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Fail—W n-t..— £>_ A Hundred Years of Socialism in Australia by Eric Fry

(Based on a paper given at the Communists and the Labor Movement Conference, Melbourne, August 1980.)

Beliefs and theories cannot be understood 1830s some notions of producers' and separated from the society in which they exist consumers' co-operatives were current and which gives rise to them. I will outline the among the artisans of Sydney, derived from main changes in Australia over a century, the Robert Owen, and brought here by chartists setting for socialist ideas. I will not be able to and radicals. Later, in Melbourne, a say much about the other side of the coin, the scattering of European revolutionary exiles ruling classes and their dominant ideologies, discussed socialist theories in their clubs. against which the socialist ideas were put Socialist ideas that count, however, take root forward. I have also to leave aside, largely, the only when they answer the perceived needs of individual men and women who formulated a working class in a capitalist mode of and fought for revolutionary principles, many production. of whom are commemorated and some of whom, themselves, are participants at this From about 1860, Australia became a conference. My purpose is to show that, for a predominantly capitalist economy despite its hundred years, socialism has been a force in distance from the world centres of capitalism, the making of Australia. despite the pioneering which continued on its We could trace socialist ideas back more frontiers, and despite the hopes that gold or than a century if we wished. As early as the cheap land would make it a country of A Hundred Years of Socialism 45 independent producers or yeoman farmers. capitalist ideology. This dialectic is the one The most profitable industry was large-scale thing of which we can be certain. wool growing, the main support of the merchants and financiers who exported Socialist ideas before 1890 were utopian, primary products to Britain and imported that is, the reality of capitalist society was manufactured goods in return. The largest contrasted with an ideal society based on enterprises were British firms which abstractions such as "justice" and "reason". controlled shipping, banking and the raising This ideal was so plainly superior, it was of new capital. The processing of raw supposed, thal it had only to be understood in materials and the supply of everyday goods order to be accepted by people of goodwill was giving rise to some local manufacturing. from all social classes. Its advocates were Transport and distribution, building and small groups of writers and speakers, fringe construction were important in the economy, intellectuals and self-educated craftsmen, shared between many small businesses and a using the methods of propaganda and few large ones. The cities of Sydney and publicity to proclaim the truth. William Lane Melbourne were growing to populations of is the best known of them, more because of his half a million as the centres of this economy. weaknesses than his strengths. His emotional This was commercial rather than industrial journalism accorded with the taste of the day; capitalism, a colonial economy dependent on his conception of socialism was particularly Britain, not an autonomous one, providing a innocuous — "Socialism means the place for a substantial petty bourgeoisie — brotherhood of man, the union of all for the tradesmen, small owners, contractors, agents, securing of social justice"; his exodus to shopkeepers, farmers, who were self- Paraguay and subsequent life as a employed. Yet. the mode of production — the conservative newspaper editor could be used way the economy was organised — was to demonstrate the absurdity of socialist capitalist. A simple measure of this is the doctrines. Other socialists of the time were census of 1891 which recorded the sources of made of sterner stuff. income of all breadwinners. Less than 15 By 1890 there was a labor movement in percent were employers of labour, another 15 Australia as well as socialist ideas. This labor percent were working on their own account, movement consisted of trade unions, mostly and about 70 percent were wage or salary of skilled workers which, over thirty years, earners. This is a picture of capitalist relations had won improvements in wages, hours and of production in which more than two-thirds conditions by direct bargaining with of the income earners are employees, employers. They did not confine themselves although from the other side, almost one- to simple economism; they made their voice third are employers of labour or self- heard in public affairs — on immigration, the employed, showing a broad, rather than White Australia policy, government works, narrow, top to the class structure. access to farming land, education, and Relations of production are not the whole legislation to protect employees. Seeking a of class relations, which enter into and are, in better place for labour in existing society, they turn, permeated by, the entire web of social emphasised their respectability, inscribing on life — law, politics, family, ideology. Class, their banners "Defence, not Defiance". But too, is a dynamic relationship, not a static set their proudest banner celebrated the Eight- of categories. Nevertheless, a picture at a Hour Day, a reduction in surplus value and point of time is revealing so long as we hence profits which no employer gave recognise the forces which produced it and willingly and many still refused. will change it. I only want to make the point The unions had been successful basically that by the late nineteenth century Australia because of the relative shortage of labour in was a capitalist country and that therefore we this developing but distant part of the British find socialist ideas emerging in opposition to world economy. They were