Pathfinder Press is offering the book for $5--which amounts to $8 off the cover price--to anyone who purchases an introductory subscription to either the Militant or Perspectiva Mundial. Campaigning to get out the political perspectives contained in the new book, and taking advantage of the special offer, will give a boost to the subscription campaign.

Socialist workers and Young Socialists aim to distribute the new book as widely as possible in working-class neighborhoods, on picket lines, in factories and at plant gates, on campuses, in rural areas, and at demonstrations and other political events. In New York, New Jersey, and other areas they are planning a special day of campaigning Saturday, May 19, heading into a special public meeting at Columbia University (advertised on page 1).

The book makes a powerful case for the need to join and build a revolutionary youth organization and proletarian party in the United States. "A vanguard layer of workers and farmers in this country is becoming more confident from their common fighting experience," author Jack Barnes explains. "Their own experience in life and struggle is bringing them closer to that of the workers and peasants of revolutionary Cuba" who are "ordinary working men and women." If those who reject the capitalist rulers' framework have "worked together beforehand to build a disciplined, centralized workers party--with a program and strategy that advances the historic line of march of our class worldwide," Barnes notes, "then we'll be ready for new opportunities in the class struggle when they explode in totally unanticipated ways."

The circulation campaign is a part of this process. And using it as a recruitment vehicle, following the lines of resistance at picket lines and protest actions against cop brutality, stepping up sales to co-workers on the job, and going door-to-door in workers districts are the keys to completing a successful subscription effort. A glance at the sales chart shows participants in the international circulation campaign are a week behind schedule with 371 Militant subscriptions sold and right on target for PM subscriptions. With the new book the total of 499 pamphlets sold will jump substantially over the next weeks. The days leading up to the May 26–June 3 target week, which may include regional sales teams, can be used to close the gap. The Militant has received several reports on sales activities, some of them are highlighted below.  
 
Sales team to anthracite coal region
"We went door-to-door in a neighborhood in Frackville, Pennsylvania, near the Hollander Home Fashions plant where garment workers are on strike," said Dan Fein, who joined a regional team there this past weekend. "The whole town is steeped in union tradition."

Fein said that at one house a high school student asked him, "What do you think about the 1943 coal miners' strike against the wage freeze imposed by Franklin Roosevelt?" Just three months later Pennsylvania anthracite miners walked off the job demanding a $2 per day wage increase. Fein said the student's mother who was involved in this discussion turned to her daughter and asked, "What do you think, should we buy the subscription?" The daughter replied, "Yes," and they bought a Militant subscription and a copy of The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning pamphlet.

Before leaving the town the team sold three Militant subscriptions, 12 copies of the paper, and one pamphlet. The previous week a sales team sold 25 copies of the Militant while visiting the Hollander picket line and two Militant subscriptions to anthracite miners in the area.

In Iceland four supporters of the Militant went on a one-day sales trip to Selfoss, the main town in a farming area an hour and a half away from Reykjavík by car. "This was part of an effort to use the sales drive to sell in new places in and around Reykjavík," wrote Ögmundur Jónsson. "We put up a literature table in front of the main supermarket in Selfoss, and sold seven Militants and three copies of the Icelandic edition of The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning, recently published by Pathfinder."

Jónsson said their sales efforts have been focused on distributing the pamphlet as broadly as possible and increasing the regular distribution of the Militant. "Every Monday when the Militant arrives we discuss the articles and how we can use them to sell the paper, as part of taking a more conscious approach to explaining the value of reading the socialist press regularly," he said. "So far, we have sold two subscriptions during the drive, and sales of the paper have increased substantially. The new pamphlet has sold well. The goal we set at the beginning of the sales drive has already been reached and raised. At the May Day march in Reykjavík alone we sold 21 copies, despite rain and bad weather."

Partisans of the socialist press in Houston said they have sold subscriptions from literature tables set up at shopping centers every week of the drive so far. "In addition to the new readers, we have begun to meet people who look for us every week and sometimes buy a book or pamphlet," said Jacquie Henderson, a garment worker. "One young woman, who ended up buying a Militant subscription, pointed to Playa Girón/Bay of Pigs: Washington's First Military Defeat in the Americas displayed on the table and remarked, 'What I like about this book is that it tells the other side of the story. In school they never tell us about the Cubans' side.'"

"When we got back to the Pathfinder bookstore we met three young Salvadoran men at the door who work in Houston as day laborers," Henderson remarked. "Another worker had told them about our literature tables on Shepherd Avenue. Before they left they purchased a PM subscription and three pamphlets, and said they planned to attend the next Militant Labor Forum."

"We are fighting to stay on target in the drive by taking the Militant door-to-door in workers districts and following up on potential subscribers who have asked us to call them later about buying a subscription," said Abby Tilsner from Newark, New Jersey. "We also sold four subscriptions and nine pamphlets in the area where Bilal Colbert was killed by a cop in Irvington. This included one subscription we got later from a protester we met at the May 5 demonstration against the killing of Colbert. One resident from there who bought a subscription told us, 'I want you to come to our next city council district meeting to sell Militant subscriptions to people there.'"
 

We began selling the Militant and PM to workers in the area during the shift change at ConAgra's Beef processing plant in Greeley, Colorado, where some 2,000 people work on two shifts. Holding signs in English and Spanish reading "Equal rights for immigrants" and "Solidarity with garment workers in Los Angeles," we sold five Militants, eight PMs, and a PM subscription during the two-hour shift change and at a nearby bank where workers were cashing their paychecks.

We sold most of our subscriptions and papers in a large trailer park in Fort Morgan where most of the residents seem to work for Excel. Almost everyone who bought a subscription also bought a pamphlet. Many people wanted to talk about struggles in the plant and broader political questions.

Altogether, our team of four sold 12 subscriptions to Perspectiva Mundial and eight pamphlets, which included the Spanish editions of The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning and Pathfinder was Born with the October Revolution. Nine of the subscriptions and seven of the pamphlets were sold to meat packers. Two other subscriptions were sold to workers employed at nearby feed lots. The team also sold six copies of the Militant and 12 PMs.

Pete Seidman is a member of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1149 in Marshalltown, Iowa.  
 
 
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