The reprint of an unjustly forgotten book edited by renowned historian E. P. Thompson, detailing the experience of socialist British youth volunteers working on constructing the railway from Šamac to Sarajevo in Yugoslavia in 1947.
Starting with the slogan of the youth labour activists, "we build the railway, the railway builds us", the book is a testimony of genuine socialist ideas based on internationalist collectivism, subjectivity defying objective limits of capitalism, and solidarity of anti-fascist struggles.
As a document of optimistic and forward-looking solidarity, it deserves to be read today as a hope against pessimist cynicism of anti-humanist apocalyptic scenarios.
Introduced by Slobodan Karamanić, the book includes a lengthy text by E. P. Thompson, and contributions by notable British activists and writers such as Dorothy Sale, F. D. Klingender, Peter Worsley, and others.
Edward Palmer Thompson (1924-1993) was a British historian and intellectual, specializing in the social and cultural history of the United Kingdom and particularly the world of labor.
