The Experience of a Communist Publishing House: Tinta Roja Interviews Javier Martin, Member of the Political Bureau of the PCTE and Director of Ediciones Tinta Roja
—The work being carried out by the publishing house is of great importance; from Argentina, we view it very positively. What political and ideological foundations underpin the publishing house’s work?
First of all, thank you very much for your interest and for your words, comrades. That our work reaches Argentina and is valued there, with the rich working-class publishing tradition that country has, is a source of great pride. Hopefully, sooner rather than later, we will make it possible for Argentine workers and communists to have access to our works.
Ediciones Tinta Roja was founded on a premise that governs everything else: there is no such thing as neutral cultural production. Every artistic, literary, or intellectual expression is generated within a class-divided society and, whether its producer knows it or not, serves the interests of one class or another in one way or another.
Starting from that premise, we fully and naturally embrace our partisan character. From this follows the central ideological foundation: we understand culture and ideology not as autonomous spheres external to social practice, but as particular forms of expression, thought, and discourse that arise from the material conditions of existence of men and women.
Literature, in its broadest sense, is also a means of ideological struggle. What we do, therefore, is nothing more than a small contribution within a much broader hegemonic mechanism.
The publication and dissemination of Marxist works in recent decades has been defined by the academic and commercial criteria of the major publishing monopolies. What is published, how it is published, what is marginalized from research and publishing circuits, and so on, is all determined by various biases, interests, and objectives. Put simply, we could say that the principal objective is to promote a domesticated Marxism while concealing and censoring militant Marxism.
What workers read—the works they access when they seek to give a certain logic and coherence to their thoughts—is shaped by these criteria. Hence the importance of recovering a militant publishing practice: a publishing practice that accompanies, stimulates, and strengthens revolutionary political action.
Professionalism means doing things with standards and ambition. It means aspiring for the publishing project to grow, to have increasingly greater resources and means to produce, distribute, and disseminate books by and for the revolution.
Rigor means doing things carefully and attentively, so that each of our works fulfills its function successfully.
—Editorial production on various political and ideological subjects is fundamental for any Communist Party that wants to establish closer contact with the masses. How is editorial work combined with the mass movement?
We fully agree with that premise, and, as we said, it lies at the very heart of our project.
We summarize our organizational work in two words: socialize and stimulate.
We do not conceive of the book as an object whose function ends at the moment of sale or individual reading, but as a tool that must be inserted into everyday life, into spaces of work and struggle, and into collective debate.
The first dimension, socializing, has to do with democratizing access to critical knowledge. Dominant cultural dynamics tend to make Marxism elitist, presenting it as a product reserved for minorities. Against this, we actively seek models that bring the book closer to the working class, making it easier to access and encounter: being present in an increasing number of bookstores, facilitating online sales, carrying out outreach work through social media, participating in fairs and events that bring books into the streets, keeping our publications affordable, constructing reading pathways that allow for progressive educational development, and so on.
The second dimension, stimulating, points to something even more important: it is not enough for the book to reach workers’ hands; it must generate debate, discussion, and organization.
For this reason, we understand our work as that of a publishing house that assumes an actively organizational role. We promote presentations, discussion groups, and collaborations that turn each title into an opportunity for collective encounter and discussion. Whenever possible, we publish critical apparatuses—introductions, preliminary studies, notes—that help readers situate the work and draw conclusions applicable to the struggles of the present.
A good recent example is the introductory study accompanying our edition of Lenin’s Against Imperialist War, designed precisely so that this classic can engage with current debates on war and imperialism.
This editorial work generates, in itself, mechanisms that militants can use directly as part of their interventions, as well as, of course, for their own political education.
Our goal is for the communist book, in order to fulfill its function, to leave the bookshelf and enter the factory, the neighborhood, the assembly, and the everyday trade-union and political trenches.
That is, in reality, the clearest lesson left to us by the publishing genealogy we reclaim: the publishing houses of the 1930s, as well as initiatives of exile and the underground resistance, were never merely commercial or academic projects, but components of a broader AgitProp apparatus and ideological struggle, intimately connected with the Party and with the organized workers’ movement.
—The publishing house has publicly existed for only a short time, yet we can already see significant literary and publishing progress. What are the next political objectives?
It is true that our public activity is still relatively recent, but behind it lies a much longer process of planning, and above all the conviction that this project must be built patiently, rigorously, and without haste that could compromise quality.
So far, we have published eleven titles across our Píleo, Orbe, and Espiga collections, and we continue expanding the catalog with new additions, as demonstrated by the recent launch of our Turno collection.
As you know, the gravitational axis of a revolutionary hegemonic perspective is the political action of the Communist Party. This conception also defines our style of work: it is not simply a matter of publishing Marxist authors for their documentary or historical value, but of adopting the framework of class struggle and the theoretical-political tasks of the moment as the method for determining what to publish, how to publish it, and for whom.
For this purpose, we began by studying and researching the history of workers’ and militant publishing, both Spanish and international.
Naturally, the premises outlined above are not new; they connect us to a long tradition filled with lessons. A tradition, it should be said, that is largely unknown.
In Spain, this research led us back to the 1920s, to publishing houses such as Ediciones Oriente, Ediciones Edeya, and Cenit, and to publishers such as Rafael Giménez Siles and Wenceslao Roces.
But the patterns are very similar across much of the world: clandestine publishing efforts, militant criteria for selecting works, the pursuit of professionalism and breadth, connection with the political tasks of the period, coordinated efforts through the Communist International, and so on.
Ediciones Tinta Roja seeks to be a conscious reactualization of this genealogy for our time. We do not imitate it nostalgically; rather, we seek to inherit its spirit: professionalism, rigor, and militant vocation at the same time.
The priority is, logically, to guarantee publications, but we have objectives beyond that. So far this year, we have built a steadily growing base of readers, attended more fairs, held many presentations, increased our presence in bookstores, and so on.
All this work, which falls within the organizational role of the publishing house, must be systematized and developed.
We want to multiply the discussion groups and debate spaces around our titles, both in person and digitally; strengthen direct communication with our readers; and seek formulas—such as the recent collectors’ subscription initiative—that allow us to sustain and grow the project.
As a militant publishing house, we need to build our own social base, a core of readers and collaborators who feel that this publishing house belongs to them, rather than seeing it simply as a book supplier. This is essential for preserving our independence.
—What are the publishing house’s current plans?
We are currently in the midst of preparing the titles that remain in the 2026 catalog. It has been a very intense and exciting year, but also one involving a great deal of work.
The publishing house has grown considerably and very quickly. We have gone from publishing five titles in 2025 to planning the publication of twelve in 2026.
We still have several titles ahead of us that we believe will be very well received and will have a significant impact.
Between September and October alone, we will publish Selected Works by Clara Zetkin, Revolution by Kemal Okuyan, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Turkey, and We Do Not Ask Permission, a collection of essays by various contemporary Marxist historians on the struggles of the Spanish workers’ movement in 1976.
—And what is the broader objective of the project?
Ultimately, our fundamental objective remains the one that gave rise to the project: to contribute, from the modest terrain of publishing, to the political and cultural recomposition of the working class in our country, and to do so by connecting with that international tradition of workers’ and communist publishing houses of which you, from Argentina, are part, with your own long history.
The more bridges that are built between projects like ours and militant publishing experiences in other countries, the stronger will be the common cultural fabric that the working class needs in order to read itself.
In that sense, interviews such as this one already fulfill part of that function in themselves: building ties and reconstructing an international communist publishing movement.
Article republished from Number 22 of ORIENTACIÓN, organ of the Central Committee of the Argentine Communist Party (PCA)