Entrepreneurial Passion Behind the Heterodox Economics Newsletter (HEN Editorial 345)

Hono­ring past con­tri­bu­tors, invi­ting new ones, and for­ma­li­zing sup­port to bridge glo­bal gaps in hete­ro­dox eco­no­mic publishing.

Joseph Schumpeter’s ico­nic descrip­tion of the entre­pre­neur, as an ideal-type for the pas­sio­nate, adven­tur­ous, and smart cha­rac­ters that coin the history of indus­try, can, of course, be con­tes­ted in many ways: it’s a little reduc­tion­ist, it’s a little essen­tia­list, its framing is overly sexist… and so on. None­thel­ess, I would admit that the intui­tion that some actors are dri­ven by an intrin­sic desire to pas­sio­na­tely fol­low their con­vic­tions – ther­eby often negle­c­ting short-term risks and costs – bears some reso­nance with me. Wit­hout a cer­tain pas­sion for stuff like under­stan­ding com­plex sys­tems, fos­te­ring human well-being, or sup­port­ing demo­cra­tic gover­nance, I would, for ins­tance, most pro­ba­bly not have become a hete­ro­dox economist.

Simi­larly, Fre­de­ric S. Lee, the foun­der of this News­let­ter, always made an entre­pre­neu­rial impres­sion on me: Fred was an eager net­wor­ker, a strin­gent com­mu­nity orga­ni­zer, a devo­ted scho­lar, and dedi­ca­ted to fos­ter hete­ro­doxy till his last breath. Rela­tedly, the work of the large majo­rity of assistants and vol­un­teers that hel­ped manage and deve­lop the News­let­ter over the years was dri­ven by simi­larly pas­sio­nate moti­ves. The News­let­ter would indeed not be pos­si­ble wit­hout their – paid as well as unpaid – con­tri­bu­ti­ons, which are truly essen­tial in many respects.

In this spi­rit, I wan­ted to take the oppor­tu­nity to high­light the tire­less and meritful work of Niklas Klann and Johanna Rath, who have ser­ved as the two main assistants over the last years and were the true pil­lars on which this sci­en­ti­fic com­mu­nity ser­vice res­ted. Wit­hout their con­tri­bu­tion, I would have fai­led mise­ra­bly as an edi­tor, and the pos­si­bi­lity of rely­ing on their relent­less, careful, and obser­vant capa­ci­ties made my life as an edi­tor easy, some­ti­mes even close to comfortable ;-)

Niklas is soon to com­plete his MA in Socio-Eco­no­mics at the Uni­ver­sity of Duis­burg-Essen, while Johanna plans to finish her PhD at Johan­nes Kep­ler Uni­ver­sity Linz – both are get­ting set for making the next big steps in their jour­ney and I wish them all the best for doing so. Alt­hough the pro­s­pect of their future absence admit­tedly sca­res me a little, the out­look to work with new col­le­agues, like Till Aper­dan­nier or Mo Lauf­köt­ter, on this ambi­tious pro­ject exci­tes me. Wel­come to the team and let’s have a good time rocking hete­ro­dox economics ;-)

Aside from (paid) assistants I manage to employ here or there, the News­let­ter also draws on con­tri­bu­ti­ons from (unpaid) vol­un­teers, like, most nota­bly, Alam Gabriel Gali­cia Robles, whose efforts not only help us to get the edi­to­rial workload done, but are also essen­tial to broa­den our vista and show grea­ter sen­si­ti­vity to dif­fe­rent prio­ri­ties in dif­fe­rent world regi­ons. In this spi­rit I would like to renew our long-stan­ding call for inter­na­tio­nal vol­un­teers that would like to sup­port the Newsletter’s work – if you are inte­res­ted in joi­ning our some­what chao­tic, but very kind&friendly team to keep the world infor­med about hete­ro­dox eco­no­mics, gladly let us know via email.

Alt­hough this orga­niza­tio­nal setup worked well in the past, I have to admit that I always strug­g­led with one key draw­back, namely that it repro­du­ces exis­ting glo­bal asym­me­tries: my assistants in the Glo­bal North typi­cally enjoy paid jobs, while our vol­un­teers from the Glo­bal South have con­tri­bu­ted for free. To remedy this key aspect I deci­ded to create a for­mal asso­cia­tion to pro­vide more fle­xi­ble insti­tu­tio­nal sup­port for the Hete­ro­dox Eco­no­mics News­let­ter with the main idea to allow for pay­ing finan­cial remu­ne­ra­ti­ons to vol­un­teer con­tri­bu­tors from the Glo­bal South. In my view this is a win-win stra­tegy to con­front our inter­nal asym­me­tries and to improve our edi­to­rial sen­si­bi­lity for con­tri­bu­ti­ons and views out­side the Glo­bal North context.

I would like to invite you, my dear rea­ders, to become sup­port­ing mem­bers in this newly fun­ded asso­cia­tion – that is mode­stly labe­led as „Inter­na­tio­nal Asso­cia­tion for Hete­ro­dox Eco­no­mics and Poli­ti­cal Eco­nomy“ ;-) – for a small annual con­tri­bu­tion of 25 Euros. While the pri­mary pur­pose of this asso­cia­tion is to sup­port the publi­ca­tion of the Hete­ro­dox Eco­no­mics News­let­ter, the pro­vi­sio­nal regu­la­ti­ons would also allow for broa­de­ning the spec­trum of plan­ned acti­vi­ties given a reasonable num­ber of peo­ple show inte­rest. In case you are moti­va­ted to sup­port this move towards a for­ma­liza­tion of the inher­ent entre­pre­neu­rial pas­si­ons dri­ving the publi­ca­tion of the News­let­ter by beco­ming a mem­ber, we would be truly che­ris­hed if you can send us a short note to newsletter@heterodoxnews.com. We will then pro­vide you with an out­look on the cur­rent state and next steps of this project.

Many thanks for con­side­ring and all the best,