Wages for Students
Sueldo para estudiantes
Des salaires pours les étudiants
WRITTEN BY the 'wages for students' students
EDITED BY JAKOB JAKOBSEN,María Berríos, and Malav Kanuga
We are fed up with working for free. We must force capital, which profits from our work, to pay for our schoolwork. Only in this way can we seize more power to use in our dealings with capital
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Estamos hartos de trabajar gratis. Debemos forzar al capital, que lucra con nuestro trabajo, a pagar por nuestro trabajo estudiantil. Sólo de esta manera lograremos alcanzar el poder que necesitamos para lidiar con el capital.
•• •
Nous en avons assez de travailler gratuitement. Nous devons obliger le capital, qui tire pro t de notre travail, à payer pour notre travail scolaire. Voilà notre seul moyen de nous saisir d’un plus grand pouvoir dans nos tractations avec le capital.
Wages for Students was published anonymously by three activists in the fall of 1975. It was written as “a pamphlet in the form of a blue book” by activists linked to the journal Zerowork during student strikes in Massachusetts and New York.
Deeply influenced by the Wages for Housework Campaign’s analysis of capitalism, and relating to struggles such as Black Power, anticolonial resistance, and the antiwar movements, the authors fought against the role of universities as conceived by capital and its state. The pamphlet debates the strategies of the student movement at the time and denounces the regime of forced unpaid work imposed every day upon millions of students. Wages for Students was an affront to and a campaign against the neoliberalization of the university, at a time when this process was just beginning. Forty years later, the highly profitable business of education not only continues to exploit the unpaid labor of students, but now also makes them pay for it. Today, when the student debt situation has us all up to our necks, and when students around the world are refusing to continue this collaborationism, we again make this booklet available “for education against education.”
This new trilingual edition includes an introduction by George Caffentzis, Monty Neill, and John Willshire-Carrera alongside a transcript of a collective discussion organized by Jakob Jakobsen, Malav Kanuga, Ayreen Anastas, and Rene Gabri, following a public reading of the pamphlet by George Caffentzis, Silvia Federici, Cooper Union students, and other members and friends of 16 Beaver.
Wages for Students was anonymously authored and published in the fall of 1975 by George Caffentzis, Monty Neill, and John Willshire-Carrera, three activists associated with the journal Zerowork and later with the Midnight Notes Collective. This trilingual edition includes an introduction by the original authors and is edited by Jakob Jakobsen, María Berríos, and Malav Kanuga.
Collective Spanish translation: Catalina Valdés, Carlos Labbé, Mónica Ríos, Romina Pistacchio, Constanza Ceresa, Javier Osorio, Catalina Donoso. Special thanks to Carolina Alonso Bejarano for editorial assistance and Edison Pérez for Spanish proofreading.
Collective French translation: Alponse Girard, Frédéric Racine, and Paulin Dardel of Éditions de l’Asymétrie. Special thanks to Adrien Tournier of Éditions Entremonde and Gabrielle Gérin for editorial assistance.
PRODUCT DETAILS
Author: ‘Wages for Students’ Students
George Caffentzis, Monty Neill, and John Willshire-Carrera (Introduction); Jakob Jakobsen, María Berríos, and Malav Kanuga (editors)
Publisher: Common Notions
ISBN: 978-1-942173-02-1 (print)
ISBN: 9781942173267 (eBook)
Published September 1, 2016
Format: Paperback
Size: 7 by 4.5
Page count: 224 Pages
Subjects: Social Movements/Education