First published: 27 May 2006
One of the effects of the quarter century of victories of international capitalism after 1979 was that it became significantly harder to obtain Marxist works. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 the Collected Works of Marx and Engels rose hugely in price and it took over a decade for the series to be completed. The Collected Works of Lenin disappeared and are expensive to acquire even second hand. Trotsky’s works went up significantly in price. The stream of publication and translation of lesser known Marxist writers that had appeared from the late 1960s onwards largely dried up.
For those who do not know it already therefore www.marxists.org represents a superb achievement. An ongoing project, it includes, at the time of writing, internet versions of the first ten volumes of the Collected Works of Marx and Engels plus many of their individual works, the great bulk of the Collected Works of Lenin, large amounts of Gramsci, Rosa Luxemburg, and a host of more minor Marxist writers. A gratifying statistic is that for May 2006 there were over 1.4 million visits to the site.
This is an invaluable resource for readers of Socialist Action and it should be supported in every way.