BY GREG McCARTAN
November 27, 1995
Pathfinder, 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 on page 12.
The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, will be available from Pathfinder in November with a new cover and attractive, more readable typography. Drafted in 1847 as the program of the first international workers organization, the Manifesto is essential reading for youth and workers involved in political protest action and labor struggles.
The pamphlet's newly designed cover features a color reproduction of a section of the Pathfinder Mural. Bookstores and individuals can now place orders. The cover price is $3.95. With this new printing, promoters of Pathfinder literature can approach professors on college campuses who may want to order the Pathfinder edition for their classes.
Pathfinder supporters in several countries have traveled to areas outside the cities where they live to sell socialist literature and reach out to workers and youth.
Norton Sandler reports a three-person team from Des Moines, Iowa, and Peoria, Illinois, visited University of Kansas in Lawrence, introducing students there to the Militant, Perspectiva Mundial, and the Marxist journal New International. Team members also called ahead to set an appointment to show Pathfinder titles to the buyer in the bookstore at the student union.
The team allotted adequate time to prepare for the meeting during their busy swing through Lawrence. The buyer ordered 18 Pathfinder books and a five-pack of the booklet Genocide Against the Indians, by George Novack. Among the titles ordered were Cosmetics, Fashions, and the Exploitation of Women; Lenin's Final Fight; The Truth about Yugoslavia; Teamster Rebellion; and New International no. 9, featuring "The Rise and Fall of the Nicaraguan Revolution."
On a visit to Denver, Colorado, Jill Fein from Salt Lake City teamed up with other Pathfinder backers to visit several chain stores in the area. Afterward they set up a table on the Metro State campus. "A student came by," reports Fein, "and filled out a subscription to the Militant before we could even explain what the paper is about. When asked how he knew about the paper he replied, `I work at ABC Books and they carry a lot of the titles you have on this table,' pointing to February 1965, The Final Speeches, by Malcolm X; Nelson Mandela Speaks; and the Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara. `I figured any paper connected with these books must be all right.' "
During a two-day sales trip in France, Pathfinder promoters from Britain and France found heightened interest in titles by and about Ernesto Che Guevara, a central leader of the Cuban revolution. Several new titles on Guevara have been published in France this year, and several stores ordered Pathfinder's French-language edition of Che Guevara: Economics and Politics in the Transition to Socialism by Carlos Tablada. By visiting nine booksellers or distributors in Paris, supporters garnered orders for some 130 books, pamphlets, and copies of Nouvelle Internationale.
Supporters of Pathfinder in Quebec have been in the middle of protests, rallies, and discussions on the fight for national independence. Carole Caron, a member of the International Association of Machinists in Montreal, reports a "better than average month of sales from the Pathfinder Bookstore. Many people we met at the rallies had never heard of Pathfinder or our bookstore, and there was interest in our titles, especially among young people." Sixty-five Pathfinder books and pamphlets were sold there during October.