BY MARY-ALICE WATERS
A conference on Political and Social Publishing in the 1990s took place in Havana, Cuba, February 2-3, sponsored by the publishing house Casa Editora Abril. An article on the gathering appears on the front page. Mary-Alice Waters, president of Pathfinder Press, was among the speakers who addressed the meeting. We reprint below her presentation. It is copyright Pathfinder Press 1998 and is reprinted by permission.

First of all a thank you to Casa Editora Abril for taking the initiative to organize this conference as part of the events surrounding the Eighth International Book Fair that opens here in Havana tomorrow. It gives us all a rare opportunity to share experiences and discuss how to do a more effective job in meeting those goals we hold in common.

Pathfinder Press was born with the October Revolution. As a publishing house, our direct line of continuity goes back to the earliest publication of speeches and writings by Lenin in the United States on the eve of 1917. That is when magazines like the International Socialist Review, produced by left-wing militants in the Socialist Party, began publishing articles by the Bolshevik leader.

Origins in 1919
Following the victorious insurrection of the workers, peasants, and soldiers of the tsarist empire, revolutionary- minded working people the world over sought to emulate the example of the first worker-bolsheviks. By 1919 a regroupment of left-wing socialists, members of the Industrial Workers of the World, and others had come together to found something truly new - the communist movement in the United States, whose explicit goal was to emulate the Bolsheviks. Through many and varied channels they began to publish the periodicals, pamphlets, and books that for the first time in the 20th century brought to the working class in our hemisphere a communist perspective that drew on the toilers' initial experience of taking power, defending it, and using it worldwide.

I start with this because it is the clearest way I can explain what guides the editorial policy of Pathfinder to this day. For more than 80 years, Pathfinder and its various predecessors (from Merit and Pioneer, all the way back to the Literature Department of the Workers Party of America) have had one and only one objective: to publish and distribute as widely as possible the books, pamphlets, and magazines that are necessary to advance the construction of a communist party in the United States - an objective that is inseparable from the building of a communist movement internationally.

From 1917 to today, we have sought to defend a course true to Lenin's leadership of the Russian Revolution and the early years of the Communist International, as opposed to the course that later became identified with the Stalin-led Communist Party of the Soviet Union - the results of which are being reconfirmed in the colossal events of recent years that continue to unfold. And we have prioritized printing works created by revolutionists who exemplified Lenin's internationalist and proletarian course in deeds as well as words.

We always started with the ongoing facts before us in the world, with the most important challenges of the world class struggle, thinking about how to strengthen the fighting vanguard of the working class so it is better armed to understand the world in which we live; to understand the history of the modern working-class movement; to become more conscious of its strength and historic responsibilities; and to chart a line of march toward taking power in order to open the road to the construction of socialism.

Communism: a movement, not a doctrine
We have always subscribed to Engels's famous response to Herr Heinzen, written at about the same time as the Communist Manifesto, that "communism is not a doctrine, but a movement; it proceeds not from principles but from facts... Insofar as it is a theory, [it] is the theoretical expression of the position of the proletariat" in its struggle with the bourgeoisie and the "theoretical summation of the conditions for the liberation of the proletariat" and its allies from exploitation and oppression.

To bring this home for us today, I want to use the example of one of the most important books that Pathfinder has published in the last eight years. It is entitled U.S. Hands Off the Mideast! Cuba Speaks Out at the United Nations. It was published in English and Spanish in October 1990 as Washington was driving toward the horrendous, massive assault on Iraq that began in January 1991. Cuba's then-ambassador to the United Nations, Ricardo Alarcón, speaking from the seat Cuba fortuitously held on the Security Council, was the only voice speaking out clearly and consistently, utilizing the arena of international diplomacy, against the imperialist war being mounted under the auspices of the United Nations flag.

Pathfinder, in a matter of days (literally) brought out a small booklet containing each and every one of Alarcón's speeches to the world, along with the main speech by Fidel condemning Washington's aggression. When that sold out in a few weeks, we printed a second, expanded edition, so that communists and anti-imperialist fighters around the world could use it to campaign against the war that the magazine New International rightly calls "the opening guns of World War III."

In the short space of six months, Pathfinder sold some 10,000 copies of that title in English, and 1,500 in Spanish.

Today, as Washington is again accelerating toward a new murderous - and cowardly - assault on the people of Iraq, and one that will if anything be even more brutal than the last, that Pathfinder title takes on renewed importance. The fact that - as is our policy - we have not allowed the book to go out of print means that our weapons are ready, and, as we meet here, it is again being used by opponents of Washington's course around the world.

