MAOIST.WS

Maoist Information Web Site

www.etext.org/Politics/MIM material preservation update

2009 July 1

This announcement draws attention to new links for the "20081120.zip" and "20090109.zip" files described in /whatsnew/etextarchives.html and a link to an archive of www.etext.org/Politics/MIM, the Etext Archives Web site of the Maoist Internationalist Movement inaccessible since January 2009.

The new links for 20081120.zip and 20090109.zip are actually for new files, 20081120n.zip and 20090109n.zip, based on 20081120.zip and 20090109.zip. The new files have different SHA256 checksums, because of different file times and the addition of files named "md5.txt" and "sha512.txt" to each collection. These files contain checksums for individual items.

Links for 20081120n.zip (SHA256: daaa5f412c0351e5e132b9f2d4e3b2f8ca60e01ef909fa6c7838862617d3dd5c; 0.7 MB)

Links for 20090109n.zip (SHA256: 985ff8d244a1bae24e71bce339075eaa6787b2782ffea9e648a64230e13677ce; 0.2 MB)

These Mini File Host links will eventually expire on their own. While I'm on the topic, this writer points out that the small numbers of downloads (shown on the Mini File Host pages) with the old links is proof that very few people use MIWS for organizational reasons; otherwise, there would have been more interest in the last material added to www.etext.org/Politics/MIM before the closing of the Etext Archives was announced. That is the way it should be, because MIWS is for people learning theory and method. Of course, 20081120n.zip contains long theoretical articles of substance such as "From the poverty of philosophy into political economy: Algeria" (October 13, 2008), but most visitors will probably have a lot on their plate already for a long time. The reason for the above links is responsibility to the proletariat as MIWS has discussed (even though six months have passed since January 2009). There is also a nihilism question, because some of the things MIWS has discussed or would like to discuss www.etext.org/Politics/MIM addressed in detail.

Link for archive of www.etext.org/Politics/MIM (MD5: 992af9a1ddf6cee2b7ae65b64a57cb6c; SHA512: ec627fa2147bf7ae0a21755be931df7731f1c0789580b61e8d5f71ffc5675f2b3fe02f96ab90eaa1518acf8423f77638c768339a24175ef3d6c5933e6a52447a)

The "emt.zip" file in the directory for this Internet Archive item is 45.5 MB in size and decompresses to more than 130 MB. Unpacking emt.zip creates thousands of files and directories.

This writer does not know how likely it is that this will stay in the Internet Archive. I do not notice that there is no other archive of www.etext.org/Politics/MIM in the Internet Archive except through Wayback Machine, which is not ideal for browsing. The archive was apparently created by "crawling" www.etext.org/Politics/MIM in April 2007. It contains text files (including HTML files) only. I have not checked all the links in the archive.

Web pages in the archive seem unmodified from the originals except for links converted for off-line browsing. "Absolute" links within www.etext.org/Politics/MIM have been converted, and links with query strings have been converted (to point to files with names created for Web pages that had addresses with query strings, e.g., http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/classics/famous/text.php?mimfile=luxun.txt). Linux users can execute the commands unzip -j emt.zip *luxun.txt* and unzip -j emt.zip *whatsnew.html and view the source of whatsnew.html to see what I'm talking about.

Apparently, some files that had addresses like http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/classics/famous/text.php?mimfile=luxun.txt are available neither via the Wayback Machine nor in another, Web archive of www.etext.org/Politics/MIM that is more complete than emt.zip by date. (Although, some files that can be found in the Web archive cannot be found through the Wayback Machine, and vice versa.) emt.zip complements the other archive partially. There is no complete archive of www.etext.org/Politics/MIM available on the Web.

emt.zip unpacks to a folder named "emt." Unless people know what they are doing and have studied the computer security issues related to privacy, how computer activity leaves traces, and anonymous browsing and secure off-line browsing practices, this writer would not just unpack emt.zip to the Windows desktop and view the contents with a Web browser. (Some files in emt.zip have question marks in their names and cannot be extracted with their original names to some file systems commonly used by Windows users. Linux users will have an easier time working with the archive. But this is another issue.)

emt.zip seems to be the only single-file archive of www.etext.org/Politics/MIM on the Web. This writer is not pleased to be writing this announcement. The reader will notice that this article is dated July 2009. That means MIWS has waited almost six months for someone else to get on the ball with these things, and if it had to wait this long it is possible that it could have been waiting six years. MIWS is not a MIM site, and it is not in any kind of sectarian interest of MIWS's to be the only site pointing to these archives. MIWS takes some responsibility for potentially giving the impression that it might put up complete archives of www.etext.org/Politics/MIM and MIM Theory, but the proletariat cannot rely on one Web site like MIWS.

A single file that could be redistributed and unpacked by anyone on their Web site, emt.zip makes it easier to reproduce the www.etext.org/Politics/MIM material. Making the material easier to reproduce may make infiltration of the communist movement easier, and there are other competing considerations. Overall, though, it is a reflection of sectarianism at this time not to disseminate the material as easily as can be done. The material has to be approached from the viewpoint of the international proletariat. The long-term solution to infiltration on the Internet is to raise standards of reasoning and production (what some might call "participation" or "creativity," but I don't want to confuse the gregarious or artistic here).

Distributing a binary archive of www.etext.org/Politics/MIM would be complicated. Distributing a 50 MB file is relatively easy. Per byte, text files are generally more important than binary files. Binary-related considerations should not be an obstacle.

This writer is not going to try to explain why others have evidently not managed to put up independent archives of the www.etext.org/Politics/MIM material, but people should be introspective, for example, do they really care about science. No offense to the previous efforts, but the archives of www.etext.org/Politics/MIM that existed before June 2009 were missing many important documents. MIWS became aware of this through its own practice and seeing that many documents that it wanted to read were missing. I'm not sure how anyone could have found this acceptable.

