Lawrence & Wishart

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The following is a petition that recently appeared over at www.change.org, imploring the book publisher Lawrence & Wishart [L&W] to withdraw its demand that the Marxist Internet Archive [MIA] take down its transcriptions of Marx & Engels ‘Collected Works [MECW]. Like most of the petitions begun on that website, it will almost surely prove ineffectual. Nevertheless, it’s now reposted here for largely symbolic reasons.

I will say in passing, however, that I on’t begrudge L&W the decision to invoke copyright on the MECW, at least not any more than I begrudge any book company to do so. MECW is L&W’s rightful property — that is, property according to bourgeois right. So they are fully justified — from a legal standpoint, anyway — to insist that it be respected. They’re no worse than, say, the “counterhegemonic apparatus” of Verso, New Left Review, and Historical Materialism. Anyone who loudly protests L&W’s invocation of copyright while defending the copyright of his or her own publishing house just as loudly are total hypocrites for protesting L&W’s decision. Especially since the MECW alone is more worth reading than the vast majority of shit, most of it tedious exegesis, that they put out.

However, all things told, it’s pretty pointless to try and enforce this and will doubtless inspire a backlash. Below the petition are some links to a website where someone (I don’t know who it is) has apparently uploaded printers’ PDFs of the first 23 volumes of the MECW. Didn’t even know they existed before someone alerted me to it. And don’t know if any more are set to become available, so don’t ask. In a way, though, they’re preferable to the MIA versions, since they’re proofed and formatted. Not just for citation purposes, either, but because the MECW on MIA was incomplete and often contained clerical transcription errors.

Petition to allow Marx & Engels’ Collected Works to remain in the public domain

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We are very grateful for the work you have done, along with International Publishers and Progress Publishers, translating into English and publishing the MECW [Marx & Engels Collected Works]. This is an extremely valuable contribution to the workers movement and Marxist scholarship not only in the English-speaking world, but internationally.

MIA [Marxist Internet Archive] has made these works available for free on the web to an even wider public, and they have now become an essential tool for thousands of Marxist scholars and activists around the world.

We fully appreciate the efforts and difficulties that running a small independent publishing house entails. But allowing free access to the MECW on the MIA website does not hinder sales. On the contrary, the publicity it provides increases them, and we would support any attempt to further improve this aspect.

But over and above any commercial considerations, there is a crucial matter of principle at play here. Having been available freely online for ten years, the MECW have become an essential part of the shared knowledge and resources of the international workers’ movement. We cannot take a step backward.

This decision would only damage Lawrence and Wishart’s reputation without bringing any significant economic advantage.

That’s why we call upon you to reconsider this decision and reach an accommodation which keeps these essential resources in the public domain, where they belong.

PDFs of Marx & Engels’ Collected Works

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Note: I’m not hosting any of this content, and don’t know who is.

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Finally, here is a word from Sebastian Budgen on this. Of course he’s lamely trying to counterbalance his own (very public) condemnation of those who violate copyright for books that he helps put out with the popular public outrage over Lawrence & Wishart demanding the same. He doesn’t fault them in terms of the principle of the matter — nor do I — as I assume he fundamentally agrees with them. Rather, he questions the viability of the demand that the public respect its copyright claim. I agree with him here, but have no clue why he doesn’t apply the same logic to himself.

Also, hats off to Doug Henwood for the following hilarious troll. I may have been unfair in characterizing his political stance on electoralism in a previous post; hopefully this maybe forgiven.