In a similar way, 30 years ago Pathfinder published another book - Che Guevara Speaks. In December 1967, only weeks after the death in combat of Ernesto Che Guevara, while news of that event and its implications still resounded like a drumbeat around the world, Pathfinder published the first edition of that collection of speeches and writings. We have not allowed it to go out of print from that day to this.

1. Pathfinder is not formally or legally the publishing house of a party (it has its own corporate structure and lines of decision-making). At the same time, from the beginning the writers, editors, directors and production personnel have all been active communist cadres in the United States (communists with a small `c'), experienced in the working-class movement. Pathfinder is the publishing house that has always kept in print the major documents, resolutions and speeches by leaders of the Socialist Workers Party. In the historical perspective, this is one of its most important and irreplaceable accomplishments. Without this the documents that both reflect and guide the practical work of communist workers, students and their allies in the United States would be nowhere available.

The Changing Face of U.S. Politics: Working-Class Politics and the Trade Unions by SWP national secretary Jack Barnes - which has been published by Pathfinder in three languages (English, Spanish, and French) - is the most recent important example of this central core of our publishing.

Produced in heat of political battles
2. As has been true throughout the history of the workers movement, the best materials we publish are almost without exception those produced by revolutionists in the heat of political battle - not abstract analyses or distanced studies, but pamphlets and books written by those who have been responding to the needs of the day.

One of the best examples of this is a book written in the anti-Nazi underground during World War II by a young Belgian, who was a Jew. The Jewish Question, by Abram Leon, perhaps the finest historical materialist study of this question ever to be written, was put down on paper while Leon was active in the underground. He finished it only a short time before he was captured and died at the hands of the Gestapo. Sailors, merchant marine men who were members of the SWP and often acted as couriers internationally, were able to salvage a copy of the manuscript in the closing days of the war. Pathfinder translated it, published it, and has kept it in print for decades.

Since 1928 when the Militant first began publishing - and 1931 when Pioneer Publishers produced its first title - there has always been a close working collaboration between the newspaper and what is today Pathfinder. Many of the materials that eventually find their way into Pathfinder publications first appear in the pages of the Militant. It couldn't be otherwise with a publishing house that is always in the thick of struggles and seeking to promote a clear class perspective.

From the beginning of the Cuban revolution, for example, the Militant has been the main periodical in the United States that published important documents and speeches by leaders of the Cuban revolution. These were often then rapidly reprinted by Pioneer Publishers as pamphlets and used widely by the active defenders of the Cuban Revolution both in the United States and Canada, many of whom organized themselves during the revolution's opening years as the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

In the days before photo-offset printing, it was especially important to be able to reuse the hot-lead type set for the newspaper, which was by far the costliest element in the printing process.

Pamphlets such as the first edition of The Second Declaration of Havana were published this way, for example - another title that Pathfinder has kept continuously in print, in this case since 1962. Tomorrow, in fact -February 4 - we will be marking the 35th anniversary of that call to action to the toilers of the Americas. Today we still use it widely as one of the best and most basic publications we have to explain the character of U.S. imperialist domination of Latin America and the place of the Cuban Revolution in the uncompromising struggle against it.

Just in the last days, the most recent example of this kind of collaboration came off the press, in English and Spanish. Celebrating the Homecoming of Ernesto Che Guevara's Reinforcement Brigade to Cuba. It is a collection of articles published in the Militant last year, including a series of articles, interviews, and speeches about Che by those who knew and worked with him as a leader of the Cuban revolution, a number of them reprinted from various publications here in Cuba. It also includes an excellent piece by Algerian revolutionary leader Ahmed Ben Bella, reprinted from Le Monde Diplomatique.

This is a Militant publication, but it will be distributed by Pathfinder and used broadly by young socialists and Militant supporters everywhere. Over the years, a number of publications like this have eventually evolved into Pathfinder books. But this kind of format allows for rapid, and relatively less expensive, publication of materials that might not otherwise be quickly available and easily accessible.

What is needed, not what is profitable
3. Pathfinder's starting point has always been what is needed by those fighting to change the world, not what will sell in the capitalist market. In other words, what guides us is the opposite of what guides any bourgeois publishing house. Moreover, with limited resources, we have always had to choose carefully, and often had to make painful decisions, on what, and what not, to publish. We do well to publish 4 or 5 new titles in a year's time, although in 1997 we were able to bring out 12 new titles, including 5 in Spanish and 4 in French. That's exceptional.

