This world-historic fact, and the question of what steps to take to more effectively organize the members of the Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialists, together with proletarian fighters attracted to socialism, were the central themes of the event held at the Pathfinder Building.

Featured at the front of the meeting, and on sale for the first time, was From the Escambray to the Congo: In the Whirlwind of the Cuban Revolution in both English and Spanish. The new book by Cuban revolutionary leader Víctor Dreke was edited by Mary-Alice Waters, who was one of the keynote speakers at the event.

The meeting took place in the midst of two days' volunteer labor by nearly 90 members, supporters, and contacts of the communist movement. The whole weekend was part of a months-long effort to reorganize Pathfinder, the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial, and the SWP's national office, along with Pathfinder's printshop.

Participants traveled from as far away as California and Washington State; Texas; Florida; and Toronto and Montreal in Canada. The meeting reflected the hard work and high spirits of the volunteers, who, through a series of such "red weekends," are dramatically transforming the apparatus that produces the books, pamphlets, and periodicals of the communist movement.

By the end of the weekend the socialists workers and young socialists had reorganized and divided Pathfinder's entire stock of books into a smaller and more efficient pick-and-pack operation integrated as part of Pathfinder's offices, and a larger supply that is stored in the printshop.

Teams worked throughout the two days to turn editorial material from paper to electronic files and to collect the e-mail numbers of every Pathfinder customer so the publishing house can begin sending out invoices electronically.

Others organized an area for volunteers to ship out the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial to subscribers and distributors, and set up an area for office supplies.

Barnes, who chaired the meeting, read greetings to the event from leaders of the party branch in Birmingham, Alabama, which held a simultaneous grand opening of their headquarters in a workers district in the city. They noted the interest that Pathfinder books have generated among workers in the area, and expressed confidence that establishing the headquarters and bookstore will advance their party-building work. In addition, branch members have gotten hired together in both coal mines and textile mills in the area, deepening the proletarization of the party unit.

The possibilities for building the communist movement were also seen in the turnout of 50 people the evening before at the grand opening of the party headquarters and Pathfinder bookstore in Upper Manhattan (see article, page 4).

On the previous weekend 30 workers and youth had attended a socialist educational weekend in Miami.

Individuals and small groups of youth and workers are coming around the party and Young Socialists in New York. Many are immigrants, originally from Argentina, Burkina Faso, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico, and other countries. In his remarks, Barnes returned several times to discuss how the party and Young Socialists can together organize practical revolutionary work with these vanguard fighters, joining the three forces together in a common organization.  
 
Acceleration of imperialism's course
"We need to keep remembering that September 11 only marked an acceleration of the course of U.S. imperialism and the underlying contradictions and tendencies moving at different paces for years beforehand," Barnes emphasized.

In George Bush's announcement of the big increase in the budget for "homeland defense," the U.S. president stated that the U.S. rulers are "fighting a two-front war." In Washington's view, every opposition to imperialism anywhere in the world has a counterpart right here in the United States.

Plans to hire, train, and equip more cops and la migra agents are part of the broad assault on immigrant workers. Washington more and more sees anyone who overstays their visa as a suspect in the "war on terrorism." But, he noted, there is a big gap between budget proposals and the rulers' ability to use the full scope of the measures they hope to carry out against the working class owing to the resistance among working people and conflicts among the rulers themselves.

On the military front, Washington's forces remain stronger than the rest of its imperialist rivals combined, with a nuclear arsenal that is continually renewed and remains as potent as ever. The U.S. rulers will continue their drive to set up an antimissile system to prevent smaller countries from using missiles and other advanced technology to the disadvantage of U.S. imperialism.

Along with the use of its military, Washington will increasingly weigh in with its economic power to impose tariffs and pursue trade disputes in order to maximize the competitive advantage that capitalists in the United States have over their competitors.

Barnes recalled that the Hawley-Smoot Act of 1930, which brought U.S. tariffs to their highest-ever protective level at the time, played a big role in bringing on the Great Depression, as retaliatory measures by other countries sent U.S. exports into a sharp decline.  
 
Rightists in Europe
As has already happened in the United States, immigration is transforming the working class in Europe. This development has been accompanied by a growing number of murders, cop killings, and rightist attacks against immigrant workers, Barnes noted. Right-wing forces who campaign against immigrants as the "enemy within" have grown.

