which posture as unorthodox and Lettish, but BOOK contain little to question the class power of the bourgeoisie. There are marxist parties, unions REVIEWS and student groups but there is not an effective marxist analysis of our indigenous cultural streams coming from any of them. There have been some faint stirrings in this direction from AUSTRALIAN CULTURAL ELITES: writers in Arena (Melbourne), in the 1960s, Intellectual Traditions in Sydney and echoed in Richard Gordon’s anthology The Melbourne, by John Docker, Angus and Australian New Left (1970), but nothing has Robertson, 1974 (165 pages, bibliography, come from this quarter since. notes, index). T,M R 0W S E Nothing, that is, except John Docker’s book, which in some respects reflects its association One of the great weaknesses of Australian with Arena, where some of its material was first political life is the miserable failure of marxist published. In this volume, Docker has written analysis to make a positive impact on most of about some of the most important producers of our secular intellectuals. By intellectuals I bourgeois ideology in Australia this century, mean that more or less coherent and though he never conceives them in these terms. continuous group of people who write for our His concern is, rather, to argue that Australian quarterlies, churn out weekly columns in our culture is not a monolithic tradition, but newspapers, present Australian society to us in contains at least two distinct traditions of books and essays, and occasionally comment assumptions about society, politics, education on the affairs of the nation and/or the ‘human and creativity. Docker locates these traditions condition’, for television or radio. Sometimes geographically; one is characteristic of their books are set for schools (such as Donald Melbourne, the other of Sydney. Horne’s Lucky Country). They are not always household names but they are immensely The Sydney tradition is one of ‘elite influential since their function is to produce the ‘pluralism’: society is composed of many groups ideas with which most Australians know their and subcultures of which the society and its place in the world. Naturally I’m artistic/intellectual/bohemian one is more using ‘know’ with my fingers crossed: the free, uncompromised, creative, sexually honest. knowledge presented in these different media is The life-style of the intellectuals is self­ ideological, with its characteristic consciously antagonistic to the rest of society presumptions of pluralism, consensus, which is wowserish, dull, utilitarian, affluence and its comfortable and indulgent conformist, materialistic, etc. Their political fatalism about human nature. practice is laissez-faire and anarchist. This tradition has both a literary (Brennan, Slessor, ‘Class’ is a word rarely used by these Lindsay, A.D. Hope, Patrick White) and a commentators; when it occurs it is used philosophical component (John Anderson and descriptively as a socio-economic category or to the Freethought/Libertarian tradition). Basic explain some ‘breakdown’ of industrial assumptions about society and nature are relations. In their literary and artistic criticism shared by the poets and the philosophers. the mainstream writers are rarely concerned with art as a reinforcer of the ideologies of The Melbourne tradition is more historically capitalism. The universities, with a few conscious than the Platonic Sydneyites, more ‘ratbag’ exceptions, treat marxism as an engaged with a distinctive Australian tradition historical topic, an intellectual curiosity, but which they formulated and wanted to see not as a way of understanding society and flourish. “The Melbourne intellectual will history. characteristically think that an Australian, nationalist derived, social democratic ethos A genuine challenge to Australian and egalitarian ethic are compatible with what capitalism will require that analysis of all are seen as central values of European social activities be made from the point of view civilisation. Melbourne intellectuals feel at the of the working class. There needs to be a centre of their society, both because they are struggle against ideology itself contesting the spokesmen for, or social activists on behalf of, orthodoxies which clutter our media and the social democratic spirit of Australia’s past, reinforce class domination. My impression of and because they are bringing to Australia ‘the Left’ in Australia is that it has often failed European standards of sophistication and to distance itself from non-marxist orthodoxies relevance.” (p. IX). Their political practice is about Australian social life. Most writers are more activist, favoring the ALP, though a still too comfortable with images of Australia considerable number were CPA members 45 before 1956 (some of them are now associated literary philosophical and political, but these with Overland). This tradition is analysed by intellectual choices emerge at the same time as Docker in terms of the work of Vance and Nettie a response to specific Sydney historical Palmer, and