"As the Pentagon sets up POW camps and begins interrogations of prisoners outside Kandahar," he said, "we join with other anti-imperialist fighters and communists from around the world meeting in Athens, Greece, this coming week to discuss how to more effectively and rapidly respond to imperialism's accelerating assaults against working people the world over.

"Even as the imperialist powers send more and more soldiers to Afghanistan and elsewhere in Central Asia," Barnes said, "we work to make more efficient the production of revolutionary books and periodicals and find ways to make them more widely available to workers, farmers, and youth facing imperialism's onslaught around the world."

Barnes, the national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party, was one of a panel of speakers December 15 at a meeting held in a large room being renovated in Pathfinder's printshop. Also speaking was SWP leader Norton Sandler, who had recently led a team of socialist workers and youth at the Guadalajara, Mexico, book fair. Sandler described the response to Pathfinder titles at the fair, a growing number of discussions at the booth about the class struggle in the United States, and a layer of workers and youth who have returned to meet socialist workers and youth at the fair each year (see article on page 11).

Other speakers included Jack Willey, a Militant staff writer who departed the next day for Greece where he was to attend a meeting of the World Federation of Democratic Youth; Jacob Perasso, the organizer of the Young Socialists National Executive Committee; and Mary-Alice Waters, editor of New International. Róger Calero, director of the Pathfinder Fund, explained the importance of the upcoming publishing plans of Pathfinder and encouraged those attending to contribute generously to the $125,000 fund drive.

Many of the workers and youth in attendance volunteered their labor over the weekend, joining crews at the Pathfinder Building. The projects were aimed at taking the next steps in reorganizing the printshop so it can meet the sharpening competition in the commercial market in the area and at the same time continue to turn out tens of thousands of Pathfinder books and pamphlets every year, in addition to the weekly Militant and monthly Perspectiva Mundial.

Coming out of the two days of voluntary labor, popularly known in the communist movement as Red Weekends, socialist workers and youth decided to keep the momentum going through December 24 in order to complete the major projects in the reorganization of the printshop. When the work is done on December 24, the volunteers will have consolidated the entire shop on the first floor of the Pathfinder Building, the pick-and-pack operation that fills order for Pathfinder books and pamphlets produced by the shop; large areas for storage of paper used on the presses; and space for shipping and receiving. The work involves preparations to move two sheetfed presses used in the production of all Pathfinder books to an area that previously housed the printshop's bindery.

In addition, moving the offices of the newspaper and publishing house into the same location of a branch of the party in New York City will require the digital organization of the many records and historical materials of the Socialist Workers Party, the Militant, and Pathfinder. This project will be at the center of the daily work of the publishing staffs and will be supplemented by Red Weekends in January and beyond. The move will put the communist movement in the best political position to deepen its work in the unions and workers' districts, among youth on college campuses, and to recruit new generations to the communist movement.  
 
Acceleration of political trends
Pointing to these moves and the transformation of the physical setup of the printshop, Barnes said the production of revolutionary books and pamphlets is a central task for communists. This includes titles that contain the rich lessons of the workers' movement and communist writings over the past 150 years. It also includes books that explain from inside the United States--the now dominant, but final empire humanity will ever know--a Marxist perspective on current world developments and the possibilities of forging a proletarian leadership as the crises of world capitalism deepen and the rulers intensify their assaults.

Barnes said that Washington's launching of a war drive in September has simply "accelerated trends that have been developing for some time." The most important goal of Washington's brutal assault is not Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Iran, but India, he said, where under the Clinton administration the U.S. ruling class set a course to deepen economic, military, and political ties with what will be an increasingly weighty capitalist power in the region, and one with a yearly economic output that will soon surpass that of France and Germany.

"The imperialist war against Afghanistan was not against terrorism or any 'ism,'" Barnes said. Instead, it was a war among state powers to establish hegemony and to prepare to face conflicts that are at different stages among the rival imperialist powers as they each reach out to gain an edge for themselves in a situation of intensifying competition and conflicts.

