A highlight of the conference will be a big sale of the nearly 100 basic works of Marxism and other revolutionary books and pamphlets that have been put in digital form since mid-1998 (see ad on this page).

The volunteers are taking big strides forward in their work to keep all 350-plus of the publisher's titles in print. "Production is up more than 53 percent over last year," Peggy Brundy explained to a recent meeting of the Pathfinder Reprint Project steering committee in the San Francisco Bay Area. In the 11 months from August 1999 to June 2000, volunteers completed 50 books, compared to 36 in the preceding 12 months.

The project is an international effort involving some 200 supporters of the Socialist Workers Party and communist organizations in other countries. These volunteers are turning into digital form all of Pathfinder's books and pamphlets on the revolutionary struggles of working people and continuity of the communist workers movement. Using state-of-the-art computer-to-plate technology, the printshop produces books quickly and economically, directly from the digital files turned in by volunteers in the field.

The increased pace of this campaign in recent months is the result of careful organization, intensive training, and political explanation to integrate many new volunteers--and redeploy veterans--into various stages of book production. These include proofreading, formatting, preparing indexes, and working with photos and artwork to recreate the covers, internal graphics, and photographs in each book.

Detailed attention to standardizing each team's work--from how to deal with "loose lines" in the formatted text, to how to match the colors of the covers--has been essential. As a result, Tom Tomasko, a leader of the project, noted, "We now have a larger pool of active volunteers and more skill at what we are doing."

The workers who volunteer in Pathfinder's printshop are working hard to keep pace with the project. The shop's goal is to print each title turned in by the volunteers within 30 days. In addition, the shop reprints titles that have already been digitized whenever stock gets low, and is responsible for printing and reprinting new titles that Pathfinder publishes, such as The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning: The Fraud of Education Reform under Capitalism, which will be available in English, Spanish, and French this month.

The shop is well on its way to making the 30-day goal a reality. So far this month, it has printed 6 newly digitized titles, with 3 more scheduled before the end of the month. Counting the 3 new pamphlets, the shop will produce 21 Pathfinder titles this month--a record.

Often the newly printed books barely touch the shelves in the warehouse before they are boxed up and sent out to customers around the world. For example, 300 copies of What Is Surrealism?--completed by the volunteers in June and delivered by the shop earlier this month--have already been shipped out, bringing in more than $5,000 in sales.

A new Stahl ST90 stitcher, a machine that staples and trims pamphlets and magazines, was recently installed in the shop, improving its ability to produce Pathfinder titles. Printshop workers have used the new machine to stitch four of the pamphlets produced this month, as well as the July-August issue of Perspectiva Mundial magazine.

"The new machine can be learned much more quickly than the old stitcher, and it doesn't require prior mechanical experience," explained Ellen Brickley, one of the new operators. "Laura Garza and I are still learning. But we can run it on our own after a few weeks, and our competence increases every day."

With a little more experience, one of the two operators will be able to move to night shift, allowing the shop, for the first time, to maintain two shifts of stitcher operation. This will not only speed up the turnaround time in producing revolutionary literature. In addition, by helping to win new commercial jobs, this advance in the organization of the shop schedule can increase sales revenues by tens of thousands of dollars in the next half year.  
 

En defensa del marxismo by Leon Trotsky

In Defense of Marxism by Leon Trotsky

Marxism and the Working Farmer, an Education for Socialists bulletin

Nothing Can Stop the Course of History by Fidel Castro

Portraits, Political and Personal by Leon Trotsky

La revolución traicionada by Leon Trotsky

Thomas Sankara Speaks

W.E.B. Du Bois Speaks, vol. 1

What Is Surrealism? by André Breton

Nine more titles--all previously digitized--will be reprinted this month for a second time by pulling a CD out of a drawer and going to printing plates (the lasting fruits of this entire labor-saving, cost-saving international effort):

American Labor Struggles: 1877–1934 by Samuel Yellen

At the Side of Che Guevara: Interviews with Harry Villegas (Pombo)

Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara

Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War by Ernesto Che Guevara

The History of American Trotskyism by James P. Cannon

Marxism and Terrorism by Leon Trotsky

On the Jewish Question by Leon Trotsky

Teamster Rebellion by Farrell Dobbs  
 
 
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