Is it now time to be  considering beginning an academic boycott of L & W over this?


Martin Upchurch
Professor of International Employment Relations
Middlesex University Business School
The Burroughs
Hendon
London NW4 4BT

07545 487952
[log in to unmask]
Global Work and Employment Project (GWEp)
http://www.mdx.ac.uk/research/areas/HR/gwep/index.aspx

Globalisation and Work Facebook Group
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#/group.php?gid=238371095227&ref=ts

Beyond Labour Regulation blog
http://www.globalworkonline.net/blog/beyondlabour/
________________________________________
From: To complement the journal 'Capital and Class' (ISSN 0 309 8786) [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Christian Fuchs [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 02 May 2014 10:44
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: the disappearing Marx Engels Archive

Hi Alan,

I think the problem is precisely that L&W justifies its actions by
saying it has created a "copyright edition of the Collected Works" that
"is a scholarly library edition of fifty volumes, which resulted from
work carried out over a period of more than thirty years" and that
therefore it is "entirely normal" for "radical publishers to defend
their copyrights", by which they justify their actions.

They say no word about the true originality of the 50 volumes. A list
would be needed that explains details for every volume.

But even such a list is besides the point because Marx and Engels
created all of these works, not L&W. Editorial and translation work has
gone into some of these volumes, but this work could not have been
conducted without Marx and Engels' original work.

Now you can say that copyright on Marx and Engels' originals has expired
70 years after their death, but if communist morality is the same as
bourgeois law then we would not have to abolish capitalism and
everything would be fine already.

Another issue is the bad quality of many of these translations (e.g. the
problem of not understanding how to translate Hegelian language from
German to English).

The point is something else.

Besides MECW I found one L&W book I am interested in and now bought =
"Marx in London" (I have some of the Gramsci stuff which may also be
considered partly interesting), but this is a specific interest of mine.
L&W's book programme is completely outdated and not adequate for the
analysis of 21st century capitalism. It like most "radical" publishers,
journals, conferences, scholars etc ignores topics such as
communication, media, the digital, the Internet - media and
communication studies is a blindspot of Marxist theory.

I am not saying L&W or other Marxist scholars, publishers, conferences
etc should change their strategy because we have Marxist projects such
as tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique
(http://www.triple-c.at) for this purpose, I am just saying that L&W is
hiding the problem of its outdated publishing programme (except MECW)
behind blaming "the Internet" and "people on the Internet" for its
financial problems: It has made financial losses in both 2011 and 2012
and the turnover has declined in 2012.

There is no communist moral right that a "radical publisher" such as L&W
is absolutely needed and there is no automatic communist moral duty to
support all radical publishers. It depends very much on what they are
doing and how. L&W neither understands the topic of the digital as
Marxist topic nor the role of the Internet for publishing today.

The whole farce that L&W has now started will not help them improving
their situation or selling more books...

I personally do not care at all if this publisher ceases to exist. One
can do better than them.

