International Publishers

INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS. A Communist-oriented New York publishing house that was founded in 1924 by Alexander Trachtenberg—a veteran socialist who joined the Communist Party in 1921—with financial assistance from the socialist and entrepreneur A. A. Heller, International Publishers (IP) became the first US publisher to extensively publish the works of V. I. Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Nikolai Bukharin, and other Soviet Communist thinkers in English. Additionally, IP began extensive publication of the works of Marx and Engels, often commissioning new translations and thus becoming the predominant publisher of Marxist classics in the United States, cooperating with Lawrence and Wishart Publishers, Great Britain, and the Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow.

During the heyday of the Communist movement in the United States, which occurred in the 1930s and 1940s, IP published Marxist-Leninist classics in large editions in many formats, including the inexpensive Little Lenin Library series, whose titles were sold for only a few cents each. IP also published original works in a variety of subject areas, including the Labor Fact Book series, which was co-published with the Labor Research Association. Leaders of the Communist Party, including Earl Browder and William Z. Foster, were also among its authors.

During this period IP also published works such as Philip S. Foner’s History of the Labor Movement in the United States and Herbert Aptheker’s Negro Slave Revolts, which influenced many outside the Communist movement. IP also published works by black authors such as W. E. B. Du Bois, making them available to a larger audience. Distribution was handled, in great part, through a network of left-wing and Communist Party-related bookstores and through the movement apparatus itself. Displays of IP books and related literature were always present at meetings, rallies, and demonstrations, often reaching tens of thousands in this manner.

IP’s fortunes waned during the McCarthy period, as Trachtenberg was jailed with other leaders of the Communist Party under the Smith Act for conspiring to teach the advocacy of the overthrow of the government by force and violence. With the decline of the Party and its formidable literature-distribution apparatus, IP’s fortunes suffered. Some of IP’s original works during this period included William Z. Foster’s History of the Communist Party of the United States, History of the Negro People, and other historical works.

After Trachtenberg’s retirement in 1962, he was succeeded by James S. Allen, author of Reconstruction: The Battle for Democracy. Allen began to revamp IP’s marketing efforts, printing attractive trade paperback editions of Marxist classics, and hiring a marketing staff that concentrated on regular bookstore channels. Subsequently, during the rise of the student movement of the 1960s, IP’s fortunes also rose, making possible a wide range of new titles. Among these were a number of works by Antonio Gramsci, Kwame Nkrumah, Franz Marek, and Ernst Fischer. IP also became a co-publisher of Marx-Engels’s Collected Works in fifty volumes with Lawrence and Wishart and Progress Publishers, Moscow. The use of original Marxist works in college courses not only boosted IP’s sales but prompted publication of a number of titles, such as Dynamics of Social Change, as supplementary reading for courses.

In 1973 Allen was replaced by Lou Diskin, who stepped up IP’s marketing efforts through the book trade. As the student upsurge of the 1960s waned, sales of Marxist classics flattened. IP continued to publish works of U.S. Communist leaders such as Gus Hall and Henry Winston. Allen began and Diskin continued the publication of biographies and autobiographies of Party leaders, including John Williamson, Ben Davis, Hosea Hudson, and William L. Patterson. By the early 1980s Diskin was replaced by Betty Smith, who continued to reprint Marxist classics and publish new works by black authors and younger Marxist scholars. Standard works, such as Foner’s History of the Labor Movement, grew to ten volumes.

By the end of the 1980s, IP’s catalog included works by Angela Davis, reprints of early works on jazz and music criticism, Native American and African American poetry, as well as Albert Soboul on the French Revolution of 1789 (the translation of the latter subsidized by the Mitterrand government). IP’s books could be found in major bookstores across the country as well as in many classrooms.

Nonetheless, the impact of the Reagan-Bush years of conservative dominance brought hard times to all left-wing publishers, and IP was no exception. An even greater blow fell with the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and a subsequent schism within the Communist Party, USA, which saw the departure of many of IP’s authors, including Herbert Aptheker and Angela Davis. The down-sized Party, faced with draconian belt-tightening, had fewer resources to devote to publishing. Nonetheless, even in the mid-1990s its catalog still contained dozens of highly respected titles, even if it had failed to retain or attract young authors.

Marxist publishing in the United States grew substantially during the sixties and seventies, with presses such as Monthly Review, Pathfinder, South End, and others producing significant titles. Newer houses such as Marxist Education Press of Minneapolis, which had a close kinship with IP, but specialized in more scholarly works, and New Outlook Press of New York, which specialized in hagiographic biographies of Communist leaders, also continued to publish.

International Publishers received a severe blow when the Communist Party’s financial support ceased following an end to the secret Soviet subsidy that underwrote its efforts. New publications were severely cut back. Nonetheless, since 2000, the press has managed to continue to publish works by African American authors, international politics, and environmental justice.

Lincove, David A. "Radical Publishing to 'Reach the Million Masses': Alexander L. Trachtenberg and International Publishers, 1906-1966," Left History. Fall-Winter 2004, pp. 85–124.

International Publishers Website. https://www.intpubnyc.com