sure of their 46 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW No. 80 strength and confident about their future. So state socialism, to be achieved by trade unions grew early and strongly in parliamentary means, for which they sought Australia, evolving a union consciousness to find the right kind of electoral strategy. which could lead to class consciousness. They They were all products of their time, marked were the potential mass audience for socialist by a narrow Australian nationalism, almost ideas and even by 1890 some of the most invariably racist in their support of the White active unionists were touched by socialism as Australia Policy, declaring the equality of an ideal. women only as an abstract principle, sectarian in their attachment to dogmas A generation of prosperity ended suddenly which reflected their powerlessness to shape in the early 1890s with a depression as severe events. For all this they kept socialist ideas and more prolonged than that of the 1930s. alive as an opposition to the dominant After a series of bitter strikes and lockouts, ideology and they were not wholly separated the trade unions were greatly reduced, though from class-conscious unionists, on whom they not destroyed. Turning to direct political had some influence. action, they launched the class-conscious mass movement which created the Labor The frustration of the socialists, which Party. The program of the Labor Party, as it seemed everlasting, was being resolved by was hammered out over ten years or more, 1914. The Labor Party had to wait twenty had three components: full political years, to 1910, before it won office in the democracy, trade union demands for the Commonwealth and New South Wales protection of labour, and Australian parliaments and was accepted as the nationalism. Later, some social welfare alternative government in all states, forcing provisions, such as old age pensions, were its conservative opponents to combine added and the national policies became more against it. What was the outcome of this first prominent. period of Labor in power? The reforms amounted to some industrial legislation to The Labor Party was never a socialist protect trade unionists, a little social welfare, party. Socialists had flung themselves into a more comprehensive arbitration system, a building it and had some influence on it in its modest land tax on large holdings and a weak early fluid years when socialist aspirations Commonwealth Bank. More fundamentally, could be accepted as a distant objective. there was an all-round strengthening of the Genuine socialists were for ever thereafter national government, accompanied by confronted by the dilemma of whether they compulsory military training and an should work within a mass reformist party Australian navy. Most of this program which did not seek more than palliatives, or followed on from earlier Liberal stay outside it and risk becoming isolated. governments, as Labor became a consensus I will not recount the comings and goings party. There was not much for the workers, between the socialist groups and the Labor not much to show for twenty years of rank- Party. Those who tried to influence the Labor and-file devotion to building the party. Deep Party were best represented by the Victorian divisions were present in the Labor Party Socialist Party which, under Tom Mann, before the First World War. became a political and intellectual force on Disillusioned militants turned to the IWW the left. Those who stood outside the Labor (the Industrial Workers of the World), the Party found they could not win votes against new force which revitalised class struggle in it in elections, so became more doctrinaire in Australia, sweeping aside the old socialist their hostility to the Labor Party and other groups unless they joined it. The doctrines of socialists. the IWW came from outside Australia, from All these socialist groups took their theory the United States, but took root in this from abroad, from Britain and the Second country because they made sense to class­ International. Their goal was some kind of conscious workers. The IWW told the A Hundred Years of Socialism 47 flourished, at the front the slaughter mounted with no end in sight. So Hughes, Holman and other Labor leaders joined with every voice of the ruling class to call for conscription. In two referendums in 1916 and 1917, conscription was rejected, despite the weight of the whole establishment for it, censorship, intimidation and prosecution of opponents under the war powers. It was a great victory for a mass movement which formed on class lines. The IWW spearheaded this mass movement. They completely opposed the war from the beginning. From the first, their slogan was: "Answer the declaration of war with a call for a general strike." As Tom Barker, editor of Direct Action, put it simply: Let those who own Australia do the fighting .... Workers of the World, unite! Don't become hired murderers! Don't join the army or navy! The IWW was suppressed. They were prosecuted and jailed under the War Precautions Act, charged with treason, with workers that they must constantly light the conspiring to burn down business premises in boss at the point of exploitation, on the job, Sydney (receiving sentences of up to fifteen by direct action and unity; that the state was years), leaders like Barker, who was born in run by governments in the interests of the England, were deported. Refusing to be silent ruling class, so must be defied and eventually and scorning to hide, the IWW stood up with smashed; that politics was a trap, the Labor great courage, defiant to the end. Party bogus, arbitration a trick; that workers must rely on their own strength, in industrial By its nature the IWW could not be a tight unions. They declared: and disciplined party which would organise and survive underground. So it was destroyed The working class and the