Tag: Pathfinder Books

How Marxists in the US helped lead in overthrow of slavery

Vol. 88/No. 16 - April 22, 2024
Joseph Weydemeyer, inset, close collaborator of Karl Marx, served as officer in Union Army, like those, above, during Civil War. Marx hailed President Abraham Lincoln for his reelection in 1864, saying that politically it was “the triumphal war-cry” of “Death to Slavery.”

Revolutionary Continuity: The Early Years 1848-1917 by Farrell Dobbs is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for April. This is the first of two volumes covering class struggles and political battles behind the development of a Marxist leadership in…

Luxemburg, Liebknecht: martyrs of the revolutionary movement

Vol. 88/No. 14 - April 8, 2024
Revolutionary internationalist leaders Rosa Luxemburg, inset, speaking in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1907 and Karl Liebknecht, speaking in Berlin in 1918. The two revolutionaries, jailed by the German government for opposing imperialist war, hailed victory of the Bolshevik Revolution.

Portraits, Political and Personal by Leon Trotsky is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for April. Trotsky was a central leader of the October 1917 Russian Revolution led by V.I. Lenin and fought the overturn of its proletarian internationalist…

Che: Cuba’s socialist revolution shows way forward for humanity

Vol. 88/No. 13 - April 1, 2024
Che Guevara, right, in voluntary labor at 1961 Cuban construction site. In 1987, Fidel Castro led revival of Che’s ideas on transforming working people while deepening socialist revolution

One of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for March is  Che Guevara Speaks, first published within weeks of his death in combat at the hands of the CIA and U.S.-trained forces in Bolivia in 1967. Che joined the revolutionary movement…

Carl Skoglund: lifelong communist, ‘old guard’ union fighter

Vol. 88/No. 11 - March 18, 2024
Minneapolis Teamsters Local 544’s executive board meeting in November 1937. From left, Farrell Dobbs, Grant Dunne, Carl Skoglund, V.R. Dunne, Miles Dunne, Jack Smith, Bill Brown. Skoglund, Cannon said, “played a big role” in victorious 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strikes.

One of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for March is Speeches for Socialism by James P. Cannon. Below is an excerpt from Cannon’s talk at a January 1961 Los Angeles meeting celebrating the life of Carl Skoglund. Both had been…

Pathfinder books win widespread interest at Havana Int’l Book Fair

Vol. 88/No. 10 - March 11, 2024
Visitors crowd into central bookstore for Cuban publishers at Havana International Book Fair Feb. 24. Foreign and other Cuban publishers had stalls elsewhere around the book fair grounds.

HAVANA — The Pathfinder stand at the Havana International Book Fair was a center for nonstop discussion, as it has been for a quarter century. Hundreds of people came looking for books about the crisis-wracked capitalist world today, the history…

Teamsters’ newspaper helped win 1934 Minneapolis strikes

Vol. 88/No. 10 - March 11, 2024
July 26 Organizer, daily broadsheet of Teamsters Local 574’s 1934 strike battles in Minneapolis. Crucial to winning victory, union prepared strikers for every move by bosses, the government.

The French edition of The History of American Trotskyism, 1928-1938: Report of a Participant by James P. Cannon is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for February. Cannon, a founding leader of the Socialist Workers Party, explains in the…

Communist International defended rights of oppressed peoples

Vol. 88/No. 8 - February 26, 2024
Lenin speaks at Second Congress of Communist International, July 1920, in Petrograd, Russia. Combating persecution of Jews, said Lenin, is vital to advance socialist revolution as only road to ensure rights of all oppressed nations. Under his leadership, Bolshevik Party was on the front lines of the fight to end pogroms.

One of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for February is Workers of the World and Oppressed Peoples, Unite! Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress of the Communist International, 1920, Vol. 1. The 1917 revolution led by V.I. Lenin and…

Che fought to extend socialist revolution in Latin America

Vol. 88/No. 7 - February 19, 2024
Fighters in 1952 Bolivian national revolution. Prerevolutionary crises in Latin America led Che Guevara, Bolivian fighters to try to open socialist revolution across the continent in 1966.

The Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for February. Guevara, an Argentinian who helped lead the Cuban Revolution, set out in Bolivia to forge a continent-wide revolutionary movement of workers and peasants.…

The US Civil War was the Second American Revolution

Vol. 88/No. 6 - February 12, 2024
Slaves liberated by Union army in Newbern, North Carolina, after Emancipation Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln, Jan. 1, 1863, Communist leaders Karl Marx, Frederick Engels said U.S. Civil War was a struggle between slavery and free labor. They backed Lincoln and free labor.

America’s Revolutionary Heritage: Marxist Essays by George Novack is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for February. This excerpt is from the chapter “The Civil War — Its Place in History.” It explains the revolutionary character of both the…

Building a proletarian party is needed to lead struggle for power

Vol. 88/No. 5 - February 5, 2024
At left, Socialist Workers Party leaders V.R. Dunne and James P. Cannon lead 15 members of SWP, Teamsters Local 544-CIO to Minneapolis federal courthouse, Dec. 31, 1943, to be taken to prison in frame-up for opposing Washington’s entry into second imperialist world war.

This excerpt is from The Struggle for a Proletarian Party by James P. Cannon. It is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for January. The book records the fight to build a party, proletarian in program and composition, that can lead…