Our guideline, and this is especially true of books, is to publish materials that have a lasting value, that deal - in something more than a conjunctural way - with questions that are and will remain central to the workers movement for years.

For us - and again this is the opposite of the way bourgeois publishers function - the important list is our backlist, keeping in print the titles that contain the crystallized work of decades. Upgrading and improving them when possible, but keeping them in print in any case. That in-print backlist is one of the greatest leverages we have, allowing a relatively small cadre of communists to have substantially greater weight than would otherwise be possible.

In the last year alone we have reprinted 83 of our titles as we strive to approach capitalist norms of efficiency and stock control with small runs and just-in-time delivery. That is an enormous challenge that we don't always meet.

Some books, like Lenin's Final Fight, published last year in Spanish for the first time ever, are actually titles Pathfinder has had in print for 70 years or more, in one or another edition or collection.

All told, Pathfinder has more than 330 titles in print today. Some 280 are in English, 31 in Spanish, 16 in French, and a number in Russian. Together with Pathfinder supporters in other countries, several Pathfinder titles are also published in Swedish, Farsi, Greek, and Icelandic.

4. Most of the books we print, of course, are works that no one else is interested in publishing, because there is no other English-language publisher that shares Pathfinder's objectives.

Books like Fighting Racism in World War II, for example, that tells the story of the fight against segregation and discrimination inside and outside the U.S. armed forces, even as the Second World War was unfolding. Or the magnificent series of books Pathfinder has published on the documents of the early years of the Communist International. These were things we had no competition for.

The same can be said for some of the books that are today among our best-sellers -speeches by Malcolm X, one of the most outstanding leaders of the working class in the United States in the 20th century, a man who was killed by his enemies precisely because of his uncompromising revolutionary and internationalist trajectory. At the time Pathfinder began publishing Malcolm - while he was still alive -many on the left in the United States were denouncing him as a racist, and even a fascist. Fidel and Che, who were warmly welcomed to Harlem by Malcolm, understood his magnificent leadership qualities the same way we did.

In the words of revolutionists
Pathfinder always tries to publish books by revolutionary leaders, letting them speak for themselves in their own words. I would say we give precedence to such books over works by others about the great revolutionary leaders and events of our epoch. Workers, revolutionary-minded young people, don't primarily need interpreters, explainers, intermediaries. They can do the work of reading for themselves and over time understand more and more, especially if they discuss with fellow fighters. They gain self-confidence by knowing that they can read Marx, or Lenin, or Malcolm, or Che and work together to understand what such kindred spirits are talking about.

Pathfinder's "Speaks" series is one that captures this well: Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, Leon Trotsky Speaks, Malcolm X Speaks, Che Guevara Speaks, Sandinistas Speak, Nelson Mandela Speaks, Thomas Sankara Speaks, Maurice Bishop Speaks, W.E.B. DuBois Speaks, Eugene V. Debs Speaks.

That is why we publish books of speeches and writings by leaders of the Cuban revolution - by Che and by Fidel especially. To let the Cuban revolution speak for itself, through its most capable representatives. That's also why we are so happy that Secretos de generales [Secrets of generals] has been published here in Cuba, and a further set of revolutionary voices are able to be heard, read, and studied by new generations around the world.

And today, with the writings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin - previously readily available from the publishing houses of the Soviet Union - becoming more and more difficult to obtain, we anticipate that Pathfinder will soon of necessity begin to fill that gap as well.

Bearers of culture
5. At the point where politics and broader questions of culture intersect, the working-class movement constantly wages battle against both bourgeois dominance and mind-deadening escapism. From Marx and Engels to Che and Fidel, the great working-class leaders of our epoch have always fought to make the highest cultural conquests within class society the property of working people. They have done so knowing that it is working people who will be not only the bearers of the best of bourgeois culture into the new society, but will be among the great majority who more and more become the confident creators of culture.

Pathfinder considers the publications of works such as Art and Revolution by Leon Trotsky (with its trenchant polemic against the Stalin bureaucracy's politics of socialist realism), What is Surrealism? by André Breton, and our newest title, John Coltrane and the Jazz Revolution of the 1960s by Frank Kofsky, to be a necessary part of our publishing program. As Malcolm X insisted, broadening your scope makes working people better, and more effective, political people. It also enables them to fight with more joy.

