Pathfinder Press Was Born With The October Revolution

[John Connolly]

Brian Hauk wrote:

> Pathfinder Press Was Born With The October Revolution:
> A publishing house for working-class fighters that lets revolutionary
> leaders speak in their own words {International Socialist Review}
> *********************************************************************
> from the Militant, vol.62/no.6 February 16, 1998
>
>
> A conference on Political and Social Publishing in the
> 1990s took place in Havana, Cuba, February 2-3, sponsored by
> the publishing house Casa Editora Abril. An article on the
> gathering appears on the front page. Mary-Alice Waters,
> president of Pathfinder Press, was among the speakers who
> addressed the meeting. We reprint below her presentation. It is
> copyright Pathfinder Press 1998 and is reprinted by
> permission.
>
> BY MARY-ALICE WATERS
> First of all a thank you to Casa Editora Abril for taking
> the initiative to organize this conference as part of the
> events surrounding the Eighth International Book Fair that
> opens here in Havana tomorrow. It gives us all a rare
> opportunity to share experiences and discuss how to do a more
> effective job in meeting those goals we hold in common.
>
> Pathfinder Press was born with the October Revolution. As a
> publishing house, our direct line of continuity goes back to
> the earliest publication of speeches and writings by Lenin in
> the United States on the eve of 1917. That is when magazines
> like the International Socialist Review, produced by left-wing
> militants in the Socialist Party, began publishing articles by
> the Bolshevik leader.
>
> Origins in 1919
> Following the victorious insurrection of the workers,
> peasants, and soldiers of the tsarist empire, revolutionary-
> minded working people the world over sought to emulate the
> example of the first worker-bolsheviks. By 1919 a regroupment
> of left-wing socialists, members of the Industrial Workers of
> the World, and others had come together to found something
> truly new - the communist movement in the United States, whose
> explicit goal was to emulate the Bolsheviks. Through many and
> varied channels they began to publish the periodicals,
> pamphlets, and books that for the first time in the 20th
> century brought to the working class in our hemisphere a
> communist perspective that drew on the toilers' initial
> experience of taking power, defending it, and using it
> worldwide.
> I start with this because it is the clearest way I can
> explain what guides the editorial policy of Pathfinder to this
> day. For more than 80 years, Pathfinder and its various
> predecessors (from Merit and Pioneer, all the way back to the
> Literature Department of the Workers Party of America) have had
> one and only one objective: to publish and distribute as widely
> as possible the books, pamphlets, and magazines that are
> necessary to advance the construction of a communist party in
> the United States - an objective that is inseparable from the
> building of a communist movement internationally.
> From 1917 to today, we have sought to defend a course true
> to Lenin's leadership of the Russian Revolution and the early
> years of the Communist International, as opposed to the course
> that later became identified with the Stalin-led Communist
> Party of the Soviet Union - the results of which are being
> reconfirmed in the colossal events of recent years that
> continue to unfold. And we have prioritized printing works
> created by revolutionists who exemplified Lenin's
> internationalist and proletarian course in deeds as well as
> words.
> We always started with the ongoing facts before us in the
> world, with the most important challenges of the world class
> struggle, thinking about how to strengthen the fighting
> vanguard of the working class so it is better armed to
> understand the world in which we live; to understand the
> history of the modern working-class movement; to become more
> conscious of its strength and historic responsibilities; and to
> chart a line of march toward taking power in order to open the
> road to the construction of socialism.
>
> Communism: a movement, not a doctrine
> We have always subscribed to Engels's famous response to
> Herr Heinzen, written at about the same time as the Communist
> Manifesto, that "communism is not a doctrine, but a movement;
> it proceeds not from principles but from facts... Insofar as it
> is a theory, [it] is the theoretical expression of the position
> of the proletariat" in its struggle with the bourgeoisie and
> the "theoretical summation of the conditions for the liberation
> of the proletariat" and its allies from exploitation and
> oppression.