The growing statification and militarization that marks imperialism has also been accelerated with the war drive, he said. Despite the talk of the Reagan and Thatcher administrations in the United States and United Kingdom in favor of "small government," each increased the power of the centralized imperialist state, a trend explained by Russian communist leader V.I. Lenin early in the century, Barnes said.

Combined with this, he said, is a drive toward militarization--using the military forces of the state inside the borders of the imperialist "democracies" in country after country. The rulers justify the growing presence of troops, National Guard, border patrols, and federal police with an ideological campaign to convince working people that "there is a 'we'--that workers and farmers have something in common with the superwealthy capitalist exploiting families," he said.  
 
Defending workers' rights
"For the imperialists, a precondition to fighting a war is fighting it at home," Barnes explained. "We fight to defend and advance workers' rights, not 'democracy.' The mark of a 'democratic society' in the decline of imperialism is increasing class differentiation. Fighting workers of an earlier generation used to point out this reality by saying that Rockefeller and a guy with nothing both have the same right to know it is illegal to sleep under a bridge," he said. "You can be fined and face disaster only if you are a worker and without capital. If Ted Turner ran for office and was fired for his political views--an unlikely scenario, and something we would oppose--he would not have to think one moment about how to pay the rent, unlike Michael Italie, who was thrown on the street by Goodwill from his job as a sewing machine operator because of what he said at a candidates debate about the actions of the U.S. government.

"These kinds of fights are about workers' rights," Barnes said. "If workers aren't affected in a differential way by the carrying out of 'democracy' under capitalism, then capitalism can't survive. For property of this kind--the private ownership of the means of production--to continue, the propertyless millions have to depend on selling their labor power and making a wage in order to survive.

"That is why thinking workers and farmers never think of 'me' but always think of 'us,'" he said. "The bourgeoisie chooses its victims. But what Michael Italie and others who have stood up to fight show is that they can choose whoever they want in the communist movement and their 'victims' will come to the head of a fight that will set the bosses back much more than anything gained in the initial blow they inflicted."

Barnes said that communists seek to lead workers to defend the gains of the democratic revolution won by workers and farmers through revolutionary battles and mass popular struggles of labor and its allies. "Unless workers fight from the point of view of workers' rights, democratic rights will be lost. All reforms by the capitalist class," he said, "are the by-product of revolutionary struggle. All defense of and advances in democratic rights come out of the battles to defend workers' rights."  
 
World Festival of Students and Youth
Jack Willey, who helped lead a delegation from the United States of Young Socialists to the 15th World Festival of Youth and Students in Algeria this past summer, also addressed the audience. Willey reported that he was headed to Athens, Greece, the following day to attend a meeting of the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) to "evaluate the Algiers festival and discuss where do we go from here."

"Some 6,500 people attended the youth festival in Algeria," Willey explained in his presentation, "which was marked by those who came from countries oppressed by imperialism."

YS members who attended came from seven countries. After the festival ended they organized a trip to Western Sahara to learn about the struggle of the Sahrawi people against the U.S.-backed Moroccan regime's assaults on their struggle for self-determination.

"The Algiers festival stood on the shoulders of the youth festival held in Cuba in 1997," noted Willey. It "proved that a new festival movement has begun, which is marked by a qualitative shift in the workers' movement over the last decade."

Willey said discussion at the meeting in Athens will take up how to advance this course in the years ahead, including holding more frequent world youth festivals in order to more rapidly respond to new assaults and aggression by imperialism. "We must respond to the accelerating trends in world politics with an accelerating youth movement," he remarked.  
 
YS doubles size, organizes new chapters
Since last spring, "the Young Socialists has doubled its size," said YS leader Jacob Perasso to applause from the audience. "We have new chapters in St. Paul, Minnesota; Seattle; Tucson, Arizona; and are recruiting new members in Miami."

The growing New York chapter includes "many youth from different backgrounds and international experiences, including from the Dominican Republic, Gambia, and elsewhere. Our meetings are bilingual with simultaneous translation."

