International Socialist Review

INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW. Published by Charles H. Kerr and Company of Chicago, the International Socialist Review (ISR) still stands as a major chronicle of the American socialist movement in the first two decades of the twentieth century. The monthly’s contributors—a virtual “who’s who” of international socialism—reported and made comment on every major social, political, and economic development that had some bearing on the movement’s direction.

Edited from 1900 to 1908 by socialist intellectual Algie M. Simons, the ISR initially served as a sounding board for the numerous theoretical debates facing the international movement. Its primary goal, enunciated at its inception, was to help familiarize American activists with socialist thought. Differing opinion on the strategy and tactics of the American movement and lengthy exchanges on “correct” Marxian or “scientific” positions filled its pages. Additional discussions on the socialist’s relation to the American farmer and the “land question,” the “Negro problem,” women and socialism, and perspectives on organized religion also found a place during those years. In 1902 the International Socialist Bureau at Brussels designated the ISR “the official American organ” for its communiqués.

Kerr fired Simons in 1908 and worked to transform the monthly into “the fighting magazine of socialism,” a popular monthly “of, by, and for the working class.” Liberally illustrated with “action fotos” and original graphics, the revamped ISR carried firsthand reports of major strikes, lockouts, organizing drives, and employers’ offensives as well as theoretical and political discussions. Kerr’s work with longtime associates Mary and Leslie Marcy and an editorial board including left-wingers William D. “Big Bill” Haywood, Frank Bohn, and poet/illustrator Ralph Chaplin raised the ISR’s circulation from nearly six thousand in 1908 to over forty thousand by 1911.

A national voice for the movement’s direct-action, industrial unionist wing, the monthly survived the in-house battle between Left and Right within the Socialist Party of America in 1912–1913, only to fall victim, in 1918, to government suppression for its opposition to U.S. entry into World War I. Two American Trotskyist journals, the most recent in 1997, subsequently adopted the name of ISR without being able to replicate its prestige or wide circulation.

Gutman, Herbert G. “The International Socialist Review.” In The American Radical Press, 1880–1960, edited by Joseph R. Conlin, vol. 1. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1974.

Martinek, Jason D. 2010, 'Business at the Margins of Capitalism: Charles H. Kerr and Company and the Progressive Era Socialist Movement’, Business and Economic History On-Line 8: https://thebhc.org/sites/default/files/martinek.pdf

Martinek, Jason D. Socialism and Print Culture in America 1897–1920, London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012.

Ruff, Allen M. ‘We Called Each Other Comrade’ - Charles H. Kerr & Company, Radical Publishers. Oakland: PM Press, 2011 [Chicago: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1996].

International Socialist Review - Haithi Trust Digital Library: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009034160

International Socialist Review - Marxists Internet Archive:  https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/index.htm