[notJim]

That's not what happened. This decision has actually been in the works for a while and involved a lot of discussion.

> The decision to cease publication and sales of the books was made last year after months of discussion, the company, which was founded by Seuss’ family, told AP

https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation-world/ct-aud-nw-dr-...

eBay has an existing policy that removes racist materials. They're just applying it based on the Seuss info.

> Items with racist, anti-Semitic, or otherwise demeaning portrayals, for example through caricatures or other exaggerated features, including figurines, cartoons, housewares, historical advertisements, and golliwogs

https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/prohibited-restricted-ite...

[ipsum2]

As someone mentioned above, Mein Kampf is still allowed: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m...

[gnopgnip]

No, Mein Kampf is not allowed. Critically annotated versions are allowed. There is a significant difference here

[enriquto]

This is ridiculous. Historians should be allowed to freely read original, non-critically annotated, historical documents. Otherwise they cannot do their job.

[UncleMeat]

Do you think that historians are buying primary source material on ebay?

Given how frequently people reference historians and history in these discussions, I'm surprised that nobody ever seems to ask them their opinions.

[enriquto]

There's no special "historian card" that you need to show to access sources. Everybody has the right to study history on their own, and I guess the world would be a much better place if many of us did.

[UncleMeat]

> Everybody has the right to study history on their own, and I guess the world would be a much better place if many of us did.

I guess?

History is something that historians do, not study. There is a meaningful difference between an expert applying actual methods and an interested layperson reading primary sources for their own edification. Not to say that people should be prevented from doing that, but it does seem like a bait and switch to say "what about the historians" and then swap to "what about this entirely different set of people" when it becomes clear that historians aren't actually using ebay in the method you describe.

If you really care about laypeople having access to primary sources, a way bigger problem is the fact that most archives will not allow non-credentialed people to access their materials. There's way more "censorship" going on there than anything happening on ebay if that counts.

[franga2000]

N=1, but yes, surprisingly often. The one I know buys a lot of old books from people online to keep in their home library and has on occasion actually found some very rare items that people selling them simply don't know the rarity of. I've heard of at least one such find end up on display in a museum (incidentally, also a children's book, but probably not Seuss). And it's not just historians who have a use for unaltered source material.

While I don't mind cleaning up/modernizing certain things and not printing the originals anymore, not allowing the existing originals to be sold even by independent third-party sellers is just horrible.

[UncleMeat]

Are those sources or collectors pieces?

We've got a lot of old books purchased second hand because historians tend to like old books, but none of them are primary sources used for research. All of the primary sources are coming directly from archives or inter-library-loans.

[sp332]

I assume they do because eBay pushed so many competitors out of the market.

[UncleMeat]

My wife is a historian. We've got hundreds and hundreds of books at home. Exactly zero ebay purchases. Among her colleagues, I'd bet that none of them have ever purchased a primary source on ebay.

[timcederman]

And they're welcome to read those at the library or other sources - eBay, as a company, is under no obligation to facilitate dissemination of historical documents.

[yerwhat01010]

‘Skynet Is A Private Company, They Can Do What They Want,’ Says Man Getting Curb-Stomped By Terminator

https://babylonbee.com/news/skynet-is-a-private-company-they...

[enriquto]

I thought that ebay was just a website where people could sell their historical documents to each other. Ebay does not "disseminate" the things that people send to each other. Heck, it doesn't even deal with the delivery! It just processes the payments. Why are they willing to engage in editorializing stuff that they don't even see? It makes no sense.

[RobertKerans]

Ebay is a company, not a website, and company policies specify which products can be listed by their users. It's not neutral, you're being deliberately obtuse here.

[RobertKerans]

They are, nobody stops them doing that.

[madeofpalk]

Right so this story is actually about yet another platform poorly enforcing its own moderation policy.

[SpicyLemonZest]

But there's a point where poor, one-sided enforcement of a facially neutral moderation policy becomes in practice a biased policy.

[ojnabieoot]

This is misleading and approaching a lie. eBay only allows critically-annotated copies of Mein Kampf which are designed for scholars. I am sure that a copy of “If I Ran The Zoo” with a sociologist critically annotating the abhorrent racism would be permitted on eBay.

From one of the listed items:

> This item has been listed previously. eBay removed it with this reminder of the guidelines:

> "You listed the book Mein Kampf, but it is not a critically annotated edition. eBay only allows critically annotated versions of Mein Kampf to be listed on the site. While we appreciate that you chose to utilize our site, we must ask that you please not relist in this case."

> This is their policy and this edition is compliant with that policy.

[brandonmenc]

> eBay only allows critically-annotated copies of Mein Kampf which are designed for scholars. I am sure that a copy of “If I Ran The Zoo” with a sociologist critically annotating the abhorrent racism would be permitted on eBay.

This seems worse than an outright ban on all copies.

[ipsum2]

> eBay only allows critically-annotated copies of Mein Kampf which are designed for scholars

That's a good point. I didn't realize they were annotated by modern scholars.

[UncleMeat]

The Mein Kampf lie is already halfway around the world. A tremendous amount of misinformation is already out there regarding this story.

