International Publishers
Encyclopedia
International Publishers is a book publishing company based in New York City specializing in Marxist
works of economics
, political science
, and history
. The company was established in 1924 by A.A. Heller and Alexander Trachtenberg
, using funds earned through a lucrative trade concession granted during the New Economic Policy
by the government of Soviet Russia
. The publisher has continued to maintain an extremely close working relationship with the Communist Party USA
(CPUSA) throughout its more than eight decades of existence. It continues in operation in New York City
today as the publishing arm of the CPUSA
. He expanded his fortune as head of the International Oxygen Company, a welding
supply company that operated a trade concession in Soviet Russia during the time of the New Economic Policy
in the early 1920s. A lifelong socialist, Heller had previously been a heavy financial donor to the New York Call
, the Socialist Party's New York daily newspaper. He had been instrumental in funding the purchase of the headquarters building for the Rand School of Social Science
.
The company began with a capital stock of $50,000, paid in by Heller, with the stock subsequently split with Trachtenberg as compensation. Alexander Trachtenberg
, a left wing member of the Socialist Party of America
associated with the Rand School of Social Science
and its publishing house, who joined the Communist movement at the end of 1921, served as manager of International Publishers from its inception through the 1940s.
According to testimony before U.S. Congress by Trachtenberg, in addition to his initial $50,000 investment, Heller continually made up losses incurred by International Publishers during it first 15 years. Over that period, his investment climbed a total of some $115,000.
Volition for forming International Publishers seems to have come from Heller and Trachtenberg. Initial assistance came from the Communist Party (then the Workers Party of America
), limited to supplying advice and addresses of radical bookstores around America. In a letter dated June 1924 from the party's head Literature Department, Nicholas Dozenberg
, cautioned Trachtenberg that Charles H. Kerr & Co. of Chicago had already published many standard titles by Karl Marx
, thus limiting the prospects of successful new editions of the same works. Instead, Dozenberg encouraged Trachtenberg to concentrate on "books not yet published in English written by popular Russian writers like Lenin, Zinoviev
, Radek
, and others."
Initially, International Publishers had official independence from the Communist Party USA
(CPUSA). However, it counted the CPUSA's official publishing arm and its New York state literature department, the "Wholesale Book Corporation," among its biggest clients. By 1939, 15 years after its establishment, the publisher was dealing with some 700 bookstores around the country. Among these were some 40-50 bookstores, owned and operated by various district organizations of the Communist Party.
Despite its semi-independent status legally, International Publishers functioned practically as official US publisher of Communist Party literature. Meanwhile, in 1927 the Party renamed its "Daily Worker Publishing Company" to parallel International Publishers as the "Workers Library Publishers." The Party also limited activity of the Workers Library Publishers largely to the issuance of propaganda pamphlet
s and the publication of official Party magazines. International Publishers focused on publishing hardcover
and paperback
books, with only some pamphlet literature (and at a much slower pace). As the decade of the 1930s came to a close, some 90% of International's catalog were titles published in bound book form: only 10% were pamphlets.
. The Book Union first offered an anthology entitled Proletarian Literature in the United States, nearly 400 pages long and edited by current or future editors of The New Masses
: Michael Gold
, Granville Hicks
, Joseph North, and others. The Book Union collected a $1 annual fee from its members, who then received a discounted volume in the mail each month. The Book Union obligated members to buy 2 of 12 selections during the year. Purchase of four books in a year entitled members to a bonus premium. Despite its aggressively low pricing, the Book Union proved less successful than the "Left Book Club" operated by Victor Gollancz Ltd
in England and seems to have been terminated after just a few years.
As of 2010, International Publishers remained in active operation, albeit with a slow rate of new releases. A document submitted for the discussion preceding the 29th National Convention of the CPUSA (held in New York City in May 2010) called for a "revitalized" International Publishers. The document, authored by Dennis Laumann, called for a new edition of The Communist Manifesto
targeted to the academic market, upgrades to the International Publishers website, and reissue of several titles from the out-of-print IP back-catalog as part of a new, uniform series of "Marxist Classics." As models of successful, left-wing publishers in the Internet age, Laumann cited the publishing house of the International Socialist Organization
-affiliated Chicago publisher Haymarket Books
, and the Cuban-oriented Ocean Press of Australia
.
