Who owns NLR?

[Alain]

Does anyone know what is the ownership structure of New Left Review? Is it an ordinary llc or some kind of cooperative, or what else?
Same goes for Verso Books, Jacobin Magazine, and the other leftist/radical publications.

Also, as a theoretical question: how should one proceed in establishing a radical leftist publication? Is it just as fine if someone is exploiting the workers in order to publish leftist propaganda as it would be if it was worker owned? Do the ends justify the means in this case?

[motion denied]

I don't know about NLR or Verso etc.

But in my experience, "radical" publishers are bad, maybe worse than regular ones. A communist boss is still a boss, and will act as such.

[Decolonize The Left]

Two things:
1) None of those publications are cooperatives. You'll have to look to something like AK Press for that.
2) Starting a print publication is crazy expensive. Just beware.

[Hatshepsut]

While NLR is critical of the Labour Party, it's hardly ever been a revolutionary publication. From its own historical statement, during a 1960s switch of emphasis less than five years after startup,

"It was argued that socialist hegemony must be developed within civil society prior to, and as a precondition of, socialist advance at the level of the government or state."
- http://newleftreview.org/history

Quality of writing is a different beast. NLR certainly beats the drivel popular media have become; it's sufficiently academic that much of it is over my head. I believe that it is organized as a nonprofit, though I don't know how that works in Britain. Research into business ownership and control is difficult: It's not a thing where you can just Google the answers. Generally you must pay for information of this nature, obtaining it from firms that do it on a professional basis. In the USA that comes under the fields of investment advice and credit rating, even when the business concern is a nonprofit.

Their editorial board, perhaps having nothing to do with the ownership structure itself, is listed on their website at
- https://newleftreview.org/about

In the USA, nonprofits file a tax return called Form 990-T which by law must be available to the public and is sometimes online, or a copy can be purchased from the IRS. These forms give lots of clues but do not always reveal who actually controls a charity. While Britain requires reporting to the Crown; I'm not sure public disclosure provisions typical of the USA operate there. VAT tax registration may also be a useful avenue however.

Basically, our capitalist system attaches great priority to the ability to privilege ownership data even while it allows corporations to act as legal persons. U.S. owners need not reveal themselves at all unless their company trades on a public stock exchange; they are only required to give contact info for one to three responsible officers in most states, people who may not be the owners or financial controllers. It was hard for investigative journalists to determine who was behind GPS, a hidden-money PAC that manipulated the elections of George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004.

[bricolage]

NLR and Verso are pretty connected, I think that Perry Anderson bankrolls them. All the publishers/magazines you mentioned have standard business structures.

Left organizations can certainly exploit workers and those workers should be supported when the struggle against said exploitation, case in point: https://libcom.org/library/morning-star-strike-interview-worker

[blake 3:17]

I thought it was Anderson's money, but the whole enterprise is pretty big. NLR would certainly be profitable, Verso has such a deep catalogue it's probably pretty safe for the present.

Both NLR and Verso have a very firm base in academic circles as well as publishing fairly popular titles.

The problem of publishing is a very complicated one and it's good not to be too idealistic about it. I've been involved on the periphery in smaller presses for ages and you never know what issue is going to cause a huge argument or what surefire moneymaker might just sink the ship.

Andre Schriffin's The Business of Books was a pretty interesting take on the whole thing... in 1999. Since then I don't know of a good Leftist book about books.

[bricolage]

I thought it was Anderson's money, but the whole enterprise is pretty big. NLR would certainly be profitable, Verso has such a deep catalogue it's probably pretty safe for the present.
It's hard to tell, publications that appear successful often hide what's going on beneath. Case in point the London Review of Books has a pretty big circulation - I'd guess bigger than NLR - but has been bankrolled to the tune of 27 million by Mary-Kay Wilmers. NLR has less staff and is put out less regularly but I wouldn't be surprised if there's something similar with Perry Anderson.

Simple fact is that print publication is not, and is not going to be anytime soon, lucrative.

[Alain]

While NLR is critical of the Labour Party, it's hardly ever been a revolutionary publication. From its own historical statement, during a 1960s switch of emphasis less than five years after startup,

"It was argued that socialist hegemony must be developed within civil society prior to, and as a precondition of, socialist advance at the level of the government or state."


Well, since I've been subscribed to it for quite some time now, I can say that the "revolutionary fervor" in it's pages really depends on who's writing the article itself, the publication isn't revolutionary or reformist in and of itself. The quality of writing per se is generally of pretty high quality.


NLR and Verso are pretty connected, I think that Perry Anderson bankrolls them.


Case in point the London Review of Books has a pretty big circulation - I'd guess bigger than NLR - but has been bankrolled to the tune of 27 million by Mary-Kay Wilmers. NLR has less staff and is put out less regularly but I wouldn't be surprised if there's something similar with Perry Anderson.

Really? Perry Anderson has that kind of money? I have to say I wouldn't have thought so.


Left organizations can certainly exploit workers and those workers should be supported when the struggle against said exploitation, case in point:Morning Star

Didn't know about this story. I am quite surprised since Morning Star is owned by the People's Press Printing society which is actually a cooperative(it's a readers' cooperative, not a workers' cooperative though, so that must be the cause of this).
Sorry for misquoting you there but apparently I'm not allowed to post links.