The Militant - March 18, 2013 -- Cuban workers and youth look for books on US class struggle and capitalist crisis

Vol. 77/No. 10 March 18, 2013

Cuban workers and youth look for books
on US class struggle and capitalist crisis

BY OLIVIA PALLISTER
HAVANA—Among the books in Spanish most sought after by workers and youth here in Cuba during a four-week visit by an international team participating in the Havana International Book Fair, as well as in related activities in Havana and Santiago de Cuba province, were titles on the class struggle and revolutionary working-class politics in the United States.

Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power by Jack Barnes sold 135 copies in Spanish. Forty-six copies of Is Socialist Revolution in the U.S. Possible? by Mary-Alice Waters were bought at events here, as well.

Some 500 copies of this working-class newsweekly, the Militant, were sold for a peso each, with 15 people getting subscriptions—far more than during any previous book fair.

Titles presenting a Marxist explanation of the roots of today’s global contraction of capitalist production, trade and employment—and a working-class road to combat the exploiters’ assaults—were very popular. This was shown by interest in “Capitalism’s Long Hot Winter Has Begun” in issue no. 6 of Nueva Internacional (70 copies sold) and “What the 1987 Stock Market Crash Foretold” in issue no. 4 of that magazine (40 sold).

The largest number of Pathfinder books sold or donated were new titles available this year at book presentations in Havana and Santiago de Cuba. This included:

• more than 1,000 copies of the most recent edition (in Spanish and English) of The Cuban Five: Who They Are, Why They Were Framed, Why They Should Be Free;

• 550 copies of Cuba and Angola: Fighting For Africa’s Freedom and Our Own; and

• 620 copies of the new booklet Women and Revolution: The Living Example of the Cuban Revolution, a companion to a book launched at last year’s fair, Women in Cuba: The Making of a Revolution Within the Revolution (270 more of which were sold here this year).

Of special interest were 27 copies sold—in English—of Problems of Women’s Liberation by Evelyn Reed. Few books in English sell in large quantities here, but sales of this title not available in Spanish registered the thirst for works on the origins of women’s oppression and a revolutionary course to fight for emancipation.

In addition, 80 copies were sold of Lenin’s Final Fight—one of the most sought-after titles here since Pathfinder first published it in Spanish in 1997—as well as 32 copies of The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.

All told, more than 6,000 Pathfinder books were sold or donated during the activities here.