The final resolution of the 29th Convention on building the party, communist youth movement, and party press did not mention International Publishers by name, however. Instead, it emphasized the emergence of "new mass communications" via internet
and social networking websites. It called for "every member and club to join in the effort to change our culture and master the new forms of mass communication."
However, International Publishers (still run by Trachtenberg) seemed to contradict his testimony regarding the firm's position as de facto official CPUSA book earlier that same year by releasing the first American edition of the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (bolsheviks): Short Course (100,000 copies). This book, first published in the USSR, commissioned by the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party (which included Joseph Stalin
himself), was regarded as a fundamental training text of the world communist movement, touted in the Party press, and studied meticulously by Party members.
Trachtenberg indicated that International Publishers did not own presses but used the services of a company called Van Rees Press on a contract basis. The firm also exchanged printed sheets for publication with its British sister organization, Lawrence & Wishart, and bought sheets for binding from the forerunner of the official Foreign Languages Publishing House in Moscow. He estimated that some 10% of International Publishers' books had made use of such sources but that a lowering of dutyrates on bound books had largely eliminated the economy of importing unbound sheets.
Trachtenberg estimated annual sales by International Publishers at $75,000 to $80,000. He noted that the company had a staff of four.
, International Publishers has been party to the publication of a number of titles of lasting scholarly importance.
During the 1920s, International Publishers produced the first English-language editions of important works on Marxist theory by Karl Kautsky
(Foundations of Christianity, 1925; Are the Jews a Race? 1926; Thomas More and His Utopia, 1927), Leon Trotsky
(Literature and Revolution, 1925; Wither England? 1925; Wither Russia? 1926), Nikolai Bukharin
(Historical Materialism, 1925, The Economic Theory of the Leisure Class, 1927; Imperialism and World Economy, 1929); and Joseph Stalin
(Leninism, 1928).
International Publishers worked in conjunction with the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute in Moscow
on three separate publishing initiatives involving the works of V.I. Lenin: an aborted Collected Works project begun in 1927; a 12-volume Selected Works project issued 1934-1938 in green bindings; and a revised, 12-volume Selected Works edition published in blue bindings in 1943. International also joined with the Communist Party of Great Britain's
publishing house, Lawrence and Wishart
and Progress Publishers
(Moscow) to publish the massive, 50-volume Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, a project launched in 1975 and completed only in 2004.
International Publishers was an early reissuer of John Reed's legendary chronicle of the Russian Revolution, Ten Days That Shook the World
. Originally published by Boni & Liveright
in 1919, an International Publishers edition came out in 1926 and — except for a time during the reign of Joseph Stalin
, when the book fell out of official favor — it has been a mainstay of the publishing house's catalog ever since.
International Publishers has also published a considerable number of memoir accounts by leading Communist Party participants, including those of William "Big Bill" Haywood
(1929), Nadezhda Krupskaya (1930), William Z. Foster
(two volumes, 1937 and 1930), Ella Reeve Bloor
(1940), Joseph North (1958), W.E.B. DuBois (1968), Benjamin J. Davis
(1969), John Williamson
(1969), William L. Patterson
(1971), Hosea Hudson
(1972), Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
(reissue, 1973), Art Shields (two volumes, 1983 and 1986), and Angela Davis
(paperback reissue, 1988).
International Publishers was also a frequent publisher of prolific American Communist historian Philip S. Foner and published his landmark, 10-volume History of the Labor Movement in the United States (1947–1994) as well as his massive 5 volume collection The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass (1950–1975).
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
works of economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
, political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
, and history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
. The company was established in 1924 by A.A. Heller and Alexander Trachtenberg
Alexander Trachtenberg
Alexander "Alex" Trachtenberg was an American publisher of radical political books and pamphlets and activist in the Socialist Party of America and later the Communist Party USA...
, using funds earned through a lucrative trade concession granted during the New Economic Policy
New Economic Policy
The New Economic Policy was an economic policy proposed by Vladimir Lenin, who called it state capitalism. Allowing some private ventures, the NEP allowed small animal businesses or smoke shops, for instance, to reopen for private profit while the state continued to control banks, foreign trade,...
by the government of Soviet Russia
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic , commonly referred to as Soviet Russia, Bolshevik Russia, or simply Russia, was the largest, most populous and economically developed republic in the former Soviet Union....
