The New York Communist

[Voice of the Left Wing of the Socialist Party of America edited by John Reed.
Only ten issues were printed, in the spring of 1919]

(April 1919 until June 1921)

Archivists’ note: The New York Communist was a short lived paper (only 10 issues published) put out by John Reed in New York City at the time the Left Wing of the Socialist Party of America was in the process of being expelled by what the Left Wing termed “The Right Wing”, in the period of April though June of 1919. Joining John Reed in producing this paper was Eadmomn MacAlpine, Associate Editor and Maximilian Cohen, Business Manager. The Editorial Board consisted of N. I. Hourwich, N. Zucker, J. Wilenkin, and B.D. Wolfe

Reed’s newspaper documented one of the most ferocious factional struggles in the history of the Socialist Party of America, a veritable war marked by arbitrary dissolutions of party units, lockouts from facilities, and takeovers of scheduled meetings. It is this blow-by-blow coverage which makes The New York Communist one of the most important primary sources for historians studying the process of formation of the American Communist movement during the tumultuous year of 1919.

The other principle newspaper of the Left Wing of the Socialist Party at the time was Revolutionary Age, published in Boston. Its principle editor was Louis Farina, with Eadmonn MacAlpine as associate editor. Contributing editors included Scott Nearing, John Reed, Ludwig Lore, and Sen Katayama, as well as Nicholas Hourwich and Gregory Weinstein.

After the split in the Socialist Party (expulsion of the Left Wing), the Left Wing of the SP became a few competing “communist” parties, including principly the Communist Party of America and the Communist Labor Party, each with its own both above and under-ground newspapers, all called The Communist. In the end, these (with pressure from the Comintern) merged, and the Communist Party USA was born.

Printed on cheap, high acid newspaper, few original copies of this paper survived as the decades passed. From 1970 Until now (December 2021), the only access available to this paper was a reprint of it published by Greenwood Press. Unfortunately, the quality of text presented on the majority of the pages of this particular Greenwood Reprint (unlike such in most of the material Greenwood Press reprinted) tended to be very poor.

I, Marty Goodman of the Riazanov Library digital archive project was fortunate to obtain in December of 2021 the same original pages of this paper used to produce the Greenwood Reprint, which had once been in the possession of Tamiment Library, but had been tossed out because they were in such damaged condition. I spent as much as six hours per page after scanning these, making digital restoration of the material, with help from the Greenwood Reprint.

Marxists Internet Archive presents here relatively sharp, crisp, clear high quality images, with good quality OCR, scanned at 1200 dpi from the original pages of this paper. At least for the most part, for the damage to the paper was so great that some parts of some pages had to be presented using pieces of the much poorer quality text in the Greenwood Reprint. The full page of graphic art on the first page of the first issue, presented in the Greenwood Press reprint wrecked by the tape Tamiment Library ill-advisedly put across it, is presented here digitally restored.

We also present here, for reference and comparison, 1200 dpi high resolution, carefully exposed scans of the pages of the Greenwood Reprint, as this had been the working reference for researchers and historians for the last 50 years.

Editorial Staff of The New York Communist:

For issue number one, three individuals are listed:
  John Reed as editor
  Eadmonn Mac Alpine as Associate Editor    Maximillian Cohen as business manager

For all remaining issues, issues numbers 2 through 10, editorial staff is listed as:
  John Reed, Editor
  Eadmomn MacAlpine, Associate Editor
  Maximilian Cohen, Business Manager

Editorial Board:
  N. I. Hourwich
  N. Zucker
  J. Wilenkin
  B.D.Wolfe

The New York Communist
Official organ of the Left Wing, Socialist Party, Greater New York locals
—Scanned from original pages, and digitally restored—

[Scanned from original paper issues, and extensively digitally restored. This is the best quality digital presentation of of this periodical, with by far best and most use-able OCR. Except for issue 10 here, absent from the original pages I had access to, and provided scanned from pages of the Greenwood 1970 reprint.]

Number 1, April 19, 1919

Number 2, April 26, 1919

Number 3, May 1, 1919

Number 4, May 8, 1919

Number 5, May 15, 1919

Number 6, May 24, 1919

Number 7, May 31, 1919

Number 8, June 7, 1919

Number 9, June 14, 1919

Number 10, June 21, 1919 [This scan is from the Greenwood Reprint. No original paper was available.]

—Scanned from Greenwood Reprints—

[For comparison, here are 1200 dpi pdf files of The New York Communist as they appear in the 1970 Greenwood Reprint.

Note that the Printers' Union Bug, which Greenwood Press (a non union shop) deliberately erased from their reproductions of The New York Communist, is now restored (by me and the Riazanov Library digital archive project). All else in these scans is directly and unaltered from what Greenwood Press presented. This union bug is located in the area of the top left corner of page 2 for all issues 1 through 9, except for issue 5, where it is located on page 1 at the top just to the right of the printed volume and issue number. As I did not have original paper for issue number 10, I could not be sure whether or where it bore a union bug, though one assumes it did have one, and likely on page 2.]