BY SARA LOBMAN AND AMANDA ULMAN
OBERLIN, Ohio-"I went to the class on fascism because there have been some rightist attacks against immigrant workers in Iceland and I wanted to learn more about what's behind them," Siggi Herald, a 20-year-old member of the Young Socialists from Keykjavík, said in an interview here July 6. "Recently a swastika and some Nazi slogans were painted on the side of a church whose minister is Vietnamese."

Herald was visiting the literature display and exhibit center set up at Talcott Hall in Oberlin College during the Active Workers and International Socialist Conference, which took place here July 6-9.

Like many other conference participants, Siggi and his brother Benedikt Herald, also a member of the YS in Iceland, took advantage of the center to continue political discussions begun at conference classes and workshops. They also came to pick up books and pamphlets published and distributed by Pathfinder Press on working-class struggles and the fight for socialism.

`New International' top seller

In addition to buying books by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, V.I. Lenin, and Leon Trotsky, the Heralds also made a purchase for their YS chapter back home-a collection of every article published over the last 60 years in the New International, a Marxist magazine of politics and theory.

The magazine was founded in July 1934 by pioneers of the communist movement in the United States and Canada. It has been published for more than six decades since then, presenting political, theoretical, and historical material that clarifies the most important questions of program, strategy, and organization confronting the working-class movement internationally.

The first two volumes in the collection, carrying all the articles in the magazine from 1934 to 1971, were available at the conference; the third will be ready later this year. The entire 3-volume set will be offered for sale to the public by the end of 1996. Some 120 sets were sold at the conference.

In all, conference participants bought more than $21,000 worth of books-some 160 different titles-off the tables that lined the main room of the display center.

In addition to the New International collection, top sellers included 34 copies of an upgraded reprint of The Third International after Lenin and 22 copies of The History of the Russian Revolution, both by Leon Trotsky. More than 100 conference participants attended a class on the history of the Russian revolution presented by long-time SWP leader Doug Jenness.

Interest in titles on the Cuban revolution was also high. Twenty copies of the Spanish-language edition of Pombo: A Guerrilla with Che were sold, as well as 14 copies of a book that includes both Fidel Castro's Political Strategy by Marta Harnecker and History Will Absolve Me by Fidel Castro.

Another popular title was The Changing Face of U.S. Politics: Working-Class Politics and the Trade Unions by Jack Barnes with 17 copies sold.

Purchases of books and pamphlets were closely connected to the discussions and debates unfolding at the main conference sessions, and at workshops and classes. Karolina Bjornheden, a 25-year-old worker from Sweden, met the Young Socialists in Athens, Georgia, where she has been living for several months. She was one of 15 people who picked up a copy of The Politics of Chicano Liberation following a class given by Róger Calero and the book's editor Olga Rodríguez. "The thing that impressed me most about that class and the one on the Russian revolution is that they weren't just about history," she noted. "They were about struggles today and the international character of the fight for the rights of all people to dignity and self- determination."

Debate on `Marxism and Terrorism'

The liveliest debate unfolded in two classes, titled "From the Baku Congress to the Fight for Palestinian Self- Determination" and "Marxism and Terrorism." Martín Koppel, editor of the socialist monthly Perspectiva Mundial, and Abby Tilsner, an auto worker just laid off from the General Motors plant in Tarrytown, New York, gave the presentation on the pamphlet Marxism and Terrorism by Leon Trotsky. They said that working people should give unconditional support to those fighting for their national liberation in the Middle East, Ireland, Quebec, and elsewhere.

A few participants in that class expressed a different view. While supporting fighters for national liberation, one argued, communists must criticize the recent IRA bombings at Canary Wharf and Manchester in Britain and the suicide bombings by Hamas supporters in Israel as ineffective methods of struggle. Another participant said that the Canary Wharf bombing dealt a setback to the Irish freedom struggle.

"In the face of the imperialists `anti-terrorist' campaign - joined by many middle-class radicals - we must point out that the capitalist exploiters are the real terrorists," Koppel responded. "These bombings are an inevitable reaction to their system of oppression. And the bombs are their problem, not ours. The concern of revolutionists is whether there is a fight against national oppression and how to join it, seek out the militants, and as we stand shoulder to shoulder with them present a proletarian perspective. We rejoice at the fact that thousands of Irish and Palestinian patriots refuse to bend their knees to their imperialist oppressors; we don't join the chorus of critics against them."

Koppel said that if a proletarian wing develops as part of a national liberation movement, communists would support the tactics in the struggle put forward by that current. "But we don't hold against Palestinian and Irish combatants the fact that they don't have a communist leadership today -we don't tell them to stop struggling with whatever methods they know until they get a leadership worthy of them."

A couple of industrial workers from the United Kingdom said their experiences on the job after the recent bombings showed that, far from suffering a setback, supporters of the struggle for Irish self-determination continue to get a broad hearing as working people engage in wide-ranging debates on this question.

Meetings with authors, editors
Following these classes, many participants gathered at the front of the room to continue discussion informally and to buy copies of Israel and the Arab Revolution, Marxism and Terrorism and Terrorism and Communism by Leon Trotsky, The Proletarian Revolution and Renegade Kautsky by V.I. Lenin, and Ireland and the Irish Question by Marx and Engels. Marxism and Terrorism was the top seller, with 15 copies purchased.

During lunch and in the evenings, special presentations were organized in the exhibit center. In the evening, authors and editors of several Pathfinder titles spoke. They included Michel Prairie, the editor of the French-language edition of An Action Program to Confront the Economic Crisis; Steve Clark, managing editor of New International; Michael Taber, editor of Third International after Lenin; and Betsey Stone, the editor of Women and the Cuban Revolution.

YS pamphlet
The YS table, featuring a display of some of the struggles Young Socialists members have been involved in over the past year, was active throughout the conference. YS members sold hundreds of copies of a new pamphlet with the political principles, campaigns, and rules of organization the YS adopted at their first national convention held April 6-7 in Minneapolis. In addition, the Young Socialists raised $1,900 in a raffle. p> Adam Wolfe, a young activist from Indiana was among the two dozen people who stopped by the Socialist Workers election campaign table to sign up to travel to different parts of the country to help campaign for James Harris and Laura Garza, socialist candidates for president and vice president. "These photos say a lot about the campaign," he said, pointing to the display. "The socialist candidates stand with immigrant workers, family farmers, and other working people." p> There was a constant cluster of people around the big display that celebrated the recent release from prison on parole of socialist and union activist Mark Curtis, who was framed up by the police and sentenced to 25 years in prison in 1988. When he was arrested, Curtis was part of a fight to defend 17 immigrant coworkers in the Swift meatpacking plant in Des Moines, Iowa, whom the INS tried unsuccessfully to deport. "Many people here know of Mark's fight," said Maggie Perrier from Chicago, who was staffing the display. "But there are also many young people coming by the table who are learning the history of it for the first time." Copies of the pamphlet Why Is Mark Curtis Still in Prison?, which tells the story of the fight, were available in English, Spanish, and French.  
 
 
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