Peter Glover reports that the following resolution (or a slightly modified
version) he drew up about the L&W-MIA situation has been approved in
principal by Liverpool Against the Cuts. It's an attempt to resolve the
situation in a constructive, principled, solidaristic manner.
-----
Lawrence and Wishart, who hold the copyright for the Collected Works of Marx
and Engels, have directed the Marxists internet Archive to delete all
material that originate from the Collected Works edition. The works of Marx
and Engels are not just the preserve of academics. They were written for
everyone and represent not only an historic contribution to just to British
culture but to the culture of humanity as a whole. The MIA is a free
resource for historians, researchers, students and activists in 45 languages
with over a million visitors a month. MIA is free, non-profit making and
staffed by 62 volunteers. For elderly people and for many people in poor
countries free online access is their only access. However we also
understand that Lawrence and Wishart is a radical publisher of works that
would otherwise be unavailable to the public.
We therefore call upon Lawrence and Wishart to reconsider its decision.
We call upon this Union to work with the TUC and other Unions at the highest
level to seek ways to keep the Marxists Internet Archive free for public
use.
We call upon this Union to work with the TUC and other Unions at the highest
level to seek a compromise between the publishers Lawrence and Wishart and
the Marxists Internet Archive, including moral and financial assistance to
radical publishers like L and W.
We call upon this Union to launch a campaign to make the works of Marx and
Engels as widely available to trade Unionists as possible.
We also call upon this Union to launch a joint campaign with other Unions to
make the Collected Works of Marx and Engels available at public libraries
across the country.
We also call upon this Union to campaign against library closures and the
widespread selling off of publicly owned books.
-----Original Message-----
From: Phoebe Moore
Sent: Wednesday, April 30, 2014 1:56 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: the disappearing Marx Engels Archive
Very well put Christian, thanks for this
Phoebe
Dr Phoebe V Moore
Senior Lecturer
<http://www.mdx.ac.uk/aboutus/staffdirectory/phoebe-moore.aspx> in
International Relations
School of Law, University of Middlesex London
Blog phoebevmoore <http://phoebevmoore.wordpress.com/>
Email [log in to unmask]
On 30/04/2014 17:50, "Christian Fuchs"
<[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Reflecting on the list postings, I have written the comment below.
Lawrence & Wishart vs. The Marxist Internet Archive: The Blindness of
the Copyright Left
Christian Fuchs
http://fuchs.uti.at/1123/
The publisher Lawrence & Wishart (L&W) has issued a takedown notice to
the operators of the Marxist Internet Archive (MIA,
http://www.marxists.org) in order to have them delete the online version
of the copyrighted volumes of the Marx Engels-Collected Works (MECW)
that L&W distributes and sells in 50 volumes. The basic argument of L&W
is that the online version is ruining the company financially: The
online version’s “[i]nfringement of this copyright [L&W’s copyright on
MECW] has the effect of depriving a small radical publisher of the funds
it needs to remain in existence“.
The MIA commented: “Removing them from generalized Internet access and
bouncing the MECW ‘upstairs’ into the Academy is the opposite of
’maintaining a public presence of the Works.’ It restricts access to
those having current academic status at a university that is subscribing
to the service. This is the same as for readership of learned journals.
It is not public access. This is the opposite of the general trend
toward making things available for free on the Internet. What L&W argues
is truly a cognitive disconnect of major proportions. It also destroys
the enhanced functionality which MIA gave to the MECW material,
embedding it with the writings of other Marxists“.
The question is how viable L&W’s argument is. The online version does
not contain page numbers, which is an incentive for scholars,
institutions and libraries to also buy printed volumes. It is
furthermore doubtful that more people will buy the (expensive) volumes
priced at £50 each or £1500 as a set once the MIA has taken down the
online version. The L&W argument misperceives the nature of digital
information on the Internet that allows easy, quick and cheap
distribution, copying and access. What is likely to have already
happened is that thousands of users have made copies of the online
edition for personal use and for further spreading it on the Internet.
Takedown notices have the opposite effect of what they intend to bring
about: they are likely to further help spreading the information whose
distribution they want to hinder.
