Pluto Press
Encyclopedia
Pluto Press is a radical
, progressive
, independent publisher based in London. Pluto Press specialises in "progressive, critical perspectives in politics and the social sciences", and describes itself as "one of the world’s leading radical publishers". It has published authors such as Noam Chomsky
, John Pilger
, Susan George
, Eduardo Galeano
and Vandana Shiva
. It is distributed in the United States by Palgrave Macmillan
, an international academic publishing company.
Pluto Press Australia is not related to the British company.
, rank-and-file trade union
activist, socialist publisher and organic farmer) and others as an arm of International Socialism, the forerunner of the Socialist Workers Party
in the UK. Michael Kidron
(an economist, Marxist theorist, agitator
, editor, publisher, and author) joined Pluto Press -- then a small-scale publisher -- as an editorial editor in 1972, along with his wife Nina, as manager director. In 1979 the company ended its political affiliation and became independent.
criticized the University of Michigan Press
for distributing allegedly antisemitic books published by Pluto Press, including those by Israel Shahak
and "Overcoming Zionism" by Bard College
professor of social studies
Joel Kovel
. The controversy was not about the right of Kovel or Pluto to publish the work; rather, critics challenged the propriety of a university press
distributing books that did not meet stricter academic review and approval guidelines. Three University of Michigan
regent
s called on UM Press to end its relationship with Pluto Press. In January 2008, the UM Press issued new Distribution Guidelines that Pluto was unable to meet. The UM representative said: "Pluto publishes serious scholarly works, but has an explicit political mission -- Pluto Press has always had a radical political agenda."
Political radicalism
The term political radicalism denotes political principles focused on altering social structures through revolutionary means and changing value systems in fundamental ways...
, progressive
Progressivism
Progressivism is an umbrella term for a political ideology advocating or favoring social, political, and economic reform or changes. Progressivism is often viewed by some conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians to be in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies.The...
, independent publisher based in London. Pluto Press specialises in "progressive, critical perspectives in politics and the social sciences", and describes itself as "one of the world’s leading radical publishers". It has published authors such as Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
, John Pilger
John Pilger
John Richard Pilger is an Australian journalist and documentary maker, based in London. He has twice won Britain's Journalist of the Year Award, and his documentaries have received academy awards in Britain and the US....
, Susan George
Susan George (political scientist)
Susan George is a well-known Franco-American political and social scientist, activist and writer on global social justice, Third World poverty, underdevelopment and debt. She is a fellow and president of the board of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam...
, Eduardo Galeano
Eduardo Galeano
Eduardo Hughes Galeano is a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His best known works are Memoria del fuego and Las venas abiertas de América Latina which have been translated into twenty languages and transcend orthodox genres: combining fiction, journalism, political analysis, and...
and Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva , is a philosopher, environmental activist, and eco feminist. Shiva, currently based in Delhi, has authored more than 20 books and over 500 papers in leading scientific and technical journals. She was trained as a physicist and received her Ph.D...
. It is distributed in the United States by Palgrave Macmillan
Palgrave Macmillan
Palgrave Macmillan is an international academic and trade publishing company, headquartered in Basingstoke, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom and with offices in New York, Melbourne, Sydney, Hong Kong, Delhi, Johannesburg. It was created in 2000 when St...
, an international academic publishing company.
Pluto Press Australia is not related to the British company.
History
Pluto Press was founded in 1969 by Richard Kuper (a university lecturer in international politics at the University of HertfordshireUniversity of Hertfordshire
The University of Hertfordshire is a new university based largely in Hatfield, in the county of Hertfordshire, England, from which the university takes its name. It has more than 27,500 students, over 2500 staff, with a turnover of over £181m...
, rank-and-file trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
activist, socialist publisher and organic farmer) and others as an arm of International Socialism, the forerunner of the Socialist Workers Party
Socialist Workers Party (Britain)
The Socialist Workers Party is a far left party in Britain founded by Tony Cliff. The SWP's student section has groups at a number of universities...
in the UK. Michael Kidron
Michael Kidron
Michael Kidron was a revolutionary thinker and cartographer. He was part of the leadership of the International Socialists through the 1960s and 1970s. He is perhaps best remembered for his visually arresting The State Of The World Atlas.-Early life and career:Kidron was born on 20 September...
(an economist, Marxist theorist, agitator
Agitator
An agitator is a person who actively supports some ideology or movement with speeches and especially actions. The Agitators were a political movement as well as elected representatives of soldiers, including the New Model Army of Oliver Cromwell, during the English Civil War. They were also known...
, editor, publisher, and author) joined Pluto Press -- then a small-scale publisher -- as an editorial editor in 1972, along with his wife Nina, as manager director. In 1979 the company ended its political affiliation and became independent.