For the same reason we are proud to help distribute internationally La Gaceta de Cuba, published by the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, as we do Granma and Cuba Socialista, published by the Communist Party of Cuba.

Depend on volunteer labor
6. Pathfinder is only able to maintain this kind of publishing program because of the generous support of communist- minded workers around the world, above all. They subsidize our publishing program because they agree with it, and they make real sacrifices to keep these revolutionary weapons in print. Pathfinder loses money on every book it publishes. It has never had a year, or even a quarter, when it broke even.

Because Pathfinder books are expensive for working people even in the United States (they are in the upper-middle range of going market prices), several years ago we set up the Pathfinder Reader's Club to make them more accessible to regular readers. For $10 per year anyone can join the club, and receive all Pathfinder titles at 15 percent off the cover price at any Pathfinder bookstore, or by ordering directly. And throughout the year we offer even higher discounts on selected titles.

We also rely heavily on volunteer labor to translate, proofread, scan and format, set type, do artistic work for our covers - some of which are truly beautiful - and all the other time-consuming work that is necessary to produce and distribute printed materials.

Right now, we are in the midst of a major project, involving volunteer labor from countries around the world, to put every single title currently in print by Pathfinder in digital form. Only by doing this will we be able to continue to take advantage of advances in printing technology that allow us to frequently print small quantities and continuously upgrade new editions as our resources permit.

Volunteers are also now finishing the work to produce a series of three CD-ROMs that will contain the entire collection of almost 65 years of the journal of Marxist theory and politics New International. With only a few copies of many of the early years of the magazine in existence, we were in danger of losing this irreplaceable resource entirely. Now it will once again be readily available to new generations communists in the U.S. and around the world.

7. The sale and distribution of Pathfinder titles also depends on the volunteer efforts of supporters. First and foremost, Pathfinder sales are "street sales" - sales by communist youth and workers off what we often call "guerrilla tables." Folding card tables set up regularly on street corners in popular shopping areas, at plant gates, on university campuses, near high schools. They sometimes get harassed by cops who don't like what we are selling and try to establish that the tables are illegally placed on private property. So the guerrilla tables sometimes have to stand their ground, sometimes retreat in order to retake the position later, or find a more defensible location.

An international network of Pathfinder bookstores in seven countries is another important source of sales. These also are organized completely by volunteers, by workers, who keep the stores open as many hours a week as possible.

The same volunteers also act as sales representatives, visiting regular commercial bookstores, libraries, and professors in dozens and dozens of cities, discussing the books with buyers and teachers. They obtain orders that are placed either directly with Pathfinder or through wholesale distribution businesses that buy from Pathfinder as well as other publishers.

Through these kinds of volunteer efforts - which include taking Pathfinder booths to numerous international book fairs around the world, from Moscow, to Frankfurt, to Tehran, to Guadalajara, to Sydney, to Havana - the reach of our publication effort is truly surprising.

8. A special word about our publishing in Spanish. Our Spanish-language publishing began, in a modest way, in the 1930s as the communist movement in the United States increased its collaboration with revolutionary fighters in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic. A not insignificant part of this, again, was due to the efforts of communists who were part of the merchant marine, who frequently sailed to the major ports of the Caribbean.

Chicano fight propels Spanish titles

But the modern period of publishing in Spanish owes its impetus to the new rise of the Chicano movement in the United States at the end of the 1960s - part of the revolutionary upsurge throughout Latin America in the wake of the 1959 victory in Cuba and the defeat of U.S. imperialism at the Bay of Pigs. The upsurge of the Chicano movement was also the product of the mass opposition within the United States to Washington's aggression against the people of Vietnam, and the determination of young Chicanos to do everything possible to end that war - a war in which they were being conscripted to fight and die, waged against a people for whom they had nothing but growing respect. The powerful example of the struggle for Black liberation, followed by the rising wave of struggles by women against their oppression, were a mighty impetus, as well.

That is when the Spanish-language sister publication of the Militant was born - Perspectiva Mundial. As with the Militant earlier, collaboration between PM and Pathfinder has been the source of a growing arsenal of books and pamphlets in Spanish.

