Världssocialism Journal (1970-78)

I'm a bit annoyed with myself that I didn't spot this before now.

Via the Marxist Internet Archive, the full run of the 16 issues of the Swedish language journal, Världssocialism: Tidskrift för vetenskaplig socialism, which roughly translates as World Socialism: Journal of Scientific Socialism.

I can't just leave it there, so here's the first article/editorial from the first issue. Google translate is your friend.

Bara en rysk revolutionär

De som läser Marx och Lenin kan inte undgå att upptäcka en del olikheter mellan dessa båda revolutionära tänkares synsätt. Det är dock få som inser hela naturen och vidden av skillnaderna mellan Lenins synsätt och Marx'.

Nu, då Ryssland uppenbart bara är en av många kapitalistiska och imperialistiska stater, har den förlorat det mesta av det som tidigare drog många förvirrade samhällskritiker till den. Tendensen är dock att man skyller på Stalin (eller Chrustjev) för att ha förvrängt marxismen och förvandlat den till en härskande statskapitalistisk klass' ideologi. Lenin betraktas oftast som en genuin marxist. Att han inte var det ska vi försöka visa i några artiklar.

Lenin och Bolsjevikpartiet som han ledde talade onekligen ett marxistiskt språk och försökte rättfärdiga sin politik med marxistiska termer. Detta fordrar en del förklaringar utgående från den materialistiska historieuppfattningen.

Kapitalismen i Ryssland, som började utvecklas i slutet av förra århundradet, hade sina egna speciella drag. Kapitalisterna där var svaga och beroende av dels Tsaren, dels utländska investeringar. Resultatet var att de blev politiskt isolerade och inkapabla att leda en revolution mot tsarismen, som var nödvändig för en full kapitalistisk utveckling i Ryssland. Uppgiften att besegra Tsaren i en borgerlig revolution föll därför i andra händer, intelligentians, en social grupp speciell för Ryssland som utgjordes av de universitetsutbildade.

Kampen mot tsarismen och dess teori, startades av en del av denna intelligentia. Med tanke på de ryska kapitalisternas svaghet och feghet var det inte förvånande att dessa revolutionärer kom att attraheras av anti-kapitalistiska idéer. Den största delen av dem - även om de inte utgav sig för att vara marxister - såg sig själva som socialister. Senare var det några, bl.a. Lenin, som plockade upp några av Marx idéer, men det betydde fortfarande inte att de tjänade arbetarklassens intressen.

Lenin's teori om elitpartiet - hans mest notoriska snedsteg från Marx, där han säger att revolutionen bara kan nås genom att ett elitparti med professionella revolutionärer leder de missnöjda massorna - var direkt hämtad från den ryska revolutionära traditionen.

Det är sant att Marx började sin politiska bana som den sortens gammalmodiga revolutionära demokrat, men han insåg snart att den socialistiska revolutionen måste skilja sig radikalt från de tidigare borgerliga, därför att den måste bli den första revolutionen som genomförs av en majoritet, medveten om sina intressen. Marx förkastade teorin om självutnämnda "befriare" som skulle leda massan av obildade människor till frihet. Lenin avancerade inte långt förbi de gamla teorierna. Han påminde såväl i sin teori som i sin praktik om en borgerlig eller kapitalistisk revolutionär. I själva verket var det för att Ryssland i början av det här århundradet var moget för en sådan revolution, som hans idéer hade någon som helst politisk och social betydelse.

Stalin förvrängde verkligen marxismen till en konservativ, statskapitalistisk härskande klass ideologi, men han byggde framförallt på Lenins tidigare förvrängningar av marxismen.

Lenin var bara en rysk revolutionär medan Marx var en revolutionär socialist. Detta är den stora skillnaden mellan dem.

Edgar Hardcastle in Dutch

Party News from the SPGB Discussion Forum

"The Dutch-language section of the Marxist Internet Archive has started a section on Edgar Hardcastle (“Hardy” as he was known in the Party) with his articles translated from the Socialist Standard."

