Apparently not. Usually when I post one of these articles promoting a
book I check Bookshare to see if they have it. With often more than a
thousand books added daily you never can tell. This one was not there.
Just now I tried Learning Ally and they did not have it either. The pity
about Learning Ally is that they should have plenty of books like this
one if not this particular one. Back when Learning Ally was a cassette
tape only library they made provisions for users to send them books to
be recorded. One had to send them two copies so that the reader and the
monitor had a copy. I got them to record a good many Pathfinder books
that way. Prior to myself there had been a comrade in Texas who had done
the same thing. So, while they did not have the entire Pathfinder
catalog, they had a pretty good number of Pathfinder books. Then they
made the transition to digital. They converted a lot of books they
already had on tape, but announced that books that were no longer
relevant to their field would not be converted. That did make some sense
because they had innumerable outdated textbooks that no one would want
to read now. However, most of the Pathfinder titles did not make it
through the transition. I doubt that they retained the tapes either. I
assure you that those books were still highly relevant to their field,
but they were lost anyway. The Pathfinder titles on Bookshare are mostly
from two sources. Bookshare has outsourced some scanning and proofing
work to some disability oriented organizations around the world and they
have added a number of Pathfinder books. These outsourcers do not seem
to concentrate on any particular kind of books, so I think they have
been added from that source pretty much at random. The other source for
Pathfinder books on Bookshare is me. I scanned them. The trouble with
that is that I have to buy these books in order to scan them and I do
not have a whole lot of money lying around to buy books. I have also
scanned some books from some other radical presses too, such as
International Publishers, the press of the Communist Party, and the
press of the Freedom Socialist Party which I for get the name of right
now. The problem with that last one, though, is that their books usually
come in a format with lots of sidebars and other flourishes that make
them very hard to scan and I have just about decided to avoid Freedom
Socialist Party publications. Other than the Pathfinder books and
including some of the pathfinder books most of what I have been scanning
lately I have acquired from PaperbackSwap.com. That is the cheapest way.
And lately, because of that, I have been scanning just some fiction that
might interest me, that is, mostly indy science fiction. I still do
occasional Paperback Swap searches for radical literature though. But I
can't order them unless someone posts them. If someone else would like
to scan Pathfinder or other radical books for Bookshare, though, that
would be very pleasing to me.
On 10/14/2016 1:52 PM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
Thanks. Do you know if these books are in audio format? Carl Jarvis
On 10/13/16, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://themilitant.com/2016/8039/803905.html
‘Is Socialist Revolution in US Possible?’ points road forward for
working class
The third edition of Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible? A
Necessary Debate Among Working People by Mary-Alice Waters, a leader of
the Socialist Workers Party, has just been published by Pathfinder
Press. What lies ahead of working people “are struggles that transform
us as we fight to transform the twisted social relations of the
dog-eat-dog world of capitalism — relations that corrode human
solidarity and coarsen us all,” Waters says in the book.
Here we reprint the preface to the new edition.
The debate over the question posed in the title of the book is critical
for working people today. What is the road forward in a world marked by
a growing crisis for our class caused by the deepening exhaustion of
capitalism? Is the working class capable of transforming itself in
struggle and overthrowing capitalist rule and running the world ourselves?
This book — and Pathfinder’s other new title Are They Rich Because
They’re Smart? Class, Privilege, and Learning Under Capitalism — are on
special for $7 each, and for $10 with an introductory 12-week
subscription to the Militant.
The preface is copyright © 2016 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by
permission.
❖
BY NORTON SANDLER
Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible? The answer given here by
Mary-Alice Waters is an unequivocal, “Yes!”
That is, however, only the first of the important questions addressed
during what became the deepgoing international debate recorded in these
pages. Even if a socialist revolution is possible, is it “necessary”?
Why can’t capitalism be “regulated” and made to serve the interests of
the overwhelming majority of humanity? What does the oft-abused term
“revolution” mean? And are there any living examples we can learn from?
This 2016 edition of Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible? appears
some eight years after the near meltdown of the world capitalist banking
system in the closing months of 2008. That financial and stock market
panic soon exposed a far deeper underlying crisis: the long downward
trend of capitalist profit rates in the United States and
internationally, and the resulting contraction of investment in
production, trade, and hiring. A slow-burning worldwide depression had
begun.
