Marxists Internet Archive
The Marxists Internet Archive (MIA, also known as marx.org or marxists.org ) is the largest internet archive of original Marxist writers and other political currents left ( socialists, anarchists, etc.). The multilingual editions are created by a non-profit organization with volunteers. From the MIA -created content is available under the Creative Commons License.
History
The origins of the MIA fall according to different representations in the years 1987 and 1990. "World History Sourcebook ", a project of the " Center for History and New Media " at George Mason University in Fairfax County called MIA as one of the oldest collaborative Archive Projects of the Internet, which was created in 1987 in the ARPANET and migrated into the World Wide Web 1993. The MIA itself defines its origin in the year 1990, when a person who operates under the pseudonym "Zodiac ," began with the digital archive of the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. These were and distributed via usenet newsgroups to 1993, a website of the project with the name " Marx / Engels Virtual Library " was created on a server of the University of Colorado at Boulder.
" Well, I'm happy to say, those days of chaotic distribution are over. At long last, after wandering the cyber- deserts in exodus, all thesis Marx / Engels ETexts now have one, cozy, communal home. "
In the following period the archive, which until then only writings of Marx and Engels included to complement other Marxist writings was. In early 1995 many mirrors of the now " Marx / Engels Archive" ( MEA) were closed -mentioned project in the university area, which led to a short-term interruption of the operation. In response to these events was on 26 October 1996, operated through a commercial Internet service provider domain " marx.org " was founded. In the course of these changes the archive in " Marx / Engels Internet Archive " (MEIA ) has been renamed. 1997 started to build a non- English speaking archive. In the same year internal conflict about the direction and organization of the MEIA, which led to the beginning of 1998, that all authors have been removed from the archive except Marx and Engels developed by Zodiac. In response, the " Marxists Internet Archive" ( MIA) was founded with the domain " marxists.org " in July 1998, which again led all content. In 1999, the remaining content on the domain " marx.org " whose operators were no longer associated with the MIA, removed. The domain " marx.org " was the MIA 2002 purchase for their project. 2000 Mirrors of the MIA were built in the U.S., UK and Australia. In January 2000, an average of 23,000 page views per day were recorded in January 2003 and 109,500 in January 2006, 258,900 page views per day. Having since late November 2006, probably from the People's Republic of China denial of service attacks against the website have been conducted, they had to renewed attacks 13 to 15 Januar 2007 their operating set short term, the content could, however, largely kept accessible via mirror sites be. On 1 April 2007, the main server of the project went online again.
Organization
Since 2000, the MIA is reported in California nonprofit organization. The Charter of the MIA, the free accessibility of the project is held in the introduction. All materials in the Marxists Internet Archive are, unless otherwise stated, under the public domain. From MIA created materials are released under the Creative Commons License ( cc-by -sa- 2.0). In addition to donations revenue arise only through a DVD distribution. The MIA available funds are used to finance the project and to provide prospective information ( such as free CDs or brochures ) are available. The MIA is based on claims to democratic decision-making processes and on full disclosure of its activities, which include, for example, the budget, the articles, the Charter, as well as the source code. Decisions are made in a committee ( "steering committee" ), which includes all ( volunteer ) staff. This determines the classification of authors, on modifications of regulations ( 3/4 majority ), financial expenses and the like. Employee is one who has at least done over the last six months, three separate contributions to the archive and agrees to abide by the MIA Charter and Bylaws. The MIA defines itself as it is a politically independent project whose priority is to make archival material available. Was MIA at the beginning of an English-language project of the U.S. space, it evolved over time into a global project with volunteers around the world. The approximately fifty staff, and administrators come from over 30 countries. In addition to the transmission of writings in the archives, their proofreading and indexing / categorization, including the translation of scriptures and encyclopedic work on the fields of the MIA.
Revenue and expenditure 1999-2006, details.
Revenue and expenditure in 2006, diagrams and details.
People worldwide
Content
Materials are provided in 45 languages. The MIA is divided into five core areas: " Marxist authors ", "Reference ", " historical archive ", " Topics Archive " and " Encyclopedia of Marxism ". Furthermore, even found a so-called "Students - Section" as an introduction and a decision taken by MIA herself compilation of influential Marxist ( " Key Marxists ").
In the " Marxist authors " are currently writings of over 125 authors listed. For each author a separate archive is created, which often also includes biographical data and images in addition to his writings. The archive of the writings of Marx and Engels, for example, includes approximately 40,000 pages of the collected works, the Chinese-language part of the archive the complete works of Marx, Engels and Lenin.
