Pathfinder Press, located in New York with distributors in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, publishes books and pamphlets by revolutionary and working-class leaders. Pathfinder bookstores are listed in the directory on page 12.
The Education for Socialists series, distributed by Pathfinder, is a great resource for those interested in learning the history and program of the communist movement, and the lessons of more than a century and a half of working class struggle. The nearly five dozen bulletins were prepared by participants in the activities and debates around major developments in world politics from the 1930s to today.
There are Education for Socialists that take up the fight for women's rights, the organization of a communist party, the fight against the U.S. war in Vietnam, the fight for an independent Black political party, and much more. Until October 31, Pathfinder is offering 20 percent off on the entire collection of Education for Socialists bulletins to members of the Pathfinder Readers Club. In addition to special discounts like this, members of the Readers Club receive a 15 percent discount on all Pathfinder publications at any of the Pathfinder bookstores around the world. Membership in the Readers Club is $10 a year.
Four Education for Socialists - The Workers and Farmers Government by Joseph Hansen, Workers and Farmers Governments Since the Second World War by Robert Chester, Class, Party, and State and the Eastern European Revolution, and For a Workers and Farmers Government in the United States by Jack Barnes focus on the character of the government that comes to power following an anticapitalist revolution and its role in the fight to expropriate the capitalist class.
This question, first posed directly by V.I. Lenin and other leaders of the Communist International following the victory of the Russian revolution, was pushed to the fore again by the revolutions in China and Eastern Europe following World War II.
The Socialist Workers Party in the United States, as well as communists in other parts of the world, were quick to embrace the Chinese revolution and to organize support for it against the attacks by the imperialist powers and capitalist and feudal forces in China itself. But the revolution there, like those in Eastern Europe, also posed important theoretical questions. How was it possible for working people to take power and begin to reorganize society in their own interests under the petty-bourgeois leadership of Stalinist - and, in the case of China, peasant - parties?
The Cuban revolution, which burst on the scene in 1959, made it possible for the first time since the Soviet Union in the early 1920s for communists to defend and learn from a revolutionary leadership in power.
By looking at all these revolutions together, communists were able to gain a clearer understanding of the irreplaceable power of the workers and farmers government as a tool in the hands of working people. This conquest remains crucial to understanding developments today in the workers states in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China.
Several other Education for Socialists take up the experiences of the workers and farmers governments in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Grenada. The Chinese Revolution and its Development includes several interesting selections, including "The Third Chinese Revolution and its Aftermath," which was approved by the 1955 Socialist Workers Party convention, and "The Chinese Communes," an article on agrarian reform in China.
Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro contains several talks by the Cuban leader not available in other books and pamphlets published or distributed by Pathfinder. These include early speeches like "I Will Be a Marxist-Leninist to the End of My Life," and "The Revolution Must Be a School of Unfettered Thought." In the first, given in December 1961, just two months before the Cuban people declared the socialist character of their revolution at a mass rally where the Second Declaration of Havana was read, Castro noted, "The more we learn what imperialism is - and not by word, but in the flesh and blood of our people,...the more convinced we become of all the truths [Karl] Marx and [Frederick] Engels wrote."
Several Education for Socialists bulletins focus on the history and lessons of the fight against fascist movements in the United States from the capitalist crisis and labor radicalization of the 1930s through the anticommunist crusade led by Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s.
Counter-mobilization: A Strategy to Fight Racist and Fascist Attacks draws on the experiences of the Minneapolis Teamsters movement, which successfully took on the fascist Silver Shirts in Minneapolis in the late 1930s. The discussion by leaders of the Young Socialist Alliance and the Socialist Workers Party in 1975 was organized at the YSA's request after a professor at San Francisco State University invited a member of the National Socialist White People's Party to speak to his class.
In the discussion, Farrell Dobbs, a central leader of the fight to organize the Teamsters Union in the Midwest in the 1930s explains how they had defeated the fascists at that time. The union didn't threaten to bust up the fascist's gathering or argue against their formal right to hold a meeting. Instead, they built the broadest public mobilization possible to isolate the rightist thugs. "What we said is that we're organizing a union defense guard and the guard is going to so conduct itself that it will show the fascists that they can't operate in Minneapolis without a fight," Dobbs said.
For the entire list of Education for Socialists, write to Pathfinder, 410 West Street, New York, NY 10014.
Busy Sales For Pathfinder In Moscow
MOSCOW - Pathfinder sales representatives from Iran,
Sweden, and the United Kingdom are looking forward to
several busy days of sales and promotion at the Moscow
International Book Fair being held here September 5-10.
On the first day the stand was permanently busy in discussions with Russian people who wanted to know more about the ideas of Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, and the leaders of the Communist International in the 1920s. Before we could get all the books unpacked and ready for display, a young Russian man purchased a copy of Women's Evolution by Evelyn Reed. Another book that many visitors to the fair were interested in was America's Revolutionary Heritage by George Novack.
The six Russian-language titles by revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky caught the attention of many peo-ple - young and old - as they walked by. Of particular interest was the four-volume work edited by Trotsky entitled Bulletin of the Opposition.
-ALAN HARRIS