University of Michigan Press controversy
In the fall of 2007 StandWithUsStandWithUs
StandWithUs is a non-profit pro-Israel education and advocacy organization based in Los Angeles. As of 2009, it has branches in Los Angeles, New York, Denver, Michigan, Chicago, Seattle, Orange County, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, the UK, Australia, and Israel....
criticized the University of Michigan Press
University of Michigan Press
The University of Michigan Press is part of the University of Michigan Library and serves as a primary publishing unit of the University of Michigan, with special responsibility for the creation and promotion of scholarly, educational, and regional books and other materials in digital and print...
for distributing allegedly antisemitic books published by Pluto Press, including those by Israel Shahak
Israel Shahak
Israel Shahak was a Polish-born Israeli professor of chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, known especially as a radical political thinker, author, and civil rights activist. Between 1970-1990, he was president of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights and was an outspoken critic...
and "Overcoming Zionism" by Bard College
Bard College
Bard College, founded in 1860 as "St. Stephen's College", is a small four-year liberal arts college located in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.-Location:...
professor of social studies
Social studies
Social studies is the "integrated study of the social sciences and humanities to promote civic competence," as defined by the American National Council for the Social Studies...
Joel Kovel
Joel Kovel
Joel Kovel is an American politician, academic, writer, and eco-socialist. A practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst until the mid-1980s, he has lectured in psychiatry, anthropology, political science and communication studies. He has published many books on his work in psychiatry,...
. The controversy was not about the right of Kovel or Pluto to publish the work; rather, critics challenged the propriety of a university press
University press
A university press is an academic, nonprofit publishing house that is typically affiliated with a large research university, and publishes work that has been reviewed by scholars in the field. It produces mainly scholarly works...
distributing books that did not meet stricter academic review and approval guidelines. Three University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
regent
Regent
A regent, from the Latin regens "one who reigns", is a person selected to act as head of state because the ruler is a minor, not present, or debilitated. Currently there are only two ruling Regencies in the world, sovereign Liechtenstein and the Malaysian constitutive state of Terengganu...
s called on UM Press to end its relationship with Pluto Press. In January 2008, the UM Press issued new Distribution Guidelines that Pluto was unable to meet. The UM representative said: "Pluto publishes serious scholarly works, but has an explicit political mission -- Pluto Press has always had a radical political agenda."
Publishing list
Pluto has over 800 titles in print and represents authors from a wide range of progressive political viewpoints, including the following:Contemporary political writers
- Tamim al-Barghouti
- Naseer AruriNaseer AruriNaseer Aruri is an American professor and author of several books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He is the Chancellor Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where he taught from 1965 to 1998....
- Noam ChomskyNoam ChomskyAvram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
- Jonathan CookJonathan CookJonathan Cook is a British writer and a freelance journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, who writes about the Middle East, and more specifically, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.-Background:...
- Ariel DorfmanAriel DorfmanVladimiro Ariel Dorfman is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina since 1985.-Personal...
- Peter FryerPeter FryerPeter Fryer was an English Marxist writer and journalist.-Early life:Peter Fryer joined the Young Communist League in 1942 and the Communist Party in 1945. On leaving school in 1943 he became a reporter on the Yorkshire Post, and was dismissed by the paper in 1947 for refusing to leave the...
- Frank FürediFrank FurediFrank Furedi is professor of sociology at the University of Kent, United Kingdom. He is well known for his work on sociology of fear, therapy culture, paranoid parenting and sociology of knowledge....
- Eduardo GaleanoEduardo GaleanoEduardo Hughes Galeano is a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His best known works are Memoria del fuego and Las venas abiertas de América Latina which have been translated into twenty languages and transcend orthodox genres: combining fiction, journalism, political analysis, and...
- Susan GeorgeSusan George (political scientist)Susan George is a well-known Franco-American political and social scientist, activist and writer on global social justice, Third World poverty, underdevelopment and debt. She is a fellow and president of the board of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam...
- Uri GordonUri GordonUri Gordon is an Israeli anarchist theorist and activist.He is a lecturer at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in Ketura, Israel...
- Robin HahnelRobin HahnelRobin Hahnel is a Professor of Economics at Portland State University. He is best known for his work on participatory economics with Z Magazine editor Michael Albert. He is currently a visiting professor at Lewis & Clark College....
- Thomas HardingThomas Harding (publisher)Thomas Harding is a British journalist, videographer and publisher who is known for running media organizations that cover stories that other news outlets will not cover....
- bell hooksBell hooksGloria Jean Watkins , better known by her pen name bell hooks, is an American author, feminist, and social activist....
(Gloria Jean Watkins) - Boris Kagarlitsky
- Saul LandauSaul LandauSaul Landau is journalist, filmmaker, and commentator. He is Professor Emeritus at California State University, Pomona. He is a senior Fellow at and Vice Chair of the Institute for Policy Studies.-Career:...
- Nur-eldeen MasalhaNur-eldeen MasalhaNur-eldeen Masalha is a Palestinian writer and academic.He is Professor of Religion and Politics and Director of the Centre for Religion and History and the Holy Land Research Project at St. Mary's University College, University of Surrey...
- Norton MezvinskyNorton MezvinskyNorton Mezvinsky is a historian. He is a Distinguished University Professor, Emeritus, Connecticut State University and is the president of the International Council for Middle East Studies, Inc., a new academic think tank in Washington, D.C. He has written numerous published books, articles and...
