International Publishers is a book publishing company based in New York City, specializing in Marxist works of economics , political science , and history .
36-715: International Publishers Company, Inc., was founded in 1924 with funds given the project by Abraham A. Heller . Heller was the radical son of a wealthy jeweler doing business in Paris . 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
72-611: 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. 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
108-528: A few years. 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
144-595: A field of research that ultimately led to the range of journals that Lawrence & Wishart now publish. John Newsinger wrote that the Communist vendetta against George Orwell 's Homage to Catalonia was maintained as recently as 1984, when Lawrence & Wishart published Inside the Myth , a collection of essays "bringing together a variety of standpoints hostile to Orwell in an obvious attempt to do as much damage to his reputation as possible." Continuing to publish
180-591: 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
216-732: A joint mining operation. The New York Times reported that $ 1 million of emeralds had hit US markets as a result. In 1938, Heller ("of Chappaqua, New York ") served as purchasing agent for the North American Committee to Aid Spain, which had raised more than $ 1 million in cash and materials. In 1939, the Dies Committee announced Heller was the first "millionaire Red" found. In 1940, Heller's name came up during Dies Committee hearings during testimony by Benjamin Gitlow and Alexander Trachtenberg . In 1950, Heller
252-680: 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. 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) and Angela Davis (paperback reissue, 1988). International Publishers
288-722: A monopoly. During the 1920s, Heller introduced the acetylene welding industry to the Soviet Union . In 1921, Heller helped start the Friends of Soviet Russia and published occasionally in its journal Soviet Russia . In 1922, Heller became the American representative of the Supreme Council of National Economy of Soviet Russia ( Vesenkha )." In 1924, Heller co-founded, financed, and owned International Publishers, which printed or imported books and pamphlets from
324-548: 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
360-529: A staff of four. During the 1960s and 1970s, International expanded its publication of inexpensive trade 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 by Karl Kautsky ( Foundations of Christianity, 1925; Are
396-566: A volunteer at the Marxists Internet Archive (MIA), Lawrence & Wishart allowed the website to publish material from the MECW around 2005, but it was always an option of the publishers to revoke permission. This finally happened at the end of April 2014, when the publishers asked via email for the deletion of 1,662 files from the website, threatening legal action if MIA did not comply. Lawrence & Wishart has argued that
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#1732801274296432-616: 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 left-wing and anti-fascist publisher founded by Ernest Wishart, father of the painter Michael Wishart . Journals published include: Founded in 1936, Lawrence & Wishart initially became involved with
468-890: The International Brigade Memorial Trust , the Marx Memorial Library , the Socialist History Society , UNISON and Unite the Union . In August 2016, Lawrence & Wishart moved premises from Central Books in Hackney Wick to new premises in Chadwell Heath . The move was a result of a combination of increased rents within Hackney Wick due to gentrification and regeneration of the area due to
504-503: 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. The law firm for incorporating International Publishers was Hays, St. John & Buckley of 43 Exchange Place, whose partners included Arthur Garfield Hays . According to testimony before
540-511: The Socialist Party of America . In 1917, he was instrumental in funding the purchase of the headquarters building for the Rand School of Social Science . In 1919, Heller became director of the commercial department for the Soviet Bureau, headed by Ludwig Martens . Julius Hammer (father of Armand Hammer ), founder of Allied Drug and Chemical and thus Heller's partner, was one of the bureau's six directors. The commercial department
576-403: The U.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. The idea of forming International Publishers seems to have come from Heller and Trachtenberg. Initial assistance came from the Communist Party (then
612-546: The USSR , while Alexander Trachtenberg served as "manager, editor, salesman." As "angel investor," Heller owned 51%, while the Comintern owned 49%, so that the publisher looked like a private business, according to ex-communist witness Benjamin Gitlow . Trachtenberg claimed that Heller and he split ownership 50-50. Trachtenberg also said that Heller's wife helped incorporate the company. Trachtenberg met Heller when Heller
648-708: 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." In
684-461: The Communist Party. Trachtenberg characterized the relationship of International Publishers to the Communist Party as merely one of "buyer and seller." 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
720-881: The Heller was a "very wealthy man" and "a millionaire before the Russian Revolution ." Heller was a member of the Communist Party USA , as well as annual member of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and patron of the Jewish Encyclopedia . Heller bought a farm in Bernardsville, New Jersey, shortly after returning from Paris around 1910. Lawrence %26 Wishart Lawrence & Wishart