> To bring this home for us today, I want to use the example
> of one of the most important books that Pathfinder has
> published in the last eight years. It is entitled U.S. Hands
> Off the Mideast! Cuba Speaks Out at the United Nations. It was
> published in English and Spanish in October 1990 as Washington
> was driving toward the horrendous, massive assault on Iraq that
> began in January 1991. Cuba's then-ambassador to the United
> Nations, Ricardo Alarco'n, speaking from the seat Cuba
> fortuitously held on the Security Council, was the only voice
> speaking out clearly and consistently, utilizing the arena of
> international diplomacy, against the imperialist war being
> mounted under the auspices of the United Nations flag.
> Pathfinder, in a matter of days (literally) brought out a
> small booklet containing each and every one of Alarco'n's
> speeches to the world, along with the main speech by Fidel
> condemning Washington's aggression. When that sold out in a few
> weeks, we printed a second, expanded edition, so that
> communists and anti-imperialist fighters around the world could
> use it to campaign against the war that the magazine New
> International rightly calls "the opening guns of World War
> III."
> In the short space of six months, Pathfinder sold some
> 10,000 copies of that title in English, and 1,500 in Spanish.
> Today, as Washington is again accelerating toward a new
> murderous - and cowardly - assault on the people of Iraq, and
> one that will if anything be even more brutal than the last,
> that Pathfinder title takes on renewed importance. The fact
> that - as is our policy - we have not allowed the book to go
> out of print means that our weapons are ready, and, as we meet
> here, it is again being used by opponents of Washington's
> course around the world.
> In a similar way, 30 years ago Pathfinder published another
> book - Che Guevara Speaks. In December 1967, only weeks after
> the death in combat of Ernesto Che Guevara, while news of that
> event and its implications still resounded like a drumbeat
> around the world, Pathfinder published the first edition of
> that collection of speeches and writings. We have not allowed
> it to go out of print from that day to this.
>
> *****
>
> I want to make a number of quick points about the facts and
> policies that guide our publishing efforts. I hope they will
> provoke some discussion and comment.
> 1. Pathfinder is not formally or legally the publishing
> house of a party (it has its own corporate structure and lines
> of decision-making). At the same time, from the beginning the
> writers, editors, directors and production personnel have all
> been active communist cadres in the United States (communists
> with a small `c'), experienced in the working-class movement.
> Pathfinder is the publishing house that has always kept in
> print the major documents, resolutions and speeches by leaders
> of the Socialist Workers Party. In the historical perspective,
> this is one of its most important and irreplaceable
> accomplishments. Without this the documents that both reflect
> and guide the practical work of communist workers, students and
> their allies in the United States would be nowhere available.
> The Changing Face of U.S. Politics: Working-Class Politics
> and the Trade Unions by SWP national secretary Jack
> Barnes - which has been published by Pathfinder in three
> languages (English, Spanish, and French) - is the most recent
> important example of this central core of our publishing.
>
> Produced in heat of political battles
> 2. As has been true throughout the history of the workers
> movement, the best materials we publish are almost without
> exception those produced by revolutionists in the heat of
> political battle - not abstract analyses or distanced studies,
> but pamphlets and books written by those who have been
> responding to the needs of the day.
> One of the best examples of this is a book written in the
> anti-Nazi underground during World War II by a young Belgian,
> who was a Jew. The Jewish Question, by Abram Leon, perhaps the
> finest historical materialist study of this question ever to be
> written, was put down on paper while Leon was active in the
> underground. He finished it only a short time before he was
> captured and died at the hands of the Gestapo. Sailors,
> merchant marine men who were members of the SWP and often acted
> as couriers internationally, were able to salvage a copy of the
> manuscript in the closing days of the war. Pathfinder
> translated it, published it, and has kept it in print for
> decades.
