BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS
NEW YORK - As the Militant went to press this week, nearly 200 people participated in a meeting at City College of New York (CCNY) on "100 Years of Struggle Against U.S. Imperialism: Africa, Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines." It was sponsored by a number of campus and other groups.

In her talk at the meeting, Mary-Alice Waters, editor of the Bolivian Diary by Ernesto Che Guevara published by Pathfinder Press, pointed out that the gathering was taking place as Washington is marching working people of the United States and the rest of the world toward a slaughterous war against the people of Iraq. She referred to comments U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright had made the day before that "what we are doing is serving the role of the indispensable nation to see what we can do to make the world safer for our children and grandchildren and for those people around the world who follow the rules."

This assault against Iraq, Waters said, will be followed by other imperialist wars, as the dominant capitalist powers will inexorably drag humanity toward another world interimperialist slaughter - unless working people stop them by taking power out of the hands of the exploiting classes. The Cuban socialist revolution, she said, clearly points the way forward not only for those fighting for national liberation and for ending imperialist domination, like fighters in Puerto Rico, but for working people inside the United States as well.

The panel of speakers included Félix Wilson, Deputy Ambassador of Cuba's Interests Section in Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rican independence fighter Rafael Cancel Miranda. (An article on the event will appear in the next issue.)

Over the previous few weeks, members of the Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialists built this event on the job, at plant gates, on campuses, at picket lines protesting Washington's plans to slaughter the Iraqi people, and at meetings in defense of abortion rights.

Renewed resistance
Based on the political perspectives discussed and adopted at the convention of the Socialist Workers Party and international socialist conference in June 1997, members and supporters of the SWP, Young Socialists, and communist leagues in other countries recognized new openings to win a hearing for revolutionary ideas among workers and youth.

These perspectives and the tasks that flowed from them for disciplined communist organizations were confirmed and concretized in the course of a round of four regional socialist conferences held across North America - in Chicago, Birmingham, Toronto, and Seattle - between October 1997 and the end of January of this year. The featured speakers at each of these gatherings were Waters and SWP national secretary Jack Barnes.

One indication of the expanding opportunities for communists worldwide, discussed in the talks by Waters at the four gatherings, is the political strengthening of Cuba's socialist revolution over the past couple of years, as the worst of the economic and political crisis precipitated by the sudden collapse of trade relations with the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union has passed. Discussions with workers, military personnel, and youth around the Pathfinder Press stall during the recently concluded Eighth International Book Fair in Havana (see front-page article) is an example of what has opened up, as the battle for beans and potatoes has eased in Cuba.

A second factor is the evidence that the political retreat of the working class and labor movement in North America, Western Europe, and most other imperialist centers has bottomed out. The bosses and their governments don't find it as easy today as five or ten years ago simply to beat back working-class resistance by stretching out strikes or lockouts and passing legislation to push back the social wage and union rights won by labor and its allies.

Barnes called attention to this shift in his June convention report, pointing to the example of the electoral defeats of the incumbent bourgeois conservative regimes in the United Kingdom and France by, respectively, the class- collaborationist Labour Party and Socialist Party/Communist Party coalition. The outcome of the hard-fought United Parcel Workers strike in the United States in August and early September provided further confirmation. The talks by Barnes and discussion from the floor at the subsequent conferences followed the evolution of these and other developments in the class struggle from the San Francisco Bay Area to events in Germany, Sweden, New Zealand, and elsewhere.

A third, related indication is the modest increase in the recruitment of youth to the communist movement and, above all, the evidence that a layer of them are taking on more and more leadership responsibility. Young fighters are shouldering leadership of the trade union work of the communist movement, in the print shop, and in political collaboration with fellow revolutionists around the world.

These developments, in turn, have put the SWP and Young Socialists on a footing to respond to Washington's accelerated war moves against Iraq.

