Statement of Purpose
Is this yet "another" website devoted to the writings of Scientific Socialism? Perhaps, although I hope not. At the time of this writting, the largest concentration of on-line versions of the literature in the Communist tradition, beginning with and descending from Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels, can be found in the ever-growing Marx/Engels Internet Archive (MEIA).
Although the Marx/Engels collection is by far and away the center-piece of the Archive, followed by the writings of Leon Trotsky and Mao Tse-tung, the works of two major figures in this tradition, V. I. Lenin and J. V. Stalin, are very poorly represented. In the case of Stalin, only three items, and although the Lenin collection numbers more than twenty items, no more than two or three can be classed among Lenin's most significant writings. Indeed, the most striking feature of the Lenin holding is the near total absence of Lenin's major pieces.
My intention in setting up From Marx to Mao is not to "compete" with the MEIA, which is an impossible task given the many volunteers who participate in that project, so much as it is to provide an on-line version of very important texts, most especially by Lenin, which are long, long overdue. The name of this site is admittedly a misnomer and reflects the goal, rather than, the reality of the contents in this site; there is, at present, very little from Marx, Engels, and Mao.
This infant "Library" has two primary goals. The first is to provide interested readers with access to the fundamental texts and documents from these two major figures in this tradition that are not available in the above mentioned Archive. The second is to present this material in a form that is easily accessible and, above all, conducive to the close study of these documents. To this end, every reasonable effort has been made to reproduce the texts in the form in which they appeared.
If the response to this effort is favorable, I will try to start developing on-lines versions of texts appearing at other sites that are far removed from the printed format.
It should go without saying that your suggestions and criticisms of this site and of its contents, or lack thereof, are more than welcome (unless they are from a reactionary point of view). My e-mail address is plastered all over the place so please feel free to provide your comments or to report any errors in transcription (missing letters, mis-spellings, etc.) that you come across. Finally, this is a one-person operation that could benefit greatly from anyone interested in participating in this project
P.S.: Access and use of this material is meant to be free. Readers are encouraged to download the texts and make them available to those without Internet access. I have "copywrited" [©] the "form" of "presentation" of this material, which may or may not have legal standing. This is done to discourage "enterprising" persons who might wish to transform this material into a "commodity" for their own private gain. In the event that there is legal standing, let such persons be forwarned that I've inserted "code" in various parts of each text for purposes of identification. Those wishing to "make a buck" off this material will have to do some work, i.e., read the text and find the code to remove it, in which case they might get an education, or strip the text of all the code and do the HTML mark-up.