Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube

Trotsky and Holiday Communism in Germany

It’s called “Vacation Communism”: 70,000 people gather for four days at an old Soviet air base two hours north of Berlin.

Nathaniel Flakin

July 7, 2015
Facebook Twitter Share

This is the FUSION. Germany’s biggest left-wing festival has taken place for the last 19 years.

The event is non-commercial, making it different from just about any other music festival in the world. There are no uniformed security guards. Drinking water is free and visitors can bring their own food. Instead of a few big headline acts, there are dozens of small stages. Not only is there no advertising – the organizers don’t even publish which bands will perform until the festival begins. But there are still some big acts, this year including Calle 13 and Ton Steine Scherben.

The demand for the 70,000 tickets is so massive that people need to sign up for a lottery seven months in advance. Countless people used to jump over the fence – but the area got so full that last year a big double fence was erected. Many visitors work as volunteers to keep things running – but there is also a professional structure in the background coordinating dozens of participating groups.

In this self-organized environment, discriminatory behavior is almost unheard of. That’s why they call this “holiday communism”. Four days of music, parties and performances, all of which reflect the “desire for a better world”. This year, for example, the festival was full of solidarity for the struggle of the Kurdish people in Rojava in Syria.

Still, this is not quite “communism”. There is an overwhelming variety of colored armbands which indicate different responsibilities and privileges. A number of people have difficult jobs like cleaning toilets – they get money in exchange for their labor power. Some artists even drive through the festival area in private double decker busses.

This is more like a feverish dream of what a free society could look like – a small “city” that exists for a few days with a certain level of centralization, but no real state. It’s a taste of “an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” In the same way that an occupied factory like Madygraf is like a dream of workers controlling the means of production.

So there’s nothing wrong with dreaming. As Lenin quotes in “What Is To Be Done?”: “The rift between dreams and reality causes no harm if only the person dreaming believes seriously in his dream, if he attentively observes life, compares his observations with his castles in the air, and if, generally speaking, he works conscientiously for the achievement of his fantasies. If there is some connection between dreams and life then all is well.” We can’t think of communism as a “utopia” which we can never reach – communism is the real movement of the working class to expropriate the bourgeoisie and abolish class society. So this “dreamy” festival is only useful if visitors take up the political struggle against the capitalists.

Members of RIO, the Revolutionary Internationalist Organization, and activists with members of other groups participated with a small delegation of “Trotskyists at the FUSION”. We used the (semi-satirical) slogan “Dictatorship of the Proletariat instead of Holiday Communism” in order to make the ideas of Leon Trotsky more popular. Because “Holiday Communism” is not enough – we need world socialist revolution.

Facebook Twitter Share

Nathaniel Flakin

Nathaniel is a freelance journalist and historian from Berlin. He is on the editorial board of Left Voice and our German sister site Klasse Gegen Klasse. Nathaniel, also known by the nickname Wladek, has written a biography of Martin Monath, a Trotskyist resistance fighter in France during World War II, which has appeared in German, in English, and in French. He is on the autism spectrum.

Instagram

Arts

Turning the Greatest Anti-war Novel Ever into Bourgeois Propaganda

All Quiet on the Western Front won four Oscars, and it’s not hard to see why. The production — depicting the horrors of World War I — is spectacular. Yet the producers did not at all understand Erich Maria Remarque’s novel. Spoilers follow.

Nathaniel Flakin

March 16, 2023

Five Years after Ursula K. Le Guin’s Death, We Need Her More Than Ever

Ursula K. Le Guin tended the embers of revolt in a new age of imperialism and counterrevolution. She tasked us with stoking them into a blaze.

Jason Koslowski

January 22, 2023
The cast of "Glass Onion" lounge next to a pool.

Glass Onion: Liberalism’s Dream

Netflix’s new movie, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, is the ruling class’s dream about itself.

Jason Koslowski

January 4, 2023
Main characters in a desert landscape

Selling Suffering and the Spectacle of Blackness in Nope

In his new movie, Jordan Peele examines the ways in which the capitalist system forces us to place our lives in jeopardy and sell our own suffering. Spoiler alert!

Emma Boyhtari

October 14, 2022

MOST RECENT

“Lesser Evil” Biden Wants More Border Patrol Than MAGA Republicans

Over the weekend, Biden bragged about his support for even more resources than “MAGA Republicans.” to “secure the border” on Twitter. This is “lesser evilism” in action.

Molly Rosenzweig

March 28, 2023
Customers clear shelves of water Sunday at Fresh Grocer in West Philadelphia.

A Chemical Plant Just Poisoned Philadelphia’s Water: A First-Hand Account of the Crisis

A company dumped thousands of gallons of poisonous chemicals into Philadelphia’s drinking water. This is an on-the-ground account by a Philadelphia worker and socialist.

Jason Koslowski

March 27, 2023
A group of protesters, in the front of whom are a line of protesters wearing red vests. In the front right corner, a white sign reds "vive la retraite," with a skeleton wearing a red hat in the middle of the sign on a black background with a text bubble on its left that reads, "oiv a bosse, c'est pas pour en crever!"

“French March”: The Right to Revolutionary Optimism

Evoking memories of '68, the students enter the fight against Macron. In our chaotic world, the future can only be built in the streets.

Eduardo Castilla

March 26, 2023

Joe Biden Is Deporting Russians Who Escaped Putin’s Draft — Let Them All In!

The United States is deporting Russians who sought asylum following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This is a heinous attack against war resisters and shows that the proxy war in Ukraine is about capitalist rivalry first and foremost.

Sam Carliner

March 26, 2023