Marx/Engels Online Library (12/28/1993)
misc.activism.progressive


Date: 1993-12-28 01:36:23 PST
From: Zodiac (zodiac@io.org)
Subject: Marx/Engels Online Library


MARX AND ENGELS ONLINE LIBRARY GUIDE

                        update: December 27, 1993


It's been almost a month since the contents (not to mention the very
existence) of the Marx & Engels Virtual Library were posted to various
newsgroups and lists. [In a 'long-goodbye', Zodiac re-posted all the 
material transcribed and posted over the past 2 years]
The library has grown considerably since. (Because of the M&E archive's
evolving nature, net cruisers might sweep in every two weeks or five
to see what's new...)

Since the last announcement, some major sections have been added --
such as the 1844 _Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts_ -- as well as
interesting subdirectories -- such as one containing most of Marx's
writings on or about the International Working Men's Association
(a.k.a. the First International).

Another new subdirectory is called OTHERS, dedicated to major historic
works from other thinkers.  It currently holds sections for DeLeon,
Lenin, and Trotsky.  These subsections shall receive less attention
than the Marx/Engels section proper, understandably.  One can
currently find therein a copy of Lenin's _State and Revolution_ (an
excellent follow-up read to Marx's _The Civil War in France_); watch
soon for a copy of Trotsky's _The Revolution Betrayed_. (Please note:
This archive isn't intended to store programmatic etexts of various
modern political organizations, so please don't ask. There already
exists an interesting collection of such material at
etext.archive.umich.edu, maintained by Paul Southworth
(pauls@umich.edu).)

The new DeLeon section is largely the work of Mike Lepore
(mlepore@mcimail.com).  I'm very grateful to Mike for his effort in
this area.  I would also like to express my appreciation to Jim Esch
(jim.esch@launchpad.unc.edu) for his work transcribing some of Marx's
earliest compositions, before KM's _Rheinische Zeitung_ editorial
stint in 1842.  And I most definitely must thank Martha Giminez and
Don Roper for providing a reliable home for these classic texts (as
well as help in setting things up).

There are now a total of five people scattered about the North
American continent engaged in ascii-transription of some Marx and
Engels work.  If you wish to aid in this project, perhaps type-out
some work, or parts of a work, near-and-dear to your heart, contact
me at zodiac@io.org, to prevent duplication of effort.  The more the
merrier.

The M&E library serves several functions.  It provides research
material and/or general reading pleasure for those interested in this
epoch-shaping stream of thought.  More importantly, these works are
now constantly at hand and FREE (ok ok, I know you need a computer and
a modem, etc., that's another story).  The recent demise of Progress
Publishers in Moscow means M&E texts will probably become harder to
find, and most certainly more expensive -- driving the volumes out of
the range of students and working people.  (Progress actually pulped,
that is, destroyed, thousands and thousands of editions.  Alas.)

Once transcribed, and uploaded to the net, these works take on lives
of their own, branching off from the mainstream net into little BBS
eddies about the globe, from Austria to Australia.  I've happily heard
from people who have found them in little local BBSs in places of
which I've never heard.  As most local BBS users don't have access to
the Internet, I assume a great many more are getting these files, yet
have not the means to tell me so.

At any rate, I hope you find the Marx/Engels virtual library of value
and enjoyment.

But, enough of the background crap.  To the heart of things: the files
themselves!

                                   *

There are three main ways to access the M&E archives:  Gopher, FTP,
and Email.

1.  GOPHER

When logged into your Internet account, at the prompt type:

     gopher csf.colorado.edu

You will connect to a Boulder, Colorado, computer which will then
presented you an opening menu.  Select/type:

     12

which takes you into the Progressive Sociologist Network (PSN) menu; at
this point, you will see the Marx and Engels section at number:

      8.

Type that, and in you go.  PIck and choose among the dozens of texts
available.

The advantage of gopher is that it is makes it easier to browse the
library, peek about into files; and, most importantly, gopher permits
one to provide fuller file titles, so etext files can be named exactly
as per the original works (as opposed to ftp listings, which have
shorter names).

If you decide you wish to keep a copy of a work, just hit save and it
copies the file back to the home area of your account computer.

Here is the prettified gopher-file list, set up recursively (meaning,
with subdirectories listed):

