Max J, Newcastle
Rising Tide is an up and coming ‘civil disobedience’ activist group which hosts the “People’s Blockade”, an activist festival which involves rafts and kayaks in the hunter river to prevent the entry of coal ships. This year, I counted many coal ships which ‘broke the blockade’, so it seemed that the blockade was no blockade at all. So why did RCO comrades along with FSP members host a stall at the festival anyway?
The not-quite-a-blockade brings together a variety of people from various backgrounds, from politically engaged students (both high school and university), to elderly activists, indigenous activists, random members of the public, etc. During our stall, we were able to leaflet and have conversations with all sorts of politically engaged people who more or less were at least sympathetic to a communist perspective, even if they didn’t have all the details worked out in their heads. A great gathering of that many people who are politically engaged in one way or another (even if it isn’t the right way) is the sort of event communists should be going to, to have a presence and spread communist politics. To refuse to go to events such as these is to leave these people to the mercy of Greens, adventurists, opportunists, reactionaries (of the ‘overpopulation theorist’ flavor – Extinction Rebellion and Scientist Rebellion), etc. It would be to refuse to carry out one of the basic duties of communists: to intervene in all avenues of the struggle where working people are present and engaged.
While we can turn our noses at groups like Extinction Rebellion and Rising Tide, we can’t deny that adventurist left-liberalism is attracting people to it. When people feel as if they can’t intervene politically through the usual left-reformist means, they will turn to adventurism and in extreme cases, insurrectionism/terrorism (see: Blockade Australia et al). The Greens were also in attendance to fish for voters, as they are prone to do. I myself saw Mehreen Fahruqi at the Greens stall (which, on the second day, was across from ours). We need to be there to present an alternative to left-reformism and left-opportunism/adventurism: a communist program for the working class to take power.
RCO and FSP comrades did an amazing job spreading communist and eco-socialist politics during this blockade. We also did a good job showing people that unity between communists is more than possible, something you wouldn’t hear of if you only went to the CPA’s otherwise middling stall. Our leaflets were incredibly popular during the blockade, especially our ‘eco-communism’ booklet, which summarised the RCO’s position on communist demands for the climate crisis. Leaflets on the cost of living crisis, what communism was, and why capitalism is the problem were also popular.
Newcastle’s Revolutionary Communists made their presence known this weekend, and we will most likely attend the next not-quite-a-blockade, with more leaflets and hopefully more comrades. We hope that our partnership with comrades from the FSP is long-lasting and ends with a merger toward a mass workers party.
PARTISAN! 