A sincere look at Mr Frye
I welcome you to the blog once more. I recently found a small essay by a 'Brian L. Frye' from the University of Virginia in their Journal of Law and Technology, vol. 25 no.5 from 2022, which was an interesting read, to say the least. I then also found an article from 2005 by Mick Brooks on the same topic on the site 'In Defence of Marxism'. What interested me, however, was their sheer difference in quality.
On the one hand, Mr Frye talks to us about Marx being a 'Literary Landlord' and proceeds to demonstrate to us how Marx wanted to abolish private property of the means of production, while also reserving the right to be credited for the ideas he brought forth, along with the economic reward that came with their sale in books. We must take this moment to remind ourselves that Marx died sick and destitute, and made a living off his writing.
Now, Mr Frye says that wanting to abolish the private property of the means of production is contradictory to wanting to own your own ideas' economic fruits in a capitalist society. Mr Brooks says that by logic, intellectual property rights enclose ideas to limit their use and thus exploit them despite costing nothing. We see that the main difference between Frye and Brooks, is that one blames Marx for wanting to make money off his works (along with rightly critiquing the firm that 'owns' the copy rights to Marx's works), the other points to capitalist ownership of ideas as the 'fetter on the development of the productive forces'. The thing they have in common, is that the holding of intellectual property rights of work alien to the owner's pen in order to profit from it is a shameless theft like any other capitalist's. What they don't have in common is wanting Marx to abolish private property of the sale of his work, which is the standpoint Mr Frye chooses to adopt.
The opinion of yours truly regarding this, is that Marx's work should be of collective ownership, a common good, as Brooks rightly puts it; however, Mr Frye's spoony and lazy criticism of Marx for wanting to be credited for his contributions (which he by the way never disallowed the credited use of by others as a scientific communist) in the same fashion as a scientist wants to be credited for discovering something new, while being able to sell copies of his works (which in no way contradicts his ideology), is a nonsensical, boorish, opinology.
He calls authors landlords, when it is the publishers and their bourgeois associates that extract the 'rent' from the work of the authors and the print workers! Meanwhile, Mr Frye blames Marx for wanting to make money off his own work that he wrote. What is true for Brooks, and for Marx for that matter, is that science and art are a common good. Capitalist production never ceases to keep the collective from use by the collective, and in all senses, when Marx sought a publisher for his books along with a margin of profit which he wouldn't be dividing between the printers and editors, or the advertisers, but with the publisher Otto Meissner, who had also published Engels' work (Found in a wikipedia article) he was, in few words, a bourgeois hypocrite ! In the same way in which he put it in his silly essay:
Sick burn. Unfortunately, Marx was long dead and couldn't respond.
What I think, is that criticizing a dead man who lived in abject poverty for wanting credit and to make money off his work, instead of treating it as the tragic irony of his material reality under capitalist production, is a seriously stupid "point" to try -- and fail -- to make.
However, the valid point which he makes, is the exclusion of Jenny Westphalen from a credit in transcription of his works and the wider ideological discussions she participated in, which were omitted by Marx. One could argue they weren't necessary to credit, given the fact we take ideas from others without noticing, and that to credit every influence on you would be outright impossible, but it is a good point to criticize the omission of Ms Westphalen from the formation of Marx's ideas. I am of the opinion that it would be right to include Ms Westphalen when naming Marx and Engels, as well, and remember her contributions to the field in bringing her own ideas to Marx's discourse. In a word, I agree with Frye here, despite his shortcomings.
Another point we must dwell on, are his meaningless additions to the essay, which we must see:
"However, the title page of the first edition of Capital included the phrase, “Das Recht der Uebersetzung wird vorbehalten” or “The right of translation is reserved.” In other words, Marx was claiming the exclusive right to publish translations of Capital, presumably under the copyright laws of other countries."
"While he probably realized that asserting copyright ownership in Germany was pointless, apparently he hoped it might be valuable in other countries, if Capital proved commercially successful."
"And it came to pass. Between 1872 and 1875, Marx asserted his translation right under French copyright law to prepare the authentic French translation of Capital. Notably, his contract with the publisher stipulated that the book be sold at a price “which all can afford.” After all, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."
What a mensch."
"One can hardly blame Marx for capitulating to the realities of publication in a capitalist society."
(Earlier on in his essay:
"It seems everyone’s a landlord, at least when it comes to what they truly love. Marx loved his theory of communism so powerfully, he couldn’t see that what he truly wanted - what he desperately needed - was to own it, just like any other landlord. But ownership is the problem, especially when it comes to nonrival goods like ideas. Marx’s ironic landlordism could only undermine the credibility of the ideas he loved so well. So, if you love an idea, set it free. The hypocrisy you avoid is likely to be your own."
Compare, then, the product of Marx's work, to the appropriation of the means of production and land to charge a rent; The 'savant serieux' strikes again, with his ignorant opinions!
(Later on)
"In fairness, Marx didn’t really advocate the total abolition of private property. Rather, he argued that communism requires collective ownership of the “means of production,” but doesn’t preclude private ownership of personal property. As he put it, “Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations.”23 In other words, people can own consumption goods, but not the land and factories necessary to make them."
He demonstrates that he understands what Marx meant, and then proceeds to attempt to analyze how it holds with Marx's view on copyright and intellectual property.
"So, can that distinction salvage Marx’s belief in the legitimacy of literary property? Maybe copyright and attribution are forms of personal property consistent with Marxist theory."
Copyright, when placed in the hands of a publishing house, is the capitalist expropriation of the worker's ideas, as his critique of Lawrence & Wishart argues. But then, he says this.
"Yes, authors are “workers,” when they are producing works of authorship. But when the work is done, the author becomes a copyright owner, and the worker becomes the landlord. As many Marxists have long realized, “intellectual property” is just as capitalistic as any other kind."
(Should read: Intellectual property by the firm is just as capitalistic as any other kind.)
Translation:
'The worker, when they stop working, and own what they have produced, are bourgeois. The author partaking in the fruits of their labour is bourgeois.'
(Recall this):
"One can hardly blame Marx for capitulating to the realities of publication in a capitalist society."
What he says then, is that workers, appropriating the products of their work, and owning them, is bourgeois, and more akin to landlords owning land than the money-grubbing publishers that "share in the booty" as Marx put it, with their collaborators. He in fact outlines how copyright in capitalist society, as it is used, for example, to suppress Marxist Internet Archive, and as Brooks analyzes in his article, are bourgeois; then, he walks into a rake, and calls the workers' personal property of their work, and their right to attribution, bourgeois!
The notion shown here by Mr Frye, is what the rest of this essay rests on. Thus, we won't go into it here.
Some sort of conclusion
References:
Article on Otto Meissner, in German. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Meissner_(Verleger)#Literatur
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