BY MARTÍN KOPPEL
"We got our first placement of Capitalism's World Disorder
at a bookstore so far - a store in Hampton bought two copies
of the book," reported Nan Bailey from Virginia's Tidewater
region.
Bailey is heading up a four-day team of socialist workers and a young socialist who have been taking this and other Pathfinder titles to several bookstores and libraries in the area together with selling the Militant and other revolutionary literature to working people at a number of worksites and elsewhere.
The team has met with Steelworkers at the giant Newport News shipyard.
The militant four-month strike there, which ended in early August, has had a big impact on other workers and farmers in the region who are inspired by their example of labor power and solidarity.
Also in the team's plans are sales and discussions at two meat-packing plants, a visit to another shipyard, and a table at a college campus.
Bailey reports, "Some of our most productive results have been at book outlets that were recommended by militant workers and others we met in the area, including Militant subscribers."
The Virginia team was one of the initial efforts in a new campaign, launched by the Socialist Workers Party's National Committee following the August 5-7 Active Workers Conference in Ohio, to sell Capitalism's World Disorder: Working-Class Politics at the Millennium to a broad range of bookstores, libraries, and other outlets where working people acquire books.
Capitalism's World Disorder contains five talks by Socialist Workers Party national secretary Jack Barnes. The book serves as a guide to action for working-class fighters, presenting a class approach to understanding the vast changes that have swept world politics since the October 1987 near- meltdown of the world stock markets and the initial consequences of imperialism's march toward fascism and war.
The campaign to sell this book, which will last through the end of the year, is centered in regions around the country where working people are engaged in resistance to the assaults of the ruling rich, as well as areas where socialist workers are organized in local and factory units. The ability to carry out this concerted effort is based on the objective political situation today - the new mood of combativity and growing confidence among groups of vanguard workers and farmers who increasingly see that we face a common class enemy as well as a common future.
Advancing course of proletarianization
The SWP National Committee decided to organize the campaign
to sell Capitalism's World Disorder in such a way that every
book sale to a store or library will be part of involving
socialist workers more deeply in the actions of the new
proletarian movement emerging today in city and
countryside - above all through extending the reach of the
communist movement in coal-mining areas and among farmers,
meatpackers, and garment and textile workers. The
campaign - integrated into the daily political work on the
job, in working-class neighborhoods, at plant gates, and on
picket lines - will be led through the national and local
leaderships of the units of communist workers in the
industrial unions.
The party's National Committee affirmed that it is the responsibility of the SWP leadership bodies on every level to demonstrate in practice that every member of the party can be fully integrated into these efforts, as part of acting in a politically centralized way. Key to success will be the participation of the Young Socialists in this campaign, from plant-gate sales to every single regional team.
One initiative along these lines is a team that headed to eastern Pennsylvania in late August, fielded by socialist workers - including a member of the Young Socialists - from New York, Philadelphia, and Newark, New Jersey. The team went to a livestock auction near the Pennsylvania border in Hackettstown, New Jersey, where they met several young farmers and others who engaged in discussions on the program of action proposed by the New Jersey Socialist Workers candidates in response to the devastating social consequences of the drought in the eastern United States. Six people purchased copies of the Militant.
The team also sold at the entrance of the Jeddo Coal Co. mine near Hazleton, Pennsylvania, where union miners waged a hard-fought strike that ended earlier this year. In Wilkes- Barre, a worker who had earlier purchased Capitalism's World Disorder arranged to meet them to suggest which retail outlets in the area could be approached to place Pathfinder books. The team also planned to sell at the entrance to a garment shop and at a community college where workers take classes to obtain mine safety certification papers.
The new campaign builds on gains of the March-June sales drive in which socialist workers sold 940 copies of Capitalism's World Disorder, especially the final weeks of that effort, which developed some real campaign momentum.
More recently, the Communist League in the United Kingdom embarked on a drive to sell an extra 200 copies of the book before the end of the year by involving the entire membership of the party in the effort to place this Pathfinder title in a large array of bookshops, libraries, and other stores. Their initial successes - almost 40 copies of Capitalism's World Disorder placed in London and Manchester bookshops in the first three days alone, as well as boosted sales on the job - underscore the fact that this campaign and how it is being organized will be key to beginning to reverse the decline of Pathfinder sales of the last two years, a decline that does not correspond to the objective political openings today.
The Active Workers Conference registered the growing receptivity to Pathfinder books, New International magazine, and the communist press among proletarian fighters, who increasingly find this literature essential to their effective participation in class-struggle activity.
Help from fellow farmers and workers
Recent experience indicates that fellow farmers and workers
will be glad to recommend where to place Pathfinder titles in
commercial outlets and libraries where others like themselves
seek books, from rural cooperatives to bookstores, department
stores, and record/video stores.
A team in central Illinois began a successful weekend of work by following up a tip from a steelworker in St. Louis, who cited the case of a co-worker who had purchased The Changing Face of U.S. Politics: Working-Class Politics and the Trade Unions, by Jack Barnes, at a campus bookstore in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. The bookstore buyer remarked that four copies of that book had been purchased in recent months, adding her observation that "books by Jack Barnes sell." A copy of Capitalism's World Disorder was featured on a "New Titles" shelf near the front, and she indicated the bookstore would place an order with Pathfinder that week.
The team ended up visiting five bookstores and one library, selling the Militant to nine workers at the Bridgestone- Firestone tire plant in Decatur, and taking some time for political discussion with a politically active coal miner in the area.
Another team in the coalfields spent four days in southern Illinois and western Kentucky in mid-August. "We took Capitalism's World Disorder and other Pathfinder titles to 20 bookstores and libraries in the tri-state area, and sold the Militant to more than 90 miners and other workers and farmers," reported Ted Leonard, a textile worker from Boston.
An important aspect of this campaign is to organize training sessions to equip all participants to answer the basic questions bookstore buyers ask, and to ensure the professional standards expected of promoters of Pathfinder literature. The team in Virginia, for example, got off to a good start with a short orientation for all team members by a rail worker who is experienced both in communist work on the job and in placing books in stores and libraries.