Marxists Internet Archive

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The Marxists Internet Archive ( MIA , also known as marx.org or marxists.org ) is the largest Internet - archive of original Marxist authors and other politically left currents ( socialists , anarchists , etc.). The multilingual editions are created by a non-profit organization with volunteers . Content created by the MIA is licensed under the Creative Commons License .

history

According to various accounts, the origins of the MIA go back to 1987 and 1990. "World History Source", a project of the "Center for History and New Media" at George Mason University in Fairfax County , describes MIA as one of the oldest collaborative archive projects of the Internet , which originated in ARPANET in 1987 and migrated to the World Wide Web in 1993 . The MIA itself dates back to 1990, when a person operating under the pseudonym “Zodiac” began digitally archiving the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . These works were distributed via newsgroups and Usenet until the project's own website with the name “Marx / Engels Virtual Library” was created on a server at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1993 .

“Well, I'm happy to say, those days of chaotic distribution are over. At long last, after wandering the cyber-deserts in exodus, all these Marx / Engels etexts now have one, cozy, communal home. "

“Well, I'm happy to announce that the days of chaotic spreading are over. Finally, after a long wandering in the exodus of the cyber deserts, all these Marx-Engels-E-texts have a single, comfortable, common home. "

- Zodiac : Nov 26, 1993
MEA, September 1996

In the following period, the archive, which until then only contained writings by Marx and Engels, was expanded to include writings from other Marxists. At the beginning of 1995 many mirrors of the project now known as the “Marx / Engels Archive” (MEA) in the university area were closed, which led to a brief interruption in operations. In response to these events, the domain "marx.org", operated by a commercial Internet service provider , was founded on October 26, 1996 . In the course of these changes, the archive was renamed “Marx / Engels Internet Archive” (MEIA). In 1997 work began on setting up a non-English language archive. In the same year internal disputes developed about the direction and organization of the MEIA, which at the beginning of 1998 led to the fact that Zodiac removed all authors from the archive except for Marx and Engels. In response to this, the “Marxists Internet Archive” (MIA) with the domain “marxists.org” was founded in July 1998, which again managed all content. In 1999, the remaining content on the “marx.org” domain, whose operators were no longer linked to the MIA, was removed. The MIA was able to acquire the domain “marx.org” in 2002 for its project. In 2000 MIA mirrors were set up in the USA , Great Britain and Australia . In January 2000, an average of 23,000 page views per day were recorded, in January 2003 109,500 and in January 2006 258,900 page views per day. After denial-of-service attacks against the website, presumably from the People's Republic of China, had been carried out since the end of November 2006, the website had to cease operations between January 13th and 15th, 2007, but most of the content could be accessed via mirror Pages are kept accessible. On April 1st 2007 the main server of the project went online again.

organization

Since 2000, the MIA has been a California-registered non-profit organization. The MIA charter introduces the free accessibility of the project. All materials in the Marxists Internet Archive are in the public domain unless otherwise stated . Materials created by the MIA are published under the Creative Commons License (cc-by-sa-2.0). In addition to donations, income is only generated through DVD sales. The funds available to the MIA are used to finance the project and to provide information (such as free CDs or brochures) to interested parties. According to its own statements, the MIA is based on democratic decision-making processes and on full disclosure of its activities, including the budget , the statutes , the charter and the source code . Decisions are made in a steering committee to which all (voluntary) employees belong. This decides on the classification of authors, modifications of regulations (with a 3/4 majority), financial expenses and the like. An employee is someone who has made at least three separate contributions to the archive in the last six months and agrees to adhere to the MIA charter and statutes. The MIA defines itself as a politically independent project, the priority of which is to make archival material available. The MIA was initially an English-language project from the United States, but over time it has developed into a global project with volunteers all over the world. The approximately fifty employees and administrators come from over 30 countries. In addition to the transfer of the scripts to the archive, their proofreading and indexing / categorization , the translation of scripts and encyclopedic work are also part of the MIA's work areas.

