BY GREG McCARTAN
This week the Militant begins a regular column, "Selling the Books the Workers of the World Need Now!" Socialist workers, members of the Young Socialists, and supporters of the communist movement in the United States have taken on ambitious goals to sell Pathfinder books: 1,800 books and pamphlets a month through local Pathfinder bookstores, and 1,400 to retail outlets, libraries, college bookstores, and other commercial stores.
As part of this overall goal, socialist workers who are members of industrial unions have taken a goal of selling 400 Pathfinder titles a month to co-workers on the job. The accompanying chart shows initial results of this effort.
In addition to the campaign to sell 1,550 copies of Ernesto Che Guevara's Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War (see column below), socialists are also organizing to win a total of 1,200 members of the Pathfinder Readers Club by May 1.
Weekly results of sales, showing totals for the month, are to be received at the Militant by 8:00 a.m. each Monday to be recorded in the chart.
At recent leadership meetings of socialists active in the industrial unions and of the Socialist Workers Party National Committee, a consistent theme of the reports and discussion was that effective communist work can only be carried out in the mass movement if it is done hand-in-hand with selling revolutionary literature. Many who had begun to do this reported on the interest in getting hold of Pathfinder titles, and on how it can transform the political striking power and functioning of union fractions and local branches of the communist movement.
Melissa Harris from Seattle writes that a team at Western Washington University sold $100 worth of books. Selling from a literature table with large signs calling for a end to the U.S. embargo of Cuba, team members were approached by students "for discussion about Cuba and the politics of Patrick Buchanan all day long," she reports. The most frequently question asked was, "Why do you think the U.S. embargo against Cuba should be ended?" A team member also visited the campus library for a meeting to introduce Pathfinder titles to the book buyer there.
A rapidly developing trend is for socialists to take a bag of books into work and show them around. Being able to see the books and look through them makes it more likely someone will decide to buy one than seeing a Pathfinder catalog alone.
Brad Downs, a member of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union at the General Motors plant in Baltimore had a good week of sales this way, and sent in another note "to follow up on yesterday's report. When I went back to work on Friday a co- worker who joined the Readers Club bought a copy of Racism, Revolution, Reaction: 1861-1877. A third co-worker bought Two Speeches by Malcolm X. I could have sold more of Malcolm's books if I had brought more stock with me."