Footscray in Melbourne’s west has become the latest battleground over medically supervised injecting rooms (MSIR). Local rallies are a rarity these days, but over the last two weeks the suburb’s mall has been the site of two protests—a right-wing anti-MSIR rally organised by the Liberal Party and a community rally in support led by the Victorian Socialists West.

From the moment Karl Marx put pen to paper, pro-capitalist political commentators and academics have attempted to bury his ideas. But successive generations of political activists have continually turned to Marx’s ideas, from the best working class fighters who joined the various communist and socialist parties in the early 20th century to the student radicals who stood up to the horrors of Vietnam war in the 1960s, embracing his searing indictment of capitalism and his argument for revolution.