  • Income and expenditure 1999–2006. There are no comparable statistics for 2002 and 2003.

  • Income and expenditure 1999–2006, details.

  • Income and Expenditures 2006, Charts and Details.

content

Materials are made available in 45 languages. The MIA is divided into five core areas: "Marxist Authors", "Reference", "History Archive", "Topic Archive" and "Encyclopedia of Marxism". Furthermore there is a so-called “Students Section” as an introduction and a compilation of influential Marxists (“Key Marxists”) made by the MIA itself.

The section “Marxist Authors” currently lists writings by over 125 authors. A separate archive is created for each author, which, in addition to their writings, often also contains biographical data and images. The archive of the writings of Marx and Engels, for example, comprises around 40,000 pages of the collected works, the Chinese-language part of the archive the entire works of Marx, Engels and Lenin .

The “Reference” section contains not only people like Mao Zedong or Josef Stalin, but also writings on philosophy and the natural sciences, or writings by anarchist and socialist authors. In its charter, the MIA names four reasons for assigning an author to the reference archive : Firstly, when the author rates Marx and Engels . Second, if Marxism is rejected in essential parts. Third, when an author's writings are theoretically or practically disconnected or hostile to the labor movement . Fourth, if the work is idealistic or if the work lacks dialectics . Below is a schematic selection of the subject areas in this area:

In the “history archive” you can find materials according to historical-geographical thematic order (e.g. international workers' organizations from 1847 or the Soviet Union ). In the “topic archive”, materials on different subject areas are prepared, such as the philosophical concept of alienation , political economy, the origins of different currents of communism, revolutionary developments in different states, or materials about other political currents such as fascism and anarchism or utopian socialism. The “Encyclopedia of Marxism” includes a glossary , biographies , events and organizations.

Marx & Engels Internet Archive

The archive on the writings of Marx and Engels contains a multilingual script index and an indexing of the English-language scripts according to different approaches. In addition to a chronological order, there are further orders according to topic and the "Marx / Engels Collected Works" (MECW) as well as selected publications from the complete works, materials on the International Workers' Association , in which Marx and Engels were involved, and an extensive collection of letters. Biographical material, a picture gallery, a search function and an index of fonts in PDF format are also available.

German-language archive

In 2007, the German-speaking area of ​​the MIA is divided into four sections. The section “Marxists” contains writings by around 30 authors, under “Reference” you will find writings by around 15 authors, a “history” archive with materials on the German and Austrian labor movement is available and the section “Philosophy” with one work.

DVD

The MIA also offers its materials on DVD . This DVD is being sold because large parts of the world are not sufficiently connected to the Internet. This distribution also enables income to cover costs. Interested parties from the USA or Canada , Western Europe , Australia, Hong Kong , Israel , Japan , New Zealand , Singapore , South Korea and Taiwan must pay a fixed price to purchase the MIA DVD. This income also enables people from other countries to receive a free DVD or CD . In addition, there are local distributors for Argentina , Bangladesh , Bolivia , Brazil , Chile , India , Indonesia , Pakistan , Paraguay , the Philippines , Sri Lanka , Turkey , Uruguay , Vietnam and the successor states of the former Yugoslavia to reduce shipping costs and the Increase access to the archive.

Decentralized archiving

According to its own information, MIA tries to distribute the contents of the archive to as many individuals as possible so that they can further disseminate the contents themselves, making it more difficult to prevent the distribution of the published contents. The MIA specifically supports the local distribution of its materials on a non-profit basis. In this sense, in addition to DVD sales, the MIA also offers to download the entire archive with rsync or similar applications in order to create a new mirror.

"If the Archive is shut down by a publishing conglomerate or the government, having this information widely dispersed around the world, essentially untraceable, with the content entirely intact, is a great thing."

"Should the archive be closed by a publisher or the government, it's great to have this information scattered all over the world, virtually untraceable, with the contents completely intact."