Under the "Reference" section to find next to people like Mao Zedong or Joseph Stalin, for example, writings on philosophy and the natural sciences, or writings of anarchist and socialist authors. The MIA calls in its Charter four reasons for the assignment of an author under the Reference Archive: First, if the author of Marx and Engels pre- dated. Second, if it is rejected in essential elements of Marxism. Third, if the writings of an author theoretically or practically unconnected or hostile stand in relation to the labor movement. Fourth, if the work is idealistic, or lack the work on dialectics. Below is a schematically illustrated selection of the topics in this section:
- Science & Philosophy: Political economy (eg Adam Smith); Classics of philosophy (eg Hegel); Classics of political theory (eg de Tocqueville ); ethics; Ancient dialectic; natural sciences
- Socialism and Anarchism: Utopian socialism (eg Thomas More ); Anarchism (eg Bakunin ); reformism; Communism (eg Helen Keller ); The Comintern; Maoism; National liberation movements; Black Liberation Movement
In the "historical archive " contains materials according to historical- geographical issues order (eg: International labor organizations from 1847 or the Soviet Union). The "Theme Archive" materials are processed on different topics, such as the philosophical concept of alienation, political economy, the origin of different currents of communism, the revolutionary developments in different states or materials on other political movements such as fascism, anarchism or utopian socialism. In the " Encyclopedia of Marxism " contains a glossary, biographies, events and organizations.
Marx & Engels Internet Archive
The archive to the writings of Marx and Engels includes not only a multilingual fonts index a development of the English Fonts by different approaches. In addition to a chronological order to find further orders on the topic and the " Marx / Engels Collected Works" ( MECW ), as well as selected writings from the total, Materials for the International Working Men's Association, were involved in Marx and Engels, and a detailed collection of letters. Furthermore, it is still biographical material, a photo gallery, a search function and an index of fonts in PDF format available.
German -language archive
The German -speaking area of the MIA is divided into four sections 2007. The section " Marxists " includes writings by about 30 authors, "Reference " you will find writings from about 15 authors, a "history" archive of materials for German and Austrian labor movement is present, and the section "philosophy" with a factory.
DVD
The MIA provides its materials also as a DVD. This DVD is sold, because large parts of the world are not sufficiently connected to the Internet. In addition, this distribution allows revenue to cover costs. Interested parties from the United States or Canada, Western Europe, Australia, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan have to pay a set price to acquire the MIA DVD. With these revenues is also possible that people from other lands 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, in order to reduce the shipping costs and the accessibility to increase to the archive.
Distributed archiving
MIA tries by its own account, to distribute the contents of the archive to as many individuals so that they can distribute the content itself and it is so difficult to prevent the distribution of the published content. The MIA concretely supports the local distribution of its materials to non-profit basis. In this sense, the MIA offers the DVD sales to also download the whole archive with rsync or similar applications 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, untraceable Essentially, with the content Entirely intact, is a great thing. "
Broadleft.org
On the sister site " Leftist Parties of the World" is a link directory is run to left-wing groups, organizations and parties around the world, trying to cover the whole spectrum of political movements. Links to social democratic parties, green and communist movements, as well as other left currents are found, as well as alliances, international organizations, but also so-called "Political - Military Organizations", organizations lead the armed struggle or led. The links are organized by region and political orientation.
Criticism
The MIA is to be used only under restrictions for academic work. While the bibliographic information is mostly given to the text edition in a satisfactory manner, often missing, similar to the Project Gutenberg- DE, the page numbers. This prevents an academic citation. Often the translations of some fonts are also not consistently or authorized. The MIA can therefore be used in this sense in the first place only as a focal point for literature searches, to quote from the MIA, however, is problematic, and only in rare cases. The inconsistent treatment of the contents and website, as well as the search function is also found criticism.
The categorization of the authors followed by normative considerations. Thus, for example, find people like Joseph Stalin or Mao Zedong only in the reference archive. With this attitude, the MIA refers in theoretical and practical meaning clear positions in intra - Marxist discourses. Could be criticized that this active attitude defeats the purpose of an archive.
The selection and content of the materials provided, for example in topics archives or the Encyclopedia of Marxism, have been criticized as one-sided. However, it must be remembered that this is a voluntary work -based non-profit organization, and the archiving of certain relevant materials in principle everyone who participates is open.
Mirrors
2007 is the MIA to secure the contents and to the management of data transfer with eight mirrors on the internet. Three mirrors, the main server in Fremont, California included, are in the U.S., depending Another Mirror is located in the UK, France, Germany, Russia and Australia. A Mirror in the U.S. and the Mirror in Australia of university servers hosted (server of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and the Australian National University).