 Stachel was a top assistant to party leader Jay Lovestone in 1928, serving as Organizational Secretary of the Communist (Workers) Party.Stachel was also named the director of the party's pamphlet publishing house, Workers Library Publishers, from the time of its inception in 1928.Historians Irving Howe and Lewis Coser have characterized Stachel in this period as the "chief assistant in Lovestone's less savory projects" and charge that he "planned and led a raid upon the private apartments of the Trotskyist leaders, rifled their files, and stole whatever was likely to burn well in the factional fires."