Let us have a look at MECW Volume 35 (Capital Vol. 1). It was published
in 1996. 6 people seem to have been involved in the editorial project.
After the publication of Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, Marx put
efforts on writing a sequel that finally became Capital, Volume 1, and
was delivered to the publisher in Hamburg by Marx in person in April
1867. So it is fair to assume that Marx at least put 20 000 hours of
work into Capital, Volume 1. The L&W translation is based on the edition
that Samuel Moore (1838-1911) and Edward Aveling (1849-1898) translated
under the editorial leadership of Engels. We can assume that this
translation took also up to 10 000 hours and Engels’ editorial work also
some years, let’s say 5 000 hours. According to MECW’s editorial note,
the edition is “based on the first English edition” by
Moore/Aveling/Engels. It is unclear what “based” here actually means. If
you compare some sample passages from MECW 35 to the original
Moore/Aveling/Engels edition, then there are indications that they are
quite identical (I used a sample of about 20 arbitrarily selected
sentences that are all identical).
Putting together this edition, layouting and distributing it etc has
taken some time, but the actual text we are reading has primarily been
enabled by estimated 20 000 hours of Marx’s work, 10 000 hours of Moore
and Aveling’s work and 5 000 hours of Engels’ work. Furthermore the
editors of MECW Volume 35 write that they have copied translations of
French, Greek, Italian and Latin quotes from Ben Fowkes’ 1976 Penguin
translation.
MECW 35 is mainly the work of Marx, Engels, Moore and Aveling. L&W sells
it for £18.99 in a special edition and for £50 in the MECW edition.
Certainly for each sold volume one pays to a specific degree for the
labour conducted by printers, L&W employees, etc. But who pays for the
labour conducted by Marx, Engels, Moore and Aveling? L&W benefits from
Marx, Engels, Moore and Aveling’s work without ever having paid them
because they are dead. No single translation could be made without their
original work. Claiming copyright is problematic because the labour
involved is not just the new editorial and sales work, but first and
foremost also the original work conducted by Marx and Engels. If we
apply the copyright logic that L&W applies to the MIA to L&W itself,
then one can only say that by selling MECW L&W exploits Marx, Engels,
Moore and Aveling who cannot be paid for the revenue that L&W makes from
their labour because they are dead. L&W is claiming copyright on works
that were primarily produced by thousands of Marx and Engels’
intellectual working hours. The solution however is not to prohibit L&W
to further sell these volumes or to prohibit MIA to provide Marx and
Engels’ works online, but to respect the fact that Marx and Engels’
works are common goods and should be available as such. Claiming the MIA
is stealing information from L&W is just as absurd and misplaced as
claiming that L&W is stealing information from Marx and Engels because
the whole idea of a copyright on Marx and Engels’ works is absurd.
Given these circumstances, it is idiosyncratic to suggest, as some
observers have done, that the to date 1435 signees of the petition that
asks L&W to allow MECW to be public domain should pay L&W or collect
money for L&W. If anything is feasible, then it is organising resources
for new online translations conducted as collaborative wiki project.
Threatening and debating copyrights on Marx and Engels’ works is just a
deflection of attention from a much more needed task – new translations.
New translations? Why?
Take again Capital, Volume 1. The main translations used are MECW
(=Moore/Aveling) and Penguin (Fawkes). Let’s take two example passages.
MEW 23, 558 + Urfassung von 1867, 521: Von diesen Widersprüchen
abgesehn, würde ein direkter Austausch von Geld, d.h.
vergegenständlichter Arbeit, mit lebendiger Arbeit entweder das
Wertgesetz aufheben, welches sich grade erst auf Grundlage der
kapitalistischen Produktion frei entwickelt, oder die kapitalistische
Produktion selbst aufheben, welche grade auf der Lohnarbeit beruht.
MECW 35, 536: Apart from these contradictions, a direct exchange of
money, i.e., of realised labour, with living labour would either do away
with the law of value which only begins to develop itself freely on the
basis of capitalist production, or do away with with capitalist
production itself, which rests directly on wage labour.
Penguin, 676: Apart from these contradictions, a direct exchange of
money, i.e., of objectified labour, with living labour would either
supersede the law of value, which only begins to develop freely on the
basis of capitalist production, or supersede capitalist production
itself, which rests directly on wage labour.
