They have begun soapboxing in workers districts, joining union picket lines, campaigning at factory gates, and petitioning in several states—from Mississippi to Utah—to put the working-class alternative on the ballot. They are getting revolutionary literature into the hands of working people and youth who seek ways to oppose the imperialist rulers’ drive to wars abroad and brutal offensive against workers and farmers at home.

As they campaign, socialist workers are acting to respond to the new opportunities and responsibilities they have today to deepen their work as union builders and organizers alongside other workers—from the western coalfields to packinghouses in the Midwest to garment and textile plants.

Acting along these lines was at the heart of the deliberations of the delegates to the 42nd SWP convention.

Some 400 people attended the convention, which was the culmination of three months of discussion in party branches. The delegates elected by the branches discussed and adopted a convention platform outlining a political course of action for the party. They also elected a new National Committee. Convention sessions were translated simultaneously into Spanish and French for guests observing the proceedings.

The platform included two reports, titled “Putting Trade Union Work Back at the Center of Fraction Work” and “This Is a Moment When the Organization Question Is the Central Political Question.” Parts of these documents will be published in upcoming issues of the Marxist magazine New International, along with others adopted by the 2002 party convention.

New International no. 12, scheduled for publication this fall, will be titled “Our Program Starts with the World.” Its companion volume, NI no. 13, will feature “Capitalism’s long hot winter has begun.” This document is based on the political report adopted by the 2002 SWP convention, and was part of the platform the delegates adopted at the June party convention. Parallel issues of the Spanish-language Nueva Internacional and Nouvelle Internationale in French will also be produced.

Members of the Communist Leagues and Young Socialists in Australia, Canada, Iceland, New Zealand, Sweden, and the United Kingdom took part in the gathering. Their representatives contributed to the convention deliberations as well as the classes and other activities that took place in conjunction with the convention.  
 
Working-class resistance
A report to the delegates titled, “The organization of western coal begins,” presented by Róger Calero, opened the convention. It centered on the expanding labor support for the nine-month battle for union representation being waged by striking workers at the Co-Op mine in Huntington, Utah, and the impact of this struggle on miners and other workers throughout the West (see front-page coverage).

During the discussion Chris Hoeppner, a delegate from Seattle, explained how socialist workers there supported and helped build a labor tour for two striking miners in the Pacific Northwest, which overlapped with most of the convention and was initiated and sponsored by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (see last week’s Militant).

In a report to convention delegates, SWP national secretary Jack Barnes highlighted a quote from a Militant news article on the Utah miners’ battle that stated, “Miners in the West see the potential for a victory at the Co-Op mine as a spur to other UMWA organizing efforts in mines they work at or know about. Discussion about the Co-Op mine strike continues to bubble among miners in the region.”

Barnes noted that the sentence should be amended to add “and among other workers such as those at Wal-Mart,” referring to descriptions by one of the delegates from Price, Utah, about the impact of this fight on broader layers of workers in the area including those at Wal-Mart stores.

In his report, Calero also pointed to union-organizing struggles brewing among packinghouse workers in the Midwest and elsewhere.

These struggles, he said, sharply underscore the increased responsibility that all socialist workers have today to work shoulder-to-shoulder with fellow workers to strengthen their unions or, in plants that are not organized, to help get the union in.

The political report by Jack Barnes and discussion by the delegates addressed many issues that confront the working class and its allies worldwide—from the conflicts deepened by the imperialist occupation of Iraq; to Washington’s transformation of its military and its deployment abroad and the interlinked domestic “security” measures directed against the rights and political space of working people in the United States; to the inexorably deepening economic crisis.  
 