756-570: The International Oxygen Company in New York City and served as its general manager. International Oxygen Company had its headquarters in Newark, New Jersey. (According to a 1914 blue book, Abraham A. Heller was treasurer, while a Solomon Heller was president and Jacob Heller was secretary. ) He was also a partner in Allied Drug and Chemical. From 1909 to 1920, Heller helped finance the New York Call , New York City-based daily newspaper of
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#1732801274296792-738: 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
828-738: The Russian-born Heller emigrated to the USA. In 1892, he joined the socialist movement. After studying at Harvard University, he went into the jewelry business in Paris for a few years. He ran the Paris office of his father's company, L. Heller & Son, from 1903 to 1910; the office disbanded in 1911. (Company employees included Auguste Victor Louis Verneuil , inventor of the Verneuil process or "flame fusion" process of synthesizing corundum, rubies, and sapphires.) In 1910, Heller co-founded
864-513: The construction of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park ; and the convenience of the company to remain close to Central Books, who are also Lawrence & Wishart's distributor. The Marx/Engels Collected Works ( MECW ) were published by Lawrence & Wishart, in collaboration with others, between 1975 and 2004 in 50 volumes, and is the most complete attempt at rendering their work in English. According to Andy Blunden ,
900-616: The fall of 1935, International Publishers launched a new program called the " Book Union ". This was a radical book-buying circle, modeled on the Book of the Month Club . 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
936-458: 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 duty rates 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
972-419: The free reprints on MIA will affect its plans to issue MECW in a digital version in the near future, and its action is purely to ensure that it remains in business. By the end of April 2014, more than 4,500 individuals had signed a petition objecting to Lawrence & Wishart's decision to take action against MIA. In response to the criticism, Lawrence & Wishart in a statement said it had been "subject to
1008-472: The journals New Formations , Anarchist Studies , Renewal , Twentieth Century Communism , and Soundings , Lawrence & Wishart are also developing their work with online books. Recent online publications have included Regeneration , on generational politics, and the Soundings collection The Neoliberal Crisis . The company has also published books with a number of partners, including Compass ,
1044-578: The political and cultural life of the popular front , publishing literature, drama and poetry, as well as political economy, working-class history and the classics of Marxism . After the Second World War , the company published work from the CPGB's History Group , including early work by Eric Hobsbawm . Later in the century, Lawrence & Wishart began its project of commissioning translations of selected writings by Antonio Gramsci , whose work on
1080-466: The relationship between politics and culture has ongoing significance for the company. The first volume dedicated to Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks , was published in 1971, and re-published in 2005. The mid-1980s saw the publication of works by writers who brought the insights of cultural studies to bear on more traditional political concerns with ideology, politics and power,
1116-475: 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,
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1152-627: Was a Russian-American who served as commercial director of the Russian Soviet Government Bureau (or "Soviet Bureau") as of 1919 and co-founded International Publishers with Alexander Trachtenberg in 1924. Abraham Aaron Heller was born in October 1874 in Minsk (or Moscow ), Russian Empire, the son of a wealthy jeweler Lazarus Heller, owner of L. Heller & Son, with offices in New York City and Paris. In 1891,
1188-688: Was a director of the Jefferson School of Social Sciences (successor to the New York Workers School as well as president of People's Radio Foundation, Inc. Directors of People's Radio included Joseph R. Brodsky as well as Rockwell Kent and Peter Shipka of the International Workers Order . Heller was married to Edith Heller. During testimony to the Dies Committee, Trachtenberg stated
1224-633: Was also a frequent publisher of prolific labor 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 five-volume collection The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass (1950–1975). The company also published the work of Herbert Aptheker , a historian specializing in African-American history. Abraham A. Heller Abraham Aaron Heller , best known as A.A. Heller ,
1260-630: Was serving on the board of the Rand School (director in 1918 ) and Trachtenberg was a teacher there. In 1927, Philip Fried, general manager, said that Samuel Heller, president of Heller & Son, had signed a contract with the Russky Samotzvet (Soviet State Trust) for rights to mine the "vast emerald fields" in the Urals mountains in the USSR, in return for American capital and management of
1296-587: Was the "heart of the Bureau." In late 1919, Heller boasted that 2,500 American firms had expressed interest in doing business with the new USSR, while meatpackers in Chicago (including Swift & Co. ) denied that they would trade with "enemies of the United States." In early 1920, Heller announced that the Soviet Bureau would operate on a barter basis and that the Soviet government conducted all foreign trade as
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