Perasso said YS members in New York are forging joint trade union fractions with members of the Socialist Workers Party. Workers and students in the chapter also join street tables in workers' districts to sell revolutionary literature.

Internationally the YS is also advancing, said Perasso, pointing to the moves in Iceland and Sweden where the Young Socialists and Communist League plan to fuse their two organizations.

At the world youth festival in Algiers, he reported, YS members met a delegation of four youth from Haiti, discussed socialism and world politics with them, and described their work in the United States to build a proletarian youth organization and party. The Haitian youth bought every issue of New International magazine, studied them, and decided to form a Young Socialists when they returned home. "They have a chapter of 11 people and see the need to build a revolutionary workers party," he said. This is just one example, Perasso noted, of the interest in building revolutionary organizations capable of leading masses of working people in struggle that YS members found at the Algiers festival.  
 
Beginnings of communist international
What Willey and Perasso have described, Barnes said, are the first steps toward launching a new communist international. Among the anti-imperialist currents reflected at the world youth festival are those who will respond to a new socialist revolution in the world. For younger members of the communist movement in the United States, as well as young communists in Cuba today, the opportunity to collaborate with anti-imperialist fighters on the international arena is a crucial one. It makes it possible to develop a movement of revolutionary-minded youth in the world today, and to gain experience, political confidence, and Marxist training while "constructing something that is essential in building a communist movement," he said.

Out of experiences such as these, Young Socialists and members of Communist Leagues in Iceland and Sweden have charted a course of fusing their forces in order to build on the strengths of various generations in building proletarian organizations capable of attracting, educating, and making disciplined combatants out of workers and youth who help lead working people to power and fight to overturn capitalism (see Militant issues nos. 45 and 48). This fusion perspective is one that has implications for Young Socialists and communist leagues in every country, Barnes said.

Featured speaker Mary-Alice Waters had returned to the United States from Cuba just days earlier, where she and a Pathfinder editorial team worked on a soon-to-be-released title, From the Escambray to the Congo: Inside the Whirlwind of the Cuban Revolution by Victor Dreke. Dreke was a combatant in the Rebel Army that led workers and peasants in Cuba to topple the Batista dictatorship in 1959, opening the first socialist revolution in the Americas. He was a central leader of the successful battle to crush U.S.-backed counterrevolutionary bands between 1960 and 1964, as well as second in command of the internationalist volunteers led by Ernesto Che Guevara who fought alongside national liberation forces in the Congo in 1965. He has played a leading role in the revolution ever since.

Waters also attended the 10th meeting of the São Paulo Forum December 4–7 in Havana. The Forum is made up of political parties from across Latin America and the Caribbean that define themselves as anti-imperialist and against neoliberalism (see article, page 6).

Waters referred to examples given by speakers at the meeting of the interest in Pathfinder books, and in meeting and talking with Young Socialists and socialist workers from the United States, by workers, farmers, and youth at book fairs, the world youth festival, and elsewhere. "These examples demonstrate the importance of what we do as communists inside the United States," she said, "with class clarity, with consistency, and by charting a course to take on and put an end to the final empire in history."

Waters said Pathfinder will be presenting three titles at the upcoming Havana International Book Fair this year, an example of the growing number of titles in Spanish produced by the publishing house. "We can't publish a title only in English any more," she said, because getting books into the hands of working people and youth whose first language is Spanish is essential to building a communist party and youth organization in the United States and elsewhere. In addition to simultaneous publication in English and Spanish, Pathfinder is increasingly also producing a French-language edition as well.

"This year the Havana book fair goes on the road," Waters said, bringing publishers to several cities outside of the capital so a wider layer of the Cuba population has an opportunity to review and purchase books. "The revolution is expanding in this direction. They say, 'if we can publish more, we will.' About 5 million books will be made available through the book fair," she said, "including two editions of Pathfinder titles in Spanish: Che Guevara Talks to Young People and Che Guevara: Economics and Politics in the Transition to Socialism."