- MIA

broadleft.org

On the sister site "Leftist Parties of the World" a list of links to political left groups, organizations and parties around the world is operated, which tries to cover the whole spectrum of political movements. Web links to social democratic parties, green and communist movements as well as other left currents can be found there, as well as alliances , international umbrella organizations , but also so-called "political-military organizations", organizations that lead or have led an armed struggle. The web links are sorted by region and political orientation. The update of the page was stopped in 2006.

criticism

The MIA can only be used for scientific work with restrictions . While the bibliographic information on the text edition is largely given in a satisfactory manner , the page numbers are often missing, similar to the Gutenberg-DE project . That prevents scientific citation . Often the translations of some scripts are also not common or authorized. In this sense, the MIA can primarily only serve as a point of contact for literature searches, but quoting from the MIA is problematic and only possible in rare cases. The inconsistent preparation of the content and website as well as the search function also met with criticism.

The categorization of the authors follows normative considerations. For example, people like Josef Stalin or Mao Zedong can only be found in the reference archive. With this stance, the MIA takes clear positions in internal Marxist discourses in a theoretical and practical sense .

The selection and content of the materials made available, for example in thematic archives or the encyclopedia of Marxism, were criticized as one-sided. However, it must be remembered that this is a voluntary non-profit organization and that the archiving of certain relevant materials is in principle open to everyone who participates.

Mirrors

In 2007, the MIA is responsible for securing the content and managing the data transfer with eight mirrors on the Internet. Three mirrors, including the main server in Fremont , California , are located in the US, and one further mirror each is located in the UK, France , Germany , Russia and Australia. A Mirror in the US and the Mirror in Australia from university - servers from hosting (server of Virginia Tech and the Australian National University ).

Web links

Commons : Media files from the Marxists Internet Archive  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Wayback machine

Sources and Notes

  1. ↑ See review of "WorldHistorySources", Mills Kelly, 2003 - Center for History and New Media at George Mason University in Fairfax County (USA)
  2. ↑ a b See history of the MIA (own presentation)
  3. ^ Zodiac: Marx / Engels Virtual Library, November 26, 1993
  4. ↑ For a more detailed description see history of the MIA (own presentation)
  5. ↑ See server statistics January 2000 (rounded)
  6. ↑ See server statistics January 2003 (rounded)
  7. ↑ See server statistics January 2006 (rounded)
  8. ↑ See MIA statement on the "denial of service attack" ( Memento of March 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ^ New York Times : Who's Attacking an Online Marxist Archive? China Is Suspected of Trying to Block Access to Texts, Noam Cohen, February 5, 2007
    International Herald Tribune : Online Marxist archive blames China for electronic attacks, Noam Cohen, February 5, 2007
    Süddeutsche Zeitung : Zodiac and the rebirth of the revolution online, Petra Steinberger, February 7th, 2007  (     page can no longer be accessed , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.sueddeutsche.de  
  10. ↑ Documents on the non-profit status of the MIA
  11. ↑ See Charta des Marxists Internet Archive
  12. ↑ Attribution, disclosure under the same conditions; Version 2.0
  13. ↑ See the DVD section
  14. ↑ Except for a reserve for emergencies
  15. ↑ MIA budget
  16. ^ MIA bureaucracy
  17. ↑ In a period of time between three weeks and six months
  18. ↑ List of volunteer employees and administrators in the MIA
  19. ↑ See MIA: Transcribe Text
  20. ↑ Cross-Language Section in the MIA
  21. ^ List of authors who are categorized as Marxists by the MIA
  22. ^ Institute for History at the University of Vienna ( Memento from March 13, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
  23. ↑ See MIA: Becoming a Domestic Distributor in My Country
  24. ↑ Cf. MIA: Howto set up a mirror of marxists.org
  25. ↑ Cf. MIA: Why do we sell this DVD?
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on May 21, 2007 .