Members, supporters respond
To respond to these growing political opportunities and challenges, SWP and YS members in industrial unions are holding a round of national meetings to discuss how to campaign more effectively among their co-workers and other unionists. Socialist workers in the International Association of Machinists (IAM) and the United Steelworkers of America (USWA), for example, are meeting in Washington, D.C., and Minneapolis respectively February 21-22.

Coming out of the round of regional conferences, party branches are beginning to discuss how to expand and regularize sales of communist literature at plant gates, how to organize their forces and political reach in a variety of factories and unions in each city, how to clean up Pathfinder bookstores and meeting halls, how to plan more effective public forums where the voice of militant labor can be heard each week - how to function in a more disciplined and collective manner.

Active supporters of the SWP are also pitching in to respond to these political developments. In San Francisco, a recent meeting of active supporters had a wide-ranging discussion of the party's campaigning efforts, how to begin raising money for the spring party-building fund, and how to fill up the roster for bookstore staffing to free up party members to do more plant-gate sales and political work on campuses and elsewhere.

In Los Angeles, Robin Maisel a long-time member and supporter of the communist movement, recently sent in $200 for a rush order of copies of the special International Socialist Review supplement to the Militant featuring the talk by Mary- Alice Waters "Pathfinder Press was born with the October revolution." Waters gave the presentation at a conference in Havana, Cuba, on political publishing. "I would like to do a mailing to supporters and others in southern California as a fund raiser," Maisel wrote.

Following up on Maisel's idea, Militant editors have decided to reissue the talk by Waters as part of an 8 1/2"x11" format booklet, which will be available soon. Waters gave her presentation at one of the meetings surrounding the February 4-10 Havana book fair. The new Militant booklet will include another talk Waters gave at the launching of Pathfinder's Pombo: A Man of Che's `guerrilla' during the book fair, and related articles from recent issues of the paper.

Communist workers and youth from around the world will be heading to Cairo, Egypt, March 4 to participate in an international meeting of youth. This author, along with Young Socialists leader Jack Willey, will be participating in the gathering to assess the World Festival of Youth and Students held in Cuba last summer and to discuss the next steps in building an anti-imperialist youth movement. They will also report for the Militant on the response by working people in North Africa and the Middle East to Washington's attempted slaughter of the Iraqi people.

Revolutionizing book production
These openings for the communist movement to recruit have encouraged the steps now under way to revolutionize the production of revolutionary books and pamphlets in Pathfinder's print shop, to meet the growing political demand.

The print shop's leadership and staff are working to rapidly select, acquire, and begin using labor-saving machinery that will allow them to send electronic files of books directly from the computer to printing plate.

To make this revolution in book production feasible, supporters of the communist movement have responded to a appeal during the Seattle conference to begin organizing to produce digital manuscripts of books ready for printing plates.

In a report adopted by the 1991 convention of the Socialist Workers Party, party leader Mary-Alice Waters explained the importance of organizing the work of the print shop - including decisions on machinery and the use of valuable factory space - on the basis of the goals the communist movement is working to achieve.

Rather than piling up large inventories of books that deteriorate - in the process either wasting resources on expensive warehousing costs, or misallocating precious production footage for dead storage - the aim, Waters said, must be to keep the expanding arsenal of Pathfinder titles in print in the quantities needed to meet the demand for revolutionary literature.

Only then, Waters said, can we make the right decisions "about what kind of machinery we need to efficiently do these kinds of short runs." Armed with that understanding, she added, the response of members and supporters of the communist movement will be: "If that's what the party needs, we've got to have the machinery to do it."

At the opening of the 1990s, supporters of the communist movement raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to make possible the purchase of two Heidelberg sheet fed presses to enable Pathfinder books to be produced in small quantities and with increased quality. Today, raising the capital necessary for modern computer-to-plate equipment is the next step along this road, enabling the sheetfed presses to be used to much greater effect. This step will allow quick turnaround, short- run printing that can bring the books and pamphlets out in a timely way, at lower costs, and with a smaller print shop staff.

"Eliminating most of the labor in the shop's prepress department will also allow us to concentrate on improving productivity and efficiency in the bindery, on the presses, and in other departments in the plant," said José Aravena, a member of the Young Socialists who heads up the bindery department of the shop.

