 Original logo of International Publishers, used from the time of the firm's establishment in 1924 throughout the decade of the 1930s. | |
| Founded | 1924 |
|---|---|
| Founder | |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | New York City |
| Publication types | Books |
| Nonfiction topics | Marxism |
| Official website | intpubnyc.com |
International Publishers is a book publishing company based in New York City, specializing inMarxist works ofeconomics,political science, andhistory. The firm has long been associated with theCommunist Party USA and its predecessors and has worked closely with the party's pamphlet publishing imprints — Daily Worker Publishing Co. (1924–1927), Workers Library Publishers (1927–1945), New Century Publishers (1945–1963), and New Outlook Publishers (1963–2000s).
International Publishers Company, Inc., was founded in 1924 with funds given the project byAbraham A. Heller.[1] Heller was the radical son of a wealthy jeweler doing business inParis.[2] He expanded his fortune as head of the International Oxygen Company, awelding supply company that operated a trade concession in Soviet Russia during the time of theNew Economic Policy in the early 1920s.[3] A lifelong socialist, Heller had previously been a heavy financial donor to theNew York Call, the Socialist Party's New York daily newspaper. He had been instrumental in funding the purchase of the headquarters building for theRand School of Social Science.[4]
The company began with a capital stock of $50,000, paid in by Heller, with the stock subsequently split with Trachtenberg as compensation.[5]Alexander Trachtenberg, a left wing member of theSocialist Party of America associated with theRand 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.[5]
The law firm for incorporating International Publishers was Hays, St. John & Buckley of 43 Exchange Place, whose partners includedArthur Garfield Hays.[6][7]According to testimony before theU.S. Congress by Trachtenberg, in addition to his initial $50,000 investment, Heller continually made up losses incurred by International Publishers during its first 15 years. Over that period, his investment climbed to a total of some $115,000.[2]
The idea of forming International Publishers seems to have come from Heller and Trachtenberg. Initial assistance came from the Communist Party (then theWorkers Party of America), limited to supplying advice and addresses of radical bookstores around America.[8] In a letter dated June 1924 from the party's head Literature Department,Nicholas Dozenberg cautioned Trachtenberg thatCharles H. Kerr & Co. of Chicago had already published many standard titles byKarl Marx, thus limiting the prospects of successful new editions of the same works.[8] Instead, Dozenberg encouraged Trachtenberg to concentrate on "books not yet published in English written by popular Russian writers likeLenin,Zinoviev,Radek, and others."[8]
In the fall of 1935, International Publishers launched a new program called the "Book Union". This was a radical book-buying circle, modeled on theBook of the Month Club.[9] The Book Union first offered an anthology entitledProletarian Literature in the United States, nearly 400 pages long and edited by current or future editors ofThe New Masses:Michael Gold,Granville Hicks, Joseph North,[10] and others.[9] 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 obliged members to buy 2 of 12 selections during the year.[9] Purchase of four books in a year entitled members to a bonus premium.[9] Despite its aggressively low pricing, the Book Union proved less successful than theLeft Book Club operated byVictor Gollancz Ltd in England and seems to have been terminated after just a few years.
On September 13, 1939, International Publishers Secretary and Treasurer Alexander Trachtenberg was called before the so-calledDies 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."[11]
Trachtenberg indicated that International Publishers did not own presses but used the services of a company called Van Rees Press on a contract basis.[12] 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 officialForeign Languages Publishing House in Moscow.[13] He estimated that some 10% of International Publishers' books had made use of such sources but that a lowering ofduty rates on bound books had largely eliminated the economy of importing unbound sheets.[14]
Trachtenberg estimated annual sales by International Publishers at $75,000 to $80,000. He noted that the company had a staff of four.[15]
During the 1960s and 1970s, International expanded its publication of inexpensivetrade paperback books under the title "New World Paperbacks". A number of titles bore this as an alternative company logo.
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 byKarl 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); andJoseph Stalin (Leninism, 1928).
International Publishers worked in conjunction with theMarx-Engels-Lenin Institute inMoscow on three separate publishing initiatives involving the works ofV.I. Lenin: an abortedCollected Works project begun in 1927;[16] a 12-volumeSelected Works project issued 1934-1938 in green bindings;[17] and a revised, 12-volumeSelected Works edition published in blue bindings in 1943.[18] International also joined with theCommunist Party of Great Britain's publishing house,Lawrence and Wishart andProgress Publishers (Moscow) to publish the massive, 50-volumeCollected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, a project launched in 1975 and completed only in 2004.[19]
International Publishers was an early reissuer ofJohn Reed's legendary chronicle of the Russian Revolution,Ten Days That Shook the World. Originally published byBoni & Liveright in 1919, an International Publishers edition came out in 1926 and — except for a time during the reign ofJoseph 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 ofWilliam "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. Du Bois (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),Gil Green (1984) andAngela Davis (paperback reissue, 1988).
International Publishers was also a frequent publisher of prolific labor historianPhilip S. Foner and published his landmark, 10-volumeHistory of the Labor Movement in the United States (1947–1994) as well as his massive five-volume collectionThe Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass (1950–1975). The company also published the work ofHerbert Aptheker, a historian specializing inAfrican-American history.
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