employing as an organisation. Yet its ideas of socialism class have nothing in common .... did not disappear — neither its rejection of all Between these two classes a struggle capitalist ideology nor its method of militant must go on until the workers of the industrial unionism. Reaction had not world organise as a class, take triumphed wholly. Lines had been drawn possession of the earth and the beyond which the rulers could not go: on machinery of production, and abolish conscription, or reduction of standards of the wages system. living, on the right of workers to defend By 1917 World War I brought Australia to themselves through their trade unions. a crisis which crystallised around the two conscription referendums. Australia entered A revolutionary turn the war on a wave of patriotism and Empire loyalty which provided a flood of recruits for Although the revolutionary upsurge of the Army. By 1917 feelings had changed. At World War I shook the ruling classes in many home, unemployment spread, prices rose, countries, only the Bolsheviks were able to living standards fell, war profiteers seize and hold power. Their success was an 48 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW No, 80 inspiration for communist parties formed in prosperity or security to Australia. There, other countries, as in Australia in 1920. On local manufacturing grew behind tariff the one hand, the Australian Communist protection- commerce, transport and Party sought to model itself faithfully on the communications enlarged their scale with Bolsheviks; on the other, it was the heir to the new technology; the primary industries and Australian socialist tradition and had to live mining came more under the control of or die in the Australian environment. So from finance capital. the beginning there was always tension The national bourgeoisie was more between the outside theories and the local diversified, less dependent on Britain for circumstances. capital or migration, or even trade. The This was not new in Australian socialism — capitalists devised a network of government it had always been the case. It was particularly intervention for their protection and to win pronounced with the Communist Party popular support. They could only go a certain because, now the road to socialism had been distance with this: they could not break with opened in the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union dependence as a truly national bourgeoisie, must be defended against its enemies who nor provide either welfare or ideals which would destroy it. The Third International would bind the working class to them. centred there embodied the experience and Politically this was reflected in Australia's wisdom of the world working-class status as a self-governing dominion of the movement. British Empire, and in the strength of the The Labor Party had been decimated after Labor Party, and culturally in a strong strand it split in 1916. Nevertheless it endured after of Australian national feeling and shedding its right wirig, regained support, isolationism, side by side with Britishness. persisted as a more class-conscious, even In the crisis of the depression of the 1930s, embittered, party, adopting a hesitant the Scullin federal government, powerless Socialist Objective in 1921. The unions were against the hostile Senate and the bankers, prepared to strike in defiance of arbitration agonised as it inexorably followed the dictates courts and governments to defend their of the most powerful Australian and British conditions and move on to the offensive for a capitalists to cut wages and welfare in order to 44-hour week. By the mid-1920s both Labor restore profits. The story has often been told, Party and unions had distanced themselves so I will not give it here. The simple facts of from the reviled Communist Party without hardship and desperation are overwhelming, rejecting socialism as the ultimate goal of when one in three were unemployed, often their reforms. The old socialist groups homeless and hungry, and all hopes of the withered, leaving the small Communist Party future were swept away. In the shock and to carry on their tactics of publicity and uncertainty, society was violently polarised, propaganda on the outskirts of the labor the majority certainly accepting the movement. Despite its new name and conservative answers, but a large part of the doctrines the Communist Party could only labor movement rejecting them and pinning continue the educational role which the their hopes for a little while on Jack Lang's earlier socialist groups had followed. brand of laborism. In fact, the influence of socialist ideas was ebbing by 1920. In the uneasy 1920s, Depression and socialism conservative politics prevailed, repressive measures by governments against Lang was no socialist, yet both instinct and revolutionaries were institutionalised, a cunning led him to denounce the British determined effort was made in every way to bondholders, the banks and the money power hold to the values of the past. This could not which battened on Australia. He dramatically succeed. Britain was no longer the dominant presented himself as the fearless champion of imperialist power; it could not offer the Australian people, not only the workers. A Hundred Years of Socialism 49 When it came to the point he went quietly which, for some time, isolated them from after his dismissal by the New South Wales many class-conscious workers. Then, from Governor and, in his subsequent career, the early 1930s, the Communist Party grew in became a virulent anti-communist. numbers, finding a base in the unemployed Nevertheless, large sections of the Labor and the trade unionists who accepted militant Party had been radicalised. In 1931 the New leadership to restore their conditions. From South Wales State Conference of the Labor the mid-1930s, communists in Australia, as Party adopted a plan to achieve socialism in elsewhere, worked for a united front to three years, which Lang managed to have advance democracy and welfare at home and reversed. The traumatic events of the early oppose the aggressive fascist powers abroad. 