. The publisher has continued to maintain an extremely close working relationship with the Communist Party USA
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
(CPUSA) throughout its more than eight decades of existence. It continues in operation in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
today as the publishing arm of the CPUSA
Establishment
International Publishers Company, Inc., was founded in 1924 with funds given the project by A.A. Heller. Heller was the radical son of a wealthy jeweler doing business in ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. He expanded his fortune as head of the International Oxygen Company, a welding
Welding
Welding is a fabrication or sculptural process that joins materials, usually metals or thermoplastics, by causing coalescence. This is often done by melting the workpieces and adding a filler material to form a pool of molten material that cools to become a strong joint, with pressure sometimes...
supply company that operated a trade concession in Soviet Russia during the time of the New Economic Policy
New Economic Policy
The New Economic Policy was an economic policy proposed by Vladimir Lenin, who called it state capitalism. Allowing some private ventures, the NEP allowed small animal businesses or smoke shops, for instance, to reopen for private profit while the state continued to control banks, foreign trade,...
in the early 1920s. A lifelong socialist, Heller had previously been a heavy financial donor to the New York Call
New York Call
The New York Call was a socialist daily newspaper published in New York City from 1908 through 1923. The Call was the second of three English-language dailies affiliated with the Socialist Party of America to be established, following the Chicago Daily Socialist while preceding the long running...
, the Socialist Party's New York daily newspaper. He had been instrumental in funding the purchase of the headquarters building for the Rand School of Social Science
Rand School of Social Science
The Rand School of Social Science was formed in New York City by adherents of the Socialist Party of America in 1906. The school aimed to provide a broad education to workers, imparting a politicizing class-consciousness, and additionally served as a research bureau, a publisher, and the operator...
.
The company began with a capital stock of $50,000, paid in by Heller, with the stock subsequently split with Trachtenberg as compensation. Alexander Trachtenberg
Alexander Trachtenberg
Alexander "Alex" Trachtenberg was an American publisher of radical political books and pamphlets and activist in the Socialist Party of America and later the Communist Party USA...
, a left wing member of the Socialist Party of America
Socialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America was a multi-tendency democratic-socialist political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization...
associated with the Rand School of Social Science
Rand School of Social Science
The Rand School of Social Science was formed in New York City by adherents of the Socialist Party of America in 1906. The school aimed to provide a broad education to workers, imparting a politicizing class-consciousness, and additionally served as a research bureau, a publisher, and the operator...
and its publishing house, who joined the Communist movement at the end of 1921, served as manager of International Publishers from its inception through the 1940s.
According to testimony before U.S. Congress by Trachtenberg, in addition to his initial $50,000 investment, Heller continually made up losses incurred by International Publishers during it first 15 years. Over that period, his investment climbed a total of some $115,000.
Volition for forming International Publishers seems to have come from Heller and Trachtenberg. Initial assistance came from the Communist Party (then the Workers Party of America
Workers Party of America
The Workers Party of America was the name of the legal party organization used by the Communist Party USA from the last days of 1921 until the middle of 1929. As a legal political party the Workers Party accepted affiliation from independent socialist groups such as the African Blood Brotherhood,...
), limited to supplying advice and addresses of radical bookstores around America. In a letter dated June 1924 from the party's head Literature Department, Nicholas Dozenberg
Nicholas Dozenberg
Nicholas "Nick" Dozenberg was an American political functionary with the Communist Party USA in the 1920s. Late in 1927 Dozenberg was recruited into the underground Soviet military intelligence network, for which he worked for more than a decade under the pseudonym "Nicholas Ludwig Dallant."...
, cautioned Trachtenberg that Charles H. Kerr & Co. of Chicago had already published many standard titles by Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
, thus limiting the prospects of successful new editions of the same works. Instead, Dozenberg encouraged Trachtenberg to concentrate on "books not yet published in English written by popular Russian writers like Lenin, Zinoviev
Grigory Zinoviev
Grigory Yevseevich Zinoviev , born Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky Apfelbaum , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet Communist politician...
, Radek
Karl Radek
Karl Bernhardovic Radek was a socialist active in the Polish and German movements before World War I and an international Communist leader after the Russian Revolution....
, and others."
Initially, International Publishers had official independence from the Communist Party USA
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
(CPUSA). However, it counted the CPUSA's official publishing arm and its New York state literature department, the "Wholesale Book Corporation," among its biggest clients. By 1939, 15 years after its establishment, the publisher was dealing with some 700 bookstores around the country. Among these were some 40-50 bookstores, owned and operated by various district organizations of the Communist Party.