Waters described the steps being taken to accelerate the expansion and opening up of the educational system in Cuba, including transforming use of television through educational and political programs such as "Round Table" discussions that have become a daily feature. Recent topics discussed include the economic crisis in Argentina, the imperialist assault on Afghanistan, the cultural policies of the revolution, and the 45th anniversary of the Nov. 30, 1956, uprising in Santiago de Cuba and the landing two days later of the Granma expedition.

These and other developments that have drawn broader layers of working people and youth into social and political life are examples of the fact that Cuba emerged victorious from the Special Period, the name used for the decade following the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern European governments in 1989–90 and the resulting dramatic drop in trade with and aid from those countries.

Having won the battle of the Special Period and successfully defended the first socialist revolution in the Americas--defying all those around the world who claimed Cuba would suffer a fate similar to that of the USSR--"this is how the Cuban people are using the resources to advance a proletarian course," Waters said.

Books such as From the Escambray to the Congo, Waters said, help tell the real story of the Cuban Revolution and to make it accessible to people around the world. Pathfinder is making a contribution to getting down in print the real heart of the Cuban revolutionary struggle and how a leadership was forged, told by people in the middle of the struggle.

Young people who are searching for a revolutionary perspective and course of action cannot do so without communist works such as those published by Pathfinder--from Capitalism's World Disorder, the issues of New International, works by communist leaders such as Karl Marx and V.I. Lenin, and books by leaders of the Cuban Revolution. "What we are doing this weekend through the voluntary work brigades, and in the weeks to come, is preparing our movement to act, and to take the next steps to transform the production of Pathfinder books," Waters said.

The assaults by imperialism and resistance to it around the world, Waters explained, mean the communist movement "can recruit and develop as communist, political cadre, new generations on--and from--every continent to confront the political world we live in today and meet the challenges ahead."  
 
Working together for political goals
Over the weekend, Militant reporters interrupted several work crews to find out what they thought about the two days of voluntary labor and the evening program. In addition to work in the printshop, crews worked to prepare graphics and covers of Pathfinder books to send to volunteers who scan them and turn the books into electronic files, assisted in work to prepare Pathfinder's online bookstore, on organizing the photographic files of the Militant, helped to proofread and format the Militant index, and other projects.

Marcy Stone, a 19-year-old student at Seattle Central Community College, said she "came to the Red Weekend to see what's going on and what the Socialist Workers Party is all about." She has been reading the Communist Manifesto, which is among a few titles by Karl Marx she bought this summer. Stone said she recently purchased the pamphlet Pathfinder Was Born with the October Revolution, a subscription to the Militant, and the Young Socialist pamphlet Join the Fight for Socialism. "I still have a lot of questions, including about the difference between the YS and SWP. I and a friend want to become revolutionaries," she said.

During the Red Weekend, Stone worked on filing and putting the Militant's photo negatives in notebooks to make them more accessible for use by the staff. She "liked seeing people working together toward a common goal" and definitely wanted to pursue getting more involved. Being part of the activities "makes you want to read more," Stone said.

Robert Meyer, a 23-year-old YS member who works at a care facility in Omaha, Nebraska, said he traveled to New York for the Red Weekend because "I wanted to work with other comrades, other revolutionists. I wanted the experience of working with everybody, learning different skills, leadership responsibilities, and taking responsibility to get a job done. We all led together to finish our goal."

Meyer remarked that he "was anticapitalist for a long time but I didn't know about socialism until I met the SWP. I learned you have to be part of a broad organization that includes education of party members." Meyer said he went to Cuba as part of the Cuba-U.S. Youth Exchange held this year in Havana, which "helped me to visualize socialism and the untapped power of human beings."

Another participant in the two days of voluntary labor, Louis Turner, who traveled from Charlotte, North Carolina, said, "I wanted to be part of helping in the restructuring of the Pathfinder printshop and getting a chance to work with others." Turner, a 24-year-old who works in a plant assembling computer parts, said he was looking forward to reading the new book by Cuban general Victor Dreke, From the Escambray to the Congo: In the Whirlwind of the Cuban Revolution.  
 
 
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