[stass]

Communist Manifesto and Lenin's books are allowed without any comments though. There are books by actual terrorists too, like Bill Ayers. Books advocating for segregation. One can go on.

This fine example is ok too: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Protocols-of-the-Learned-Elders-of-...

But Mulberry street is the problem.

[o_v_o]

Communist Manifesto doesn't really contain hateful content (despite Marx's racism & misogyny)

[stass]

And yet it was used as inspiration to murder 20M+ people by explicitly dehumanizing whole classes of people.

[Clewza313]

If we go down that path, how many deaths is the Bible or the Koran responsible for?

[readflaggedcomm]

It's a [thinly-veiled antisemitic conspiracy theory](https://www.jewishpress.com/sections/features/features-on-je...), which is more obvious when viewing his oeuvre.

Edit: This comment doesn't deserve response, it deserves to be silenced.

[vidarh]

It would probably trigger more debate if the link you referred to actually explained this thesis more convincingly rather than focus on the often deplorable language.

E.g. the oft denounced 'On the Jewish Question' that is predictably cited in your link is a work arguing for the political emancipation of Jewish people.

It does so with language that is offensive to a modern reader by turning around and mocking the arguments used by Bruno Bauer who argued against political emancipation.

That [use of language] makes it problematic, and I wouldn't recommend it to someone without commentary on the polemical debate it was a part of.

But Marx is addressing and attacking the very kind of political oppression of Jewish people that forced his father to convert to Lutheranism - which the article of course mentioned without later citing its relevance to 'On the Jewish Question' -, making the point that Jewish people should have political rights without being forced to abandon their religion.

As evidence of Marx willingness to use now-unacceptable language, it works. As evidence that he hated Jews it's a massive own goal for the article writer to use an article that argued for expanding Jewish peoples rights.

There are many legitimate criticisms to level against Marx' language. But this article is dishonest or ignorant in it's presentation of a lot of it.

To address specifically the Communist Manifesto, suggesting it is talking of a conspiracy suggests you have not read it, or understood it. If anything one of the key aspects of Marxist thinking was to directly denounce the idea that the individual actions of a few have much - if any - impact on history, and to present a conception of the way society changes as one controlled by historical and economical necessity, inevitably developing based on market forces.

The idea of capitalism as a conspiracy runs directly counter to the Marxist idea of historical materialism, so it's bizarre to try to frame his work as promoting a conspiracy theory.

Furthermore, the whole first chapter is fan-boy level praise for capitalism as having brought humanity to a level of development not seen before, and for how the free market is the "battering ram" that over time forces even the worst bigots to drop xenophobia, driven by economic forces.

If he was promoting a conspiracy, he was speaking awfully well about the supposed conspirators, given the idea of the development of new modes of production as the wheel of progress is a central thesis of Marxist thought, and his insistence that socialism/communism is a necessary consequence of capitalism rests on the idea that economic progress is inevitable and detached from the actions of individuals.

The Communist Manifesto presents capitalism as a huge step forward, just still flawed and something that would eventually give way to another step forwards.

This idea of Marx as promoting a conspiracy is an inherent demonstration of a lack of understanding of Marx writing, because it lifts up the idea of great leaders where Marx consistently put that idea down and criticised it, by talking of whole movements in terms of forces and modes of production within which the individuals - even the capitalists themselves - are trapped and playing out a role they have little control over.

[ojnabieoot]

Ok if you think eBay should ban more books then go tell them that!

Incidentally this isn’t true:

> Books advocating for segregation.

Or, rather, if such books are available it is against eBay’s policy and they should be reported. eBay has a specific policy against items that glorify racism or endorse racist stereotypes: https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/prohibited-restricted-ite...

It does not have a policy against everything morally icky, but it’s quite clear about racism. Mulberry Street and If I Ran The Zoo are both racist and against eBay’s policy.

[stass]

The issue is that they are not just removing racist or hateful content according to some kind of standard. They are going after hot topics of the day, whatever it happens to be.

Even worse, hateful and racist content that is ideologically aligned is explicitly allowed. One would be hard-pressed to find anything more blatantly racist than White fragility or works of Dr Kendi, and yet you would not see eBay banning them, up until they fall out of favor.

[Igelau]

This is also a terrible idea, because there can be no scholarly analysis if scholars can't get it because everyone has jammed it down the memory hole.

(Edit: I'd really like to see some thought out defense on how censorship doesn't injure scholarship. Downvotes are just limp concessions.)

[RobertKerans]

Nobody's arguing that, so I'm not sure why anyone would need to defend a position they don't have. "I can't buy an uncommented copy of Mein Kampf from eBay" isn't the same thing as "I'm not allowed to read an uncommented copy of Mein Kampf", the latter isn't true.

[dkdbejwi383]

I doubt there are many people buying Mein Kampf as a bedtime story for their children though

[elindbe3]

Charles Manson In His Own Words is a-OK though!

[kfgx10]

So, the complete works of Shakespeare are banned because they contain "The merchant of Venice"?

[yerwhat01010]

There is absolute no chance that these radicals will not come for Shakespeare eventually. Their aim is to destroy the Western canon so they can replace it with their own propaganda: Shakespeare is too high-value a target for them to ignore.

[PontifexMinimus]

Not yet, give them time!