Charter
of the Marxists Internet Archive (M.I.A.)


1. The M.I.A. will always be 100% Free to Users

The mission of the M.I.A. is to provide a free-to-the-world archive of the works of Marxists and other works relevant to the understanding of Marxism.

The M.I.A. encourages the free copying and re-distribution of all public domain materials on the site. Material that is explicitly marked as copyright may be redistributed only with the explicit permission of the copyright holder(s), who must be contacted separately. All material that is created by an MIA volunteer is protected under the terms of the Attribution-Share-alike Creative Commons License and may be freely used and redistributed under the terms of that license.

2. The M.I.A. will always be a non-profit organization

The M.I.A. will never be owned by any person, group or for-profit organization. Any funds in excess of our expenses will be retained for emergencies or necessary development. M.I.A. volunteers and administrators are unpaid.

The M.I.A. will never carry advertisements or tracking software, and will always endeavour to protect the identity of its users.

3. We will always be based on democratic decision making

The central organizational principle of the M.I.A. is democratic decision making. Any person is welcome to work on the MIA on this basis. All volunteers and administrators have the right to vote and raise issues to vote on, equal to every other M.I.A. volunteer or administrator.

Amendments to the Charter will require consensus or the agreement of at least three quarters of those entitled to vote.

This Charter applies to all language sections of the M.I.A., and all material within them, without exception. Language sections, however, have relative autonomy to make decisions within the rules set by this Charter under the direction of the language section administrators.

4. The M.I.A. will always have full disclosure

All of our budget, bylaws, Charter, legal information, and any source code created, will always be freely available to all.

5. The M.I.A. will always remain politically independent

The M.I.A. will never be controlled by, a part of, or affiliated with, any political party, or coalition, or group.

6. The M.I.A. does not ‘judge’ writers.

The only material which cannot be included on the M.I.A. is material in breach of copyright; or the writings of authors who are still politically active; or far-right, jihadist, pornographic; or other such material which would be illegal in the country where our main server is located.

Otherwise, volunteers may create archives of any writer whose work they deem to be relevant to the understanding of Marxism.

If an author self-identifies as Marxist, volunteers will never express – whether by placement of an author’s archive or by editorial text – a judgment on whether a writer is or is not a Marxist. That is for the user to decide.

We provide supporting information for archival material – in the form of editorial footnotes, encyclopedia articles, etc. – to enhance understanding of the primary sources, while avoiding, so far as possible, judgmental formulations.

7. Our priority is to provide Archival Information