[7] It has published works by Karl Marx, Mark "Chopper" Read, Frantz Fanon, Noam Chomsky, bell hooks, Edward Said, Augusto Boal, Vandana Shiva, Susan George, Ilan Pappé, Nick Robins, Raya Dunayevskaya, Graham Turner, Alastair Crooke, Gabriel Kolko, Hamid Dabashi, Tommy McKearney, Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, Syed Saleem Shahzad, David Cronin, John Holloway, Euclid Tsakalotos, David Miller and Jonathan Cook.

Its Trotskyist agenda stemmed from its early association with the International Socialists, which broadened to a wider revolutionary left in 1972 when Nina and Michael Kidron[9][10][11] joined.

[14] The most successful was the State of the World Atlas series by Michael Kidron and Ronald Segal[15] – visual encapsulations of major social and political trends – which were created and produced by Pluto Press and published by Pan Books.

[23][24][25] The decision came after a series of events tied to the distribution of a 2007 Pluto Press book, Overcoming Zionism (written by then Bard College professor Joel Kovel), which argues for a "one state" solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

[26] After briefly resuming the redistribution, the University of Michigan finally ceased it in 2008, observing that Pluto Press does not undertake peer review of the finished manuscripts it publishes.