In my view, a better translation is:
Apart from these antagonisms, a direct exchange of money, i.e.
objectified labour, with living labour would either sublate the law of
value that just now develops itself freely on the basis of capitalist
production, or sublate capitalist production itself that precisely rests
on wage-labour.
MEW, 791: Die aus der kapitalistischen Produktionsweise hervorgehende
kapitalistische Aneignungsweise, daher das kapitalistische
Privateigentum, ist die erste Negation des individuellen, auf eigne
Arbeit gegründeten Privateigentums. Aber die kapitalistische Produktion
erzeugt mit der Notwendigkeit eines Naturprozesses ihre eigne Negation.
Es ist Negation der Negation. Diese stellt nicht das Privateigentum
wieder her, wohl aber das individuelle Eigentum auf Grundlage der
Errungenschaft der kapitalistischen Ära: der Kooperation und des
Gemeinbesitzes der Erde und der durch die Arbeit selbst produzierten
Produktionsmittel.
Kapital, Urfassung von 1867, 744f: Die kapitalistische Produktions- und
Aneignungsweise, daher das kapitalistische Privateigenthum, ist die
erste Negation des individuellen, auf eigene Arbeit gegründeten
Privateigenthums. Die Negation der kapitalistischen Produktion wird
durch sie selbst, mit der Nothwendigkeit eines Naturprozesses,
producirt. Es ist Negation der Negation. Diese stellt das individuelle
Eigentum wieder her, aber auf Grundlage der Errungenschaft der
kapitalistischen Aera, der Cooperation freier Arbeiter und ihrem
Gemeineigenthum an der Erde und den durch die Arbeit selbst producirten
Produktionsmitteln.
MECW, 751: The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the
capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property.
This is the first negation of individual private property, as founded on
the labour of the proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with the
inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation
of negation. This does not re-establish private property for the
producer, but gives him individual property based on the acquisition of
the capitalist era: i.e., on cooperation and the possession in common of
the land and of the means of production.
Penguin, 929: The capitalist mode of appropriation, which springs from
the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property.
This is the first negation of individual private property, as founded on
the labour of its proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with the
inexorability of a natural process, its own negation. This is the
negation of the negation. It does not re-establish private property, but
it does indeed establish individual property on the basis of the
achievements of the capitalist era: namely co-operation and the
possession in common of the land and the means of production produced by
labour itself
Taking into account both the formulation in the MEW and the Urfassung,
in my view a better English translation is:
The capitalist mode of appropriation emerging from the capitalist mode
of production, hence capitalist private property, is the first negation
of private property founded on an individual’s own labour. But
capitalist production produces with the necessity of a natural process
its own negation. It is the negation of the negation. This does not
re-establish private property, but indeed individual property on the
basis of the capitalist era’s attainments: the co-operation of free
labourers, their common possession of the Earth and the means of
production produced by labour itself.
Marx and Engels’ knowledge work is the primary work objectified in MECW
and all other translations and editions. It is therefore ridiculous to
stage struggles about copyrights, access and who is allowed to
monetarily benefit from the sale of Marx and Engels’ dead work that has
created works that are very alive up until today and into the future.
Limiting access or making it more difficult makes these living works
partly dead. The most important task is to make good translations as
easily and as widely available to as many people as possible in order to
enable them to read Marx and Engels’ analyses of capitalism that have
crucial political relevance. The current debate has highlighted that
there is a political economy of Marx and Engels’ writings that concerns
questions of authorship, work and ownership. It has rather overlooked
that there is also a cultural political economy involved that must aim
at finding ways, means, media, resources and the work necessary to
globally disseminate Marx and Engels’ writings. We should not deflect
attention away from the importance of having good translations readily
available in easy and accessible form for as many people as possible.
The WWW can make an important contribution to this purpose.
The task should therefore be that we create a new and improved English
online edition of Marx and Engels’ works, starting with Capital Volume
1, by making use of wiki-based collaborative translation work. We
shouldn’t pay L&W, but gather work force and resources to improve the
availability and quality of Marx and Engels’ works.
Marxist translators of the world unite!
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