> Since 1928 when the Militant first began publishing - and
> 1931 when Pioneer Publishers produced its first title - there
> has always been a close working collaboration between the
> newspaper and what is today Pathfinder. Many of the materials
> that eventually find their way into Pathfinder publications
> first appear in the pages of the Militant. It couldn't be
> otherwise with a publishing house that is always in the thick
> of struggles and seeking to promote a clear class perspective.
> From the beginning of the Cuban revolution, for example,
> the Militant has been the main periodical in the United States
> that published important documents and speeches by leaders of
> the Cuban revolution. These were often then rapidly reprinted
> by Pioneer Publishers as pamphlets and used widely by the
> active defenders of the Cuban Revolution both in the United
> States and Canada, many of whom organized themselves during the
> revolution's opening years as the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.
> In the days before photo-offset printing, it was especially
> important to be able to reuse the hot-lead type set for the
> newspaper, which was by far the costliest element in the
> printing process.
> Pamphlets such as the first edition of The Second
> Declaration of Havana were published this way, for
> example - another title that Pathfinder has kept continuously
> in print, in this case since 1962. Tomorrow, in fact -February
> 4 - we will be marking the 35th anniversary of that call to
> action to the toilers of the Americas. Today we still use it
> widely as one of the best and most basic publications we have
> to explain the character of U.S. imperialist domination of
> Latin America and the place of the Cuban Revolution in the
> uncompromising struggle against it.
> Just in the last days, the most recent example of this kind
> of collaboration came off the press, in English and Spanish.
> Celebrating the Homecoming of Ernesto Che Guevara's
> Reinforcement Brigade to Cuba. It is a collection of articles
> published in the Militant last year, including a series of
> articles, interviews, and speeches about Che by those who knew
> and worked with him as a leader of the Cuban revolution, a
> number of them reprinted from various publications here in
> Cuba. It also includes an excellent piece by Algerian
> revolutionary leader Ahmed Ben Bella, reprinted from Le Monde
> Diplomatique.
> This is a Militant publication, but it will be distributed
> by Pathfinder and used broadly by young socialists and Militant
> supporters everywhere. Over the years, a number of publications
> like this have eventually evolved into Pathfinder books. But
> this kind of format allows for rapid, and relatively less
> expensive, publication of materials that might not otherwise be
> quickly available and easily accessible.
>
> What is needed, not what is profitable
> 3. Pathfinder's starting point has always been what is
> needed by those fighting to change the world, not what will
> sell in the capitalist market. In other words, what guides us
> is the opposite of what guides any bourgeois publishing house.
> Moreover, with limited resources, we have always had to choose
> carefully, and often had to make painful decisions, on what,
> and what not, to publish. We do well to publish 4 or 5 new
> titles in a year's time, although in 1997 we were able to bring
> out 12 new titles, including 5 in Spanish and 4 in French.
> That's exceptional.
> Our guideline, and this is especially true of books, is to
> publish materials that have a lasting value, that deal - in
> something more than a conjunctural way - with questions that
> are and will remain central to the workers movement for years.
> For us - and again this is the opposite of the way
> bourgeois publishers function - the important list is our
> backlist, keeping in print the titles that contain the
> crystallized work of decades. Upgrading and improving them when
> possible, but keeping them in print in any case. That in-print
> backlist is one of the greatest leverages we have, allowing a
> relatively small cadre of communists to have substantially
> greater weight than would otherwise be possible.
> In the last year alone we have reprinted 83 of our titles
> as we strive to approach capitalist norms of efficiency and
> stock control with small runs and just-in-time delivery. That
> is an enormous challenge that we don't always meet.
> Some books, like Lenin's Final Fight, published last year
> in Spanish for the first time ever, are actually titles
> Pathfinder has had in print for 70 years or more, in one or
> another edition or collection.
> All told, Pathfinder has more than 330 titles in print
> today. Some 280 are in English, 31 in Spanish, 16 in French,
> and a number in Russian. Together with Pathfinder supporters in
> other countries, several Pathfinder titles are also published
> in Swedish, Farsi, Greek, and Icelandic.