Best, Christian

On 02/05/2014 03:01, Alan Freeman wrote:
> Hi
>
> I think that Christian's 'whose labour is it anyhow?' approach has merit to
> it, but I have a couple of problems with the detail, which Sol's point draws
> our attention to.Hel
>
> If the Collected Works are simply recycled existing translations, exactly
> why do we need the Collected Works? Presumably these existing translations
> are already in the MIA. So if what Christian says is correct,  then L&W are
> not withdrawing anything. It's all out there anyhow. So what's the problem?
>
> A
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: To complement the journal 'Capital and Class' (ISSN 0 309 8786)
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Picciotto, Sol
> Sent: May 1, 2014 8:47 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: the disappearing Marx Engels Archive
>
> Thanks for the further details, Christian. From what you say it seems to me
> that L&W's position is highly dubious legally, as well as politically and
> morally. Unless their edition made significant changes to the Moore &
> Aveling translation, they could not easily claim that it is a new derivative
> work with its own copyright. So all they can assert is the publisher's
> 25-year right over the typographical layout, which as you say would only
> prohibit scanning it as a pdf. This does not prevent the MIA from
> reproducing the text.
>
> Saludos
>
> Sol
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Christian Fuchs [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: 01 May 2014 09:24
> To: Picciotto, Sol; [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: the disappearing Marx Engels Archive
>
> Hi Sol,
>
> The copyright for the Moore/Aveling/Engels translation has expired, so
> everyone can take this edition and put it on the Internet, print it as a
> book and sell it etc. L&W cannot keep others from doing this too, but they
> can argue that MECW 35 is a special edition and that you violate copyright
> when scanning it as pdf and putting it online. Also if you look into MECW 35
> they do not make clear if it is the Moore/Aveling/Engels edition or not, but
> tend to argue that it is a new edition (it looks to me that it is not, but
> one would have to check this in more detail). And so their argument is that
> if they have newly edited and translated it, they hold a copyright.
> This argument becomes clear when L&W says: "Many translations of works of
> Marx are now out of copyright - for example the Aveling translation of
> Capital, a number of translations of the Communist Manifesto. These are
> widely available both online and in print, including in public libraries.
> Our copyright edition of the Collected Works, however, is a scholarly
> library edition of fifty volumes, which resulted from work carried out over
> a period of more than thirty years. Income from our copyright on this
> scholarly work contributes to our continuing publication programme.
> Infringement of this copyright has the effect of depriving a small radical
> publisher of the funds it needs to remain in existence."
> If MECW 35 is practically identical to the Moore/Aveling/Engels edition,
> then one could say that L&W is stealing from Moore/Aveling/Engels just like
> L&W is arguing that the Marxists Internet Archive is stealing from L&W. But
> the argument gets absurd because all these works were originally created by
> Marx and Engels' labour in the first place.
> L&W are either just like MIA thieves or none of both is a thief. It can
> however not logically be the case that just MIA is a thief and L&W is not.
> The only solution is that MIA can put online as much of MArx's works as
> possible and L&W keeps on selling the printed books, maybe in editions that
> are more appealing than the bad MECW translations, that are cheaper
> paperbacks, etc... There is no conflict of interests here, it is one
> constructed by L&W in order to blame that their business is going badly on
> the Internet and users...
>
> Best, Christian
>
> On 01/05/2014 03:12, Picciotto, Sol wrote:
>> Thanks for the interesting comments Christian. One question I still have
> is, how can L&W claim the copyright in a translation by Moore and Aveling,
> who both died over a century ago? I guess they are actually asserting the
> publisher's copyright in the typographical layout (unique to UK law), which
> runs for 25 years, i.e. for vol. 35 published in 1996, it still has 7 years
> to run? I am not sure if this would prevent Marxists.org from scanning the
> texts using OCR and publishing their non-facsimile edition?
>>
>> Saludos
>>
>> Sol
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: To complement the journal 'Capital and Class' (ISSN 0 309 8786)
>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Phoebe Moore
>> Sent: 30 April 2014 18:57
>> 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!
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> -----
>>
>>
>> Please note that Middlesex University's preferred way of receiving all
> correspondence is via email in line with our Environmental Policy. All
> incoming post to Middlesex University is opened and scanned by our digital
> document handler, CDS, and then emailed to the recipient.
>>
>> If you do not want your correspondence to Middlesex University processed
> in this way please email the recipient directly. Parcels, couriered items
> and recorded delivery items will not be opened or scanned by CDS.  There are
> items which are "exceptions" which will be opened by CDS but will not be
> scanned a full list of these can be obtained by contacting the University.
>>



---------------------------------------------------------------------------


Please note that Middlesex University's preferred way of receiving all correspondence is via email in line with our Environmental Policy. All incoming post to Middlesex University is opened and scanned by our digital document handler, CDS, and then emailed to the recipient.
 
If you do not want your correspondence to Middlesex University processed in this way please email the recipient directly. Parcels, couriered items and recorded delivery items will not be opened or scanned by CDS.  There are items which are "exceptions" which will be opened by CDS but will not be scanned a full list of these can be obtained by contacting the University.