Paris: Books by SWP leaders sell at protests, book fair

Militant/Claude Bleton

PARIS — Supporters of Pathfinder books in France sold 175 books by leaders of the Socialist Workers Party and other revolutionaries at the annual Fete de l’Humanité, organized by the French Communist Party newspaper Sept. 15-17. They also sold 53 books at demonstrations of tens of thousands of workers here Sept. 12 and 23 protesting anti-worker changes to the Labor Code by the government of President Emmanuel Macron.

Altogether, the best-sellers were three Pathfinder French editions — 37 copies of Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? 31 of The Clintons’ Anti-Working-Class Record, both by Socialist Workers Party National Secretary Jack Barnes, and 30 of Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible? by SWP leader Mary-Alice Waters. In addition, 22 copies of Socialism and Man in Cuba by Che Guevara and 16 of Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power by Barnes were sold, as well as 22 Militants and 3 Militant subscriptions.

“I don’t know if I’m on the right or the left. I bought the books in order to better understand what is happening today,” Patrick, a bus driver who got the three-book package of new titles, told us. “The unions today are too dependent on the government, we need new kinds of unions.” The sales were the strongest in nearly a decade, close to doubling results from 2016.

— DEREK JEFFERS