The new pamphlet is the result of work by a dozen volunteers in Iceland who translated the work, and of the Pathfinder volunteers who formatted the text, photos, and made the entire booklet ready for printing by Pathfinder's printshop.

In the pamphlet, which first appeared in English, French, and Spanish in July last year, Socialist Workers Party national secretary Jack Barnes takes up a number of central political questions facing working people today.

They include the fraud of education reform under capitalism today, attacks on Social Security, the deadly consequences for workers of speedup on the job, federal assaults on welfare, and police repression and government measures that have dramatically expanded the number of working people behind prison bars on death row. Barnes describes the resistance to these government and employer attacks by workers and farmers in the United States.

He explains that by rejecting the wealthy rulers' attempt to get working people to accept their framework of "looking out for number one" on each of these questions, more workers in struggle begin to see them as matters of social solidarity. Barnes says the working-class movement can "fight for the transformation of learning into a universal and lifetime activity. [As] part of preparing workers and farmers...to recognize that we are capable of taking power and organizing society."

In an interview from Iceland, Sigurlaug Gunnlaugsdóttir, who edited the translation, said, "We began the work in the first week of a 12-week strike by teachers in Iceland." The teachers took action to defend the public education system and in support of their demand for a wage increase.

As the volunteers alternated between their translation work and building solidarity with the strike, they drew on material in the pamphlet to arm themselves politically in the discussions that arose, explained Gunnlaugsdóttir. The translators worked in groups of two, said Gunnlaugsdóttir, noting there was much discussion on the translations.

Arnar Sigurdsson, one of a number of Young Socialists members who worked on the translation, told the Militant that the ideas in the pamphlet "helped us to explain why the government was cutting the budget to the state schools, and why it was such a long strike. In response to remarks like, 'it seems like they don't care that students aren't going to school,' we explained, 'It's true--they don't care, despite all their fine speeches about the importance of education.'"

The YS worked with other young people to organize a sit-in of around 70 people at the Ministry of Finance in support of the teachers' demands.

Sigurdsson and Gunnlaugsdóttir said that the strike, which ended with the teachers being granted a significant wage increase, encouraged the volunteers to speed up their work. "We wanted to get it out while the discussion was still fresh," said Sigurdsson. "Now we will integrate sales of it into the circulation drive. We are trying to get it into high school libraries, along with other Pathfinder titles."

A Swedish-language edition of the pamphlet is in the last stages of preparation, says Mike Taber, a member of Pathfinder's editorial staff.
 
 
Related article:
Good response to 'Militant' by workers in Cincinnati  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home