> 4. Most of the books we print, of course, are works that no
> one else is interested in publishing, because there is no other
> English-language publisher that shares Pathfinder's objectives.
> Books like Fighting Racism in World War II, for example,
> that tells the story of the fight against segregation and
> discrimination inside and outside the U.S. armed forces, even
> as the Second World War was unfolding. Or the magnificent
> series of books Pathfinder has published on the documents of
> the early years of the Communist International. These were
> things we had no competition for.
> The same can be said for some of the books that are today
> among our best-sellers -speeches by Malcolm X, one of the most
> outstanding leaders of the working class in the United States
> in the 20th century, a man who was killed by his enemies
> precisely because of his uncompromising revolutionary and
> internationalist trajectory. At the time Pathfinder began
> publishing Malcolm - while he was still alive -many on the left
> in the United States were denouncing him as a racist, and even
> a fascist. Fidel and Che, who were warmly welcomed to Harlem by
> Malcolm, understood his magnificent leadership qualities the
> same way we did.
>
> In the words of revolutionists
> Pathfinder always tries to publish books by revolutionary
> leaders, letting them speak for themselves in their own words.
> I would say we give precedence to such books over works by
> others about the great revolutionary leaders and events of our
> epoch. Workers, revolutionary-minded young people, don't
> primarily need interpreters, explainers, intermediaries. They
> can do the work of reading for themselves and over time
> understand more and more, especially if they discuss with
> fellow fighters. They gain self-confidence by knowing that they
> can read Marx, or Lenin, or Malcolm, or Che and work together
> to understand what such kindred spirits are talking about.
> Pathfinder's "Speaks" series is one that captures this
> well: Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, Leon Trotsky Speaks, Malcolm X
> Speaks, Che Guevara Speaks, Sandinistas Speak, Nelson Mandela
> Speaks, Thomas Sankara Speaks, Maurice Bishop Speaks, W.E.B.
> DuBois Speaks, Eugene V. Debs Speaks.
> That is why we publish books of speeches and writings by
> leaders of the Cuban revolution - by Che and by Fidel
> especially. To let the Cuban revolution speak for itself,
> through its most capable representatives. That's also why we
> are so happy that Secretos de generales [Secrets of generals]
> has been published here in Cuba, and a further set of
> revolutionary voices are able to be heard, read, and studied by
> new generations around the world.
> And today, with the writings of Marx, Engels, and
> Lenin - previously readily available from the publishing houses
> of the Soviet Union - becoming more and more difficult to
> obtain, we anticipate that Pathfinder will soon of necessity
> begin to fill that gap as well.
>
> Bearers of culture
> 5. At the point where politics and broader questions of
> culture intersect, the working-class movement constantly wages
> battle against both bourgeois dominance and mind-deadening
> escapism. From Marx and Engels to Che and Fidel, the great
> working-class leaders of our epoch have always fought to make
> the highest cultural conquests within class society the
> property of working people. They have done so knowing that it
> is working people who will be not only the bearers of the best
> of bourgeois culture into the new society, but will be among
> the great majority who more and more become the confident
> creators of culture.
> Pathfinder considers the publications of works such as Art
> and Revolution by Leon Trotsky (with its trenchant polemic
> against the Stalin bureaucracy's politics of socialist
> realism), What is Surrealism? by Andre' Breton, and our newest
> title, John Coltrane and the Jazz Revolution of the 1960s by
> Frank Kofsky, to be a necessary part of our publishing program.
> As Malcolm X insisted, broadening your scope makes working
> people better, and more effective, political people. It also
> enables them to fight with more joy.
> For the same reason we are proud to help distribute
> internationally La Gaceta de Cuba, published by the Union of
> Writers and Artists of Cuba, as we do Granma and Cuba
> Socialista, published by the Communist Party of Cuba.