A revolution is also under way in how the Pathfinder editorial staff organizes its work. Staff members have begun training in desktop publishing. "When the idea was raised to transform book production along these lines, I initially wondered whether we would need to substantially increase the Pathfinder staff," said Mike Taber, a Pathfinder editor who took part in the meetings with volunteers in San Francisco last week.

"Now, after seeing what the volunteers have already accomplished, I not only think this will not be necessary, but the overall size of the printing and publishing staffs can be reduced."

Ruth Cheney is the organizer of the steering committee of four supporters of the communist movement in the San Francisco area who are centralizing the international project to digitize some 350 Pathfinder books.

So far volunteers from Birmingham, Alabama; Boston; Chicago; Detroit; Miami; New York; and San Francisco have written to organizers in the Bay Area saying they'd like to join the effort, Cheney said. (See excerpt from Cheney's letter to initial volunteers on page 4).

Only those who can demonstrate ability to sustain the exacting standards for quality work and accuracy that Pathfinder Press is known for will be accepted into full participation in the project. Those who join are expected to use their own resources, or funds they can raise, to purchase needed computer equipment and software or to finance travel, telephone calls, and other needs.

Many of those who have come forward, including Cheney and two other volunteer organizers in San Francisco, are supporters of the communist movement who once worked in Pathfinder's print shop. Their knowledge of the type of work that goes into Pathfinder book production - and of what is needed to get rid of time-wasting bottlenecks and inefficiencies - is invaluable to the success of the project.

Toni Gorton, now an auto worker in Detroit and a supporter of the Socialist Workers Party, worked in the prepress department of Pathfinder's shop and has designed many Pathfinder books and book covers. She has decided to take some time off work at the end of February and come to New York to help standardize the design of books and finalize templates that will be used by volunteers in formatting digital manuscripts.

No member of the Socialist Workers Party, Young Socialists, and their sister organizations in other countries will be involved in the digitization work. The important work of supporters who will do the project will free up party and YS members to maximize sales of revolutionary literature at plant gates, campuses, and working-class communities, respond to political and union struggles, and recruit new members.

If you would like to volunteer for the effort to scan, proofread, and format Pathfinder books contact Ruth Cheney at 102616.3037@compuserve.com, or write to the Pathfinder Digitizing project, c/o Pathfinder Bookstore, 3284 23rd St., San Francisco, CA 94110. Tel: (415) 282-6255.

Organizers in San Francisco have asked all those who are now working to scan or proofread books to inform Cheney of the current stage of their work.

Next week's Militant will launch a capital fund to acquire up-to-date computer-to-plate printing equipment to help revolutionize production of Pathfinder books.

The new machinery will make it possible to bypass labor- intensive production processes by going direct from electronic files of finished manuscripts to metal or polymer plates, drastically cutting labor time. By doing so, Pathfinder will be able to produce books in short runs and keep in print the revolutionary books that workers and youth need in order to fight effectively.

Print shop workers are making the rounds in the Northeast to view the advanced printing equipment that is available to make this transformation possible.

"We visited one smaller shop in Delaware that uses a computer-to-plate machine that we are interested in acquiring for our print shop," said Chris Hoeppner, who directs the print shop that produces Pathfinder books. "The owner of that plant told us that the volume of production in his shop has doubled since bringing in a Gerber computer-to-plate machine. At the same time the shop went from eight to six workers. And it operates on a five-day workweek. Earlier, we had asked the owner of one of these shops if we could tour his plant on a Saturday," Hoeppner remarked. "But he told us that they no longer work on Saturdays!"

"That alone would justify the capital investment to transform our shop!" said Bernie Senter, who works in Pathfinder's current prepress department.

Leah Finger, one of the sheet-fed press operators in Pathfinder's print shop, also visited the Delaware shop. What impressed her was how few plate remakes are needed with this new technology. "The owner told us they have about one plate remake a week," Finger said. "A big difference from what we face."