A drawback of keeping an archive of www.etext.org/Politics/MIM on hand for off-line browsing is that it has to be stored somewhere. On-line archives, though convenient, have an anonymity drawback. From the perspective of someone who does not already know about a site, of course it is easier to find information in an on-line archive (not in a packed form) using a search engine.

Limitations of emt.zip:

There has not been a full accounting of what has been lost. www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/mt/index.html in 20081120n.zip shows some of the theoretical printed literature (in digital file form) that www.etext.org/Politics/MIM had for a short time before the Etext Archives were "closed." (I could not find another copy of mt/index.html with the same content on the Web. By the way, the reason MIWS doesn't link to copies of all issues of MIM Theory, 1-14, is a prioritization of other work. #9 and #13 weren't available on www.etext.org/Politics/MIM before it went down, and files for some issues need additional work to process. Hopefully, others will step up their own efforts.)

Because scientific communist lines like the MIM's are unpopular in the First World, there may be a reluctance to refer to or agree with www.etext.org/Politics/MIM material for fear of being associated with the MIM organizationally, because the material cannot be found or is hard to find in libraries for example. Recognizing similarities in line can be necessary for scientific advance. These similarities do not mean that there are underlying organizational relationships. If people think they do, sectarianism is bound to be a result. One will say things just to differentiate themselves from other organizations. This is an ideological question of taking science seriously enough not to allow it to become distorted by organizational concerns.

Some vague discussion of "cells" in the context of MIWS is concerning. However, differentiating from a particular organization has never driven MIWS's work. MIWS does not recruit, and anyone claiming to be led by MIWS is probably a cop given everything MIWS has said on organization, the Internet, and science, and given what is not on MIWS. MIWS has to address some writing by others, such as ecologists talking about Arghiri Emmanuel, because that writing is a part of people's learning. There is nothing wrong with thinking that MIWS is on the same wavelength as others, because science is unifying among those who practice it; this is true particularly on the Internet, where ideas should be based on methods, theories and facts accessible to everyone. Other ways of obtaining agreement are inherently divisive or rely on cults.

Some controversies surrounding www.etext.org/Politics/MIM toward the end of its availability centered around allegory-related issues. MIWS's approach to avoiding allegory-related problems is to make sure MIWS is making advances in its own publications and committing to the ideas it has published (or abandoning them only after giving substantive explanations).

By saying that the www.etext.org/Politics/MIM material is worth preserving, this writer is saying that individual motivations and any obscure meanings in the site are irrelevant. Most of the material will be useful in the future and to new students. Similarly, if one were to say something similar to what someone else said, the reason for that ultimately has to be located in the scientific process, not individual motivations. If there is a focus on motivations and not the substance and context of arguments, it stands to reason that knowledge production is going to become distorted.

A typical practice is to make a pronouncement on the material linked. This is writer is reluctant to do this because of the message it would send, one contrary to what MIWS has been conveying. MIWS links to www.etext.org/Politics/MIM (in a way, the site now existing only as an archive) only after putting out its own line for almost two years and only after the site is down and at least some of its content after six months is clearly in danger of disappearing forever. Not only is the per-person output of MIWS probably among the highest for a site calling itself "Maoist," there is more original writing of substance on MIWS than on most new sites claiming to be Maoist parties. MIWS does not emphasize linking. MIWS has its own understanding and reasoning, and though it may appear to help learning, links can easily become involved in leadership and other organizational struggles as if there were masses to be led over the Internet into action without understanding. As for stating differences, MIWS's differences with www.etext.org/Politics/MIM should eventually appear in its own writing.

A list of differences is more appropriate in a recruiting competition context, which this is not. MIWS agrees with www.etext.org/Politics/MIM on the main points. This writer mean things like historical idealism, contemplative materialism, individualism, Liberalism, the world party idea (opposing these things), calculating surplus value, the exploiter majority in the First World, and the labor aristocracy as the main force of fascism. However, saying "MIWS opposes historical idealism" would not be enough; it has to be demonstrated.

This writer could rattle off many disagreements with www.etext.org/Politics/MIM on various questions, probably with more conviction and substance than most. This is possible by studying the material and developing one's own stands, not using the site lazily for sectarian purposes. Selecting a few disagreements would be pointless. One effect would be to make selected disagreements seem more significant than they are. If voicing disagreements becomes a ritual, it can lead to raising disagreements without without either addressing main points or rejecting them openly, what some are doing. Even MIWS has not yet written articles on every main point. The work of www.etext.org/Politics/MIM does not have to be reinvented, but there should be advancement within the context of accepting or rejecting main points. Of course, requirements are different for masses outside the Internet at a certain level of development.

There were several paragraphs here pertaining to organization and security, but they were deleted for lacking long-term usefulness and otherwise being pointless. The bottom line of what needs to be said here is that those who themselves say www.etext.org/Politics/MIM material is useful and yet did nothing in six months to preserve it have no right to bitch. (I do not assume that they are saying the world's access to the material is not as useful as their own access.) There is no compilation of correct MIM articles or annotated articles, for example, no alternative to what MIWS has done unselectively while putting forward its own line. Even those compelled to talk about "MIM" as an ongoing problem (some while saying that the MIM is nonexistent) have to deal with the disappearance of www.etext.org/Politics/MIM somehow if they think most of it is correct and constitutes an advance. 51% of the material is still thousands of files, and that is only to mention the text files.

People alternatively appearing to be outraged by others' not making the www.etext.org/Politics/MIM material and MIM Theory available and yet have access to them have no right to bitch either. No doubt sock puppets give it to others both ways. Do it yourself or shut the fuck up.

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