>
> Depend on volunteer labor
> 6. Pathfinder is only able to maintain this kind of
> publishing program because of the generous support of communist-
> minded workers around the world, above all. They subsidize our
> publishing program because they agree with it, and they make
> real sacrifices to keep these revolutionary weapons in print.
> Pathfinder loses money on every book it publishes. It has never
> had a year, or even a quarter, when it broke even.
> Because Pathfinder books are expensive for working people
> even in the United States (they are in the upper-middle range
> of going market prices), several years ago we set up the
> Pathfinder Reader's Club to make them more accessible to
> regular readers. For $10 per year anyone can join the club, and
> receive all Pathfinder titles at 15 percent off the cover price
> at any Pathfinder bookstore, or by ordering directly. And
> throughout the year we offer even higher discounts on selected
> titles.
> We also rely heavily on volunteer labor to translate,
> proofread, scan and format, set type, do artistic work for our
> covers - some of which are truly beautiful - and all the other
> time-consuming work that is necessary to produce and distribute
> printed materials.
> Right now, we are in the midst of a major project,
> involving volunteer labor from countries around the world, to
> put every single title currently in print by Pathfinder in
> digital form. Only by doing this will we be able to continue to
> take advantage of advances in printing technology that allow us
> to frequently print small quantities and continuously upgrade
> new editions as our resources permit.
> Volunteers are also now finishing the work to produce a
> series of three CD-ROMs that will contain the entire collection
> of almost 65 years of the journal of Marxist theory and
> politics New International. With only a few copies of many of
> the early years of the magazine in existence, we were in danger
> of losing this irreplaceable resource entirely. Now it will
> once again be readily available to new generations communists
> in the U.S. and around the world.
> 7. The sale and distribution of Pathfinder titles also
> depends on the volunteer efforts of supporters. First and
> foremost, Pathfinder sales are "street sales" - sales by
> communist youth and workers off what we often call "guerrilla
> tables." Folding card tables set up regularly on street corners
> in popular shopping areas, at plant gates, on university
> campuses, near high schools. They sometimes get harassed by
> cops who don't like what we are selling and try to establish
> that the tables are illegally placed on private property. So
> the guerrilla tables sometimes have to stand their ground,
> sometimes retreat in order to retake the position later, or
> find a more defensible location.
> An international network of Pathfinder bookstores in seven
> countries is another important source of sales. These also are
> organized completely by volunteers, by workers, who keep the
> stores open as many hours a week as possible.
> The same volunteers also act as sales representatives,
> visiting regular commercial bookstores, libraries, and
> professors in dozens and dozens of cities, discussing the books
> with buyers and teachers. They obtain orders that are placed
> either directly with Pathfinder or through wholesale
> distribution businesses that buy from Pathfinder as well as
> other publishers.
> Through these kinds of volunteer efforts - which include
> taking Pathfinder booths to numerous international book fairs
> around the world, from Moscow, to Frankfurt, to Tehran, to
> Guadalajara, to Sydney, to Havana - the reach of our
> publication effort is truly surprising.
> 8. A special word about our publishing in Spanish. Our
> Spanish-language publishing began, in a modest way, in the
> 1930s as the communist movement in the United States increased
> its collaboration with revolutionary fighters in Mexico, Puerto
> Rico, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic. A not insignificant
> part of this, again, was due to the efforts of communists who
> were part of the merchant marine, who frequently sailed to the
> major ports of the Caribbean.
> Chicano fight propels Spanish titles
> But the modern period of publishing in Spanish owes its
> impetus to the new rise of the Chicano movement in the United
> States at the end of the 1960s - part of the revolutionary
> upsurge throughout Latin America in the wake of the 1959
> victory in Cuba and the defeat of U.S. imperialism at the Bay
> of Pigs. The upsurge of the Chicano movement was also the
> product of the mass opposition within the United States to
> Washington's aggression against the people of Vietnam, and the
> determination of young Chicanos to do everything possible to
> end that war - a war in which they were being conscripted to
> fight and die, waged against a people for whom they had nothing
> but growing respect. The powerful example of the struggle for
> Black liberation, followed by the rising wave of struggles by
> women against their oppression, were a mighty impetus, as well.