Use of party’s books, pamphlets
Mary-Alice Waters, a member of the SWP National Committee, reported on “The transformation of the use and production of the party’s books and pamphlets.” She pointed to the progress that the communist movement has made in recent months in confidently using its political propaganda tools to reach working people. One success was the campaign to double the number of new Militant and Perspectiva Mundial subscribers this spring. It was followed by a campaign—as part of actively building the April 25 march on Washington to defend a woman’s right to choose abortion—to sell books that explain the roots of women’s oppression and that point to a revolutionary working-class road forward. A total of 2,500 books and pamphlets published by Pathfinder Press, specially discounted as an incentive, were sold in the months of March and April.

During the discussion one delegate noted the increase in sales of these books in Iran. Such titles are also making their way into parts of Iraq for the first time, he said.

The convention delegates voted to launch a campaign to increase sales of Pathfinder books and pamphlets by 10 percent in the second half of 2004 compared to the first half of the year.

The increased thirst for and confidence in using these political weapons was reflected in sales at the convention itself: nearly 300 books and pamphlets were sold for a total exceeding $3,000. Top sellers were the new edition of Teamster Rebellion by Farrell Dobbs with 38 copies sold, the new edition of The Stalin School of Falsification with all 19 copies available sold out, and Trotsky on the Jewish Question and Abram Leon’s On the Jewish Question, with 14 and 10 copies respectively.

A representative of the Revolutionary Socialist Nucleus of Paraguay, who participated in the convention, gave greetings on behalf of his organization. A message from Dagoberto Rodríguez, first secretary of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, D.C., was read to the gathering.

More than anything else, the convention was marked by delegates’ experiences and sober realization of the opportunities and responsibilities they carry as part of the fighting working-class resistance to the social and economic consequences of the imperialist world that is coming into being.

Discussion on many of the main themes of the convention continued in several classes. The topics included “The Changing Face of U.S. Politics and the Struggle for Black Liberation”; “Jew Hatred, Trotsky-Baiting, and ‘Conspiracies’”; “Women’s Liberation and the Line of March of the Working Class,” and “Lessons for Program and Strategy Today from Forthcoming Book on the Third Congress of the Communist International.”

The convention closed with a summary report by Barnes and the election of the party’s National Committee, followed later that evening with a closing program.  
 
Campaigning for socialist ticket
The final meeting heard presentations by Calero and Hawkins, whose nominations as SWP candidates for U.S. president and vice president had been ratified by the convention delegates. Nicole Sarmiento, a Young Socialist in Miami and the SWP candidate for U.S. Senate in Florida, and other speakers described their initial experiences in campaigning for the working-class alternative and plans for getting the socialist candidates on the ballot in a dozen states across the country.

Speakers included Militant editor Argiris Malapanis; leaders of the Communist Leagues in Canada and Sweden; and John Pines, who had attended the first international preparatory meeting in Brasilia, Brazil, for the World Festival of Youth and Students scheduled for August 5-13, 2005, in Caracas, Venezuela. He said the most important preparation for the festival is to join efforts to defend Venezuela against Washington’s threats of intervention.

Ruth Cheney, a member of the San Francisco-based steering committee of the Printing Project, spoke on the work of more than 250 volunteers around the world who help produce Pathfinder books, including formatting text, proofreading, preparing graphics, and checking indexes. She explained that, to a large extent because of the increasing sales of books this spring, a number of Pathfinder titles have gone out of stock. She said the volunteers have taken steps to ensure that a steady stream of books will be back into print.

Scott Breen, a member of the committee based in Seattle that organizes the collection of all party supporters’ monthly financial contributions to the SWP, reported that they are on course to meet their goal of raising $315,000 and had won 23 new contributors over the past months.

The meeting launched a special fund appeal for the Socialist Workers Party election campaign. Those present contributed or pledged more than $51,000. The fund-raising appeal will run through August 1.

The day after the convention, volunteers in the Printing Project held several workshops on aspects of their work. The Young Socialists held a meeting for all its members and youth interested in the YS. Their discussion focused on campaigning for the SWP candidates, which will be the main axis of the work of the Young Socialists through the fall.  
 
 
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