C.B. Christesen’s Meanjin. It is a situations, (xii) more self-conscious tradition than the Sydney literary one, from Brennan to White. The I think the first sentence is meant to Sydney poets and novelists are not conceived paraphrase the view of the intellectuals as a tradition in the same sense as the themselves, while the second is Docker’s own Andersonians and the Meanjin intellectuals. summary comment, later fleshed out a little, The Sydney literary tradition is elucidated by (i.e. in his description of the Sydney hostility to Docker through a detailed literary exegesis Labor’s post-war planning proposals.) which is perceptive, even ingeniously so, but which is not historical. Chapter Four is called But importantly, the first sentence requires “Patrick White’s Australian Literary Context”, my gloss, for Docker does little to place his but it is precisely not about any ‘context’. The intellectuals historically. This should not critical reception of White and the illustrative surprise us, since the book’s intention never use made of him by some social commentators really involves anything but a close reading of would have been good material for this chapter. selected texts and a differentiation of their Instead we get an extended description of the themes into two categories or ‘traditions’. And I thematic imagery of The Vivisector and Riders think he has clearly established the presence of in the Chariot. This literary-critical framework two thematic streams, two self-images of encompassing chapters 1 - 5 excludes the social literary, artistic or scholarly activity. My impact of these poems and novels from its argument against the book is that this question focus, treating these works as art-objects whose of cultural homogeneity and Docker’s answer cultural significance is internal; this is an of duality or plurality evades the most aesthetic rather than historical approach, important questions about Australian despite the chronological ordering of the intellectuals, their function as producers of discussion. ideology in a class society.

The second half of the book is about literary We can locate Docker as a Sydney pluralist critics and social commentators of both by referring to the three most critical themes in traditions; it is more readable and it necessarily the book: (1) the critique of patriarchy (in the begins to confront questions of historical comments on Lindsay’s and Hope’s sexist interpretation. In these chapters, Docker deals image of women, and in the acquiescence of with Meanjin, Vance and Nettie Palmer, the Nettie Palmer and Miles Franklin to a male- difference between Meanjin and Southerly ( centred account of the tradition); (2) the attack Sydney’s major literary journal), and “John on the Meanjin intellectuals’ aspiration to Anderson and the Sydney Free Thought reform the culture through their critical and Tradition” , a fascinating account of the literary efforts; and (3) “the degeneration of strange avenues into which intellectual free-thought” (p. 153). The third argument radicalism can turn. The interest in these implies some commitment to the original value chapters is more due to the material itself than of Anderson’s pluralist scepticism; the second to Docker’s approach, however. He is concerned and the first show the pluralist critique in with elucidating the different accounts of action. Docker writes of Meanjin: society and the different cultural projects of each tradition. It is still an internal approach. To see Australian society as it wanted, Docker’s treatment of the historical context of Meanjin intellectuals had to deny in Australian his intellectuals (mainly 1940 to the present, history evidence and expressions which did not apart from a discussion of the Palmers between fit into a corporate tradition. They could not see the wars) is frustratingly cavalier. For instance that historically the values they admired were in his Introduction we can read these two not incompatible with acquisitive sentences, two pages apart: individualism and a liberal hegemony, and that in the name of these values women and Although spread over a number of decades, other ‘races’ and cultures were excluded, (p. these Sydney writers share a continuous 109). historical situation, (x) and Tepid pluralism, locating heterogeneity in our ‘tradition’, is the only critical standpoint The thinking in both of the Sydney traditions adopted by the author, though there is a kind of represents intellectual choices in terms of unspoken ironical distance between Docker ‘international’ movements and doctrines, and all his material. But this is so in any 46 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW MARCH-APRIL 1975. account of someone’s ‘assumptions’; and it is comprehension of Australian society. part of the convention of historical narrative that previous lived experience is compressed By reading these writers we do not come to a and reformulated, and held at a distance - a clear understanding of the process of class rhetorical, rather than theoretical distance in struggle in