    1.  1837-42 -- Young Marx (before editing Rheinische Zeitung)/
          1836/11 --  Love Poems to Jenny (three).
          1836/12 --  Feelings.
          1836/12 --  My World.
          1837/   --  Wild Songs.
          1837/02 --  Transformation
    2.  1842 -- Communism and the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung (M).
    3.  1843 -- Letters to Arnold Ruge (M)/
          1843, March -- "Ship of Fools".
          1843, May -- On Prussian Absolutism.
          1843, September -- "Ruthless Criticism".
    4.  1844 -- Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (M)/
    5.  1844 -- Intro to a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (M).
    6.  1844 -- On The Jewish Question (M).
    7.  1845 -- Theses on Feuerbach (M).
    8.  1847 -- Principles of Communism (E).
    9.  1847 -- The Poverty of Philosophy (M)/
    10. 1848 -- Communism, Revolution, and a Free Poland (M).
    11. 1848 -- On The Question of Free Trade (M).
    12. 1848 -- The Communist Manifesto (ME)/
          Collected Prefaces of Marx and Engels/
          Section 1:  Bourgeois and Proletarians.
          Section 2:  Proletarians and Communists.
          Section 3:  Socialist and Communist Literature.
          Section 4:  The Various Existing Opposition Parties.
    13. 1849 -- Wage-Labor and Capital (M)/
          ch0 -- Engels' 1891 Introduction.
          ch1 -- Preliminary.
          ch2 -- What Are Wages?.
          ch3 -- By What is the Price of a Commodity Determined?.
          ch4 -- By What Are Wages Determined?.
          ch5 -- The Nature and Growth of Capital.
          ch6 -- Relation of Wage-Labor to Capital.
          ch7 -- The Rise and Fall of Wages and Profits.
          ch8 -- Capital and Labor Are Diametrically Opposed.
          ch9 -- Effect of Capitalist Competition on Classes.
    14. 1850 -- England's 17th c. Revolution (ME).
    15. 1857 -- Intro to a Critique of Political Economy (M)/
          Production.
          Relations of Production to Distribution....
          The Method of Political Economy.
          Various Topics.
    16. 1858 -- The Grundrisse (M)/
    17. 1864 -- International Working Men's Association/
          1864 10/27 --  General Rules and Administrative Regulations .
          1864 10/27 --  The Inaugural Address of the International.
          1865 01/28 --  Address: Re-elected President Lincoln.
          1865 02/13 --  Letter to J. B. Schweitzer.
          1867 11/20 --  On the Fenian Prisoners in Manchester.
          1868 05/11 --  Address: National Labor Union (US) on UK war.
          1869 07/20 --  Resolution: Right of Inheritance.
          1870 07/14 --  Programme for the 5th Congress.
          1870 07/23 --  First Address on the Franco-Prussian War.
          1870 09/09 --  Second Address on the Franco-Prussian War.
          1871 05/30 --  Third Address on the Franco-Prussian War (Commune).
          1871 09/20 --  Speech: Political Action and the Working Class.
          1872 03/05 --  Fictitious Splits in the International (ME)/
          1872 03/05 --  Resolution(s): US Federation Split.
          1872 05/   --  Notes on the "American Split".
          1872 09/   --  Resolution: Working Class Parties.
          1872 09/08 --  Speech: The Political Battleground.
    18. 1867 -- Speech: Poland and the Russian Menace (M).
    19. 1868 -- Synopsis of Marx's Capital (E)/
          Introduction.
          Commodities and Money.
          The Transformation of Money into Capital.
          The Production of Absolute Surplus-Value.
          Relative.Surplus.
    20. 1869 -- The Abolition of Landed Property (M).
    21. 1871 -- Marx's Daughters in Post-Commune France (Jenny Marx).
    22. 1871 -- New York World Interview with Marx.
    23. 1871 -- The Civil War in France (M)/
          Chronology.
          Engels' 1891 Introduction.
          First Address -- July 23, 1870.
          Second Address -- September 9, 1870.
          Third Address -- May 30, 1871.
          appendices.
          footnotes.
    24. 1872 -- On Authority (E).
    25. 1875 -- Critique of the Gotha Program.
    26. 1877 -- Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (E)/
          1892 Introduction/
          Early Socialist Utopians.
          Dialectical Method.
          Historical Materialism.
          notes.
    27. 1879 -- Chicago Tribune Interview with Marx.
    28. 1879 -- Reformists in Germany's Social-Democratic party (ME).
    29. 1882 -- Bruno Bauer and Early Christianity (E).
    30. 1883 -- Engels' Speech At Karl Marx's Grave (E).
    31. 1894 -- The Peasant Question in France and Germany (E)/
    32. 1895 -- Capital III: Law of Value and Rate of Profit (E)/
    33. OTHERS/
          DeLeon
          Lenin
          Trotsky

2.  FTP

If you don't want to browse, but rather just log in and snatch the
whole library no questions asked, screw the rodent, login by ftp, and
"mget" the lot.)

FTP ("File Transfer Protocol") is a method of zapping files around the
planet, from one computer to another.  Assuming you have ftp capability,
at the prompt, type

     ftp csf.colorado.edu

You will connected to a colorado computer and then you will be asked for a
login name.  Type:

     anonymous

It will then ask you for a password: type

     your@email.address

Once in, type

     cd psn/Marx

and you will be in the directory.  Hit "ls" for a list of what files
are there.  Type "get" to have a file sent back to your
home directory.

These are all exactly the same files you would see by gophering in --
except their ftp names are invariably shorter and more cryptic
looking.  For instance, the _Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts_ is
titled EPManuscript.

You may have to do just a little bit of guess work to figure out what it
what.  Use the gopher list provided above to help match up ftp names and
works.

3.  EMAIL

Not all Internet accounts have access to FTP or gopher. Fortunately,
there are a ftp-by-mail services offered by generous sites. Through
ftp-by-mail, you place an "order" by email with a third computer,
which then follows your instructions and logs into the computer
holding the files you want (in this case csf.colorado.edu), grabs
those files, then mails them to you.

For details on how to work this, send an email message to:

     ftpmail@pa.dec.com

and put nothing but the word

     help

in the body of the message itself.  You will automatically be sent
instructions on how to use this extremely helpful service.

Piping Marx and Engels into cyberspace...
Zodiac.
--
"Don't HATE the media...             |                              Zodiac
beCOME the media!"                 --*--                    
            - J. Biafra              |              . . . . cum grano salis