This website contains essays and articles on Australian history from a Marxist perspective. They are offered as they were written, flaws and all, in the hope that they will be of interest to others trying to understand the development of capitalism in Australia.
Footsoldiers for capital: The influence of RSL racism on interwar industrial relations in Kalgoorlie and Broken Hill. This PhD thesis by Dr Sarah Gregson is a major contribution to the historical debate over racism and class in Australia. She sees the RSL as an elite-dominated, cross-class organisation with links to every section of society, and argues that the RSL was a significant agitator for migrant exclusion and white unity in the interwar period. In this context, labour movement responses to migrant labour incorporated a range of different strategies, from demands for racist exclusion to moves towards international solidarity.
Racism and class in Australian history: This is my current project. Since 1999, I have been doing a PhD at ANU, tentatively titled White Australia, the ruling class agenda: 1875-1888, which rejects the idea that White Australia was a victory for the labour movement, and which is looking at the role of the ruling class in excluding Chinese immigrants and promoting anti-Asian racism. I am going to upload articles and papers as I write them. I have also included some old articles and essays.
The Decline of Free Trade in Australian
Politics, 1901-1909: This is a short history thesis, written in 1998, which
looks at the rise of two party, Labor/anti-Labor politics in Australia during
the first decade of Federation; and the unification of most ruling class politicians
behind a single protectionist party. At Federation in 1901, there were three
major parties: the Protectionists, the Free Trade party, and Labor. Most historians
have written off the Free Traders as badly led, devoid of viable policies and
inherently "doomed" once Australia federated, thus avoiding the need
to explain their demise. I argue that the Free Trade party was powerful and
successful (its leader, George Reid, was even Prime Minister from August 1904
to July 1905); but that it collapsed itself into the protectionist party led
by Alfred Deakin because its leaders, and its ruling class backers in NSW, were
so concerned at the rise of working class militancy and the Labor party in the
years 1906-9.
As part of this project, I presented a paper: Labor's
tortured path to protectionism, at the 1999 Labour History conference in
Wollongong. This is an rtf file
Strike Fraser Out: The Labour Movement Campaign Against the Blocking of Supply and the Sacking of the Whitlam Government, October-December 1975. When Sir John Kerr sacked the Whitlam Government on November 11 1975, the trade union movement was pressing for a national general strike to stop him. Historians and journalists have attempted to bury this magnificent history by portraying the struggle as one between three ego-driven, stubborn, men. This is an attempt to document the real history from below. This was a university essay, written in early 1997, and is an rtf file.
Women and the Communist Party:
This is an attempt to trace and explain the way communists in Australia understood
and took up the issue of women's oppression in the years from the formation
of the Communist Party in 1920, to the end of the Second World War in 1945.
It is exciting to learn of the efforts and success of communists in relating
to working class women; and it is depressing to see the effects of Stalinism
and the turn to the "popular front" strategy and nationalism from
the mid-1930s. This was a university essay, written in 1998, and is an rtf file.
EP Thompson and the process of historical causation: This is a sympathetic critique of the greatest postwar Marxist historian. An attempt to come to terms with historical theory. This was a university essay,written in 1996, and is an rtf file
These articles and talks represent my earliest attempts to develop a Marxist analysis of Australian history. They were written in the years 1985-1990, and some suffer from an over-polemical style. Many were written as reviews of recent books which embodied a left nationalist analysis of Australian history and Australian society.
Crisis in Australian History This was an attempt to explain the Great Depressions of the 1890s and the 1930s in Australia, in terms of the Marxist theory of crisis. It is the text of a talk given around 1985.
Understanding Australian history This article was an attempt to summarise a Marxist analysis of the broad sweep of Australian history: to 1914, anyway. It is written in the form of a review of No Paradise for Workers: Capitalism and the Common People in Australia 1788-1914, by Ken Buckley and Ted Wheelwright. It was published in The Socialist, March 1989.
What is the real Labor tradition? This page contains two articles published in The Socialist in 1989. "Has Hawke betrayed the real Labor tradition?" was published in November 1989; and "The social roots of the Labor tradition" published in December 1989. The articles were attempts to come to terms with labourism in Australia, at a time when nearly seven years of Labor government had aroused enormous discontent and disillusionment within the labour movement. They were written in the form of a review of two books: The Hawke government and the Labor tradition by Graham Maddox; and The Labor Legacy: Curtin, Chifley, Whitlam, Hawke by Carol Johnson.
Immigration,
class and Australian capitalism This article was an attempt to sum
up a socialist analysis of immigration and racism in Australian history; and
to explain the various responses to the anti-Asian mobilisation which began
with Geoffrey Blainey in 1984. In particular, it was an attempt to confront
the problems of mainstream left nationalism in Australia when dealing with issues
such as racism, which is why it was written as a review of and response to Jock
Collins' book: Migrant Hands in a Distant Land (Pluto Press). It was
published in The Socialist, August/September 1988.