The Radical Year Ahead: 2024
Posted by Pete on 2nd Jan 2024
2024 is looking like another year stuffed full of important dates in radical history...
"…may I wish you in advance every happiness for the new year. If it’s anything like the old one, I for my part, would sooner consign it to the devil."
Karl Marx wrote this to Friedrich Engels as the year 1861 drew to a close.
The capitalist order seemed more resilient than ever, and a pro-slavery revolt had just broken out in the United States, leaving a radical like Marx with little to be cheery about.
The 28th of August, 2024, will be the 180th anniversary of when Marx first met Engels at the Café de la Régence in Paris
See the new - redder - Karl Marx tea towel
And Marx was hardly the last progressive agitator to be unimpressed by New Year festivity.
The Sardinian Marxist Antonio Gramsci famously scorned the event:
“Every morning, when I wake again under the pall of the sky, I feel that for me it is New Year’s day. That’s why I hate these New Years that fall like fixed maturities, which turn life and human spirit into a commercial concern…”
For radicals, the world ought to be reassessed every day of every month. Revolutionary change, in our lives and our societies, shouldn’t be limited to 1 January. But sometimes, New Year’s Day has been an occasion for revolution in the most meaningful sense.
It was on 1 January 1803 that Haitian revolutionaries declared independence from the barbaric slave regime of French colonialism, becoming the first black republic in history. On 1 January 1863, Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation went into effect in the U.S., committing the Union Army to liberate those still enslaved by rebels in the South.
And the Cuban Revolution ended the rule of the brutal President Fulgencio Batista and his oligarchic allies on 1 January 1959.
The timeless 'Women's March' design is among several popular items in the New Year Sale
The coming of the new year also brings milestones and anniversaries for radicals to celebrate and reflect upon.
There are those that happen every year, like May Day and International Women's Day.
But there are also plenty specific to the year ahead.
Some will be cause for celebration.
2024 marks sixty years of Zambian independence from British colonial rule, for example.
It will also be sixty years since Muhammad Ali became heavyweight champion of the world, before having the title stolen from him for refusing to fight the U.S. war against Vietnam.
And April will see the fiftieth year of democracy in Portugal, since the Carnation Revolution overthrew fascist rule in 1974.
There are also a fair few centenaries to reflect upon.
The British intellectual, Ralph Miliband, the U.S. civil rights activist, Anne Braden, and Amílcar Cabral were all born in 1924. Next year will be an occasion to reflect on their lessons in radical thought and struggle.
Going much further back, 2024 will mark 750 years since the birth of Robert the Bruce. The year will be a chance for Scotland to contemplate (and debate) the meanings of its nationhood and freedom.
Robert the Bruce was born on the 11th July, 1274, 750 years ago this year
See the Robert the Bruce tea towel
But 2024 has its share of solemn anniversaries in store, too.
In March, it will be forty years since the ill-fated Miners' Strike began in the U.K.
The labour movement in Britain has still not recovered from the savage defeat inflicted by the Thatcher government.
Gramsci was right, of course. We should treat every single day as an opportunity for new beginnings.
But radicals still need their history to celebrate, mourn, and cherish. To learn from and be inspired by.
And there’s plenty of radical history – not to mention radical tea towels – to come in 2024…