The first book in Spanish was published in 1981. That was Wall Street enjuicia al socialismo -the court record of the trial and conviction on subversion charges of the entire central leadership of the SWP and leaders of the Midwest Teamsters union on the very eve of U.S. entry into World War II (in fact they were sentenced to prison the day after Pearl Harbor). Published in English as Socialism on Trial, it centers on the actual court testimony of James P. Cannon, a founding leader of the communist movement in the United States and of the Socialist Workers Party. This is a book we have used in English and Spanish for decades as a very basic piece of communist education and propaganda. It is similar in this regard to Fidel's 1953 courtroom speech, "History Will Absolve Me," though, needless to say, not with the scope of the historical impact of that document. That day will come!

With the major increase in immigration to the United States from throughout Latin America in the last decades - a wave of immigration that is similar in size and historic weight to the immigration from Europe at the end of the last century - the need for a growing arsenal of weapons in Spanish has increased even more. It is not only Los Angeles, Houston, and Miami that are today major Spanish-speaking metropolitan centers. The composition of the working class within the U.S. has changed dramatically from coast to coast, even in the smallest cities and in every basic industry. The working class has been strengthened by this influx of working people from throughout Our America, who are every day more and more confident about their ability to be active vanguard fighters in class-struggle battles within the United States. A communist party in the United States today is inconceivable without a strong component of Spanish-speaking members within its leading cadres, a cadre that reflects the working class as it is, and as it is becoming. Nor is it conceivable without a strong publishing program in Spanish.

(Even though I won't take time to expand on the point here, it is important to note that our French-language publishing program, a product of collaboration between Pathfinder and communists in Canada, is born out of similar necessities dictated by the class struggle in North America, and the powerful new rise of the independence movement in Quebec, beginning in the 1960s.)

In addition to the 31 titles in print in Spanish, Pathfinder distributes dozens more of the classics of Marxism as well as many titles imported from publishers in Cuba. This year, for the first time ever, we received substantial volunteer help from a team of comrades in Cuba, at the University of Matanzas, whose efforts made possible the publication of La ultima lucha de Lenin [Lenin's final fight], in an edition that includes corrected and improved Spanish translations of Lenin's final writings, all of which were checked against the Russian original by comrades who had studied for years in the Soviet Union.

9. Several times I have mentioned the magazine New International. Like many publishing houses associated with the communist movement, Pathfinder helps to promote and distribute a political and theoretical magazine that has its own imprint. Editora Política, for example, the publishing house of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, helps to produce and distribute Cuba Socialista. New International, as the magazine we distribute is now known (like Pathfinder it has had several different names over the decades since it first began publishing in 1934), is published in English and translated into three other languages - Spanish, French, and Swedish. It plays an indispensable role in our overall arsenal, focusing as it does on the most important questions of world politics and presenting a communist line in practice on today's burning issues.

Exacting and demanding standards
10. Before closing with a few words about our work publishing titles that spread the truth about the Cuban revolution, I want to address one other point.

For us, the care with which we edit and prepare every single book or pamphlet we produce is the most important test of our publishing efforts. We consider this to be a class question. If it is to prepare itself to be the ruling class, the working class must have access to truth, to culture, to clearly presented, accurate information. Their own history and continuity must be made accessible to new generations of fighters as they enter the struggle. These are things that Che understood and fought for so well. The working class must learn to be exacting in the standards of quality it demands in all things. That is part of our self-respect and self-confidence. Those who belong to the class that produces everything know better than anyone when work is done with quality and when it is shoddy and unworthy of their efforts.

A publishing house that strives above all to provide revolutionary fighters with access to the world class struggle that they must know about and understand in order to be effective in transforming themselves and that world - a publishing house with such a goal must maintain the highest possible standards of accuracy.

A misspelled name; an incorrect date; an erroneous or confusing or even uncomfortable translation; an inaccurate footnote or caption (or none at all where one is needed for the new young reader or the worker or farmer for whom reading is still a challenge); lack of care in presenting pictures, maps, or other aids to the reader; covers that are ugly or lack inspiration and work; printing that is too light and unreadable; a book that is carelessly bound or cut - all these are lapses that pain us when they occur. And they should. They are not worthy of the working class and its historic tasks.

None of these flow from problems created by the limits on material resources from which we all suffer one way or another. They are questions of political training and discipline and respect for our class. They are an example of the question of questions - proletarian habits, which are the well-spring of discipline.

At root, this is the same question that was at the center of the Fifth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba last October - why the revolution has to prove it can be more efficient, and produce with greater quality than the capitalists. And it can.

