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!