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From The New International, Vol. XIV No. 6, August 1948, p. 162.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The lead article by Max Shachtman in this issue represents a switch in plans on our part ... We were intending to run his speech of June 25 giving a report on the situation in Western Europe, based on his recent four-month stay there; but: Tito changed our mind ... The latter speech has been published in Labor Action instead ...
Comrade Shachtman, however, is also due to work up for the NI an important article discussing another aspect of his European trip: a review of the smaller independent Marxist and socialist groups in the European countries such as the French RDR (Revolutionary Democratic Front), the Spanish POUM, etc., as well as the present status of the Fourth International organizations and its recent world conference ... As soon as possible ...
We do, however, want to give still another part of his European report right in this column ... Comrade Shachtman memoes:
“In telling you about the role that the NI plays among the European Marxists, it is difficult to avoid sounding simply like an advertising blurb. I can only insist that it is equally difficult for the comrades here to appreciate fully what the magazine means to comrades abroad who, during the difficult years of the wars, were often isolated from each other as well as from the international movement while simultaneously beset by new problems and developments.
“I weigh the words carefully, to avoid the slightest exaggeration: Not only within the Fourth International groups but in all the other Marxist groupings independent of the Stalinists and the reformist Social-Democrats (since the end of war when the NI began going to Europe once more) practically everyone at all concerned with the problems of Marxist politics and theory finds the magazine absolutely indispensable. Every copy is read by two, five or more people. It is the only American Marxist periodical which is read abroad with interest, real attention and respect, regardless of disagreements with its point of view. Not only in the British Isles – on the Continent practically everyone who can even stumble through English reads the NI, as the only periodical that attempts to grapple in a serious way with the living problems of our day from the Marxist point of view, without merely repeating stock phrases, orthodox cliches and consecrated quotations.
“Other Marxist or self-styled Trotskyist publications from this side are leafed through and glanced over; they are not read. Even to comrades who express greater political agreement with them than with us, their dull unstimulating pages seem other-worldly and uninspired. Anything we here can do to get more copies of the NI to Europe will be a real contribution.”
Readers who are moved to do so can help get more NIs to Europe by sending in subs earmarked for the purpose ...
You are undoubtedly going to read more from our new contributor, Valentin Toma ... Toma is, frankly, a pen name for a well-known Rumanian militant, now abroad, who not only knows the situation in Rumania where he has been prominent in the revolutionary movement but also had the opportunity to study at first hand the political situation throughout the Balkan countries ...
The piece on The Mysterious Bruno R., marked coming last month, ought to be coming along for the September or October issue ... James T. Farrell promises his next article on James Connolly for the September issue ... Which issue will also present Henry Judd on the Marshall Plan ...
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Last updated on 8 July 2017