> That is when the Spanish-language sister publication of the
> Militant was born - Perspectiva Mundial. As with the Militant
> earlier, collaboration between PM and Pathfinder has been the
> source of a growing arsenal of books and pamphlets in Spanish.
> The first book in Spanish was published in 1981. That was
> Wall Street enjuicia al socialismo -the court record of the
> trial and conviction on subversion charges of the entire
> central leadership of the SWP and leaders of the Midwest
> Teamsters union on the very eve of U.S. entry into World War II
> (in fact they were sentenced to prison the day after Pearl
> Harbor). Published in English as Socialism on Trial, it centers
> on the actual court testimony of James P. Cannon, a founding
> leader of the communist movement in the United States and of
> the Socialist Workers Party. This is a book we have used in
> English and Spanish for decades as a very basic piece of
> communist education and propaganda. It is similar in this
> regard to Fidel's 1953 courtroom speech, "History Will Absolve
> Me," though, needless to say, not with the scope of the
> historical impact of that document. That day will come!
> With the major increase in immigration to the United States
> from throughout Latin America in the last decades - a wave of
> immigration that is similar in size and historic weight to the
> immigration from Europe at the end of the last century - the
> need for a growing arsenal of weapons in Spanish has increased
> even more. It is not only Los Angeles, Houston, and Miami that
> are today major Spanish-speaking metropolitan centers. The
> composition of the working class within the U.S. has changed
> dramatically from coast to coast, even in the smallest cities
> and in every basic industry. The working class has been
> strengthened by this influx of working people from throughout
> Our America, who are every day more and more confident about
> their ability to be active vanguard fighters in class-struggle
> battles within the United States. A communist party in the
> United States today is inconceivable without a strong component
> of Spanish-speaking members within its leading cadres, a cadre
> that reflects the working class as it is, and as it is
> becoming. Nor is it conceivable without a strong publishing
> program in Spanish.
> (Even though I won't take time to expand on the point here,
> it is important to note that our French-language publishing
> program, a product of collaboration between Pathfinder and
> communists in Canada, is born out of similar necessities
> dictated by the class struggle in North America, and the
> powerful new rise of the independence movement in Quebec,
> beginning in the 1960s.)
> In addition to the 31 titles in print in Spanish,
> Pathfinder distributes dozens more of the classics of Marxism
> as well as many titles imported from publishers in Cuba. This
> year, for the first time ever, we received substantial
> volunteer help from a team of comrades in Cuba, at the
> University of Matanzas, whose efforts made possible the
> publication of La ultima lucha de Lenin [Lenin's final fight],
> in an edition that includes corrected and improved Spanish
> translations of Lenin's final writings, all of which were
> checked against the Russian original by comrades who had
> studied for years in the Soviet Union.
> 9. Several times I have mentioned the magazine New
> International. Like many publishing houses associated with the
> communist movement, Pathfinder helps to promote and distribute
> a political and theoretical magazine that has its own imprint.
> Editora Poli'tica, for example, the publishing house of the
> Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, helps to
> produce and distribute Cuba Socialista. New International, as
> the magazine we distribute is now known (like Pathfinder it has
> had several different names over the decades since it first
> began publishing in 1934), is published in English and
> translated into three other languages - Spanish, French, and
> Swedish. It plays an indispensable role in our overall arsenal,
> focusing as it does on the most important questions of world
> politics and presenting a communist line in practice on today's
> burning issues.
>
> Exacting and demanding standards
> 10. Before closing with a few words about our work
> publishing titles that spread the truth about the Cuban
> revolution, I want to address one other point.
