Books of the Month – Page 4

Russian Revolution: ‘The great struggle for the liberation of mothers’

Vol. 87/No. 26 - July 17, 2023

Kindergarten in Moscow in 1920. Trotsky wrote that 1917 Bolshevik Revolution advanced child care, one step to free mothers from bondage, open door to social and political life.

Women and the Family by Leon Trotsky is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for July. Trotsky, a leader of the Russian Revolution, describes how V.I. Lenin and the Bolsheviks led workers and peasants to fight to make and…

The Socialist Workers Party and defense of constitutional rights

Vol. 87/No. 24 - July 3, 2023

FBI raid on SWP Minneapolis headquarters, June 27, 1941, hailed by bosses’ press, was aimed at party, Minneapolis Teamsters leaders as rulers prepared to enter World War II.

As the Democrats ravage constitutional freedoms in their drive to criminalize Donald Trump to stop him from running for president again, we feature FBI on Trial as one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for June. It contains the results…

‘We built a party to lead a socialist revolution in the United States’

Vol. 87/No. 23 - June 12, 2023

Delegates at founding convention of Communist Party of America in Chicago, September 1919. James P. Cannon, one of the party’s founding leaders, said that their perspective was to build a Bolshevik-style party in United States like V.I. Lenin had constructed that led workers and peasants to power in Russia.

The First Ten Years of American Communism: Report of a Participant by James P. Cannon is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for June. Cannon describes his experiences as a founding leader of the Communist Party in the United…

‘There is no solution to the Jewish question under capitalism’

Vol. 87/No. 22 - June 5, 2023

When fascist groups called a rally at Madison Square Garden in 1939, 50,000 working people came out in New York for a countermobilization called by the Socialist Workers Party.

The French edition of The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation by Abram Leon is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for May. Leon’s centurieslong history of the Jewish people and the struggle against Jew-hatred was begun on the eve…

‘Malcolm X told the uncompromising revolutionary truth’

Vol. 87/No. 21 - May 29, 2023

Malcolm X speaking at the Militant Labor Forum in New York, May 29, 1964. Jack Barnes said he was “the face and the authentic voice of the forces of the coming American revolution.”

On the 98th anniversary of his birthday this month, the Militant is featuring a selection from Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power by Jack Barnes, national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party. Barnes said that “Malcolm…

‘The woman question can’t be divorced from the class question’

Vol. 87/No. 20 - May 22, 2023

Women workers from coal processing plants join miners’ protest demanding payment of back wages on Independence Square, Kyiv, Ukraine, June 30, 2020. Evelyn Reed wrote that beauty comes out of humanity’s evolution through labor, not profit-driven fashions and cosmetics.

Cosmetics, Fashions, and the Exploitation of Women by Joseph Hansen, Evelyn Reed and Mary-Alice Waters is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for May. What began as a 1954 debate in the Militant over how big-business marketing of cosmetics…

Unions ‘must aim at the emancipation of the downtrodden millions’

Vol. 87/No. 19 - May 15, 2023

Bakery workers union members won broad solidarity in their three-week strike against forced overtime, for better wages at Frito-Lay in Topeka, Kansas, in 2021. Karl Marx said that unions need to become organizing centers for the emancipation of the whole working class.

Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay by Leon Trotsky is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for May. Below is “Trade Unions: Their Past, Present, and Future,” a resolution written by Karl Marx and adopted in September…

Great Strike of 1877 showed the power of the US working class

Vol. 87/No. 18 - May 8, 2023

Rail strike in West Virginia, above, set off 1877 general strike. Karl Marx wrote that the policies of the capitalist rulers would “turn the Negroes” and “convert the farmers of the West” into allies of the workers, forging the class forces that would make a revolution in the U.S.

The Great Labor Uprising of 1877 by Philip S. Foner is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for May. After five years of economic depression, West Virginia railroad workers went on strike in the face of wage cuts and…

‘A milestone in the struggle for the liberation of southern Africa’

Vol. 87/No. 17 - May 1, 2023

Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro in Cuba, July 1991. Mandela paid tribute to Cuban volunteer fighters who helped to decisively defeat South African invasion of Angola. This spurred overthrow of apartheid regime in South Africa and strengthened Cuba’s socialist revolution.

How Far We Slaves Have Come by Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for April. From 1975 to 1991, hundreds of thousands of volunteer Cuban fighters helped drive out the U.S.-backed South African…

Legless veteran set example in battle against McCarthy witch hunt

Vol. 87/No. 16 - April 24, 2023

James Kutcher, right, with George Novack at news conference Sept. 1, 1948, in Newark, New Jersey, launching campaign to win back his job and push back against government attacks

The Case of the Legless Veteran by James Kutcher is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for April. In the decade after World War II, the Socialist Workers Party, Communist Party and others were targeted as part of the…