Australian society, the role of the this case. Lastly, the first five chapters of the ALP and the media, the activities of Australian book are just the kind of litcrit exegesis that imperialism. Some writers are explicitly Southerly critics are characterised by, in that it conservative, but more dangerous are those does not look outwards to the conditions which who vividly articulate certain anti-capitalist nurtured this common creative project. sentiments. Their arguments are usually rooted in an Enlightenment Humanism, a confident But what would a marxist approach to this assertion of rational and humane values, an material look like? The marxist historiography ethical protest against a diffuse family of of culture is not in very good shape at the modern juggernauts: technology, the USA, the moment, but it seems elementary to start by power elite, greed. Characteristically this looking at these writers as producers of critique ignores or dismisses the presence of knowledge. Although Althusser has recently material forces which could challenge and asserted that ideological practice has its own disintegrate the source of their anxiety. historical path, which does not necessarily reflect contemporary economic and political However, it would not be entirely fair to lump developments, this “ autonomy” must not Vance Palmer with Norman Lindsay, nor Ian become a slippery-dip back into the history of Turner with Peter Coleman. Palmer and Turner ideas. For the history of ideological practice to have been active partisans of a kind of be properly constituted, we must take seriously socialism in their different ways, and the the notion that ideology is produced and Melbourne tradition, as formulated by Docker, involves a means of production. It is the critical must have nourished the huge Moratorium task of historians like Docker to discern the movement in that city. Meanjin has a good basic intellectual apparatus with which record as an opponent of Australian Australian intellectuals have produced their McCarthyism when such opposition required picture of Australian society. personal courage. An adequate marxist To give Docker his due, the chapters on the account of Australian intellectuals must Sydney literary tradition do elucidate common recognise the limited virtue of the Melbourne assumptions about nature and society. social-democratic affiliation and the sturdy However, the relationship between literature anarchism which still survives in Sydney. The (i.e. that which is commonly called literature) strength and weakness of Australia’s “ Left- and popular social thought is that the former Intelligentsia” are largely derived from these provides “social” insights according to two currents. The weakness of both is their categories provided by the latter. Thus, the denigration of marxism and their subsequent chapter on Patrick White could have discussed disdain for revolutionary politics and the way his novels have been used to uphold particularly revolutionary parties. Some certain images of Australian political culture intellectuals, like Ian Turner and Steven such as “suburbia” . The historical significance Murray-Smith have had unfortunate of White is not purely internal to his novels, as experiences of the CPA in the mid-fifties, when Docker implies by his focus, but consists just as it was so slow to respond to the international much in the prevailing readings of his work. As disintegration of stalinism. Their position is marxists we need to approach these writers as now a kind of radical disenchantment, with the disseminators of a knowledge which assists spasmodic and nostalgic enthusiasm for the people to accept more or less willingly the ALP. goodness and rationality of the capitalist social While not wanting to trivialise the personal relations in which they find themselves. All acts of dissent from dominant Australian sorts of ideas can play this role, which is one values by some of the intellectuals in Docker’s reason why capitalist societies can be book, we must remember that the political culturally heterogeneous. Religious fatalism, practice of these intellectuals qua intellectuals cynical pragmatism, sexist or anti-working is the production of knowledge. The political class humor, bourgeois economics, etc., all help and historical significance of these writers is to to rationalise to individuals their behaviour in be found in what they said and wrote. a capitalist society. The ideas dealt with in Docker’s book mostly tend to be about the way This introduces my chief quarrel with we conceive Australian society and history, Docker: in stressing the two different streams "character”, and art. Both traditions mystify he has overlooked thematic continuities and frustrate by their pervasiveness a marxist between the two traditions of social 47 commentary and literary criticism, anything it was to a hopefully-awaited continuities which stem from constituting democratic destiny, not to a persistently themselves as elites. In the remainder of this uncongenial present. Vincent Buckley, a review