Kautsky's Foundations of Christianity – what a bummer
We have had to withdraw Karl Kautsky’s Foundations of Christianity from sale. This printing is full of mistakes, misprints and glitches. A crack team of people who can proof-read properly is working on a corrected version which should be available before a mass class struggle alternative to Labour has been established.
7 responses to “Kautsky's Foundations of Christianity – what a bummer”
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Sorry to hear that, I know you had put a lot of work into it.
But I can’t resist noting that this is what happens when you make fun of other peoples’ books:
“Permanent Revolution: This powerful classic was recently dropped by Pathfinder Press, which means the book is generally unavailable through bookshops, although a barely-legible facsimile is available from WellRed.”
🙂
comradely
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Fair point Jorge but those weren’t my ungracious words.
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Couldn’t you have got permission to make a facsimile of the beautifully-printed Monthly Review Press edition, now out of print?
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As Plekhanov said: ‘I realised more and more the usefulness of the old and tested rule that any writer should unswervingly observe, namely, that one should first carefully peruse the proofs of one’s articles and only then send them to the printers…’ (GV Plekhanov, ‘What Should We Thank Him For?’, Selected Philosophical Works, Volume 2, pp344-5)
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Jorge, The point being made about the Wellred edition was about its legibility. They also reproduced 70-year of typos from the 1931 printing. The SR books, in contrast are beautifully legible, printed on long-life acid-free paper, carefully hand-bound, etc.
The other difference is this: SR has withdrawn a book within one or two days of errors being brought to our attention. And we are offering readers replacements, at our own cost.
Contrast that to, for example, Pathfinder’s habitual sale of imperfect books, and the similar policy of other left booksellers.
We are being open and honest about our flaws, and we are tackling them. For that, we deserve to be praised and not derided.
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Ken,
Since the MR edition is old, they won’t have the plates or negatives anymore. Scanning in the book leads normally to massive loss of quality. The Wellred book are a great example of that: they will have done their very best to to well, but the possibility to get a high-quality scan is very unlikely.
Even old books have typos in, so scanning in the MR edition might have been no different.
In contrast, SR’s books are new type-settings, which produced perfect legibility. However, I’m sure you know that often you only see things in the hard copy that you didn’t see on screen.
Also, let’s put this all in perspective. Very few copies have been sold (just ten through the online sales I look after), and this effort now will ensure all our future books are at an even higher quality.
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I’m sure you know that often you only see things in the hard copy that you didn’t see on screen.
I know that all too well.
Yes, you do deserve praise for putting things right. I will certainly do my best to publicise the corrected reprint when it comes out.
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Liam redux 
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