BY SARA LOBMAN
With one week left in Pathfinder's extraordinary sale of the collected works of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, and V.I. Lenin, 51 sets of the Collected Works of Marx and Engels have been ordered and 37 of the Collected Works of Lenin. The sets - 45 volumes each - normally sell for $1,100 and $500 respectively. Until January 31 they are on sale for members of the Pathfinder Readers Club for $399 and $199, a more than 60 percent discount.

They include almost all the letters, speeches, articles, and other works of these three revolutionary leaders and together contain an unbelievable wealth of lessons learned by the working-class - who Marx and Engels called the gravediggers of capitalism - from the mid-nineteenth century through the early years of the Russian revolution.

The Pathfinder Bookstore in Atlanta has sent in orders for three sets of Marx and Engels' collected works and two of Lenin's. "We are really campaigning around the sale and think we have several more sales in the hopper," Floyd Fowler wrote from that city. Four Pathfinder readers in Cleveland have taken advantage of the offer, ordering a total of three sets of Marx and Engels and two of Lenin.

In addition to these two cities, orders have come in from Boston; Chicago; Denver; Greensboro, North Carolina; Columbia, South Carolina; Los Angeles; Morgantown, West Virginia; New York; Newark, New Jersey; Philadelphia; Salt Lake City; Seattle; and Washington, D.C.; as well as Australia, Canada, England, Iran, Ireland, and New Zealand.

Pathfinder is also offering several smaller collections of writings by Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Bob Miller, who works at the Ford plant in Edison, New Jersey, reports that three of his co-workers who are members of the Pathfinder Readers Club have purchased eight books and pamphlets after seeing the ad in the Militant (see pages 8-9).

One worker bought Genesis of Capital, The Housing Question, and Marx and Engels on the United States. Another bought the Spanish-language editions of Genesis of Capital; Value, Price, and Profit; and The Peasant War in Germany by Marx and Engels, and The Right of Nations to Self Determination by Lenin. A third bought The Wages System by Engels.

More than half of the individuals ordering the collected works have taken advantage of Pathfinder's layaway plan.

Readers can reserve a set with a 25 percent deposit. Pathfinder will ship the books upon receiving full payment anytime before March 31.

In New York, where 10 people have ordered one or both of the collected works, the Young Socialists and Socialist Workers Party have launched a six-part public class series on the writings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. The classes will cover topics such as "How the first communist organization was built," "What are wages," "The communist view on trade unions," and "The strategy of the Bolsheviks in the Russian revolution."

More than 30 people attended the first class, where the discussion took up the role of propaganda in the German revolution of 1848, the strengths and weaknesses of the revolutionary workers movement before the Communist Manifesto was written, and other topics.

A question at the end of the class led to a discussion on the alliance of the working class and the peasantry, sending class participants back to the collected works to check out what Engels had to say about the peasant question in France and Germany, and what Lenin wrote about the worker- peasant alliance in Russia.

Pathfinder supporters in Montreal recently wrote a letter proposing they try to track down French-language titles by Marx, Engels, and Lenin that may exist in warehouses around the world and arrange to purchase them to better make them available to workers and youth attracted to communism in Quebec, France, and elsewhere.

To order the collected works or other books by Marx, Engels, and Lenin, write to Pathfinder at 410 West Street, New York, NY, or contact the nearest Pathfinder Bookstore listed on page 12.  
 
 
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