During the last year volunteers in Pathfinder’s book warehouse here have processed several hundred prisoner requests from every corner of the country for the New York-based publisher’s annual print catalog. Workers and farmers behind bars are using the catalog to order an increasing number of Pathfinder titles.

In letters accompanying their orders and requests, the prisoners contacting Pathfinder have indicated a deep interest in socialist ideas. The writings of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, the founders of the modern communist movement, are among the heaviest in demand, along with those by Vladimir Lenin, the central leader of the Russian Revolution. Also popular are books that tell the truth about the revolution in Cuba, including the speeches and writings of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. The speeches of Malcolm X are also in demand.

An increasing number of prisoners also express interest in books and pamphlets about the U.S. labor movement and broader working-class politics in this country, including the fight for women’s liberation. Some have ordered issues of New International, the magazine of Marxist politics and theory that Pathfinder distributes.

In at least one prison volunteers know of, inmates have organized a study group centered on Pathfinder titles.

An e-mail message arrived from another prison ordering a catalog, and explaining with regret that a lack of funds prevented the prison library from ordering any books.

These are some of the comments Pathfinder has received:

An inmate writes from a prison in Texas, “I have started submitting requests to the prison library that they supply us with your books.” He includes his “most sincere revolutionary greetings to Pathfinder Press and all the comrades who have made it possible for inmates like myself to be armed with the truth.” On three occasions during the last year this prisoner has ordered a total of $200 worth of books and pamphlets from Pathfinder.

A Florida inmate told us, “I’m writing from inside the gates. I’m on a quest for knowledge and was told your Book Palace was a good place to start.”

A number of prisoners have contacted Pathfinder after hearing about its stock of titles from fellow working people in prison. “I’ve been hearing about the books that you sell and I would very much like to order some of them,” wrote one man from Illinois. A prisoner in Virginia reported, “I learned of your company through an individual I was conversing with.”

From California, one man wrote, “I acquired your address from a friend. From what he told me…I am very interested in the types of books you offer.” Similarly, a North Carolina prisoner said, “A comrade of mine let me view your catalog…and I’m very interested in purchasing some books.”

To help these fellow working people get “armed with the truth,” as the reader in Texas put it, Pathfinder offers prisoners a 50 percent discount on the cover price for all books and pamphlets. There is a flat fee of $2.50 for shipping and handling each order of one or more titles. Prisoners who request a catalog receive it free of charge.

The mailing address for all catalog requests, correspondence, and book orders is: Pathfinder Press, P.O. Box 162767, Atlanta, GA 30321. Correspondents are asked to include any necessary forms and let us know of any restrictions or guidelines that have to be observed in getting a shipment to a prisoner at each particular prison.

Maceo Dixon and Fred White are volunteers at the Pathfinder distribution warehouse in Atlanta.

Such experiences are recorded in several Pathfinder books. One example is The Struggle is My Life by Nelson Mandela, the central leader of the struggle against the brutal apartheid system in South Africa. In one section, an interview with S.R. “Mac” Maharaj, his fellow prisoner and leader of the African National Congress, provides details of Mandela’s 27-year imprisonment for his revolutionary activities.

In the 1978 interview, Maharaj noted that the quality of the books available to prisoners was “a major problem. They are subject to censorship and the result is that you have the peculiar situation where, though [the authorities] say they would like to censor books which deal with sex and crime, these are in fact the books that are available on a wide scale. But serious books, ones that we are interested in—history, economics, the geography of the world, social questions, social developments—these are very scarce.”

Maharaj adds, “Good novels are very scarce.”

Mandela and other leaders of the ANC organized classes for members in prison to read, study, and gather information about the outside world to further arm themselves for participation in the ongoing anti-apartheid struggle. This entailed a constant struggle to get reading materials into the jails. —M.D., FW  
 
 
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