"These battles are part and parcel of the attacks on the vanguard of the working class and are the biggest polarizing element and pressure on workers today," Barnes said. "Only a proletarian party that is comfortable with and immersed in this section of the working class and in proletarian struggles can lead working people." In contrast to the response of the proletarian party, these sections of the working class are invisible to the social democrats of all stripes. For their part, the union chieftains consider the people who enter into mass struggles against the employers and their government to be trash, he said.

One result of Washington's war against Afghanistan, Barnes noted, was the increased intensity of the conflict between India and Pakistan. In the Middle East, the actions of U.S. imperialism since September 11 have put wind in the sails of the Israeli ruling class and armed forces in their war against the Palestinian people.

The U.S. rulers' growing arrogance is based on the belief that they can subject people anywhere to the same brutality they are dealing out to the prisoners at the illegally occupied U.S. naval base in Guantánamo, Cuba.

But "victories" such as these, said Barnes, lead to new resistance by workers and farmers, including at home. The proletarian fighters and leaderships this resistance breeds lack knowledge that their actions are part of a course towards the communist movement. Socialist workers and young socialists on reporting teams to Argentina, at book fairs in Cuba and Mexico and other countries, and at labor and social protests in the United States where they meet workers in struggle, present this perspective. They discuss with these co-fighters the fact that it is possible to chart a road to bring an end to the brutalities of capitalism by converging with the communist movement and building proletarian parties capable of leading working people to power.

And socialist workers and youth here have one decisive point to bring to proletarian leaders around the world: the fact that a communist leadership can and will be built in the United States, Barnes said. This will make it possible to bring down the world's final empire; until that is accomplished, a nuclear question mark will continue to hang over humanity.  
 
Fusing with proletarian leaderships
To help clarify these party-building perspectives, Barnes pointed to a letter written in 1932 by Leon Trotsky, a central leader of the Russian Revolution who fought to continue the communist traditions of the Bolshevik party led by Lenin. Trotsky headed the communist forces in the Left Opposition in the battle to rebuild proletarian parties and a revolutionary international leadership. In his 1932 letter to the International Secretariat of the Left Opposition, he reported a request from an organization of black workers in South Africa for a discussion of central issues in world politics.

"The Johannesburg comrades may not as yet have had the opportunity to acquaint themselves more closely with the views of the Left Opposition on all the most important questions. But this cannot be an obstacle to our getting together with them as closely as possible at this very moment, and helping them in a comradely way to come into the orbit of our program and tactics." Trotsky noted that the clear voice and actions of the communist vanguard will attract the "warm sympathies of the most oppressed sections of the international working class... to whom belongs the decisive word in the development of humankind."

To help respond to similar party-building opportunities in the United States today, Barnes said, the volunteer red weekends are assisting in preparations to move Pathfinder, the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial, and the party's National Office to a shared location with the Garment District branch in Manhattan. This will help make it possible for the leadership of the party and young socialists in New York to organize to carry out a fusion of their forces with those from all countries and nationalities coming toward the communist movement in the city.

Barnes introduced Angel Lariscy, a member of the Brooklyn branch of the party and the daytime foreman in Pathfinder's printshop. Prior to the event, participants were able to walk through the printshop in order to see the setup of the sheetfed presses, the capital additions to the shop's web press, and the reorganized storage of paper in the shop.

"We currently have 15 people in the shop," Lariscy said. "Thirteen are in production and two more make up our full-time sales force. All the work that was previously done by a full-time staff in our front office is now done from the production floor, where we run three presses on a two-shift schedule."

Lariscy described the programs that have been instituted to train enough operators to run all three presses for two shifts a day. Press operators are also learning how to bill and invoice jobs as they are completed, and basic plate-making techniques on the shop's computer-to-plate equipment.

Over the weekend the computer terminals of the plate-making machine were moved onto the production floor. This change allows the plate-making process to be integrated into the work of the press operators, said Lariscy. Next up is the transfer of the entire computer-to-plate machine to the press area.

As printshop volunteers have organized the shop around keeping three presses running for two shifts, a number of volunteers have been freed up to build the party in New York and elsewhere. Barnes noted that there are now a dozen socialist workers and Young Socialists either employed in the meatpacking and garment industries in New York City, or organizing to be.

