Socialist Alternative hosted the very successful Marxism 2016 conference in Melbourne over Easter, drawing together radicals and activists from around Australia and around the world. More than 1,250 tickets were sold and it was standing room only at many of the meetings.

The rally on opening night, with 400 in attendance and 100 turned away, was just a sign of things to come – not just in terms of big crowds but the political message. Lebanese socialist Farah Kobaissy summarised the situation in a way that all of us recognised: “Capitalism has never been in such a generalised crisis, with unemployment, poverty, lay-offs, attacks on labour rights, attacks on the environment, life is becoming more and more precarious”.

With eight sessions running concurrently throughout the conference, many hundreds nonetheless packed in to the main theatre on Friday afternoon to hear Aboriginal legend Gary Foley make his case passionately against the government’s sham “Recognise” campaign.

The same number attended in the evening to see Kobaissy and Australian socialist Mick Armstrong speak on “Revolution and counter-revolution in Syria”. Kobaissy, who has been fighting for the rights of the two million Syrian refugees now living in desperate circumstances in Lebanon, drew inspiration from recent re-emergence of protests during the ceasefire: “Five years later, despite the atrocities, the Syrian people are still marching, still chanting, still protesting with the same slogans calling for freedom, dignity and justice. With that they are paving the way for the future that they deserve”.

Saturday afternoon saw a big turn-up of 200 to hear Palestinian-American journalist and co-founder of Electronic Intifada Ali Abunimah talk on “The struggle for a free Palestine”, while just across the way at the same time well over 300 listened intently to US Black Lives Matter activist and socialist Khury Petersen-Smith speak about “Fighting police racism and brutality in the USA”. On Saturday evening South African socialist and veteran of the Soweto uprising Mandla Nkosi spoke to 200 about “Betrayal and struggle: South Africa since apartheid”.

One of the most popular sessions was the panel “Why you should be a socialist today”, with 250 attending to hear US socialist Joel Geier, Mandla Nkosi and Socialist Alternative’s national student organiser Sarah Garnham argue the case for socialist organisation in Australia. The political situation here may not resemble some of the high points overseas, but the speakers argued that we in Australia have to organise and engage in the struggles of today while preparing for the campaigns ahead.

As Petersen-Smith put it on the opening night: “The people in power encourage lives of fear and despair. We have an alternative. Speaking personally, I became an activist when I knew that the world was messed up and wanted to join with people to do something about it. But I became a socialist when I concluded that it doesn’t have to be this way – another world is possible.”

But it wasn’t just the big name speakers and international guests who gathered the crowds. The half dozen Marxism 101 sessions aimed at explaining the basics of Marxist politics each attracted between 100 and 160 people, with lively discussion and Q&A from the overwhelmingly young crowd.

Marxism 2016 can be judged a big success, not just because of the numbers attending and the quality of talks and discussions, but because it drew in activists and radicals from every generation, from high school students to veterans of the 1960s. The Radical Reels film festival, which included documentaries about Queensland coal miners building their union, the 1946 Pilbara shearers’ strike and the 1965 anti-Communist massacres in Indonesia, among others, was another popular feature.

The conference brought together the lessons of the struggles from across the globe – whether it was Finnish, Indian, German, Irish and Peruvian workers in the 1910s and 1920s, actors and production crews in Hollywood in the 1940s, Indigenous people and Pacific Islanders in the 1970s, or Indonesian and Australian workers today.

From the frontlines of today’s struggles, we heard from unionists organising migrant farm workers in Queensland and Victoria, hospital workers talking about the attacks on the health system and their efforts to organise resistance, construction workers speaking out about the government witch-hunt against their union, and Indigenous journalists and writers, including Jack Latimore, novelist Tony Birch, New Matilda and 98.9FM’s Amy McQuire and commentator Celeste Liddle, who are trying to get their message across despite the best efforts of the racist mass media to freeze them out.

The thousand plus people who attended Marxism 2016 left the conference refreshed and ready for the fight ahead.

Socialist Alternative would like to thank all those who participated and who made Marxism 2016 the vibrant and stimulating event it was.

Marxism 2017 will be held on 14-17 April next year. More details will be posted in coming months at marxismconference.org.