Seventy titles on Cuban revolution
11. Out of the 351 books and pamphlets and New Internationals that Pathfinder is responsible for keeping in print, 70 are directly related to the Cuban revolution. Four full pages of the 1998 Pathfinder catalog are devoted to titles on "The Cuban revolution in world politics." Everything from six volumes of speeches by Fidel, to Socialism and Man in Cuba, to Women and the Cuban Revolution, to How Far We Slaves Have Come, to Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution by the late SWP leader Joseph Hansen - in addition to the three titles singled out yesterday by Iraida Aguirrechu of Editora Política that have been published in the last few years, working together with that publisher. The Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara, Che's Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, and Pombo: A Man of Che's `guerrilla' by Harry Villegas, are books that would not have been possible in their current form or with the quality they attained without the aid of Editora Política. For us, such collaboration is indispensable.

The significant number of titles published by Pathfinder that aim to present the truth about the Cuban revolution is, I believe, a vivid concretization of the importance of the Cuban revolution in today's world, its actual weight in the world class struggle. Because Pathfinder has never set out to be a publisher of books about Cuba. To the contrary, we have always tried to bring the Cuban revolution into sharp focus as part of the world, and part of history.

Publishing books and pamphlets about the Cuban revolution is not a matter of solidarity nor, to say the least, a profitable commercial venture. As with everything else we publish, our purpose is to produce the works that revolutionary- minded fighters within the United States need in order to be more effective. And the Cuban revolution is today the only example in the world of a communist leadership that has taken and holds state power and uses that most important of all levers to advance the world struggle for socialism, both inside Cuba and internationally. A leadership that fights to lead the working class along its line of march, not to stifle or oppose it.

Pathfinder's publishing of pamphlets and books about the Cuban revolution began within the first months of the revolutionary victory in 1959. Among the earliest pamphlets were the speech on the first agrarian reform and "The revolution must be a school of unfettered thought," both by Fidel, as well as pamphlets like the one prepared by Militant reporter Harry Ring in 1961, based on his visits to Cuba, entitled How Cuba Uprooted Race Discrimination. The latter is a wonderful pamphlet, reprinted from the pages of the Militant, of course. I remember what a powerful impact it had on me when I first came around the communist movement about that time - just as the mass street battles to bring down the Jim Crow system of segregation in the United States were gaining such momentum. It helped recruit me.

One of the most effective titles we have published in recent years is a collection entitled To Speak the Truth. It includes the four speeches given over the years by Fidel and by Che before the United Nations General Assembly - in 1960, 1964, and 1979 - plus the speech by Che in 1964 to the Geneva conference on trade sponsored by the United Nations. We subtitled that collection, "Why Washington's Cold War Against Cuba Doesn't End," because more than any other book we have, Fidel's and Che's speeches before the United Nations explain the origins of the U.S. rulers' war against the Cuban revolution and why they will never forgive the working people of Cuba for charting their own independent course. All these are books that have been sold in the hundreds and thousands of copies across the U.S. from "guerrilla tables" as well as in big commercial bookstores. They have been used in classes and study circles in dozens of cities and towns. They have been carried into factories, mills, and mines in lunch buckets to be shown to interested co-workers.

`Communist Manifesto' is top seller
I think that perhaps the best way to capture many things about the class struggle in the United States today, and the opportunities that exist for communists is tell you what the best-selling titles produced by Pathfinder are. Our number one best-seller year after year is the Communist Manifesto. Second are books by Malcolm X. And third are books by Che Guevara.

That hit parade says a lot!

I could add that last year - 1997 - our two best-sellers were the Communist Manifesto and Pombo: A Man of Che's `guerrilla'. And among our top 15 titles, 6 were related to the Cuban revolution - including the Bolivian Diary, Che Guevara Speaks, Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, and the pamphlet of interviews with Gen. Harry Villegas At the Side of Che Guevara. Six others were collections of speeches by Malcolm X or other titles related to the Black struggle in the U.S. Two were basic texts of the modern communist movement - the Communist Manifesto and Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. And the remaining title in the top 15 was The Truth about Yugoslavia: Why Working People Should Oppose Intervention, explaining the roots of the current war in that country and imperialism's interests there.

Once again, it will be the opportunity for men and women within the United States who unflinchingly oppose the war drive of Washington and its allies to help produce and expand and sell in increasing numbers the arsenal of political weapons that working people the world over need - publications that tell the truth about imperialism and war, and why the interests of working people the world over are irreconcilable with those of the exploiting classes.

Of one thing we can be sure. The demand for such books will grow.  
 
 
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