> For us, the care with which we edit and prepare every
> single book or pamphlet we produce is the most important test
> of our publishing efforts. We consider this to be a class
> question. If it is to prepare itself to be the ruling class,
> the working class must have access to truth, to culture, to
> clearly presented, accurate information. Their own history and
> continuity must be made accessible to new generations of
> fighters as they enter the struggle. These are things that Che
> understood and fought for so well. The working class must learn
> to be exacting in the standards of quality it demands in all
> things. That is part of our self-respect and self-confidence.
> Those who belong to the class that produces everything know
> better than anyone when work is done with quality and when it
> is shoddy and unworthy of their efforts.
> A publishing house that strives above all to provide
> revolutionary fighters with access to the world class struggle
> that they must know about and understand in order to be
> effective in transforming themselves and that world - a
> publishing house with such a goal must maintain the highest
> possible standards of accuracy.
> A misspelled name; an incorrect date; an erroneous or
> confusing or even uncomfortable translation; an inaccurate
> footnote or caption (or none at all where one is needed for the
> new young reader or the worker or farmer for whom reading is
> still a challenge); lack of care in presenting pictures, maps,
> or other aids to the reader; covers that are ugly or lack
> inspiration and work; printing that is too light and
> unreadable; a book that is carelessly bound or cut - all these
> are lapses that pain us when they occur. And they should. They
> are not worthy of the working class and its historic tasks.
> None of these flow from problems created by the limits on
> material resources from which we all suffer one way or another.
> They are questions of political training and discipline and
> respect for our class. They are an example of the question of
> questions - proletarian habits, which are the well-spring of
> discipline.
> At root, this is the same question that was at the center
> of the Fifth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba last
> October - why the revolution has to prove it can be more
> efficient, and produce with greater quality than the
> capitalists. And it can.
>
> Seventy titles on Cuban revolution
> 11. Out of the 351 books and pamphlets and New
> Internationals that Pathfinder is responsible for keeping in
> print, 70 are directly related to the Cuban revolution. Four
> full pages of the 1998 Pathfinder catalog are devoted to titles
> on "The Cuban revolution in world politics." Everything from
> six volumes of speeches by Fidel, to Socialism and Man in Cuba,
> to Women and the Cuban Revolution, to How Far We Slaves Have
> Come, to Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution by the late SWP
> leader Joseph Hansen - in addition to the three titles singled
> out yesterday by Iraida Aguirrechu of Editora Poli'tica that
> have been published in the last few years, working together
> with that publisher. The Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara,
> Che's Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, and Pombo: A Man
> of Che's `guerrilla' by Harry Villegas, are books that would
> not have been possible in their current form or with the
> quality they attained without the aid of Editora Poli'tica. For
> us, such collaboration is indispensable.
> The significant number of titles published by Pathfinder
> that aim to present the truth about the Cuban revolution is, I
> believe, a vivid concretization of the importance of the Cuban
> revolution in today's world, its actual weight in the world
> class struggle. Because Pathfinder has never set out to be a
> publisher of books about Cuba. To the contrary, we have always
> tried to bring the Cuban revolution into sharp focus as part of
> the world, and part of history.
> Publishing books and pamphlets about the Cuban revolution
> is not a matter of solidarity nor, to say the least, a
> profitable commercial venture. As with everything else we
> publish, our purpose is to produce the works that revolutionary-
> minded fighters within the United States need in order to be
> more effective. And the Cuban revolution is today the only
> example in the world of a communist leadership that has taken
> and holds state power and uses that most important of all
> levers to advance the world struggle for socialism, both inside
> Cuba and internationally. A leadership that fights to lead the
> working class along its line of march, not to stifle or oppose
> it.
> Pathfinder's publishing of pamphlets and books about the
> Cuban revolution began within the first months of the
> revolutionary victory in 1959. Among the earliest pamphlets
> were the speech on the first agrarian reform and "The
> revolution must be a school of unfettered thought," both by
> Fidel, as well as pamphlets like the one prepared by Militant
> reporter Harry Ring in 1961, based on his visits to Cuba,
> entitled How Cuba Uprooted Race Discrimination. The latter is a
> wonderful pamphlet, reprinted from the pages of the Militant,
> of course. I remember what a powerful impact it had on me when
> I first came around the communist movement about that
> time - just as the mass street battles to bring down the Jim
> Crow system of segregation in the United States were gaining
> such momentum. It helped recruit me.
