I start with this because it is the clearest way I can explain what guides the editorial policy of Pathfinder to this day. For more than 80 years, Pathfinder and its various predecessors (from Merit and Pioneer, all the way back to the Literature Department of the Workers Party of America) have had one and only one objective: to publish and distribute as widely as possible the books, pamphlets, and magazines that are necessary to advance the construction of a communist party in the United States--an objective inseparable from the building of a communist movement internationally.

From 1917 to today, we have sought to defend a course true to Lenin’s leadership of the Russian Revolution and the early years of the Communist International. Lenin’s political trajectory was the opposite of the course that later became identified with the Stalin-led Communist Party of the Soviet Union--the consequences of which are being registered in the colossal events of recent years that continue to unfold throughout Central Europe, the Balkans, and the former Soviet republics. Pathfinder has always prioritized printing works created by revolutionists who exemplified Lenin’s internationalist and proletarian course in deeds as well as words.

We begin with the world and the ongoing facts before us, with the most important challenges of the world class struggle, thinking about how to strengthen the fighting vanguard of the working class so it is better armed to understand the world in which we live; to understand the history of the modern working-class movement; to become more conscious of its strength and historic responsibilities; and to chart a line of march toward taking power in order to open the road to the construction of socialism.  
 
Communism: a movement, not a doctrine
We have always subscribed to Engels’s famous response to Herr Heinzen, written in 1847 a few months before Karl Marx and Frederick Engels drafted the founding document of the modern workers movement, the Communist Manifesto. "Communism is not a doctrine, but a movement," Engels wrote. "It proceeds not from principles but from facts. Insofar as it is a theory, [it] is the theoretical expression of the position of the proletariat" in its struggle with the bourgeoisie and the "theoretical summation of the conditions for the liberation of the proletariat" and its allies from exploitation and oppression.

To bring this home for us today, I want to use the example of one of the most important books that Pathfinder has published in the last eight years. It is entitled U.S. Hands Off the Mideast! Cuba Speaks Out at the United Nations. It was published in English and Spanish in October 1990 as Washington was driving toward the brutal, massive assault on Iraq that began in January 1991. Cuba’s then-ambassador to the United Nations, Ricardo Alarcón, speaking from the seat Cuba fortuitously held on the Security Council, was the only voice speaking out clearly and consistently, utilizing the arena of international diplomacy, against the imperialist war being mounted under the auspices of the United Nations flag.

Pathfinder, in a matter of days (literally) brought out a small booklet containing each and every one of Alarcón’s speeches to the world, along with the main speech by Fidel condemning Washington’s aggression. When that sold out in a few weeks, we printed a second, expanded edition, so that communists and anti-imperialist fighters around the world could use it to campaign against the war that the magazine New International rightly calls "the opening guns of World War III."

In the short space of six months, Pathfinder sold some 10,000 copies of that title in English, and 1,500 in Spanish.

Today, as Washington is again accelerating toward a new murderous--and cowardly--assault on the people of Iraq, that Pathfinder title takes on renewed importance.¹ The fact that--as is our policy--we have not allowed the book to go out of print means that our weapons are ready, and, as we meet here, it is again being used by opponents of Washington’s course around the world.

In a similar way, 30 years ago Pathfinder published another book--Che Guevara Speaks. In December 1967, only weeks after the death in combat of Ernesto Che Guevara, while news of his brutal murder by CIA-trained forces of the Bolivian military dictatorship and the implications of that event still resounded like a drumbeat around the world, Pathfinder published the first edition of that collection of speeches and writings. We have not allowed it to go out of print from that day to this.  
 

1. Pathfinder is not formally or legally the publishing house of a party (it has its own corporate structure and lines of decision-making). At the same time, from the beginning the writers, editors, directors, and production personnel have all been active communist cadres in the United States (communists with a small ‘c’), experienced in the working-class movement. Pathfinder is the publishing house that has always kept in print the major documents, resolutions, and speeches by leaders of the Socialist Workers Party. In the historical perspective, this is one of its most important and irreplaceable accomplishments. Without this the documents that both reflect and guide the practical work of communist workers, students and their allies in the United States would be nowhere available.

The Changing Face of U.S. Politics: Working-Class Politics and the Trade Unions by SWP national secretary Jack Barnes--a new edition of which has been published by Pathfinder in three languages (English, Spanish, and French)--is the most recent important example of this central core of our publishing.  
 
Produced in heat of political battles
2. As has been true throughout the history of the workers movement, the best materials we publish are almost without exception those produced by revolutionists in the heat of political battle--not abstract analyses or distanced studies, but pamphlets and books written by those who are responding to the needs of the day.

One of the best examples of this is a book written in the anti-Nazi underground during World War II by a young Belgian, who was a Jew. The Jewish Question, by Abram Leon, perhaps the finest historical materialist study of this question ever to be written, was put down on paper while Leon was active in the underground. He finished it only a short time before he was captured and died at the hands of the Gestapo. Sailors, merchant marine men who were members of the SWP and often acted as couriers internationally, were able to salvage a copy of the manuscript in the closing days of the war. Pathfinder translated it, published it, and has kept it in print for decades.

Since 1928 when the Militant first began publishing--and 1931 when Pathfinder’s predecessor Pioneer Publishers produced its first title--there has always been a close working collaboration between the newspaper and the publishing house. Many of the materials that eventually find their way into Pathfinder publications first appear in the pages of the Militant. It couldn’t be otherwise with a publishing house that is always in the thick of struggles and seeking to promote a clear class perspective.

From the beginning of the Cuban Revolution, for example, the Militant has been the main periodical in the United States that published important documents and speeches by leaders of the Cuban Revolution. These were often then rapidly reprinted by Pioneer Publishers as pamphlets and used widely by the active defenders of the Cuban Revolution both in the United States and Canada, many of whom organized themselves during the revolution’s opening years as the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

In the days before photo-offset printing, it was especially important to be able to reuse the hot-lead type set for the newspaper, which was by far the costliest element in the printing process.

