Marx’s intellectual property
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"Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright for the Marx Engels Collected Works, have directed Marxists Internet Archive to delete all texts originating from MECW. Accordingly, from 30th April 2014, no material from MECW is available from marxists.org"
As they point out, much of the important material has been published by Progress, and other out of copyright sources, so there should b plenty left, but it is a shame, since MIA is a useful resource for reference.
That's a real shame. Luckely back versions of Marxists.org are available from the internet archive page http://web.archive.org
Apparently its for digitising and selling the collected works to academia. To be clear, they only own their translations.
L and W's sob-story defence here and its just nasty sectarians who hate them who are complaininghttp://www.lwbooks.co.uk/collected_works_statement.htmlJust how is restricting access to university libraries placing the collected works in the public domain, i wonder?
Also, come to think of it, just what rights do L and W have? It is acknowledged on wiki to have been a 3 -way joint venture by Progress Publishers in Moscow, International Publishers in NY and L and W but wasn't it all done under the auspices of the Marxist-Leninist Institute. So are the translators getting their share of royalties? I doubt it, very much. Nawwwww…i believe L and W got the copyright as a subsidy from the CPSU just as the CPGB was subsidised by the purchase of large orders of unsold and unread Daily Workers. Russian gold paid for by the surplus value of the exploited Russian proletariat therefore L and W have no moral claim to copyright, just a technical legalistic claim…
Did anyone spot that one of their authors is described thus: "Mark Perryman is a journalist, author and left-wing entrepreneur and marketer who is passionate about issues to do with Englishness, national identity and sport"<<eye rolling emoticon>>
There's a petition circulating against this:http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/lawrence-wishart-no-copyright-for-marx-engels-collected-works#share
As I noticed that the Pirate Party is contesting a ward in the Lambeth borough elections where we are too (not the same one) and they specialise in opposing this sort of thing, I wrote to them for their take on it. Here's their reply (reproduced with their permission) on the (objectively silly) legal issues likely to be involved:
Quote:That falls slap bang in the middle of our core issues with regard to copyright reform – In fact I spent a bit of today using it as an example.. Its absurd when you think about it for more than a moment.. The people who created the work can no-longer benefit, yet something that should be in the public sphere, something that adds to the sum of human knowledge is yanked away and hidden. I haven't looked at the specific legalities of it (it covers too much international ground – and things like freedom of translation were corner-stones of Soviet copyright legislation, as were short copyright lengths..) but if the Lawyers are sending letters and its a translation there is a good chance its valid in the jurisdiction its happening in. As sad as it is that the material itself will be less available, hopefully it will open up the issues more widely and maybe bring a few more people into understanding that the commons include our cultural and historic works and that we are losing access to them faster in an age where almost everything could be protected and shared.The major works listed on Wikipedia;The Communist ManifestoA Contribution to the Critique of Political EconomyDas KapitalThe Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis NapoleonGrundrisseThe German IdeologyEconomic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844Theses on Feuerbachonly the first four seem to have English translations in the public domain (pre 1923).In fact, they could be something to host on this website.
The Weekly Worker take http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/1008/karl-marx-and-friedrich-engels-for-the-masses
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