Net Jus originals: Laws Won't Lead the Way: An Argument for an Information-Age Marxism, John Buschman, 1999.

Ripubblichiamo qui di seguito un articolo apparso dieci anni orsono sul Net Jus Bulletin a firma dello studioso John Buschman.

Net Jus Bulletin - Issue 1, April - June, 1998

Laws Won't Lead the Way: An Argument for an Information-Age Marxism

by John Buschman

There is, in the United States and elsewhere, a prevalent idea that our laws and our legal system must lead the way in protecting people from the worst aspects and potentials of new electronic technologies, particularly the Internet. Examples of this abound: the Communications Decency Act was signed into law in the U.S. to protect children from Internet pornography, and then struck down by the Supreme Court in a ringing affirmation of First Amendment free speech rights in the network domain; a
gay sailor was recently reinstated by a Federal judge after it was determined that the sailor's privacy and the military's famous "don't ask, don't tell" policy were both violated by inquiring into his America Online user profile - which was easily given out to the Navy in violation of the company's own privacy policy. Similary, law enforcement and privacy-rights advocates are battling over the proper laws and regulations to govern wiretaps of cell phones and e-mail transactions, and the ability of companies to buy, sell, and gather personal information - like medical records and magazine or online subscriptions.

My argument is that legislation and the courts will not, and can not, lead the way on these issues. Why? Because, as the scholar Henry Giroux (Harvard Educational Review, May 1984) and others noted some fifteen years ago, there has been a fundamental and essential shift in the U.S.; what he calls a "new public philosophy." This modus operandi "defines economic
rationality as the model of public reason." The intervening years have borne Giroux's analysis out. Schools, universities, and libraries are increasingly organized around business models of effeciency (see James Traub in the New Yorker, Oct. 20, 1997) - much of it driven by the possibilities of electronic information delivery. Increasingly, there is a concentration of ownership of electronic resources, paralleling that which took place in broadcast and print resources in the past decade (Microsoft is, of course, one of the prime movers in this area - see Ken Auletta, New Yorker, Oct. 20, 1997) The promises made to promote
electronic information (which borderd on myth-making) have not been realized: there is no free, universal access; the electronic environment has not materialized as a more free environment for information exchange; local and national democracy has not inherently flourished in an electronic environment (see John Buschman, Urban Academic Librarian, Winter 1994).

Instead, the era of post-industrial economic policy has meant that these new communication venues and the institutions which have adapted them have been structured primarily to exploit economic potential. Slowly, and without real public debate, the values of privacy, academic freedom, independent inquiry, unfettered and unmonitored research (in, for instance, a library), data and archive integrity, and classrooms as civic and not economic spaces are being drown out by the cultural dominance and
economic claims made on behalf of digitized information and global communication networks. Such quiet and fundamental civic ideas are drowned out by claims that networked computers will make American capitalism "a healing force in the present crisis of home and family, culture and community" and that "we are in the middle of the most transforming technological event since the capture of fire" (see John Buschman, Journal of Information Law and Technology, http://elj.strath.ac.uk/jilt/elecpub/97_3busc/buschman.htm ).

Fundamental issues - like personal privacy and the independence of learning and research institutions - are being driven not by democratic or even legal principle, but rather by economic rationality in a global marketplace. Under this now-no-longer-so-new public philosophy for instance, the Internet's possiblilities for research, scholarly communication, and student inquiry take a back seat to marketing goods and making the medium serious competition for television (see Robert Reid, Wired, Oct. 1997). Where does this leave us? Perhaps ironically, if we oppose such trends in the name of civic good, public responsibility, and individual rights, it leaves us with a kind of Marxism for the Information Age (see John Cassidy, New Yorker, Oct. 20, 1997). Essentially, we are dealing with the problems Marx identified with mature capitalism. The debasement of popular and high culture comes down to Marx's essential question: "Where does Vulcan come in as against Roberts & Co? Hermes as against the Credit Mobilier?" Our current global economy based on communication is not entirely a new issue: "The bourgeoisie ... has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together" and the need for new markets "chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe." The "intellectual creations of individual nations become common property." Finally, we still are trying to dodge the silver bullet Marx identified as capitalism's Achilles heel: monopoly. Microsoft and the telephone companies, for example, are both constantly monitored by the U.S. Department of Justice for possible anti-competitive practices or monopolies concerning the Internet and telecommunications.

As Cassidy notes, Marx's alternative economics were a total failure. However, social democratic regulation and the reigning-in of capitalism's virulent social and cultural impact are solidly grounded in his humanism and his fundamental analysis of its problems - a debt largely unacknowledged among economists who advocate such policies. Laws and court rulings will not make for an effective form of electronic justice and equality until we tackle our new public philosophy and squarely address is
economic foundations.
© 1998, J. Buschman