Socialist Party Statement on the Marx Copyright Controversy (2014)

From the September 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

This spring, London-based publishers Lawrence & Wishart came under fire online and in the leftist press for allegedly trying to ‘privatise’ the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. By now over six thousand activists have signed online petitions demanding that the ‘nasty, capitalistic’ publishers retract their claim of a copyright ‘monopoly’ over the duo’s collected writings. The allegations make for compelling headlines, but in reality the issue isn’t so clear cut.

The works of Marx and Engels are valuable because they systematically document and explain the basic economic processes underpinning class societies. And an understanding of these processes is vital for identifying the problems with our own class society—capitalism—and what needs to be done to rectify them. Of course, countless later writers have helpfully summarised, elucidated, corrected, and interpreted Marx and Engels’s works, though many of the original writings remain relevant and worthy of study today.

Both men having died in the 19th century, the copyrights on their original publications have long since expired. They are now in the public domain, meaning that, as far as the law is concerned, anyone is free to copy and distribute them. However, this status applies only to the works as they were originally published, unannotated and (usually) in German. Under copyright law, whenever someone produces a new version of a public-domain work that extends or transforms it in an intellectually creative way, such as through editing, critical commentary, or translation into another language, a new copyright is manifested in the novel creative elements. British law fixes the term of copyright at 70 years following the death of the creator, so any translations and critical editions produced since 1944 are likely to be proprietary in the UK.

The recent furore over Lawrence & Wishart began when they demanded that the Marxists Internet Archive, a free online library, stop distributing material from a particular modern collection with the title Marx/Engels Collected Works. This collection is a 50-volume scholarly edition and English translation which Lawrence & Wishart had commissioned themselves (in collaboration with two other publishers) between 1975 and 2005. Though as a matter of law the publishers have the right to restrict republication of their own particular edition, their detractors have misunderstood this to mean that Lawrence & Wishart were asserting complete economic control over all of Marx and Engels’s works generally. In reality, the original German texts upon which the Collected Works is based, as well as many earlier English translations and editions of these same texts, remain in the public domain.

Certainly the Socialist Party would welcome a move by Lawrence & Wishart to release their Collected Works into the public domain, or under terms which would permit the Marxists Internet Archive to resume distributing it. But at the same time it is understandable why they have so far opted not to do this. Like any other private enterprise marketing a product, their very existence is predicated on their exclusive control of the fruits of their employees’ labour. It is illogical to attack a single commercial publisher for engaging in business practices which are, by economic necessity, no different from those of every other one.

What we can do, and indeed what we have always done, is to roundly condemn the entire socio-economic system which has led to the repugnant concept of  ‘intellectual property’. Not long ago the notion that anyone ought to be able to claim exclusive rights to the expression of an idea would have been considered absurd. Today, however, legislative and technological measures have enabled and entrenched the commodification of humanity’s intellectual output. While computers and the Internet have long since made it feasible to freely share the totality of the world’s knowledge, the realisation of this has been thwarted at every turn by those whose business models require that information, like physical commodities, remain scarce. In the digital world, of course, information is never scarce—entire libraries can be duplicated a thousand times over with the click of a button. Rather than face up to this fact, publishers have collectively erected artificial legal and technical barriers to the distribution of knowledge. Here, as elsewhere in capitalism, technological progress and social utility take a back seat to the preservation of profits.

The fundamental problem with the removal of Marx/Engels Collected Works from the internet, then, lies not with Lawrence & Wishart’s demand, nor with the bourgeois copyright regime which gave it legal force. Rather, it is with the capitalist mode of production in general, in which nothing—not even scholarly editions of socialist texts—is produced unless it can be sold at a profit. Capitalist businesses which are not willing to take such legally sanctioned but antisocial steps as are required to preserve their profits are doomed to fail, only to be supplanted by competitors with no such qualms. We therefore call on working people everywhere to unite for a single political solution: the abolition of the global capitalist system and its replacement with one based on common ownership and production for use instead of for profit.

The Chinese Authorities don't like Socialism

All evidence points to the fact that the Marxist Internet Archive website has recently been experiencing a politically motivated attack on its server from the Chinese Authorities.

Remember that the next time an apologist for the state capitalist dictatorship - Chairman Mao franchise - gushes about the Market Socialist miracle of China or a right-wing political numpty tells you that the exploitative barbarism in Beijing is evidence that socialism can never work.

Cheers,
Darren
Inveresk Street Ingrate Blog