Socialist workers and members of the Young Socialists who are campaigning with the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial are finding a real interest in the title. The explosion of protests and demonstrations in Yugoslavia that brought down the regime of Slobodan Milosevic, and the intransigent resistance of the Palestinian people in Israel and the occupied territories provide good opportunities to campaign with the pamphlet and the two periodicals.

The pamphlet addresses a broad range of political questions--from Social Security, the death penalty and police brutality, education, and the capacities of working people to transform society--from a working-class perspective, rejecting the framework of capitalist politicians and bourgeois society as a whole. Barnes describes a number of struggles, such as the unfolding social movement among miners and others in coal communities across the United States to defend federally guaranteed health-care benefits and the resistance by packinghouse workers in Minnesota that exploded against the company cranking up the speed of the production line.

The new title is aimed at "these vanguard proletarians, in town and country" who are "being impelled to consider new ideas, to read more widely, to broaden their scope, to begin expanding the limits of what they previously believed they, and others like themselves, were capable of." Many of them are open to subscribing to the Militant or PM.

The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning is an excellent piece of literature for the Socialist Workers election campaign, which presents an alternative to the Democrats and Republicans and the other capitalist parties. Candidates and their supporters can bolster sales of the pamphlet by introducing it to working people while going door-to-door to campaign, holding it up as part of street corner campaigning and at plant gates and elsewhere.

Class conscious workers, working farmers, youth, and others want to discuss why "schools under capitalism are not institutions of learning but of social control, aimed at reproducing the class relations and privileges of the prevailing order," as author Jack Barnes points out in the introduction.

Barnes notes how the relationship between education and income in capitalist society has nothing to do with college graduates knowing more, but instead is a small price the propertied rulers pay for a middle class--lawyers and other so-called professionals--that "helps them maintain social stability, hold off working-class demands, and rationalize the polarizing social consequences of the relations of production under capitalism."

Classes can be organized with workers, farmers, and revolutionary-minded youth who decide to purchase the new title and would like to delve deeper into the social questions discussed in the pamphlet. These include an explanation of the wages system and why wages are determined by the struggles of the working class to establish and defend its rights, standard of living, and social wage as a class.

Placing the Pathfinder title at the center of the subscription campaign helps sell Militant and PM subscriptions, as socialist workers in several cities are finding out. The pamphlet is only $1 when purchasing a subscription to one of the two publications.

Two supporters of the circulation effort who work in the coal mines out west traveled to Kemmerer, Wyoming, to talk to some members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) who won a recent strike against Pittsburg & Midway Coal Co. this summer.

"A woman we met at a rally organized by the UMWA last July in Denver told us that when her husband first went out on strike she disagreed with the union, but changed her mind after reading the lies stated in the local papers about the miners and how bad off the company is," said Elyse Hathaway. "She decided to join the miners' picket lines. After our discussion with her she bought a subscription to the Militant and a copy of Capitalism's World Disorder: Working-Class Politics at the Millennium.

"We spent a lot of time talking to a few people in order to deepen our relationships with fellow vanguard fighters in the coalfields," Hathaway said. "This led to a successful weekend of sales where we sold 4 introductory subscriptions to the Militant, 1 renewal for one year, 7 copies of the new pamphlet, 2 copies of Coal Miners on Strike, 1 copy of Genocide Against the Indians, and a copy of Capitalism's World Disorder." One subscriber renewed her subscription the day before the team arrived in Kemmerer.  
 
Organizing drive in Omaha
Edwin Fruit and Beth Gibbons, who are meat packers and members of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) in Perry, Iowa, joined a team of Militant and PM supporters reaching out to meat packers in Omaha, Nebraska, in order to connect with the organizing drives taking place among the workers at seven nonunion meatpacking plants in the region.

"We spread out through the Latino community to find out more about the organizing drive, set up tables at a Latino food store, and at two churches," they wrote. "One team ran into workers at the nonunion IBP plant in Council Bluffs, Iowa, who were interested in learning more about the organizing drive. The workers could relate to our descriptions of conditions faced by meat packers at Dakota Premium Foods that led to a seven hour sit-down strike. Almost everyone we had discussions with explained that the line speed was too fast, they were being forced to work injured, and supervisors verbally abused workers regularly."

The two meat packers said the Midwest sales team sold 44 copies of PM, 5 PM subs, 7 copies of the Militant, and 4 copies of The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning. A part of the team also participated in the Third World Studies Conference in downtown Omaha sponsored by the University of Nebraska at Omaha. About 50 participants, mostly academics from colleges and universities, bought $220 worth of Pathfinder literature, 2 subscriptions to the Militant, and 3 copies of the new Pathfinder pamphlet.

"This past weekend I was on a team that traveled to Worthington, Minnesota, where there is a large pork packinghouse owned by the Swift company," said Karen Tyler from southern Minnesota. She said they spent the afternoon going door-to-door in a trailer park where many workers from Swift live.

"At one of the first doors we knocked on a Swift worker and his wife who works for a large bakery company invited us inside for coffee and a two-hour discussion," said Tyler. "They told us, 'These plants are all the same, they keep running the line faster and faster.'" The meat packer said his UFCW local had sent a delegation of seven unionists down to Omaha for the September 27 solidarity rally with the workers at ConAgra who are trying to organize the plant with the UFCW.

They bought a subscription to Perspectiva Mundial and two copies of the pamphlet The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning, one in English and one in Spanish, so they could both read it. "They said they would subscribe to the Militant next week and we made plans to get back together," Tyler added.  
 
Houston 'working our way up the chart'
"We're working our way up the chart towards our ambitious goal," wrote Jacquie Henderson from Houston, where they sold 10 Militant subscriptions this past week. "Three of the subscriptions we sold were by socialists in two meatpacking and garment plants. All these workers also bought a copy of the new Pathfinder pamphlet."

Henderson said they sent a team to San Antonio to meet some union garment workers who work at two huge Levi-Strauss plants there. "At one of the plant gates when we explained who we were and that we wanted to talk to some of the union workers there, one worker responded, 'Well you've come to the right place. There's a lot of union in there.'" Henderson said workers purchased 13 copies of the Militant and two copies of PM there. Several days later one worker sent them a subscription blank filled out along with a check.
 
 
Related article:
Militant subscription drive scoreboard (October 12, 2000)