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Lawrence and Wishart assume that their scholarly edition of Marx ought to be collected in the library, or on the shelves of those able to afford it, while the rest can make do with the editions of portions of his work already circulating in other editions. The Marx and Engels of the MECW are for specialists, who can interpret them for use by everyone else. This has been the model of official Marxism for decades, and accounts in part for the excessive weight given to intellectual workers and theorists in a movement supposed to be far wider than that. This promotes the veneration of Marx’s work as scripture, accessed only by the suitably learned, whereas we believe in its importance especially as the record of a political life – in the letters, as well as the drafts and the manuscripts. Taking the MECW out of the hands of specialists allows us to shatter the doctrinal image of Marx propounded by this or that party and discover the record of a critical, changing mind committed to the abolition of capitalism and private property.
The young Marx knew about dusty collections of weighty tomes: ‘You do not need to read the books; their exciting aspect suffices to touch your heart and strike your senses, something like a Gothic cathedral. These primitive gigantic works materially affect the mind; it feels oppressed under their mass, and the feeling of oppression is the beginning of awe. You do not master the books, they master you.’ That’s in the first volume of MECW, until recently available at the tap of a few keys from my home computer. Under L&W’s new ‘access’ system, I’d have likely never read it. It seems the publishers want their edition to sit in a library as beautiful and useless as a Gothic chantry, a memorial to dead men, rather than a tool in the hands of the living.
full: http://wire.novaramedia.com/2014/05/7-reasons-radical-publishers-are-getting-owned-by-the-internet/
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