> One of the most effective titles we have published in
> recent years is a collection entitled To Speak the Truth. It
> includes the four speeches given over the years by Fidel and by
> Che before the United Nations General Assembly - in 1960, 1964,
> and 1979 - plus the speech by Che in 1964 to the Geneva
> conference on trade sponsored by the United Nations. We
> subtitled that collection, "Why Washington's Cold War Against
> Cuba Doesn't End," because more than any other book we have,
> Fidel's and Che's speeches before the United Nations explain
> the origins of the U.S. rulers' war against the Cuban
> revolution and why they will never forgive the working people
> of Cuba for charting their own independent course. All these
> are books that have been sold in the hundreds and thousands of
> copies across the U.S. from "guerrilla tables" as well as in
> big commercial bookstores. They have been used in classes and
> study circles in dozens of cities and towns. They have been
> carried into factories, mills, and mines in lunch buckets to be
> shown to interested co-workers.
>
> `Communist Manifesto' is top seller
> I think that perhaps the best way to capture many things
> about the class struggle in the United States today, and the
> opportunities that exist for communists is tell you what the
> best-selling titles produced by Pathfinder are. Our number one
> best-seller year after year is the Communist Manifesto. Second
> are books by Malcolm X. And third are books by Che Guevara.
> That hit parade says a lot!
> I could add that last year - 1997 - our two best-sellers
> were the Communist Manifesto and Pombo: A Man of Che's
> `guerrilla'. And among our top 15 titles, 6 were related to the
> Cuban revolution - including the Bolivian Diary, Che Guevara
> Speaks, Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, and the
> pamphlet of interviews with Gen. Harry Villegas At the Side of
> Che Guevara. Six others were collections of speeches by Malcolm
> X or other titles related to the Black struggle in the U.S. Two
> were basic texts of the modern communist movement - the
> Communist Manifesto and Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. And
> the remaining title in the top 15 was The Truth about
> Yugoslavia: Why Working People Should Oppose Intervention,
> explaining the roots of the current war in that country and
> imperialism's interests there.
>
> *****
>
> As a new war crisis confronts us in the Mideast, that line-
> up will shift somewhat in 1998. I dare to predict that U.S.
> Hands Off the Mideast! will once again move toward the ranks of
> the best-sellers, and the example of the Cuban revolution will
> come into sharp relief from a slightly different direction.
> Once again, it will be the opportunity for men and women
> within the United States who unflinchingly oppose the war drive
> of Washington and its allies to help produce and expand and
> sell in increasing numbers the arsenal of political weapons
> that working people the world over need - publications that
> tell the truth about imperialism and war, and why the interests
> of working people the world over are irreconcilable with those
> of the exploiting classes.
> Of one thing we can be sure. The demand for such books will
> grow.
>
> To get an introductory 12-week subscription to the Militant
> in the U.S., send $10 US to: The Militant, 410 West Street,
> New York, NY 10014.
> For subscription rates to other countries, send e-mail to
> themi...@igc.apc.org or write to the above address.
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> Visit the Militant and other communist net resources:
>
> The Militant
> gopher://gopher.igc.apc.org:/11/pubs/militant
>
> Granma International
> http://www.granma.cu/
>
> The Young Socialists
> http://pages.prodigy.com/AHSG60C/index.html
>
> Pathfinder Press
> gopher://ftp.std.com/11/Book%20Sellers/Pathfinder%20Press

What a delightful monologue - all 10,000 words. You are overindulged
bourgeois infants. People like you duped the Rosenbergs into execution,
and fueled Mccarthyism and the cold war.