"Pathfinder supporters also scored successes with Spanish-language titles at a store in Chicago," McArthur continues. "Again, orders for Capitalism's World Disorder may have to wait for a Spanish edition. But we placed a total of 35 books in several stores. Titles by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara aroused particular interest."

Nat London and Thierry Bernard report from Paris that two demonstrators at an October 16 march by 50,000 workers demanding jobs and an end to layoffs "filled out order forms for a French-language edition of the book."

"Early next year," said Michael Baumann of Pathfinder Press, when asked about the publication schedule for the Spanish and French translations of Capitalism's World Disorder: Working-Class Politics at the Millennium.

This will come as welcome news to the socialist workers and youth in a number of different countries who have joined the campaign to place this book in stores and libraries. The working class is increasingly multilingual, and not just in the United States. "The growing internationalization of the working class… is unprecedented" in every imperialist country, says Jack Barnes in one of the speeches published in Capitalism's World Disorder. Barnes' remarks about Germany apply to many other countries as well: "Immigrants … bring new experiences and give new power to struggles by workers."

In 500 pages of text and photographs, this book gives an up-to-date picture of those struggles and the world of "capitalist disorder" in which they are unfolding.

The accompanying chart, sent to the Militant by Nan Bailey for the Socialist Workers Party's Trade Union Committee, shows the results socialist workers in the industrial unions have had in placing the book in bookstores and libraries and in selling copies to individual co-workers and others.  
 
 

Discussions with Spokane workers

We got a good response from all the stores we visited. At one, which carries books, CDs, and videotapes, the book buyer spent more than 20 minutes going over the catalog and the selection of books we'd brought, and discussing politics in the area. She ordered three copies of the book, and circled 14 other Pathfinder titles she planned to order the next day. They included To Speak the Truth by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, and Notebook of an Agitator by James P. Cannon.

At another store in the area the buyer said he thought that interest in unions and the history of working people's struggles is increasing. He decided to order two copies each of three Pathfinder titles, including The Changing Face of U.S. Politics: Working-Class Politics and the Trade Unions, and Teamster Rebellion.

We had a wide-ranging discussion at the home of another locked-out steelworker who is already reading Capitalism's World Disorder. He had bought it at a Pathfinder table two weeks earlier, at a Spokane rally and march celebrating one year of the Kaiser steelworkers' resistance. He was interested in the steps we are taking to distribute Pathfinder's titles more widely.

A farmer who is also a locked-out steelworker invited us to his farm Sunday morning. Over coffee, sitting by their wood-burning stove, he and his wife talked about the fight they had gone through to save their dairy farm. He had bought a copy of Pathfinder's pamphlet Farmers Face the Crisis of the 1990s at the one-year anniversary rally in Spokane, and this time decided to get a copy of New International no. 4 on the fight for a workers and farmers government. He was very interested in the idea of an alliance of workers and farmers when team members raised it. "How can we organize such a thing?" he wanted to know.  

Scott Breen is a member of the International Association of Machinists.  
 
 

Store orders 50 Pathfinder books

The visited followed two weeks' successful efforts in the area. A visit to a library in another northern New Jersey town netted the placement of six Pathfinder titles, including Capitalism's World Disorder.

Socialist rail workers visited one other store in New Jersey that co-workers frequent to browse, sip coffee, and buy books. The store manager became convinced to take three copies of Capitalism's World Disorder after we showed her the photos, discussed the rightist politician Patrick Buchanan, and suggested that it could her go in the stores "millennium" section. She purchased 28 titles in total — a broad selection from Art and Revolution by Leon Trotsky to Spanish language titles by and about Che Guevara.

In the last two weeks socialist rail workers at Amtrak have been building solidarity with the Domino Sugar strike among their co-workers, two of whom visited the picket line for the first time. During this time a copy of Capitalism's World Disorder was sold to a yard conductor.

Jane Harris is a member of the United Transportation Union.  
 
 
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