The $105,000 is needed for Pathfinder to keep producing books that workers and farmers need. A dozen new Pathfinder titles will be rolling off the presses between now and the end of the year. And more than 30 existing titles--many of them sold out or running out--are being reprinted.

A growing number of working people and youth are seeking out such books to understand the brutal and volatile life they will more and more face and to act in defense of their interests.

They sense the increasing signs that capitalism is dragging millions toward a massive debt collapse and a depression that has already begun in parts of the world. They hear top U.S. officials assert the government’s "right" to carry out secret trials and detentions in defiance of the Bill of Rights. They see Washington laying the groundwork to launch a "preemptive" war against Iraq--an imperialist war that will engulf the entire Mideast, from Saudi Arabia to Israel.

And many today are engaged in struggles--from union fights such as that of the West Coast longshore workers, to protests against the police brutalization of working people, to actions in opposition to Washington’s economic war against Cuba.

These workers, student youth, and farmers are the main audience for Pathfinder books, which explain these developments and offer a working-class road out of the capitalist disaster. And they will also be the main source of contributors to the Pathfinder Fund.  
 
Winning first-time contributors
Supporters of this fund drive are preparing to win dozens of first-time contributors. This includes fellow workers in packinghouses, coal mines, garment and textile plants, and other workplaces, as well as young people who are becoming interested in the communist movement.

A contribution from a worker or farmer who has recently become a reader of Pathfinder books--whether it’s $20 or $100 or $5--will give momentum to winning new contributions from other working people. And it will encourage longtime contributors to Pathfinder to boost their donations.

To wage a bold fund-raising campaign, partisans of Pathfinder are organizing plans for the next 11 weeks to ensure a steady, weekly collection of payments from September 1 through November 17. In every city they are preparing Pathfinder Fund benefits within the next few weeks.

In London, a public meeting will be held September 6 to celebrate the publication of the new title Their Trotsky and Ours by Jack Barnes, featuring Michel Prairie, Path–finder’s French-language editor. The same weekend, Romina Green and Martín Koppel are speaking in Philadelphia on the class struggle in South America and prospects for building the socialist movement in the United States.

Other meetings will focus on topics ranging from class-struggle developments in the United States to the 40th anniversary of the October 1962 "missile" crisis, when the Cuban people stood down Washington’s invasion moves and threat of nuclear war.

The fund drive will get a boost from the simultaneous campaign to gain new subscribers to the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial, in which campaigners will be going into the streets with literature tables or door-to-door in working-class neighborhoods. They will meet people interested in Pathfinder books who are potential contributors to the fund effort.  
 
Fall publishing program
Pathfinder has undertaken an ambitious publishing program this fall. Adding to its arsenal of more than 375 books and pamphlets in several languages, the publisher is preparing 12 new titles between now and the end of December. Promoting, selling, and studying these new books will generate momentum that can be used to win contributions for the $105,000 fund. These books are:

• October 1962: The ‘Missile’ Crisis as Seen from Cuba, by Tomás Diez;
• A new Spanish-language edition and an expanded English edition of Malcolm X Talks to Young People;
• Marianas in Combat: Teté Puebla and the Mariana Grajales Women’s Platoon in Cuba’s Revolutionary War, in both English and Spanish;
• A French-language edition of Their Trotsky and Ours, adding to the English and Spanish;
• New Spanish and French editions of The Changing Face of U.S. Politics, by Jack Barnes;
• issue no. 12 of New International, a magazine of Marxist politics and theory distributed by Pathfinder, with documents on the unfolding class struggle in the world and perspectives for building the communist movement;
• A second French edition of The History of American Trotskyism, by James P. Cannon;
• The Assault on Moncada, by Mario Mencía, on the birth of the revolutionary movement that led Cuban workers and farmers to the 1959 revolutionary victory;
• The memoirs, in English and Spanish, of Cuban revolutionary leader Armando Hart on the revolutionary urban underground in Cuba in the 1950s.

In addition, Pathfinder is reprinting dozens of titles, including many that are selling out. One is Malcolm X on Afro-American History--an order of 100 was recently placed by a college in Fresno, California. Other out-of-stock titles that are going back to press include Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It by Leon Trotsky; Maurice Bishop Speaks; and The Great Labor Uprising of 1877 by Philip Foner.

Many of these titles will be featured at international book fairs and festivals this fall. These include the Fête de L’Humanité, sponsored by the French Communist Party, and the Spanish CP’s Fiesta, large festivals being held September 13-15 in Paris and Madrid, respectively. Others are the September 19-22 Gothenburg Book Fair, the largest such annual event in Scandinavia, and the Guadalajara International Book Fair in the first week of December, one of the largest book fairs in Latin America. International teams of Pathfinder supporters will be staffing booths at all these events.

The chart on this page lists the quotas adopted in local areas so far. In the next issue the Militant will run a chart with the initial results of the fund campaign. Checks should be made out to Pathfinder and sent to the Militant, 410 West Street, New York, NY 10014. To be counted in the Militant’s weekly scoreboard, payments must be received in the Militant offices by Tuesdays at noon.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home