Pamphlets such as The Second Declaration of Havana were first published this way, for example--another title that Pathfinder has kept continuously in print, in this case since 1962. Tomorrow, in fact--February 4--we will be marking the 36th anniversary of that call to action to the toilers of the Americas. We still use it widely as one of the best and most basic pieces of literature we have to explain the character of U.S. imperialist domination of Latin America, the inevitable resistance to it, and the place of the Cuban Revolution in that uncompromising resistance....  
 
Depend on volunteer labor
6. Pathfinder is only able to maintain this kind of publishing program because of the generous support of communist-minded workers around the world. They subsidize our publishing program because they agree with it, and they make real sacrifices to keep these revolutionary weapons in print. Pathfinder loses money on every book it publishes. It has never had a year, or even a quarter, when it broke even.

The economics of publishing quality books in small runs means that even with such subsidies Pathfinder books are expensive for working people. For this reason, several years ago we set up the Pathfinder Reader’s Club to make our books accessible to more readers. For $10 per year anyone can join the club, and receive all Pathfinder titles at 15 percent off the cover price at any Pathfinder bookstore, or by ordering directly. And throughout the year we offer even higher discounts on selected titles.

We also depend on volunteer labor by Pathfinder’s supporters to translate, copyedit, proofread, scan and format, set type, design covers--some of which are truly beautiful--and do all the other time-consuming work that is necessary to produce and distribute printed materials.

In fact, we have just begun what will surely be one of our most ambitious endeavors, ever, all with volunteer labor. Some 200 Pathfinder supporters from almost a dozen countries around the world, are preparing every single title currently in print by Pathfinder in digital form. Every book and pamphlet is being scanned, proofread and formatted, and often indexed. Every cover and photo signature is being reconstructed in digital files. Thanks to this enormous effort, which will take several years to complete, Pathfinder will be able to continue to take advantage of advances in computer-to-plate printing technology. We will be able to print small quantities, reprint frequently as demand requires, and continue to upgrade new editions as our resources permit.

Every title will be ready-to-print as needed. And we will also be able to develop a Pathfinder web site to make the fruits of this effort accessible around the world. Without the volunteer labor of our supporters around the world, none of this would be possible...

7. The sale and distribution of Pathfinder titles also depends on the volunteer efforts of supporters. First and foremost, Pathfinder sales are "street sales"--sales by communist youth and workers off folding card tables set up regularly on street corners in workers districts, at plant gates, on university campuses, near high schools, at political events, wherever workers and young people capable of being attracted toward revolutionary politics may gather.

An international network of Pathfinder bookstores in seven countries is another important source of sales. These also are organized completely by volunteers, by workers and students who organize to keep the stores open as many hours a week as possible.

The same volunteers also act as sales representatives, visiting regular commercial bookstores, libraries, and professors in dozens and dozens of cities, discussing the books with buyers and teachers. They obtain orders that are placed either directly with Pathfinder or through wholesale distribution businesses that buy from Pathfinder as well as other publishers.

Through these kinds of volunteer efforts--which include taking Pathfinder booths to numerous international book fairs around the world, from Moscow to Frankfurt, from Tehran to Göteborg, from Guadalajara, to Sydney, to Havana--the reach of our publication effort is truly surprising....  
 
Exacting and demanding standards
For us, the care with which we edit and prepare every single book or pamphlet we produce is the most important test of our publishing efforts. We consider this to be a class question. If it is to prepare itself to be the ruling class, the working class must have access to truth, to culture, to clearly presented, accurate information. Their own history and continuity must be made accessible to new generations of fighters as they enter the struggle. These are things that Che understood and fought for so well. The working class must learn to be exacting in the standards of quality it demands in all things. That is one of the sources of our self-respect and self-confidence. Those who belong to the class that produces everything know better than anyone when work is done with care and when it is shoddy and unworthy of their efforts.

A publishing house that strives above all to provide revolutionary fighters with access to the world class struggle that they must know about and understand in order to be effective in transforming themselves and that world--a publishing house with such a goal must maintain the highest possible standards of accuracy.

A misspelled name; an incorrect date; an erroneous or confusing or even uncomfortable translation; an inaccurate footnote or caption (or none at all where one is needed for the new young reader or the worker or farmer for whom reading is still a challenge); lack of care in presenting pictures, maps, or other aids to the reader; covers that are ugly or lack inspiration and work; printing that is too light and unreadable; type that is so small it discourages the reader; a book that is carelessly bound or cut--all these are lapses that pain us when they occur. And they should. They are not worthy of the working class and its historic tasks.

None of these flow from problems created by the limits on material resources from which we all suffer one way or another. They are questions of political training and discipline and respect for our class. They exemplify proletarian habits, which are the wellspring of discipline.

At root, these are the same questions that were at the center of the deliberations and decisions of the Fifth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba when it convened a few months ago, in October 1997: the revolution, the working class, has to prove it can be more efficient, and produce with greater quality than the capitalists. And it can.... 

 
1. In February 1998, Washington and its imperialist allies were threatening widespread air strikes against Iraq on the pretext that Baghdad was refusing to allow "arms inspectors" unlimited access to whatever site they demanded, in continued violation of the country’s sovereignty. In December 1998 this culminated in four days of murderous air strikes throughout Iraq conducted by United States and United Kingdom forces. Between early 1997 and November 2000, some 16,000 sorties launched more than 1,000 bombs and missiles against more than 250 targets in northern Iraq. Over 300 people, mostly civilians, were killed in these raids, according to Iraqi estimates.  
 
 
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