Members and supporters of the Socialist Workers Party and Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom are finding a lot of interest from Militant readers and others in the new Pathfinder book The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward by SWP leaders Jack Barnes, Mary-Alice Waters and Steve Clark.
The campaign to promote this title runs alongside winning Militant readers to renew their subscriptions.
In Lake Station, Indiana, SWP members Dan Fein and Leroy Watson visited with Mike Matsey and Tyler McChristian Jan. 28 to talk about the party’s program and activities. Both had signed up for Militant subscriptions last spring.
“Right-wing forces are dangerous today. We need to strengthen the progressives,” said Matsey, who is a CNC machinist at a plastics factory.
“The divisions in society are not between progressives and rightists, or red states vs. blue states, liberals vs. conservatives, or Democrats vs. Republicans,” Fein responded. “It’s about the working-class vs. the capitalist class. We need a labor party based on our unions to defend our class interests against the capitalist rulers who exploit us.”
Matsey responded, “That’s a different way of thinking about the division.” He said he liked reading Militant articles on the fight of Ukraine to defend its independence and on the protests in Iran. Fein showed him The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us. “I agree with the title, look at the increase in strikes today,” said Matsey. He renewed his subscription and bought the book along with four others — Malcolm X, Black Liberation and the Road to Workers Power; Labor, Nature, and the Evolution of Humanity; 50 Years of Covert Operations in the US; and Workers’ Rights Versus the Secret Police.
When they met with McChristian, who works at McDonald’s, he told Watson, “I don’t agree with all these immigrants coming here and getting food stamps, welfare and freeloading.” Watson responded, “What you said is an example of the politics of resentment which divides the working class. The immigrants need jobs just like we do. Our unions need to organize them to unite the working class and fight for a shorter workweek with no cut in pay to spread the available work around.”
McChristian replied, “You raise important points.” He renewed his Militant subscription and got The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us.
The new book is available at the special price of $7 through May 31 and for $5 with a Militant subscription.
In Montreal, Beverly Bernardo, Communist League candidate for the Quebec National Assembly in the riding of Saint-Henri-Saint-Anne, visited Militant subscriber Teresa Pestaña Tamayo at her home Jan. 17. Tamayo, originally from Mexico, said she opposes Quebec Premier Francois Legault’s plan to allow only French speakers to immigrate to Quebec beginning in 2026.
“It’s very bad,” she said. “I think that people who speak different languages must be able to come here because of the difficult economic situation in our countries, and to be able to reunite families living in insecurity. Many workers from Latin America come here looking for a better life.”
“The Communist League campaign opposes this measure,” Bernardo responded. “It’s an attempt by the capitalist rulers to divide working people along language lines, as they also try to do around religion. We call on the unions to campaign against these attacks on workers’ rights. Such a campaign includes breaking with all the capitalist parties and forging our own party, a labor party based on the unions.”
Tamayo agreed and decided to renew her subscription. She also bought the Spanish edition of Labor, Nature, and the Evolution of Humanity: The Long View of History by Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Mary-Alice Waters and George Novack.
In Manchester, England, Peter Clifford, Communist League candidate for Manchester Council in the May 4 elections, was among the speakers at a Jan. 21 demonstration of 60 people in solidarity with mass protests in Iran. Called by the Red Roots Collective, a group of Iranians in Manchester, the event was joined by the Manchester Trades Union Council, Kurdish groups and other political organizations.
“The wealthy bourgeois-clerical rulers of Iran have been acting for decades as though they were there for good,” Clifford told the crowd. “I’m a rail worker. Six months ago we were told unions were dinosaurs, but now hundreds of thousands of workers are saying, ‘Enough is enough.’ It’s a class battle here and in Iran.”
To help expand the Militant’s reach and to get books on revolutionary working-class politics, contact the SWP and CL branch nearest you listed in the directory.