I will try to illustrate this criticism. Melbourne intellectual from head to toe, in 1962 criticised Australian intellectuals for being job- The production of knowledge, like the oriented and for living in “suburbia” and gave production of things, requires a means of as his definition of a true intellectual someone production. The creativity of any writer is not “who would think about the destiny of man and reducible to some ineffable personal essence, as recall some lines of poetry even in a prison- many Romantic theorists say. Writers use a camp” . certain intellectual apparatus in their work, their means of production of knowledge, which I think that intellectuals from both traditions they do not necessarily affirm. It consists of see this element of estrangement, of brave certain assumptions, an intellectual universalism in the face of the overwhelmingly framework or “problematic” within which contingent, as an essential part of their raison certain questions and types of evidence make d’etre as writers and teachers. It is a personal sense, and others do not. The continuity affirmation which has the impersonal currency between these two traditions, I would argue, is of a profession, in the old sense of the word. And their sharing of a basic problematic, rooted in it is this affirmation which binds them all to a their identification of themselves as particular epistemological stance and certain intellectuals. Both traditions share basic common tendencies in their theory of society. assumptions about what an intellectual is, and the place which intellectuals typically occupy The epistemological position is rarely in their society. I refer to the enduring asserted, especially in Melbourne, but it is assumption that the intellectual is declasse, basically that the intellectual’s task is to step alienated, a privileged observer from outside back from social engagement, and see through who can discriminate between truth and myth, the myths, knock the sacred cows, rise with knowledge and socially-derived prejudices. ethnographic majesty and see the overall Marxists who claim to be able to make this reality. These perspicacities are the prerogative discrimination do so on the basis of a conscious of those who by their own affirmation can step philosophical theory, which is external to their outside of history, away from power, money, personal or political identity. In Docker’s and mundane concerns. writers, however, their perspicacity and The characteristic projectof intellectuals in legitimacy as commentators is derived from an both traditions is to deal creatively and established social .acceptance, a corporate critically with society’s “mythologies” . For confidence, and, in the case of the both streams society is held together by basic Andersonians, an empiricist theory of knowledge, substantiated for some by a mythologies about itself; for Melbourne, myth necessary bohemian elitism. and traditions are signs of cultural maturity. For Sydney intellectuals, myths are the inevitable sustenance of most of (benighted) Docker would see this assumption of society. Whether celebratory or critical, the intellectual alienation as characteristic of the privileged perspective of the historian and Sydney tradition but rather foreign to the philosopher, as the custodians of what is Melburnians. He sees the latter according to deemed mythical, is the same. their own estimate, as central to society, engaged and proselitysing the social- For Melbourne intellectuals (and Max democratic ethos. But this account of the Harris) myth needs to be continually criticised Melbourne stance is taken from some of the and reformulated in social commentary and most optimistic of Meanjin’s articles, and is literature, art and satire. Docker deals with this insensitive to the gap between identification project of the sustenance of myth as a Meanjin with the tradition, and estrangement from the intention. present. In the 1960s Meanjin published several articles arguing the modern alienation of Their explicit ambition was to make intellectuals or “Reason”. Docker notes the Australian society as rich in mythology as rapid alternations between optimism and aboriginal culture. This was the task of artists pessimism throughout Meanjin’s and intellectuals. It was discussed in the series (Christesen’s) history but does not seem to “Letters to Tom Collins” in the 1940s. realise that this came from a deep-seated Historians Russell Ward and Vance Palmer insecurity about the efficacy of their cultural celebrated the 1890s as the Eden of our project. Docker also quotes statements of frank democratic, socialist, egalitarian character, elitism, not able to place them. If the Meanjin subsequently undermined by the urbanising intellectuals saw themselves as central to trends of the twentieth century. Manning 48 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW MARCH-APRIL1975. Clark’s history bemoans the crushing of a not any rearrangement of externals. This is native bush tradition by British gentility in the what the work of the intellectual