Despite its semi-independent status legally, International Publishers functioned practically as official US publisher of Communist Party literature. Meanwhile, in 1927 the Party renamed its "Daily Worker Publishing Company" to parallel International Publishers as the "Workers Library Publishers." The Party also limited activity of the Workers Library Publishers largely to the issuance of propaganda pamphlet
Pamphlet
A pamphlet is an unbound booklet . It may consist of a single sheet of paper that is printed on both sides and folded in half, in thirds, or in fourths , or it may consist of a few pages that are folded in half and saddle stapled at the crease to make a simple book...
s and the publication of official Party magazines. International Publishers focused on publishing hardcover
Hardcover
A hardcover, hardback or hardbound is a book bound with rigid protective covers...
and paperback
Paperback
Paperback, softback or softcover describe and refer to a book by the nature of its binding. The covers of such books are usually made of paper or paperboard, and are usually held together with glue rather than stitches or staples...
books, with only some pamphlet literature (and at a much slower pace). As the decade of the 1930s came to a close, some 90% of International's catalog were titles published in bound book form: only 10% were pamphlets.
Development
In the fall of 1935, International Publishers launched a new program called the "Book Union." This was radical book-buying circle, modeled on the Book of the Month ClubBook of the Month Club
The Book of the Month Club is a United States mail-order book sales club that offers a new book each month to customers.The Book of the Month Club is part of a larger company that runs many book clubs in the United States and Canada. It was formerly the flagship club of Book-of-the-Month Club, Inc...
. The Book Union first offered an anthology entitled Proletarian Literature in the United States, nearly 400 pages long and edited by current or future editors of The New Masses
The New Masses
The "New Masses" was a prominent American Marxist publication edited by Walt Carmon, briefly by Whittaker Chambers, and primarily by Michael Gold, Granville Hicks, and Joseph Freeman....
: Michael Gold
Mike Gold
Michael "Mike" Gold is the pen-name of Jewish American writer Itzok Isaac Granich. A lifelong communist, Gold was a novelist and literary critic, his semi-autobiographical novel Jews Without Money from 1930 was a bestseller.- Biography :Gold was born Itzok Isaac Granich on April 12, 1894 on the...
, Granville Hicks
Granville Hicks
Granville Hicks was an American Marxist as well as an anti-Marxist novelist, literary critic, educator, and editor.-Life:...
, Joseph North, and others. The Book Union collected a $1 annual fee from its members, who then received a discounted volume in the mail each month. The Book Union obligated members to buy 2 of 12 selections during the year. Purchase of four books in a year entitled members to a bonus premium. Despite its aggressively low pricing, the Book Union proved less successful than the "Left Book Club" operated by Victor Gollancz Ltd
Victor Gollancz Ltd
Victor Gollancz Ltd was a major British book publishing house of the twentieth century. It was founded in 1927 by Victor Gollancz and specialised in the publication of high quality literature, nonfiction and popular fiction, including science fiction. Upon Gollancz's death in 1967, ownership...
in England and seems to have been terminated after just a few years.
Recent years
During the 1960s and 1970s, International expanded its publication of inexpensive trade paperback books under the moniker "New World Paperbacks." A number of titles bore this as an alternative company logo.As of 2010, International Publishers remained in active operation, albeit with a slow rate of new releases. A document submitted for the discussion preceding the 29th National Convention of the CPUSA (held in New York City in May 2010) called for a "revitalized" International Publishers. The document, authored by Dennis Laumann, called for a new edition of The Communist Manifesto
The Communist Manifesto
The Communist Manifesto, originally titled Manifesto of the Communist Party is a short 1848 publication written by the German Marxist political theorists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It has since been recognized as one of the world's most influential political manuscripts. Commissioned by the...
targeted to the academic market, upgrades to the International Publishers website, and reissue of several titles from the out-of-print IP back-catalog as part of a new, uniform series of "Marxist Classics." As models of successful, left-wing publishers in the Internet age, Laumann cited the publishing house of the International Socialist Organization
International Socialist Organization
The International Socialist Organization is a revolutionary socialist organization in the United States that identifies with the politics of International Socialism, a current of Trotskyism, and the Marxist political tradition that American socialist writer and activist Hal Draper called...
-affiliated Chicago publisher Haymarket Books
Haymarket Books
Haymarket Books is a non-profit left-wing book publisher and distributor. It is published by the Center for Economic Research and Social Change...
