With an uptick in workers’ battles — like the UAW strike against GM and the Blackjewel coal miners’ fight to win wages stolen from them by the bosses — the Socialist Workers Party has launched a nine-week drive to expand the reach of the Militant and readership of books by SWP leaders and other revolutionaries.
The drive, which began Oct. 5, is aimed at helping workers gain a deeper understanding of the party’s program and perspectives, and the lessons of past battles by our class around the world. The Militant urges all its readers and supporters to join in helping make this a success.
The drive, which runs through Dec. 10, has an international goal of winning 1,100 subscribers and selling 1,250 books. It runs concurrently with a drive to raise $100,000 to finance the work of the party. Next week we will publish a list of area goals in the U.S. and worldwide.
Central to this campaign will be exchanging views and sharing experiences with workers, farmers and other exploited producers in cities, towns and rural areas, laying the groundwork for working together in solidarity with strikes and other working-class protests, and on the party’s 2019 and 2020 election campaigns.
Through joining these working-class struggles, discussing their significance and the class view of other political developments on workers’ doorsteps, SWP members and partisans of the paper can establish deeper relations with union fighters and other class-struggle-minded workers and youth.
The drive is an international effort — with participation by the SWP’s sister Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK, as well as all others who join in, from Iraq to the Philippines.
Crisis of working-class leadership
Worldwide, working people in sustained protests involving millions have toppled governments in Sudan, Algeria and Puerto Rico in recent months. But while hated rulers there have been forced out, the governments that defend the interests of the capitalist rulers remain in place. What’s lacking is a revolutionary leadership capable of advancing the fight to build an independent working-class movement that can chart a course toward taking political power.
This points to the importance of getting into the hands of working-class fighters a broad range of books that explain — from the past experiences of our class — how we can transform ourselves in struggle, gaining self-confidence and growing class consciousness. To facilitate this campaign, all Pathfinder books and copies of the Marxist magazine New International will be offered at 20% off during the drive.
In addition, eight books that deal with some of the central questions of class politics and the party’s course today are available at half-price with a Militant subscription.
They are: Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power, Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? and The Clintons’ Anti-Working-Class Record, all by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes; Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible? and In Defense of the US Working Class both by Mary-Alice Waters; “It’s the Poor Who Face the Savagery of the US ‘Justice’ System” by the Cuban Five; Tribunes of the People and the Trade Unions by Karl Marx, V.I. Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Farrell Dobbs and Barnes; and The Jewish Question by Abram Leon, a revolutionary in Belgium.
Available just a few weeks after the drive begins will be a new Pathfinder book, The Turn to Industry: Forging a Proletarian Party by Barnes. It explains how the SWP throughout its history has fought to build a party based in the working class and in our unions. The title will be an invaluable tool to introduce to workers door to door, among co-workers and at political events.
Another opportunity to get books at discounted prices is to sign up for the Pathfinder Readers Club. For just $10 a year, all of the hundreds of books published by Pathfinder Press are available at a 25% discount.
To join in the drive get in touch with the SWP or Communist League in your area, listed in the directory.