Books of the Month – Page 11

Mother Jones: All workers must unite to fight common foe

Vol. 85/No. 30 - August 16, 2021

Painting of Mother Jones around 1900 leading protest by union workers. Communist leader Leon Trotsky called her a ”heroic American proletarian” with “unflagging devotion to working people,” noting she had “contempt for traitors, careerists among working-class ‘leaders.’”

One of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for August is Mother Jones Speaks: Speeches and Writings of a Working-Class Fighter. From the end of the Civil War until her death in 1930 at age 100, Mary Harris “Mother” Jones tirelessly…

Lenin: ‘Oppressed nations have the right to self-determination’

Vol. 85/No. 29 - July 26, 2021

Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin, center, at Congress of the Communist International in Moscow, 1920. Lenin explained the need to back the fight for national liberation in colonies and semicolonies, for the toilers to organize independent of the imperialists and their capitalist allies there.

One of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for July is Workers of the World and Oppressed Peoples, Unite! Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress of the Communist International, 1920 (Volume 1). This excerpt is from a report to the…

Capitalist rulers aim to solve gov’t deficit on workers’ backs

Vol. 85/No. 28 - July 19, 2021

Protest in Philadelphia by retired workers against Social Security cuts in late 1980s. Rich bondholders demand government cut social wage, not profitable interest payments on government bonds, to cover rising state debts. This attack hits what working people see as a social right.

Capitalism’s World Disorder: Working-Class Politics at the Millennium by Jack Barnes is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for July. Barnes is the national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party. The excerpt is from the section “Bondholders and the…

‘In US prison system, just going to trial earns you respect’

Vol. 85/No. 27 - July 12, 2021

One of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for July is the French edition of Voices from Prison: The Cuban Five. Fernando González, René González, Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernández and Ramón Labañino were arrested on frame-up conspiracy charges by the…

Capital rules through its two parties: Democrats and Republicans

Vol. 85/No. 26 - July 5, 2021

Laura Gray cartoon in Militant, July 29, 1944, of bosses cracking whip over Republicans, Democrats, as they rush to do bidding of capitalist rulers.

One of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for July is Letters from Prison by James P. Cannon, a founding leader of the Socialist Workers Party. He and 17 other leaders of the SWP and the Minneapolis Teamsters union were framed…

As revolution advanced, Cuban peasants’ lives were transformed

Vol. 85/No. 25 - June 28, 2021

Working people and Rebel Army fighters line up at field hospital in Sierra Maestra, Cuba, 1958. Revolutionary forces’ policy was to treat peasants, combatants, wounded enemy soldiers without distinction.

The Spanish edition of Women in Cuba: The Making of a Revolution Within the Revolution by Vilma Espín, Asela de los Santos and Yolanda Ferrer, three leaders of the Federation of Cuban Women, is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the…

Scientific socialism grew with the working-class movement

Vol. 85/No. 24 - June 21, 2021

Karl Marx, holding Neue Rheinische Zeitung with Frederick Engels in 1848 German revolution, helped build Communist League, first modern working-class party. Engels wrote, “Com-munism is not a doctrine but a movement; it proceeds not from principles but from facts.”

The excerpt below is from one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for June, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Frederick Engels. Engels helped found the modern communist movement alongside Karl Marx. In this book, written by Engels with the collaboration…

Mighty rise of unions in 1930s posed need for a labor party

Vol. 85/No. 23 - June 14, 2021

Sit-down strike by autoworkers in 1937 at General Motors in Flint, Michigan, was part of strike wave during 1930s Depression that built Congress of Industrial Organizations and posed need, and potential, for a party of labor to advance the class struggle onto the political plane.

One of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for June is Teamster Politics by Farrell Dobbs. It tells how Teamsters Local 574 members in Minneapolis in 1934 during the Great Depression learned to wield their union power to win strikes. With…

First US general strike in 1877 showed power of labor

Vol. 85/No. 20 - May 24, 2021

Rail strikers blockade engines at Martinsburg, West Virginia, in 1877. Karl Marx called their strike “the first uprising against the oligarchy of capital which had developed since the Civil War.” The working class together with oppressed toilers who are Black and exploited farmers would be the class forces of revolution in the U.S., he said.

The “Great Strike” of 1877, sparked by starvation wages and brutal working conditions, started among rail workers and then drew in more than half a million others. It alarmed the capitalist rulers. Federal, state and city governments unleashed troops, cops…

Chinese Cubans: Indispensable strand of Cuba’s revolution

Vol. 85/No. 14 - April 12, 2021

“Resident Chinese support the Cuban Revolution and its leader, Fidel Castro!” is banner of Chinese New Democracy Alliance as they join a million people in Havana, Sept. 2, 1960. Rally approved Declaration of Havana, affirming duty of oppressed peoples to fight for liberation.

Our History Is Still Being Written: The Story of Three Chinese Cuban Generals in the Cuban Revolution by Armando Choy, Gustavo Chui and Moisés Sío Wong, is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for April. It covers how these…