Carnival:

1. An expression of freedom involving laughter, mockery, dancing, masquerade and revelry.
2. Occupation of the street in which the symbols and ideals of authority are subverted.
3. When the marginalised take over the centre and create a world turned upside down.
4. You cannot just watch carnival, you take part.
5. An unexpected carnival is revolutionary.
(Taken from a RTS poster for J18)

‘If I can’t dance it’s not my revolution’ – Rosa Luxemburg

Over the past few years in the overdeveloped countries of the west there have been a series of mass mobilisations, aimed at disrupting business as usual for globalised capitalism, and in particular, for it's political and economic elite. Three tactical approaches to contesting power on the streets have emerged from these mobilisations. These could be called respectively the black, the white and the carnival blocs.

Although the black and white blocs have been the focus of much spectacular corporate and leftist media attention, the tactics of the carnival bloc has generally been ignored.
The Carnival bloc as a tactic exemplified at J18 in London 1999, S26 at Prague in 2000 or Barcelona J24 in 2001, offers an alternative way to critic and disrupt capitalist social relations without getting locked into a dialectic of escalating physical force between young able bodied militants and the cops.

Unlike the roving hit squads of the black bloc tactic, or the non-violent but assertive tactics of the white overalls, the carnival bloc offers a zone through which the whole range of people, not just the physically confident able bodied adults, can act together in challenging the power of capitalism to order our existences.

Carnival as a tactic is highly effective way of disrupting and critiquing the 'business as usual' worlds of work and consumption and of liberating social space. It moves beyond the leftist / militant approaches which limit our actions to being merely demonstrations of our 'victim' status in relation to capital and can incite / excite members of the general population to take a part in the collective realisation of our desires for a socially and ecologically just world. In the UK the carnival bloc as a tactic has its roots in the street parties of RTS, but unlike the largely static street parties the carnival bloc aims at being tactically mobile.

The Immediacy of Carnival.

Capitalism, the dominant system of organising economic production and reproduction (and environmental destruction) in our society, is above all a set of social relationships. If the anti-capitalist movement managed to overthrow the state organisation today, it would possibly be restored or a new one formed in a matter of weeks. This is because the ideas and ways of relating to each other, which sustain the capitalist system, have been internalised by us all.

But the tactic of carnival, with its subversive sense of fun and pleasure, offers us a way of liberating ourselves from such internalised oppression. Along with challenging the authority of the policeman on the street, through our playful resistance we can also challenge the policemen in our own heads

Carnival as an experience brings into question, subverts and overturns the hierarchical dualities that shape our thinking under capitalism. These thought patterns structure our everyday lives and lock us into patterns of behaviour which value and privilege duty above pleasure, work over play, society over nature, male over female, straight over queer, white over black and above all, the power that abstract wealth or money over our directly experienced sense of our human needs and desires. In contrast a carnival is a fluid, plural and collective situation where no one viewpoint is in complete control.
Within an insurgent carnival formation, a group of sambaistas can play a key tactical role.

The rhythmical sound creates a mobile temporarily liberated space within which the carnival can coalesce. Speaking to people in a way more immediate than spoken words, It creates an immediate uplifting feeling, giving people the sense of self-confidence that will allow them to step off the pavement and into the street.