producer (of second half of the nineteenth century. Each of the realist or empiricist philosopher) resides in, these writers has been allowed to be evasive not “social levelling” or any other practical about the factual truth and literary understanding but simply making discoveries tendentiousness of their descriptions. They .... and being concerned with following an have usually been exonerated by a critical intellectual tradition within an intellectual consensus that sees history as an expression of institution. (J. Anderson, Studies in Empirical a personal vision and as a formulation of Philosophy, 1962, p. 359.) society’s necessary mythology. The This quote could serve as a manifesto for formulation is celebratory and sympathetic, Libertarians whose principled passivity and but includes the possibility of criticism of intellectual elitism Docker describes The “outmoded mythologies”. intellectual project is a non-ideological concern with the ideology of others. Docker laments its It is significant that in the less optimistic decline into a technique of personal ’sixties Meanjin’s attempt at seven surveys of authoritarianism (Libertarian women who “Australian society after Menzies” were criticised sexism were accused of penis-envy). published under the “Strine”rubric of Godzone (God’s own country). Strine, a new mythology But the more substantial case against this with a necessary protective irony; celebration project is that it discourages a commitment to a from a slightly disenchanted distance. This materialist interpretation of Australian irony germinated from an a priori detachment society. They cannot see that the myths which from the myth which always lay at the heart of sustain society have as their basis, not the herd­ the most confident Meanjin writing of the like gullibility of “the masses”, but objective ’forties. conditions of existence, and particularly the conditions of existence, and particularly the Sydney’s characteristic detachment from ideological apparatuses of capitalist state social mythology has always been much more power: the family, the churches, the mass scathing; and it has often been backed up by a media, and educators and writers like proud bohemianism and attempts at a sexual themselves. They are thus left with an elitist honesty whose deficiencies Docker correctly fatalism about society which suits political criticises. Anderson’s militant scepticism is the preferences right across the spectrum, except seminal influence here. The homage which for those who see in objective circumstances the Anderson and his confidently-empiricist possibility of revolution. followers paid to Sorel and Freud was based Donald Horne and Peter Coleman would be on their alleged realism, naturalism and the most influential commentators to have objectivity, as opposed to the “metaphysics” of come from the Sydney milieu. (Both have been other theories. Anderson quotes Sorel as a editors of the Bulletin). Their criticism is source of his own ethics, a realist ethics in strictly of the iconoclast variety. Never ill at which “good” was not a notion but an actual ease with Australian capitalism, they align historical force (the proletariat in the pre-war themselves intellectually with a broad coalition Anderson). This ethical theory was superior to of anti-Establishment tendencies (anti­ other idealist ones in its realism, he argued. monarchist, anti-politician, etc.) in which From Sorel, Andersonians also derived the union leadership, self-seeking politicians, confidence to classify behaviour as “rational” bishops, and protectionist business interests or “irrational”, “disinterested” or “interested”. seem to share blame equally for any Australian Reasoning consisted of observation, malaise. With this pluralist framework they uncluttered by categories, and worked over by a can only identify obvious “interests” and prior and irreproachable Logic. As for Freud, “irrational” tendencies a fundamentally Anderson thought that psychoanalysis was reformist social criticism. revolutionary because of its naturalism, its ability to point out the link between an idea and The Andersonian commitment to the “unconscious” interests, an improved theory irrationality of society’s beliefs and behaviour for distilling the rational and objective from the was handled in different ways. The stance of irrational and subjective in human thought. Left-Libertarians has been more critical, and Armed with these critical tools, Anderson celebrates a more “rational” Bohemian ethic. could look forward to effective revolutions in Others, like Horne, Coleman and P.H. thought: Partridge, more engaged in the social sciences, were influenced by American theories of mass The only revolution properly so-called is an society, and the unattached and besieged intellectual revolution, “a revolution in ideas”, intelligentsia. The early Cold War was the time 49 in which they began to publish, and they were social commentary of Edwardian England, to clearly influenced by the anti-communism of describe the lower middle class civilisation