These books contain the historic lessons of 150 years of the modern workers movement and an analysis of the unfolding dynamics of the world class struggle today. In recent months, volunteers have begun shouldering many new responsibilities and with them has come a new name—the Pathfinder Printing Project—to more accurately express the day-to-day work of project volunteers.

The biggest change is the establishment of a project “print team,” composed of five experienced production team leaders. This print team works with other project production teams on an expanded quality-control process and a final check of the CD-ROM’s of Pathfinder books produced by this corps of international volunteers. They then organize to send the CD’s directly to printers they have selected in North America, see through all production-related questions, including quality control and delivery of the new stock to Pathfinder’s distribution center in Atlanta, Georgia. The print team makes its decisions on which printers to use based on holding down costs while at the same time maintaining Pathfinder’s quality standards.

Scheduled to roll off the presses in June, as the first titles organized start to finish in this way by the print team, are reprints of In Defense of Marxism by Leon Trotsky; Kronstadt by Trotsky and V.I. Lenin; and Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State by Frederick Engels.  
 
Grows out five years of work
These expanded responsibilities flow from the work project volunteers have been carrying out the past half decade. Working under the direction of a steering committee based in San Francisco, volunteers have completed the conversion to digital format of 363 books, pamphlets, and bulletins. Since July 2002 alone, they have prepared 46 reprints and eight new books as well as an attractive new Pathfinder 2003 catalog.

As volunteers developed skills and gained the confidence needed to produce high-quality books, step by step they expanded the scope of their work to include the formatting, proofreading, and cover checks on all new books published by Pathfinder as well as the reprints.

In addition, for a year now supporters of the communist movement have joined Socialist Workers Party (SWP) members and Young Socialists to organize sales of Pathfinder books to bookstores and libraries. The supporters are also organizing the production and mailing of high-quality promotional literature. A team of these volunteers has the responsibility for updating and maintaining the publisher’s attractive web site, www.pathfinderpress.com, which is becoming an increasingly effective tool in the sale and promotion of Pathfinder books.

In September 2002, project volunteers took on another major responsibility: operating the publisher’s new warehouse and distribution center in Atlanta, Georgia. From this transshipment center, volunteers send Pathfinder books to destinations worldwide, maintain the inventory levels, and monitor Pathfinder’s accounts. Flowing from this, volunteers there have begun to receive and record the payments from the stores and libraries that purchase Pathfinder books. Over the Memorial Day weekend, volunteers—some working in Atlanta, and several others working at home on computers at various locations—will complete the data entry work necessary to have an updated set of the publisher’s record of book inventory and customer history that will facilitate the work of those who organize the Atlanta business and distribution center.

Printing Project volunteers are taking on other important new work that contributes to the production of Pathfinder books. One such project is the scanning of the notes of reports and talks adopted by SWP conventions and leadership committees. These notes are the basic foundation on which many Pathfinder titles and New International articles are built. By using these notes, transcribed reports and talks by SWP leaders Jack Barnes and Mary-Alice Waters, for example, have been transformed into books and pamphlets such as The Changing Face of U.S. Politics; Capitalism’s World Disorder; The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning; Their Trotsky and Ours; Cuba and the Coming American Revolution; Communist Continuity and the Fight for Women’s Liberation; the lead articles in the majority of issues of New International magazine; introductions or prefaces to many titles on the Cuban revolution; Rosa Luxemburg Speaks; The History of American Trotskyism; Cosmetics, Fashions, and the Exploitation of Women; Letters from Prison; and others.

Now, having the notes available in digital form over the Internet will facilitate the production of future books, and also allows the editors to work simultaneously in more than one location.  
 
Militant index, shared network
Other volunteer teams are now preparing a complete index of the Militant newspaper from 1928 to today and digital files of a selection of material important for the work of the communist movement today from the SWP internal bulletin.

Last but not least, the Printing Project leadership has recently organized several members of its international team to work closely with the SWP leadership on establishing new computer, Internet, and data-base tools that meet the needs of the communist movement today.  
 
 
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