BY LUIS MADRID
Pathfinder Press, located in New York with distributors in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, publishes books and pamphlets by revolutionary fighters whose struggles against capitalism, racism, and all forms of exploitation and oppression point the way forward for humanity. Pathfinder bookstores are listed in the directory on page 12.
With more than 500 copies ordered by campus bookstores across the United States by early August, The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels tops the list of Pathfinder titles adopted for classroom use in the upcoming fall semester. Quantities ordered range from 10 copies to 100. Stores at two campuses included 20 copies of Engels's Socialism: Utopian and Scientific in their orders.
Malcolm X: The Last Speeches, a selection of talks given in the last two years of his life, follows the Manifesto in copies ordered to date; one campus alone asked for 100 copies. Various other titles by Malcolm X are also part of classroom adoptions every semester, including Malcolm X Speaks, with some 80 copies ordered.
The selection of books for class adoption, however, is as wide as the range of titles Pathfinder publishes and distributes. Titles chosen by professors this fall include Thomas Sankara's Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle; Fidel Castro Speeches, 1975-80; Genocide Against the Indians by George Novack; and Problems of Everyday Life by Leon Trotsky. Two other titles frequently adopted are Blacks in America's Wars by Robert Mullen, and Malcolm X on Afro-American History.
Orders have also been received for George Novack's Origins of Materialism, and Che Guevara Speaks.
"I have been saving up some money to get some books under your special prisoner discount program," wrote an inmate from the Fishkill Correctional Facility in Beacon, New York, as he sent for Daniel Guerin's Fascism and Big Business, Lenin's Final Fight by V.I. Lenin, the recently reissued pamphlet Marxism and Terrorism by Leon Trotsky, and other titles adding up to a $60 order.
Similar letters have arrived in the Pathfinder office from workers and youth behind bars in Amarillo, Texas; Pine City, New York; Calipatria, California; and other prisons across the United States. Taking advantage of the special 50 percent discount Pathfinder offers them, many inmates have prison authorities deduct the cost of the books from their accounts. Others get friends and relatives to buy the books for them, and some request that the library in their prison purchase titles.
Among the titles ordered by prisoners or prison libraries are: George Novack's The Long View of History; What Is to Be Done, Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, and The Right of Nations to Self-Determination, all by Lenin; and many more. Books by Malcolm X, Ernesto Che Guevara, and Trotsky are also popular.
Pathfinder counts on contributions to help cover the cost of these orders, which constitute priceless bridges to the outside world for those behind bars. Funds can be sent to "Pathfinder Books for Prisoners," 410 West Street, New York, NY 10014.