of Anderson and American theories of social suburban London, with its desperate emulation collapse through mass hysteria. Except of of the gentility of the wealthy and powerful. It course that in Australia, rather than any quickly passed into the vocabulary of dangerous swing to the left, we saw the contemporary Melburnians Louis Esson and entrenchment of a firm anti-communism; and Vance Palmer. In 1921 the latter bemoaned the so these theories became an opportunity to decline of the ethos of Australian radicalism celebrate the retention of a “healthy” (the Legend of the Nineties). He was reacting to conservatism. They wrote benevolently and the failure of the working class to force a half mockingly of the myths that allegedly transition to socialism after World War I, a sustain social peace in Australia. betrayal of pastoral radicalism by a spiritless urban culture, he thought. He called it Thus Home (on Anzac Day): “It is not a “dominance of villadom” . He contrasted patriotic day, but, as Peter Coleman said in The “sophisticated villadom” with the radicalism Bulletin, a ‘tribal festival’, the folk seeing itself of the bush and complained that the energy of as it is - unpretentious and comradely.” the nation was now being wasted on the Coleman, defending censorship: “It had “supply of boots and chocolates to the come to the view that censorship was suburbs” . Between the wars, a contempt for symbolically useful as a form of community suburbia was part of the corporate assurance of protest against degradation.” Sydney bohemians. After World War II, when That the Sydney presumption of community “ socialist aspirations” were again irrationality could cease being contemptuous disappointed, “suburbia” was again taken up and become ironically approving underlines as an image of an electorate preoccupied with the basic similarity between the Melbourne and domestic trivia, rather than political affairs. Sydney problematics. The above quotations For Robin Boyd it was an image of an reveal a definite convergence between aesthetically-conservative ethos; in Patrick Andersonian and Meanjin social White it became a symbol of the dispirited commentaries. Docker can illustrate a conflict materialism which surrounded and thwarted between the two over concrete issues in the the spiritual heroes and heroines of his novels - 1940s but this conflict did not last any longer very much a Vance Palmer antithesis. Finally, than Meanjin’s fragile optimism about in the ‘sixties, “suburbia” became an Australia’s progress to an ALP, Furphy- explanatory image of social complacency, in inspired, democracy. Once this confidence in the work of both Horne and the Godzone the Australian radical ethos died, new writers. sustaining myths took its place. But the new “Suburbia” is not just an image of some myths were more and more derived from satire, intellectuals’ estrangment and elitism the new social archetypes of Barry Humphries however. It is a “concept” of great currency and the celebration o f‘strine’ noted above. The among intellectuals who regard themselves as commitment to myth always contained some social critics. It contains an assumption and a degree of critical reserve, and by the 1960s the conviction of social consensus. (Horne: “The reserve had more to feed on. Optimism became genteel have been vulgarised, the vulgar made satirical celebration, a platform where Ian more gentle. People now enjoy themselves more Turner’s lecture on Aussie Rules, Boyd’s in the same kind of ways.” ) Here is a description of “suburbia” and Horne’s popularised cliche of modern sociology, the end patronising approval of Anzac Day could meet of class conflict. Because the problematic with little discomfort. All three accounts of within which these intellectuals work focusses Australian society incorporate the same so exclusively on the subjective side of social posture of intellectual pessimism about the life their interpretations are easily bemused by masses, In 1972 they were united over the ALP, similarities of life style. They neglect the on the one hand a mellow iconoclasm towards objective divisions between capital and labor the epigones of Menzies, on the other a rather which have never left Australian society, desperate optimism about social democracy. despite the appearance of social peace in the There has been one outstanding example of ’fifties and ’sixties. It is the Australian version the convergence of the two traditions in their of the Cold War “mass-society” thesis. social criticism which illustrates the common The word “elites” in Docker’s title is more irony about mass society, in the popularity of than a reference to the personal elitism of “suburbia” as an image of postwar Australian certain intellectuals; it refers to the basic civilisation, and of “classless”, post-Keynesian assumptions by which most Australian social affluence. critics, even on “the left” , have produced The term “suburbia” has its origins in the knowledge of our society. 50 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW MARCH-APRIL1975.