By Nick D.

“Join us this year for Red Books Day on February 21, 2024, marking the 176th anniversary of the publishing of the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It is an international celebration and commemoration of the Communist Manifesto and the liberatory impact it has had on people’s movements, past, present and future.”

Red Books Day was first celebrated on February 21, 2020; 172 years to the day after Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto. Initiated by left and progressive groups in India, it called for public readings of Marxist texts to celebrate “left books, their authors, and the people’s movements they ushered forward.”

As the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research explains, Red Books Day also emerged as a fightback against the violent far-right attacks and suppression of Marxist groups and ideas across the world.

“Against Marxism and rational thought, the far right has pushed obscurantist and unscientific ideas, a fog around humanity. One of those Marxists who was killed was the Indian Communist leader Govind Pansare, targeted by the far right for his rationalism and for the publication of his book Who Was Shivaji? Pansare was killed on 20 February 2015, on the eve of the day when the Manifesto had been published.”

On February 21, 2020, thousands took part in public readings across the four Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana. In Tamil Nadu alone, some ten thousand people participated in the Red Books festival.

The call issued from India was answered by political parties, publishing houses, bookstores, writers, and artists across the world. In this first year, over thirty thousand people on all continents – from South Korea and Brazil to Nepal and South Africa – came together to read, organise and fight back. Since 2020, Red Books Day has continued to grow.

In 2021, the Simón Bolívar Institute in Venezuela organised for social movement leaders and government officials – including President Nicolás Maduro – to read sections of the Manifesto and share reflections on its significance. In 2022, over half a million people in Kerala joined mass collective readings of the works of Indian communist E. M. S. Namboodiripad.

This year there will be public Red Books Day events held in Australia:

In Perth, Red Ant is holding a Red Books Day event at 5:00pm on the steps of Trades Hall, 80 Beaufort Street.

This will include a public reading of a selection of Palestinian resistance poetry and a section from Volume 1 of Marx’s Capital that describes the establishment of the Swan River Colony in Western Australia.

Melbourne Red Books Days will be at 2:00pm on Melbourne University South Lawns. There will be a launch of What is Marxism?: a new pamphlet by Red Ant Publishing featuring two articles by the Russian revolutionary leader, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

Both an introduction to the life and thinking of Karl Marx and a sample of the manner in which Lenin thought and wrote, What is Marxism? is an exposition of the scientific nature and relevance of Marxism.

For updates on upcoming events in Australia, stay across Red Ant social media or get in touch at: redant.communication@gmail.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/red.ant_org/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/red.ant.site/

You can find more information about Red Books Day, including how to organise and promote events, here: https://redbooksday.org/

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Red Books Day 2024

The campaign towards #RedBooksDay2024 has been started with releasing a dance video on L’Internationale.

The artist, Chemm Parvathy, is an activist, and member of Communist Party of India (Marxist). She is also a recipient of the Presidential National Balshree Award for Creative Performance and pursues her dance in Bharathanatyam.