BY BRIAN WILSON

OBERLIN, Ohio - One of the highlights of the Active Workers and International Socialist Conference was an enthusiastic rally on July 9 to launch a $125,000 Pathfinder Fund.

The ten-week fund, which runs from September 1 through November 12, is aimed at raising resources to reprint and upgrade the hundreds of books and pamphlets Pathfinder publishes to ensure that they are in stock and available for sale.

"Interest in revolutionary literature is clearly on the rise," stated Maggie Trowe, director of the Pathfinder Print Shop. "There's a real demand for these books in the United States and throughout the world."

Socialist workers have been selling literature to striking members of the International Association of Machinists at the McDonnell-Douglas plant in St. Louis, Missouri.

Latino activists, who are marching some 750 miles through California from Sacramento to San Diego to protest attacks on affirmative action, have also been buying Pathfinder titles. One of them, while marching, has also been reading out loud sections from The Changing Face of U.S. Politics: Working-class politics and the unions on the Chicano liberation movement.

A team of Pathfinder supporters from Sweden and the United States recently sold $450 worth of literature in Germany at protests against government attacks on the social wage. At a meeting in Berlin of about 500 students protesting tuition hikes, several of these activists were eager to get a copy of Thomas Sankara Speaks.

Some 25 Pathfinder titles were sold during a tour of Australia and New Zealand in June by Leonardo Tamayo (Urbano). Tamayo is a retired colonel in Cuba's Ministry of the Interior and one of the survivors of the 1966-67 guerrilla campaign led by Ernesto Che Guevara in Bolivia.

In Townsville, Australia, which is located about 1,200 miles north of Sydney, a high school student upon hearing about Pathfinder sent in her mail order for three books.

In France earlier this year, hundreds of copies of Nouvelle Internationale, a Marxist magazine of politics and theory, were sold to workers and students protesting government cutbacks.

In Athens, Greece, the newest bookstore featuring Pathfinder titles opened its doors for business at the end of April.

"This response, combined with the fact that Pathfinder bookstores during the first six months of 1996 have ordered as many books from Pathfinder Press in New York as they did for all of 1995, point to the importance of prioritizing an ambitious reprint program," stated Trowe.

Pathfinder aims to keep its entire inventory of several hundred books and pamphlets in stock. In addition it distributes the writings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin.

Last year Pathfinder published 29 books - both new and reprints. This year 25 books have already come off the presses, including 17 in the last three months. In addition, the publishing house has just made available on CD-ROM the collection of the Marxist magazine New International from 1934 to today.

Some of the next books to be reprinted include: Leon Trotsky on China, Leon Trotsky on France, The Lesser Evil?, The Founding of the Socialist Workers Party, Revolutionary Continuity, The First Ten Years of American Communism, Reform or Revolution, and The Chinese Communist Party in Power.

Socialist workers, youth, and others present at the concluding rally pledged more than $69,000 toward the $125,000 goal.

Those wishing to make a contribution toward this fund should make checks payable to Pathfinder Press and send them to: Pathfinder Press, 410 West St., New York, N.Y. 10014 or contact the nearest Pathfinder distributors listed in the directory on page 12.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home