- Abdullah ÖcalanAbdullah ÖcalanAbdullah Öcalan , Kurdish founder of the terrorist organization called Kurdistan Workers' Party in 1978.Öcalan was captured in Nairobi and extradited to the Turkish security force, and sentenced to death under Article 125 of the Turkish Penal Code, which concerns the formation of armed gangs...
- Greg PalastGreg PalastGregory Allyn Palast is a New York Times-bestselling author and a freelance journalist for the British Broadcasting Corporation as well as the British newspaper The Observer. His work frequently focuses on corporate malfeasance but has also been known to work with labor unions and consumer...
- John PilgerJohn PilgerJohn Richard Pilger is an Australian journalist and documentary maker, based in London. He has twice won Britain's Journalist of the Year Award, and his documentaries have received academy awards in Britain and the US....
- William Rivers PittWilliam Rivers PittWilliam Rivers Pitt is an author, editor, and political activist.-Background:Pitt was born in Washington, D.C., and lived several years in Alabama before eventually moving to Boston...
- Milan RaiMilan RaiMilan Rai is a British peace campaigner best known for being arrested on 25 October 2005 next to a London war memorial, the Cenotaph, for refusing to cease reading aloud the names of civilians by then killed in Iraq in the course of Britain's most recent war, alongside fellow activist Maya...
- Joseph RotblatJoseph RotblatSir Joseph Rotblat, KCMG, CBE, FRS , was a Polish-born, British-naturalised physicist.His work on nuclear fallout was a major contribution to the agreement of the Partial Test Ban Treaty...
- Sheila RowbothamSheila RowbothamSheila Rowbotham is a British socialist feminist theorist and writer.-Early life:Rowbotham was born in Leeds, the daughter of a salesman for an engineering company and an office clerk From an early age, she was deeply interested in history...
- Sara RoySara RoySara Roy is an American political economist and scholar. She is a Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University....
- Amal Saad-GhorayebAmal Saad-GhorayebAmal Abdo Saad-Ghorayeb is a Lebanese writer and political analyst known for her writings on the Israeli-Lebanese conflict and Hezbollah.-Life:...
- Edward SaidEdward SaidEdward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...
- Ziauddin SardarZiauddin SardarZiauddin Sardar is a London-based scholar, writer and cultural-critic who specialises in Muslim thought, the future of Islam, futures studies and science and cultural relations...
- Israel ShahakIsrael ShahakIsrael Shahak was a Polish-born Israeli professor of chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, known especially as a radical political thinker, author, and civil rights activist. Between 1970-1990, he was president of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights and was an outspoken critic...
- Vandana ShivaVandana ShivaVandana Shiva , is a philosopher, environmental activist, and eco feminist. Shiva, currently based in Delhi, has authored more than 20 books and over 500 papers in leading scientific and technical journals. She was trained as a physicist and received her Ph.D...
- Ayesha Siddiqa
- Gregory Sholette
- Howard ZinnHoward ZinnHoward Zinn was an American historian, academic, author, playwright, and social activist. Before and during his tenure as a political science professor at Boston University from 1964-88 he wrote more than 20 books, which included his best-selling and influential A People's History of the United...
Classical authors
- Frederick Engels
- Frantz FanonFrantz FanonFrantz Fanon was a Martiniquo-Algerian psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary and writer whose work is influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory and Marxism...
- André GorzAndré GorzAndré Gorz , pen name of Gérard Horst, born Gerhard Hirsch, also known by his pen name Michel Bosquet, was an Austrian and French social philosopher. Also a journalist, he co-founded Le Nouvel Observateur weekly in 1964...
- Antonio GramsciAntonio GramsciAntonio Gramsci was an Italian writer, politician, political philosopher, and linguist. He was a founding member and onetime leader of the Communist Party of Italy and was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime...
- Jack LondonJack LondonJohn Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...
- Manning MarableManning MarableWilliam Manning Marable was an American professor of public affairs, history and African-American Studies at Columbia University. Marable founded and directed the Institute for Research in African-American Studies. Marable authored several texts and was active in progressive political causes...
- Karl MarxKarl MarxKarl 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...
- Leon TrotskyLeon TrotskyLeon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
In translation
- Jean BaudrillardJean BaudrillardJean Baudrillard was a French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer. His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and post-structuralism.-Life:...
- Pierre BourdieuPierre BourdieuPierre Bourdieu was a French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher.Starting from the role of economic capital for social positioning, Bourdieu pioneered investigative frameworks and terminologies such as cultural, social, and symbolic capital, and the concepts of habitus, field or location,...
- Guy DebordGuy DebordGuy Ernest Debord was a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International . He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.-Early Life:Guy Debord was born in Paris in 1931...
- Raoul VaneigemRaoul VaneigemRaoul Vaneigem is a Belgian writer and philosopher. He was born in Lessines . After studying romance philology at the Free University of Brussels from 1952 to 1956, he participated in the Situationist International from 1961 to 1970...