The work of the volunteer brigades over the weekend, said Mary-Alice Waters in her presentation, was essential in organizing Pathfinder to devote increased attention to the promotion and distribution of Pathfinder books. Bringing the editorial offices and the pick-and-pack operation together on the same floor will help reduce duplicate work, increase the use of computers, and maximize the impact of editing, promoting, and selling the revolutionary books and pamphlets produced by the publishing house.  
 
Titles needed in Cuba and United States
In one week's time, said Waters, an international team of Pathfinder supporters will travel to Cuba to participate in the Havana International Book Fair. Pathfinder, which has a long tradition of participation in the fair, will be able to hold public launchings of three books at this year's event, she said. One will be a meeting around the newest book, From the Escambray to the Congo. Another will celebrate the Spanish-language edition of the pamphlet Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle, a speech by Thomas Sankara, the central leader of the revolution in Burkina Faso in the 1980s. Tricontinental Publishers, who will present "Equality and the Participation of Mozambican Women," will co-sponsor the event. A third meeting will be organized for Playa Girón/Bay of Pigs: Washington's First Military Defeat in the Americas by Fidel Castro and Gen. José Ramón Fernández.

Following the book fair, Waters and other Pathfinder supporters will travel together with Víctor Dreke to several cities in Cuba to participate in launchings of From the Escambray to the Congo. The meetings will be organized by the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution, a leadership organization of those who served in internationalist and military operations, and the local government and Communist Party in each city.

In his book, said Waters, Víctor Dreke brings to life "what men and women can make happen by beginning to change the economic structure and social relations through making a socialist revolution."

Waters said that From the Escambray to the Congo will be Pathfinder's lead title for Black History Month in February. She encouraged those present to begin organizing to take the book to college campuses. Make the most of opportunities, she said, to discuss the book's content with student organizations who may want to organize a meeting about it, and to introduce it to Black Studies departments and bookstores.

Pathfinder publishes titles such as these, she said, because they are needed by working people in the United States, "by the young Víctor Drekes of all colors and nationalities, whether native-born or on these shores due to the lawful workings of capitalism. Here they will find the brutalities of imperialism and capitalism. But they will also find the communist movement, the continuity of communism, and the opportunity to collaborate and work together with the Socialist Workers Party."  
 
Advances for Communist Leagues
SWP leaders Norton Sandler and Olympia Newton described steps forward being made in Sweden and the United Kingdom by the Communist Leagues and Young Socialists in those countries. Both are carrying out what has become known in the movement as the "third campaign for the turn." This involves a sharp reorientation to find and follow the lines of resistance in the working class and to establish industrial union fractions among layers of the proletariat that are facing and resisting the employers' assault.

In the United Kingdom, Sandler said, members of the Communist League are getting jobs in the meatpacking and garment industries. They have also established an organizing committee in Scotland, opening up an arena of consistent activity outside of London. These steps have put the party and YS "in touch with a layer of the working class they haven't been in contact with before. These moves have had a big impact on young people interested in our movement and opened up new possibilities for recruitment," he said.

Newton, who is also a member of the Young Socialists National Executive Committee, said that one of the political strengths of the work of the YS over the past year has been to "see our world movement as part of a broader anti-imperialist movement today." She pointed to the work that YS members from a number of countries carried out in building and participating in the 15th World Festival of Youth and Students in Algiers last summer, and to the organization's ongoing collaboration with the Union of Young Communists in Cuba.

In Sweden, she said, the YS and Communist League decided to shift their jobs from the auto and electronics industries to meatpacking and garment or textile. They have also decided to fuse their two organizations and have established an organizing committee in Gothenburg. These three steps have already led to "a deeper integration into the working class in Sweden and the discovery of industries the comrades didn't know existed before."  
 
Explosion of resistance in Argentina
Perspectiva Mundial editor Martín Koppel spoke about the explosion of resistance in Argentina and the openings to work with proletarian leaders there today. He was part of a three-person reporting team that had just returned after two weeks in the South American country.

In reporting on a variety of actions, including protests against government austerity measures and the impact of the country's $140 billion foreign debt; mobilizations by strikers demanding back pay; and demonstrations by unemployed workers, the team "found a hunger for politics, a deep interest in the Cuban Revolution and in learning about Ernesto Che Guevara, and a welcome response to what we had to say about the struggles and resistance of working people in the United States," Koppel said. "There is now a trail of Pathfinder books, New Internationals, and Perspectiva Mundials to follow up on in Argentina," he said.