Despite assurances by high-ranking public officials, including President
Barack Obama, that the US economy has now “recovered” from the worst
financial crisis since the 1930s and is doing “pretty darn well,”
working people know in our bones that for us it’s a lie. A lie borne out
by the facts we live with.
Median household income is today more than $4,000 lower than it was in
1999, seventeen years ago, and that is often the cumulative income from
multiple jobs worked by everyone in the family who can become a wage
earner. The labor force participation rate (the size of the “working
class” as measured by the capitalist government) is lower than any time
since 1978, largely because more and more workers haven’t been able to
find a job and aren’t currently looking.
Inflation, they tell us, is basically flat, but just since the turn of
the century rents have more than doubled on average, as have school fees
and childcare, while medical costs and the hit at the grocery store have
gone up nearly 100 percent. In the last year alone, health insurance
jumped on average by 7 percent, school lunches by nearly 6 percent, and
transit fares by more than 5 percent.
Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya — Washington’s wars and their grisly
consequences at home and around the world keep metastasizing. Tens of
millions are homeless and displaced.
The presumption of stability and a new era of peace and prosperity born
of an “ever closer” European Union has shattered. The economic social
and political crises in Latin America, Africa, and Asia are deepening.
Told they have to choose between two of the most broadly distrusted
presidential candidates in US history, is it any surprise so many
answer, “I won’t happily vote for either one!”
This 2016 edition of Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible? is
addressed to working people — in city, town, and countryside — across
the US and around the world, who are searching for proletarian
solidarity and a way forward in this world of deepening capitalist
conflict. It is addressed to the women and men of every skin color,
religion, national origin, and age who are every day more determined to
understand the roots of what is happening to their families and
themselves, more open to joining together with others to fight for a
future only we can create.
❖
The five-day rolling political debate on which this book is based took
place in November 2007 at the Venezuela International Book Fair, a
popular cultural festival held yearly in Caracas. The book centers
around the talk given by Mary-Alice Waters, a leader of the Socialist
Workers Party in the US and president of Pathfinder Press, who opened
the panel discussion on “The United States: A Possible Revolution,” the
book fair’s theme. The narrative is driven forward by the responses and
reactions to the issues posed by Waters, as well as her answers.
The wide-ranging debate that unfolded was unique in its depth and
clarity. Although virtually all twenty-two panelists were from the US,
certainly no similar exchange among the different political currents
they represented has taken place in living memory.
Is the integration of millions of toilers from Latin America and around
the world into the US working class a potential strength or fatal source
of weakness and division? Are US workers so corrupted by the wealth of
US capitalist society that they are incapable of revolutionary struggle?
Were the American War of Independence from the British crown and the US
Civil War the First and Second American Revolutions, or has there never
been a revolutionary struggle of any kind in US history? Has “white skin
privilege” destroyed every progressive social struggle in US history? Do
Jews control the banks and capitalist media conglomerates of the world?
Was 9/11 an Israeli conspiracy? Does Cuba remain the only “free
territory of the Americas,” or is Venezuela showing the toilers of the
world a new road to socialism?
These were among the sharply counterposed perspectives on fundamental
questions of revolutionary strategy and perspectives presented and
debated with only a few breaches of civility.
Waters’s presentation appears here along with an introduction
summarizing the issues that were joined. An article by staff writer
Olympia Newton from the pages of the Militant newspaper reports on the
political exchange, which involved several hundred audience participants
in addition to the panelists.
When the November 2007 debate took place, only the first tremors of the
coming housing-fueled “debt crisis” and subsequent near-collapse of the
credit and banking system had been felt.
One year later, the dam had burst, and the consequences were beginning
to be felt by working people the world over. At the November 2008
Caracas book fair — on the first anniversary of the exchange — Monte
Ávila, one of Venezuela’s leading publishers, presented an edition of Is
Socialist Revolution in the US Possible? for sale in bookstores
throughout that country. They also distributed a thousand copies of a
special printing without charge to young readers at the fair.
Speaking at the Caracas launching of the Monte Ávila edition, Waters
described what had transpired the previous twelve months. She looked
back at the debate that had taken place a year earlier in light of the
economic and social crisis, which was rapidly escalating and expanding
geographically, including across Latin America.
This 2016 edition of Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible?, like
the second edition published in 2009, includes both talks by Waters.
Readers will judge for themselves how well the perspectives laid out
almost a decade ago have stood the test of time.
September 2016
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