Vol. 73/No. 50      December 28, 2009

The increase in sales is one example of a deeper thirst for a revolutionary working-class answer to unemployment, mounting assaults on living standards, and growing uncertainty working people worldwide are facing as the deepest capitalist economic crisis since the Great Depression unfolds.

Fairgoers were drawn to the Pathfinder Press booth, above all, by the broad range of books that present the working-class road to political power and the continuity of the revolutionary communist movement. Among the most popular titles were the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels; writings of central leaders of the Russian Revolution, V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky; and books that record the work of building the world communist movement today.

Is Socialist Revolution in the U.S. Possible? was the top-selling book. The title—and the cover photo showing a mass demonstration by immigrant workers on May Day 2006 for legalization—provoked much discussion and interest.

The centerpiece of the book is two speeches presented by Mary-Alice Waters, a central leader of the Socialist Workers Party, as part of a wide-ranging debate at the 2007 and 2008 Venezuela book fairs. The theme of the fair in 2007 was “The United States: a possible revolution.”

Waters explains in the 2007 talk that she is speaking as part of the small minority that answers the question “yes, revolution is possible in the United States. Socialist revolution. To put it in class terms, a proletarian revolution—the broadest, most inclusive social upheaval of the oppressed and exploited imaginable.”

Among those answering no—arguing that working people in the United States were either too privileged or bought off—were Venezuelan-American lawyer and author Eva Golinger and Amiri Baraka, a U.S. writer who has been active in Black nationalist, Maoist, and Democratic Party politics since the 1960s.

Many were attracted to the book's explanation of the important place of workers who are immigrants as part of an emerging vanguard of the working class, and the ongoing weight of workers who are Black.

Some came by the Pathfinder booth asking for books by U.S. authors they have heard of, including Noam Chomsky and James Petras. The volunteers staffing the booth said Pathfinder doesn’t carry those books. They would explain that Chomsky doesn’t see the working class as capable of resolving the problems facing us either in the United States or Latin America, in contrast to the perspective offered by Waters in Is Socialist Revolution in the U.S. Possible? Petras is among those who promote the idea that Jews, and their defense of Israel, are what has dominated U.S. policy. This false conspiracy theory is a danger to working people and one that is taken up in the book as well. Several left with copies after such discussions.

These were the themes that drew 150 people to buy the book this year, and many others to ask for it after the stock had been sold out.  
 
Sales of New International magazine
Taken together, sales of New International, a magazine of Marxist politics and theory, accounted for one-fifth of the total sales—more than 400 copies.

Some of the broadest political discussions at the stand began as brief presentations of the politics contained in the different issues of this magazine. As one of the volunteers summarized the analysis of the historical and economic roots of the world economic crisis, the character of the expanding imperialist wars worldwide, and the growing assaults on the rights and living standards of working people in the United States that accompanies them, a small crowd would often gather.

Copies of Nueva Internacional no. 6 with the title article “Capitalism’s Long Hot Winter Has Begun” and issue no. 4 titled “Imperialism’s March Toward Fascism and War” would change hands as the presenter outlined the long-term decline of capitalist profit rates, the rise of speculation in forms of fictitious capital, and how the deepening debt balloon produced the world depression we are now living through. At the end, several would line up to buy a copy or two.

One person came by with a friend and explained he had bought Nueva Internacional no. 6 in the past and was amazed at how accurate it was at describing the economic crisis that later began to unfold in 2007. He suggested his friend get a copy while he bought the latest Nueva Internacional no. 8, with the article “The Clintons’ Antilabor Legacy: Roots of the 2008 World Financial Crisis.”

Many fairgoers would remark that they felt that somehow Venezuela was protected from the capitalist crisis by the country’s large oil reserves. Others, however, would point to the rise in food prices and the deterioration of infrastructure that are producing blackouts and water shortages as examples of the growing instability that is being felt more and more deeply in the working class here.

Nueva Internacional no. 5—with the feature article “U.S. Imperialism Has Lost the Cold War”—drew broad interest as well. Among other themes, the political resolution at the center of this book answers the questions: What was the Soviet Union and what brought about the collapse of the regimes that ruled it? Did world capitalism emerge from the Cold War stronger, or did the outcome accelerate its instability? What is socialism and why is its construction a revolutionary political task of the working class?

All 10 copies of Leon Trotsky’s The Revolution Betrayed and all 15 copies of Lenin’s Final Fight also sold quickly. Alongside Nueva International no. 5 these two books provide an indispensable explanation of the character of the bureaucratic regime led by Stalin that usurped power in the Soviet Union, and the battle against it. Books that were available at the stand only in English and therefore only in small numbers—from four to eight copies were brought—like Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution and Reform or Revolution by Rosa Luxemburg and Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, also sold out.

The cumulative impact of Pathfinder’s presence at the book fair and at other political activities in Venezuela over the past several years was also felt. An older worker told this reporter that he has been steadily building up his collection of books by Jack Barnes, the national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party. A student who had seen Pathfinder literature tables at the World Youth Festival in Caracas in 2005, had checked the Pathfinder Press Web site and planned his purchases. They included both volumes of Revolutionary Continuity by Farrell Dobbs, the most recent issue of Nueva Internacional, and Their Trotsky and Ours by Barnes.

Hundreds also stopped by the stand looking for collections of speeches by revolutionary leaders they had heard of.

Topping the list was Malcolm X—162 books of his speeches were sold and 113 copies of Nueva Internacional no. 8 with the lead article “Revolution, Internationalism, and Socialism: The Last Year of Malcolm X” by Barnes. Every title in Spanish by Nelson Mandela and by Thomas Sankara, as well as anything about the Grenada revolution and speeches by Maurice Bishop, also sold out.

Some of those who bought titles by Malcolm X were part of debates and discussions on the question of the fight against racism in Venezuela and the broader region. Among these were a group of Afro-Colombian students who visited the stand and spent more than an hour discussing the fight against racism in Colombia and the importance of the example of Malcolm X in their work. Laura Garza contributed to this article.  
 
 
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