The day before the Chicago meeting, participants in a Militant Labor Forum in Paris celebrated the publication of Le désordre mondial du capitalisme, the French-language translation of Capitalism's World Disorder. Michel Prairie, Ali Benali, and Tony Hunt of the Communist Leagues in Canada, France, and the United Kingdom respectively, spoke on a panel about the book and their efforts to get it and other Marxist books and pamphlets into the hands of workers and farmers resisting assaults by the capitalist rulers in those countries.

SWP national secretary Jack Barnes read greetings to the Chicago gathering from the Paris meeting held the previous evening. He saluted the active involvement in the Pathfinder Reprint Project of supporters of the communist movement whose first language is French, or who are experienced French-language translators. In addition to their participation in the international volunteer effort to keep Pathfinder's entire catalog of more than 350 titles in print, some of these supporters have also alloted time to help translate a number of these titles into French.

This translation work is organized through the enormous efforts of the Communist League in Canada and is directed by Prairie out of Montreal.

Both the Paris meeting, and the three held in the United States, celebrated plans to prioritize over the next few years the editing and translation into French, and the publication, of The History of American Trotskyism and The Struggle for a Proletarian Party by James P. Cannon, In Defense of Marxism by Leon Trotsky, and Teamster Rebellion by Farrell Dobbs. Socialism on Trial by Cannon is also projected.

To aid the organization and centralization of the translation work, a French-language Internet database had just been completed that week, Barnes reported to the Chicago meeting.

Volunteers set up a computer there with an Internet link to display the new tool, which attracted a lot of interest from participants. The Pathfinder Reprint Project database, through which the work of the project's volunteers is organized, served as the model for the new site.

Similar work in translating key Pathfinder titles into Spanish was announced by Barnes as well, to a rousing reception at all three meetings. The Spanish-language magazine Perspectiva Mundial has begun serializing The History of American Trotksyism, and will print a chapter each month in preparation for its publication as a Pathfinder book. PM editor Martín Koppel is centralizing this translation and publication effort. The Struggle for a Proletarian Party and Teamster Rebellion will follow.

Translators into Spanish, like those involved in the French-language project, are drawn from qualified volunteers in the reprint project, as well as party members.

Meanwhile, Pathfinder supporters in Sweden are beginning work on translations of Capitalism's World Disorder and The Changing Face of U.S. Politics. Selections in Swedish from both will be published in an interim format and posted on the Internet while the translation work is under way.

"Who would have predicted the number of Pathfinder titles that are now on sale in Farsi in Iran?" asked Barnes at the New York meeting. Ma'mud Shirvani, Pathfinder's Farsi-language editor, was on the platform of that meeting. A blowup of the striking, colorful cover of the new Iranian edition of "The Sea Change in Working-Class Politics," the opening chapter of Capitalism's World Disorder, hung behind the podium. By the time of the Chicago meeting, Barnes was able to hold up a copy of the completed book to show the audience.

This new title and translations of several other Pathfinder publications will be on sale in the Farsi section of the Tehran International Book Fair in early May.

On to Tehran!

Nat London from Paris contributed to this article.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home