This interest is evident in the United States as well. Young people and workers who have emigrated from Argentina attended public meetings in Miami and New York at which Koppel spoke about the reporting trip.

Barnes said that the regular financial contributions of supporters of the party are proving decisive in the work of the communist movement. Party supporters have begun organizing a campaign to raise their annual contributions to $300,000.

In addition, a Capital Fund of $600,000 launched at a red weekend in December will help lay the basis for the continued production of Pathfinder books, the renewal of printshop equipment, and other major capital needs. By the end of the weekend, the fund had reached a total of $410,485 from 39 contributors.

A special sale of overstocked Education for Socialists bulletins and hardcover Pathfinder books was held during the weekend. Socialists of all generations seized the opportunity to expand their libraries, purchasing books to a total value of $1,890.

The course laid out by the speakers, explained Barnes in conclusion, is one of a proletarianization of the communist movement to maximize the ability of proletarian fighters to join the party and to gain enough experience to decide to become lifetime communists.

The socialist revolution, he said, opens up the chance for working people to fight to transform the conditions of life. Under capitalism, it is impossible to eliminate racism, women's oppression, and to close the gap between the conditions in the cities and countryside. With the socialist revolution humanity can begin the fight to overcome these horrors of class society. On this new ground, the working class can open the battle to turn state property into social property.

The Cuban Revolution made it possible for working people to begin to grapple with these questions and chart a course along this road. The rich lessons of this battle are taken up in books such as Che Guevara Talks to Young People, he said.  
 
Weekend 'differs from jobs I've had'
Several young people and workers who joined the volunteer brigades said they decided to participate after hearing reports from previous red weekends. Brendan Mills McCabe, a 20-year-old student from Seattle who joined the Young Socialists last July, said two YS members there had told him about their earlier experiences.

"I've also talked to people who had worked in the printshop and heard about how things have changed. That made me really interested in coming," he said. "I'm impressed that people are here on a voluntary basis working this weekend; they're proud of the goals they make and the work they do. It's very different from jobs I've had.

"It's great to experience something like this," he said. "You feel more what's necessary and what can be accomplished. Last night Jack Barnes said the presses will still be running, even when the printshop moves. That they won't all shut down for even one day, because that's what we need."

Michel Duguay, 23, a student at Laval University in Quebec City, said he worked in the warehouse taking boxes from shelves and putting them in alphabetical order. He also took out hardcover copies from the warehouse for sale and brought other books up for the pick-and-pack operation in Pathfinder. "I'm really glad I came here and got to meet other members of the YS and the SWP. I see a lot of solidarity here."

Duguay said he became a YS member in Quebec shortly after the events on September 11, although that had nothing to do with his decision. "I went to the protest against the Free Trade Area of the Americas in Quebec City. Something was missing there and it didn't seem to accomplish anything. I was working in a paint shop when I met members of the YS at a literature table," he said. "I didn't know much about Marx but I liked the scientific approach to politics. I usually go to Montreal every weekend to staff literature tables at the Metro station and on campus."

When he gets back to Canada, Duguay said he will be working to build a public meeting for Communist League member Christian Catalan who participated in the Militant reporting trip to Argentina. "We met a number of people who expressed interest in the meeting at a literature table recently where we sold four subscriptions to the Militant. People are interested in having other news besides what's in the big-business press."

Carlos, a maintenance worker from Cuba who now lives in New Jersey, said he participated in the activities because "comrades invited me to come for the weekend. Everything I learned in Cuba about the United States--I've had the misfortune to live it. In this country the conditions are horrible and very exploitative.

"Under this democracy, they've taken away many social programs such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children," he said. "In the city where I live the authorities want to close down a school, but the parents are fighting it."

Rose Engstrom traveled from St. Paul, Minnesota, to participate in the weekend of voluntary labor. "I wanted to be a part of what's happening with the transformation of the print shop," she said. Engstrom, 31, a laid-off textile worker, said that it had been helpful to hear Jack Barnes explain why Pathfinder, the Militant, and the SWP National Office need to move to another area in New York to be part of a workers district.

Engstrom said that as a student in the early 1990s she got involved in political activities against the Gulf War and in labor solidarity actions. She said she joined the communist movement because "I wanted to be political. I believe that this society can be changed. When I got involved I kept running into the party."  
 
 
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