With computer-to-plate technology, the time-consuming steps needed to develop film, strip the film to the dimensions of printing plates, and manually burn the plates are eliminated, cutting down significantly on labor time and minimizing the chance for error.

Supporters of the communist movement will be asked to contribute generously to the special Capital Fund to purchase the computer-to-plate machinery and related software and equipment.

Socialist workers who are members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) are already planning to kick off the fundraising effort by pooling "Christmas bonuses" and profit-sharing checks to make a large donation to the fund. This campaign will be discussed further at the national meeting of the fraction of socialist workers in the UAW, which will take place in Chicago at the end of February, said John Sarge, a UAW member in Detroit.

Socialist workers in the International Association of Machinists and the United Steelworkers of America are also holding national meetings February 21 - 22 and will be discussing how to contribute to this fund as well. - A.M.

5 Steps To Prepare A Pathfinder Book
The following are excerpts from a letter by Ruth Cheney, the organizer of the San Francisco steering committee of the volunteer international effort to scan, proofread, and format Pathfinder books to those who have initially signed up for the project.

February 16, 1998
Dear Volunteers:

There is a broad range of ways you can participate in this project, depending on your interest, the computer equipment at your disposal, and whether you are working as one individual or with a group of volunteers in your area.

As of today, the digitization process can be broken into five major steps:

1. Scanning books, optical character recognition (OCR), and checking recognition

2. Massaging

3. Proofreading (cross-reading)

4. Formatting

5. Final Read

Let's take a look at each of these steps:

1. Scanning, OCR, and check recognition is the process of turning a raw book into digital form. A scanner looks like a small photocopying machine and works in the same manner, except that the picture of the page is in a computer. OCR is a software program that looks at the picture, realizes it is really text, and proceeds to change this picture into electronic text. Since this process is not 100 percent accurate, the software has an additional program (check recognition - also called proofing) that you manually use to make many of the corrections...

You need a scanner, an OCR program (and we strongly recommend OmniPage Pro v. 8 for the PC for the sake of consistency), and a book with the binder cut off professionally, so it is square and flat...

2. Massaging is the process by which a scanned book, now in digital form, is put into an easy-to-read format for the proofreaders to check. Massaging corrects perhaps 95 percent of the errors introduced by the OCR process. These corrections are made with only a minimal look at the original book.

You need a word processing program, preferably Word 7 for the PC since it is programmatically linked to OmniPage Pro v. 8, and the book...

3. Cross-reading is comparing, word for word, line by line, each original book page with a simply formatted, easy-to- read manuscript. The human eye is still the best mechanism for finding errors. Cross-reading involves reading word for word, letter by letter, periods, commas, italics, capital letters, colons, semi-colons, etc., and noting any discrepancies between the book and the computer-created manuscript. It is not easy and requires concentration and discipline.

Each page of the book has to be cross-read twice - the second time by a different person than the one who first read it. Second readers should explain the errors missed by the first readers and note for them any patterns. Errors found in the manuscript are each numbered and reported on a chart that should be produced for each book, listing the proofreader's name, whether it was the first or the second read, and how many errors were found. This is the only way we know of to find out who is really good at proofreading, as well as who is able to learn to become excellent at cross-reading.

Proofreading is for now the heart of this project because if we do it right we prove ourselves capable of producing top quality books...

4. Formatting is the process of taking the corrected manuscript and turning it back into the form of a book. Using guidelines and templates developed by Pathfinder, you will make the book as attractive and easy to read as any book on the market today - and usually better. In the immediate period ahead, we will do this step only in San Francisco because we are still learning it ourselves and therefore cannot either help or monitor the work of others. You need Microsoft Word, Version 6, for the PC for this step as well as a Post Script printer.

5. The "final read" has as yet to be defined. One thing is probable: All final reads will be done in San Francisco - until we have more experience.

Again - Welcome to a world-wide team. Be assured that the book you will work on will hit the streets soon!  
 
 
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