, and the Cuban-oriented Ocean Press of Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
.
The final resolution of the 29th Convention on building the party, communist youth movement, and party press did not mention International Publishers by name, however. Instead, it emphasized the emergence of "new mass communications" via internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
and social networking websites. It called for "every member and club to join in the effort to change our culture and master the new forms of mass communication."
1939 Dies Committee
On September 13, 1939, International Publishers Secretary and Treasurer Alexander Trachtenberg was called before the so-called Dies Committee of the US House of Representatives, the Special Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities. Committee members grilled Tractenberg on his own history, the sources of funding behind International Publishers, and the company's relationship to the Communist Party. Trachtenberg characterized the relationship of International Publishers to the Communist Party as merely one of "buyer and seller."However, International Publishers (still run by Trachtenberg) seemed to contradict his testimony regarding the firm's position as de facto official CPUSA book earlier that same year by releasing the first American edition of the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (bolsheviks): Short Course (100,000 copies). This book, first published in the USSR, commissioned by the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party (which included Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
himself), was regarded as a fundamental training text of the world communist movement, touted in the Party press, and studied meticulously by Party members.
Trachtenberg indicated that International Publishers did not own presses but used the services of a company called Van Rees Press on a contract basis. The firm also exchanged printed sheets for publication with its British sister organization, Lawrence & Wishart, and bought sheets for binding from the forerunner of the official Foreign Languages Publishing House in Moscow. He estimated that some 10% of International Publishers' books had made use of such sources but that a lowering of dutyrates on bound books had largely eliminated the economy of importing unbound sheets.
Trachtenberg estimated annual sales by International Publishers at $75,000 to $80,000. He noted that the company had a staff of four.
Important Publications
While producing more than its fair share of tendentious and ephemeral political propagandaPropaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
, International Publishers has been party to the publication of a number of titles of lasting scholarly importance.
During the 1920s, International Publishers produced the first English-language editions of important works on Marxist theory by Karl Kautsky
Karl Kautsky
Karl Johann Kautsky was a Czech-German philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician. Kautsky was recognized as among the most authoritative promulgators of Orthodox Marxism after the death of Friedrich Engels in 1895 until the coming of World War I in 1914 and was called by some the "Pope of...
(Foundations of Christianity, 1925; Are the Jews a Race? 1926; Thomas More and His Utopia, 1927), Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
(Literature and Revolution, 1925; Wither England? 1925; Wither Russia? 1926), Nikolai Bukharin
Nikolai Bukharin
Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin , was a Russian Marxist, Bolshevik revolutionary, and Soviet politician. He was a member of the Politburo and Central Committee , chairman of the Communist International , and the editor in chief of Pravda , the journal Bolshevik , Izvestia , and the Great Soviet...
(Historical Materialism, 1925, The Economic Theory of the Leisure Class, 1927; Imperialism and World Economy, 1929); and Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
(Leninism, 1928).
International Publishers worked in conjunction with the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
on three separate publishing initiatives involving the works of V.I. Lenin: an aborted Collected Works project begun in 1927; a 12-volume Selected Works project issued 1934-1938 in green bindings; and a revised, 12-volume Selected Works edition published in blue bindings in 1943. International also joined with the Communist Party of Great Britain's
Communist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in Great Britain, although it never became a mass party like those in France and Italy. It existed from 1920 to 1991.-Formation:...
publishing house, Lawrence and Wishart
Lawrence and Wishart
Lawrence & Wishart is a British publishing company formerly associated with the Communist Party of Great Britain. It was formed in 1936, through the merger of Martin Lawrence, the Communist Party's press and Wishart Ltd, a family-owned liberal and anti-fascist publisher.It publishes the journals...
and Progress Publishers
Progress Publishers
Progress Publishers was a Moscow-based Soviet publisher founded in 1931.It was noted for its English-language editions of books on Marxism-Leninism....
(Moscow) to publish the massive, 50-volume Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, a project launched in 1975 and completed only in 2004.
International Publishers was an early reissuer of John Reed's legendary chronicle of the Russian Revolution, Ten Days That Shook the World
Ten Days that Shook the World
Ten Days that Shook the World is a book by American journalist and socialist John Reed about the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 which Reed experienced firsthand. Reed followed many of the prominent Bolshevik leaders, especially Grigory Zinoviev and Karl Radek, closely during his time in Russia...
