One of the best attended classes was "October 1962: The ‘Missile’ Crisis as Seen From Cuba" by Steve Clark. This reviewed the events around the confrontation 40 years ago between Washington and the Cuban Revolution. Clark explained why the Cuban government accepted placement of nuclear missiles from the Soviet Union on its soil, the mobilizations of working people in Cuba as Washington escalated its war threats, and how the U.S. rulers backed down, unwilling to pay the political price for an invasion that would have sent tens of thousands of U.S. troops to their death in the face of tenacious resistance by the Cuban people.

The class helped prepare participants to discuss these questions with fellow workers and youth as the 40th anniversary approaches, and to promote and sell October 1962: The "Missile" Crisis as Seen from Cuba by Tomás Diez, soon to be released by Pathfinder. A display at the conference featured the upcoming book and the events it describes.

The other classes were: "Declining Health Care Under Capitalism" by Tom Leonard; "The Roots of Bonapartism--The 18th Brumaire" by Richard Taylor; "Building the Communist Movement in the Southern Cone" by Martín Koppel and Romina Green; and "The Hidden History of the Workers and Farmers Government in Azerbaijan: 1945-46" by Ma’mud Shivani.

The class presented by Leonard focused on cuts in medical care for veterans, which form part of the overall decline in health care for working people. The discussion took up the closure of public hospitals and clinics and other cutbacks tied to capitalist profitability, and discussed how the political question of health care takes on added importance as depression conditions loom for millions of workers and farmers. Leonard explained that communists can anticipate struggles in defense of social programs and a rise in class solidarity among working people.

One set of panels displayed the photo signatures in the English, French, and Spanish editions of The History of American Trotskyism. Mary-Alice Waters explained the political value of the photo signatures in Pathfinder books in her report to the convention. On street corners, on the job, and in book stores, the photo signatures help anyone interested in a given title gain an understanding of its contents, and an appreciation of its value to working people. They help bridge language and other barriers among working people and add substantially to the books’ political impact.

Participants at the convention bought almost 500 books and pamphlets worth a total of $6,700. Among the best sellers were the Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, 23 sets of which were sold, along with 123 individual volumes, and 82 volumes of the Collected Works of V.I. Lenin. Other top-selling titles included 71 copies of Their Trotsky and Ours by Jack Barnes; 25 of The History of American Trotskyism; 13 of the pamphlet We Are the Heirs of the World’s Revolutions by Thomas Sankara; 10 of Barnes’s The Changing Face of U.S. Politics; and 8 of Teamster Bureaucracy by Farrell Dobbs.
 
 
Related articles:
Expanding the reach of revolutionary books
Transforming the production and distribution of titles published by Pathfinder
Socialist Workers Party convention turns party outward to new opportunities  
 
 
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