1930s, when capitalism seemed on the verge of The socialism which the Communist party collapse and fascist groups drilled to save it, envisaged as its goal was centralised state strengthened socialist ideas inside and outside socialism, as seen in the Soviet Union. The the Labor Party. party tried to model itself on the Communist This was the third crisis which had shaken Party of the Soviet Union; at least as depicted Australia since the 1880s, appearing from Soviet sources, basing itself on superficially as disasters thrust on Australia democratic centralism which, in practice, from abroad. In fact, Australia's involvement meant tight party discipline and strict in them arose from internal causes interwoven obedience to higher party bodies. Not that with its place in world capitalism, bringing to revolution in Australia was seen as an a head the contradictions in the mode of immediate possibility. The economic struggle production, class relations and ideology was pursued through the trade unions where within Australia. In the first, in the depression strikes and arbitration were combined and the of the 1890s, the age of optimism ended and driving force was the workshop party branch . the employers triumphed over the unions, but In pursuit of the united front, co-operation of the Labor Party was born. In the second, in Labor Party and non-party workers was World War I, the socialists were suppressed consistently sought. More widely, but the electors said no to conscription. In the communists organised broad movements third, capitalist answers to the depression against conservative governments and in were imposed, but a large part of the working defence of democratic liberties. They class was radicalised. advocated collective security abroad against So, although in each crisis the radical forces both subservience to Britian and Australian were defeated, at the same time the ruling isolationism. class had been seriously challenged, forced to This was a comprehensive program reconsider and change its methods of ruling, combining industrial and political action to accept a new relationship of class forces. directed by a unified party for both immediate Each left in its wake heightened working-class and ultimate aims. It drew on democratic consciousness and a new form and force for traditions to incorporate Australian socialist ideas. nationalism into the socialist movement and For the rest of the J930s, socialist ideas to promote a popular counter-culture. It were centred on the transformed Communist proclaimed internationalism as more than an Party while extending far beyond it. By 1929 abstract principle, for the defence of peace, of the tiny Communist Party was abandoning Australia and, of course, of the Soviet Union. hope of co-operation with Laboi leaders and It provided both a philosophy and a guide to turning to denounce them as social fascists action in all spheres of social life, action which against whom the workers must be organised was proved effective as the Communist Party to struggle. The communists had not been grew in numbers and force. surprised by the depression, having always The outbreak of war in 1939 with the Soviet foretold a new crisis of capitalism. They Union neutral under the German-Soviet Non- opposed Lang as much as any labor leader Aggression Pact cut across communist policy, 50 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW No. 80 leaving the party uncertain and soon to be entering a long period, twenty-five years and made illegal, without being seriously more, of expansion of the productive forces damaged. Then, from mid-1941, with the nowhere more visibly than in affluent Nazi attack on the Soviet Union and the Australia. Australia's growth and prosperity Japanese threat to Australia, the communist was comparable to that of the second half of policies of the 1930s were widely seen to have the nineteenth century and with much the been vindicated, the appeasers and Menzies same foundations — an influx of capital and government completely discredited. All the migrants, a strong demand for its exports, allies joined in admiration of the Red Army. now particularly minerals. The capital came The Curtin government marshalled the from the United States and Japan rather than country for an all-out war effort with a high Britain; the migrants were European as well level of national unity, wholeheartedly as British, the markets were world-wide, with supported by the Communist Party and most Japan's share rising. The scale of industry had of the left. The far-reaching controls imposed grown, methods of production had been by the central government were accompanied transformed, transnational firms were now by full employment, social security and the dominant in the most profitable sectors and promise that a rising standard of living would Australia remained a dependent economy continue after the war. integrated into their world strategies. The working class was segmented by the The largest socialist party diversity of migrants who filled the lowest levels, the opportunities for advancement So, for a few short years, from 1941 to 1945, open to old Australians and the drawing in of the largest socialist party Australia had seen new sections, especially women, in a time of was in firm alliance with a popular reforming full employment. These changes were government, and nationalism and accompanied by a relentless offensive against internationalism marched hand in hand. any kind of socialist ideas or, indeed, any What would happen when the war was over? criticism from nationalists or liberals who The Communist Party and socialists outside defended older bourgeois principles. The it hoped