectly acceptable statement, you might say. No, no, says the Kliman procedure, it should be “more neutral”, Copernicus was simply a polymath, that is the fact, the rest is interpretation. Fine and good, but now we don’t even know if he was a good polymath or not, never mind his stature. Or let us take the wiki entry for Maurice Godelier, who is billed as “one of the most influential names in French anthropology”. No, says the Kliman procedure, he was simply a French anthropologist. Now all of this is simply ridiculous, because the stature of these people is well-established in science, but that is just to say that Kliman has his likes and dislikes, his whims and fancies, AND THEREFORE a procedure is accepted here, and rejected there. And all this can change at the drop of a hat, “by any means necessary” and “anything goes”. This is purely arbitrary, and therefore you can argue until you are blue in the face, but it makes absolutely no difference. Hence the reason why I said originally I did not want contact with Kliman & Co. You gain nothing by it.

As regards (3), you very clearly evade my point. The point is that your logic, your reporting of the views of those with whom you disagree, and your elaboration of your own fundamental categories are being viewed as unsatisfactory by scholars in your own specialist field. This contains a problem of form, a problem about the way you choose to communicate. But all of a sudden you start to talk about the content of the article written by Mohun and Veneziani, saying that you find their argumentation as a whole unsatisfactory. Clever trick, which evades the point I made about your objectionable edits, by focusing on something else. All you convey thereby is that you do not care a fart about my considerations.

As regards (4), you postulate that my reference to “censoring” must be my defence of my original entry on TSSI, implying thereby as a sort of snigger that I am trying to defend the indefensible. Magnanimously, however, Dr Kliman immediately goes on to assure us that he has good intentions, and will be happy to explain why he found “almost none of it salvageable”. The context is, that I had previously said that I was happy for Kliman as TSSI expert to work on the article, and had invited him to do so to improve the article. Kliman, you know very well that this was my stated attitude. But now we get into another subterfuge feigning innocence. You know very well, Kliman, that you censored comments of mine from the talk pages, this is a fact and anybody can verify it. All that happens here, is that you want to shift attention away from this objectionable procedure of yours, back to the content of the TSSI article. The Kliman philosophy is very clearly revealed: “who is not for me, is against me”, but this is explicitly in conflict with wikipedia philosophy, which aims to bring people together in learning. The whole thing is arbitrary, and Kliman just picks out bits that he think he can viably find fault with, without paying any attention to the case being made.

I am prepared to recognize you are an intelligent and clever man, Kliman. Nobody I know says you aren’t. But you combine this intelligence and cleverness with an arbitrary and whimsical modus operandi. You latch onto procedures when it suits you, and abandon them when it doesn’t suit you, “by any means necessary”. The result is that you are denying my freedom, you are denying me justice, and you are denying me equality in wikiland. Now somebody could say, what do I care what Kliman thinks? Well, a lot of people put a lot of work into writing wikipedia articles, and they don’t take very kindly to Kliman hacking into them when it suits his purpose.

The reason why I propose an arbitration procedure is essentially because, however cleverly you twist and turn in logic and language, Kliman, your modus operandi is arbitrary. Its determinism can be discovered only by distinguishing feigned motives and real motives. I write my articles in good faith (bona fide), to inform myself and others. You want to score points against other people “by any means necessary”. That is the difference. And if your modus operandi is arbitrary, you need an arbitration procedure. I see no way of solving my war with you. I admit I am partly responsible for what happened, because by writing the Temporal single-system interpretation article originally I could well predict that it would get a response from TSSI supporters. That’s okay with me. But I cannot predict easily what you will do next, precisely because of your arbitrariness, and, not being your father, I am not responsible for you either. The most annoying thing of all is that your sectarianism consumes time that I could have spent on shaping up the Paul Bairoch article, for which I had to go to the IISH on my free afternoon to get the relevant articles. And that is the saddest thing of all. Instead of enlightening people, you are consuming energy and time that blocks enlightenment. However, the longer you carry on like this, the more people will realize what you really are. And thus you defeat yourself in your “war”. So change, Kliman. Change.

User:Jurriaan 16:50 12 June 2007 (UTC)

In order to calm things down and arrive at a mutually agreeable state of affairs, I'll refrain from commenting on most of this. Let me just deny the allegations pertaining to my motives and the implications of my edits; say that I have no idea what "censoring comments ... from the talk pages" refers to; note that, at least in US defamation law, communication of a statement to any additional party is considered publication; request that WP:BLP, WP:NPA, and WP:CIV be respected; and apologize for the unclarity of my remark (3) above. I meant that I find their paper wanting, among other things, on grounds of logic and especially because of the way they portray what their opponents say. I cannot yet detail my objections in the case of the paper in question, which I saw for the first time only recently, but my critique of another paper by one of them [1] should be enough to make clear what I'm getting at. andrew-the-k 18:12, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Additional comment on defamation etc.

Under Dutch law, the transmission of my personal email to two concerned third parties, which you chose to publish in wikipedia, is not illegal, unless doing so involves or effects a criminal offence in terms of penal law. Since this is not the case, the issue is strictly a moral one. You could however sue me in The Netherlands for defamation in principle, with respect to anything I actually published in cyberspace, but in the given case you would be unlikely to get very far with it in the Dutch courts, which take a liberal view of expressing a public opinion. You would basically need to prove that you were personally seriously disadvantaged in some respect, and that I was the cause of it, or that your human rights were substantially violated by what I said. However, even here you try to turn things the other way round. You want to publish a personal email of mine on wikipedia, and then insinuate "defamation" in US law when you get a hostile reaction, i.e. you want to have it both ways again, in and out of wikipedia. It is the same pattern as before. You "censored" in two ways: (1) you removed my comments from the David Laibman talkpage, and (2) more generally, you removed text of mine from the article without providing valid argument. I consider your behaviour in wikipedia towards another Marxist scholar, David Laibman, an instance of despicable sectarianism. This is the wrong place to pursue your Vendetta with David Laibman. You feign "neutrality" while you are stuffing up an article about a living person you don't like. As regards (1), you are allowed to do that, given wikipedia rules concerning invective, though the comment remains on file. My article on sectarianism is also still on file, see [[2]]. It was subsequently largely deleted, and I accepted the grounds for that deletion. I regret this whole controversy, but it is important insofar as you should know that you don't get away with any sly tactics and "subtleties" here. They are not acceptable to your academic peers, and they are not acceptable to me either. But most of all they are not acceptable to wikipedians. So take good care, and don't think your "any goes" editorialising goes unnoticed. Not just anything goes here, however much you hide in proceduralities. The best policy is to acknowledge fairly that different viewpoints exist, and make it very clear what they are, without misrepresenting them. User: Jurriaan 22:58 12 June 2007 (UTC)