. Originally published by Boni & Liveright
Boni & Liveright
Boni & Liveright was a publishing house established in 1916 in New York City by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright which made a name by publishing work considered avant-garde and in so doing published work by many modernist authors. They attracted attention from the Society for Suppression of Vice...
in 1919, an International Publishers edition came out in 1926 and — except for a time during the reign of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
, when the book fell out of official favor — it has been a mainstay of the publishing house's catalog ever since.
International Publishers has also published a considerable number of memoir accounts by leading Communist Party participants, including those of William "Big Bill" Haywood
William Haywood
William Haywood may refer to:* William Dudley Haywood , American union leader, "Big Bill Haywood"* William Henry Haywood, Jr. , North Carolina senator* William Haywood , British architect and town planner...
(1929), Nadezhda Krupskaya (1930), William Z. Foster
William Z. Foster
William Foster was a radical American labor organizer and Marxist politician, whose career included a lengthy stint as General Secretary of the Communist Party USA...
(two volumes, 1937 and 1930), Ella Reeve Bloor
Ella Reeve Bloor
Ella Reeve "Mother" Bloor was an American labor organizer and long-time activist in the socialist and communist movements.-Early years:...
(1940), Joseph North (1958), W.E.B. DuBois (1968), Benjamin J. Davis
Benjamin J. Davis
Benjamin J. "Ben" Davis , was an African-American lawyer and communist who was elected to the city council of New York City, representing Harlem, in 1943...
(1969), John Williamson
John Williamson (Communist)
John Williamson was a Scottish-born radical best remembered as a top leader of the Communist youth movement in the 1920s in the United States.-Early years:...
(1969), William L. Patterson
William L. Patterson
William L. Patterson was a leader in the Communist Party USA and head of the International Labor Defense, a group that offered legal representation to communists, trade unionists, and African-Americans in cases involving issues of political or racial persecution...
(1971), Hosea Hudson
Hosea Hudson
Hosea Hudson was an African American labor leader in the Southern United States.Hudson was born in Wilkes County, Georgia...
(1972), Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was a labor leader, activist, and feminist who played a leading role in the Industrial Workers of the World . Flynn was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and a visible proponent of women's rights, birth control, and women's suffrage...
(reissue, 1973), Art Shields (two volumes, 1983 and 1986), and Angela Davis
Angela Davis
Angela Davis is an American political activist, scholar, and author. Davis was most politically active during the late 1960s through the 1970s and was associated with the Communist Party USA, the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Panther Party...
(paperback reissue, 1988).
International Publishers was also a frequent publisher of prolific American Communist historian Philip S. Foner and published his landmark, 10-volume History of the Labor Movement in the United States (1947–1994) as well as his massive 5 volume collection The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass (1950–1975).
See also
- Alexander TrachtenbergAlexander TrachtenbergAlexander "Alex" Trachtenberg was an American publisher of radical political books and pamphlets and activist in the Socialist Party of America and later the Communist Party USA...
- Communist Party USACommunist Party USAThe Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
- Bibliography on American CommunismBibliography on American CommunismThe Bibliography on American Communism is vast, with the number of books tangentially related to the topic numbering into the thousands. Some of the most important works are listed below.-General articles:...
Further reading
- Nicholas Dozenberg, "Establishing International Publishers," letter to Alexander Trachtenberg, June 19, 1924. Corvallis, OR: 1000 Flowers Publishers, 2010.
- David A. Lincove, "Radical Publishing to 'Reach the Million Masses': Alexander L. Trachtenberg and International Publishers, 1906-1966," Left History, Fall-Winter 2004, pp. 85–124.
- Alexander Trachtenberg, Testimony to the House Special Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities (aka Dies Committee), September 13, 1939. Published in Investigation of Un-America Propaganda Activities in the United States: Volume 7. Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1940; pp. 4863–4939.
External links
- International Publishers website, Intpubnyc.com, New York City. Retrieved August 22, 2010.
- Adrien Hilton, Guide to the Communist Party of the United States of America Printed Ephemera Collection, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner ArchivesTamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner ArchivesThe Tamiment Library is a research library at New York University that documents radical and left history, with strengths in the histories of communism, socialism, anarchism, the New Left, the Civil Rights Movement, and utopian experiments. The Robert F. Wagner Archives, which is also housed in...
, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York UniversityNew York UniversityNew York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
, New York City. Retrieved August 23, 2010.