that the united front would continue, Cold War was waged at home as well as that the Labor government would carry out abroad. far-reaching reforms of capitalism, while also making for granted that there would be Under these circumstances, the influence of resistance from reactionary forces, there socialist ideas weakened. In 1949 the would be further economic crises and, out of Communist Party had challenged the Labor these struggles, some time in the future, Party for leadership of the working class, and socialism would be won. failed. By now the socialist ideas shaped in the 1930s had lost their force. The Communist From their position of strength in the Party tried to maintain itself by moderate unions, the communists led large strikes for industrial policies, concentrating its attack on higher wages and the forty-hour week. The American imperialism and the danger to Labor Party sought industrial peace through world peace. In the long run, nothing could arbitration, a prospering Australian prevent its decline and splits which were part capitalism moderated by government of the decline of the whole left in advanced controls and eased by welfare measures. capitalist countries. The splits were more Meanwhile, the first shots of the Cold War effect than cause of its weakness. Since world had been fired, the world was dividing into socialism was now varied, not monolithic, two camps and, despite Labor nationalism, with conflict between its parts, hope could be there was no doubt Australia would be an ally pinned on different overseas models, none of of the United States, taking over from Britain. which convinced Australian workers. 1949 was a turning point, not only in Socialists lamented the delay of the Australia. The world capitalist economy was revolution in the West; apologists of A Hundred Years of Socialism 51 capitalism celebrated the end of ideology, by complex understanding of socialist theory as which they meant the common acceptance of a tool of analysis was built up. bourgeois practices. In this period, for the first time, marxism as Socialists were now divided. At one end of a body of knowledge became widely the spectrum, they turned to the Labor Party available, its concepts permeating, even if in a which had again purged itself of its extreme diluted form, the way in which the world was right wing in the split of the 1950s. Others seen not only by activists but by ordinary emphasised trade union militancy which, in people. It was necessary that, during this more confident days, they would have seen as period, socialists should give much of their mere economism. Some clung in increasing effort to contesting the hegemony of capitalist isolation to the earlier doctrines around ideology. To a degree, intellectual leadership which their consciousness had been formed. — I don't just mean pronouncements by Among the growing number of intellectuals, prominent intellectuals — was won away students and young professionals, a New Left from the establishment which wielded power trend emerged, trenchantly criticising the despite the acceptance of the status quo in narrowness of old socialist ideas without practical matters. being able to formulate any agreed strategy or By the mid-1970s the long period of any which could command solid support. expansion of world capitalism was coming to Surviving Trotskyist groups had a new an end and there could be no possibility of lease of life temporarily as their manifestoes Australia being exempt from this decline seemed to offer an alternative. Since objective regardless of the wishful thinking of the conditions were recalcitrant, emphasis was boomsters. So new class conflicts emerged. often placed on the power of a few to change Immediately, defence of the material gains of the world by strength of will, a variety of Left the previous period becomes the starting Wing Communism. The Australian working point of mass action. In many other ways, class was now sometimes written off as international as well as local, new innately reactionary, the reverse of earlier contradictions are bringing forth new optimistic beliefs that it was inherently responses. progressive. This fragmentation of the socialists was, on What can we say in review? Above all, that the one hand, marked by a search for new socialist ideas and action for them are part of ways forward; on the other, by disputes and Australia's history. For a century, socialists doctrinaire attitudes, characteristics of have been the vanguard of opposition to the revolutionaries in a non-revolutionary period ruling classes. The record is in no way a simple which they could not change. This is not to success story of growing strength and disparage the courage with which they stood impending victory. On the contrary, the up to decades of attack and persecution, nor socialist movement is in many respects to see these years as simply a wasteland. weaker than it has been on occasions in the past. N or is it merely a narrative of gains and Socialists had been dispersed but they had losses, of advances and retreats. The class not disappeared. They led such powerful struggle does not follow a straight path. We movements as that against the Viet Nam War know that the working class does not and such continuing ones as the radical determine events but we should also women's movement, those against racism and remember that the ruling class does not rule the ravages of capitalism on environmental untrammelled. We always have a dialectic of conditions of life. They spearheaded the trade class relationships, whether we are looking at unions' defence of their members' needs and the economy, political power or ideological refusal to be shackled by arbitration courts or hegemony, and the labor movement and employers. Ideologically, the battles never socialism are part of past, present and future ceased and, out of them a wide, richer, more society in Australia.