Booknotes

The international socialist current in Australia is small but has made a sustained effort to do theoretical work. Some of it has appeared in journals, while much of the rest has been in book form. Here are the books in more or less chronological order. You will see that some items are on this site:

Tom O’Lincoln, Into the Mainstream: The Decline ofAustralian Communism, Stained Wattle Press, Sydney, 1985. I argued thatthe Communist Party of Australia was no longer Stalinist, but equally that it had not moved towards arevolutionary Marxist perspective. Rather it was moving to assimilate into thepolitical mainstream. By the time the book appeared, this prediction was nolonger very controversial. The party wound up operations during the remainderof the decade. Read a summary of the book.

Tom O’Lincoln, Years of Rage: Social Conflicts in the Fraser Era, Bookmarks, Melbourne1993. Covers general strikes, mass anti-nuclear movements, big battles against the reactionary Petersen government in Queensland, struggles of the oppressed. They generally ended in defeat, however, which laid the basis for a more quiescent situation under therightwing Labor governments of the eighties and early nineties.

Rick Kuhn and Tom O’Lincoln (eds) Class and Class Conflict in Australia, Longman Australia, Melbourne, 1996. This assembled eight essays covering the ruling class, the working class, labour leaders, Aborigines, migrants, women, criminology, the intelligentsia and class analysis in Australian history. The book is superceded by Class and Struggle in Australia (see below), so some chapters that don't have equivalents in the newer book are now archived on Marxist Interventions, covering: the ruling class - women - migrants and class analysis.

Sandra Bloodworth and Tom O’Lincoln (eds) Rebel Women in Australian Working Class History, Interventions, Melbourne, 1998 covers most of the 20^th Century, recounting tales from the mining centre of Broken Hill, the Depression, World War II, the post-waryears, migrant women in Melbourne, equal pay in the insurance industry, and the1986 Victorian Nurses’ Strike.

Mick Armstrong, One, Two Three, What are We Fighting For? The Australian Student Movement from its Origins to the 1970s, Socialist Alternative, Melbourne, 2001, covers student radicalisation in the post-war era up to the 1970s, including the international context and the role of the left. A chapter from the book is here.

Liz Ross, Dare toStruggle, Dare to Win: Builders’ Labourers Fight Deregistration, 1981-94, Vulgar Press, Melbourne, 2004 covers one of Australia’smajor industrial turning points: the move by Labor governments to smash the country’s most militant construction union -- and the resistance, centred on Melbourne. The book is meticulously researched, with extensive use of archives, original union material and fifty-seven interviews with participants. More info here .

Rick Kuhn (ed) Class and Struggle in Australia, Pearson Longman, Frenchs Forest, 2005 replaces the older Class and Class Conflict in Australia. Eleven chapters cover the capitalist class, the state, workers, labour leaders, students, Aborigines, women, lesbian and gay oppression, racism, Australian imperialism and the environment. With illustrations by David Pope.

Tom O’Lincoln, United We Stand: Class Struggle in Colonial Australia, Red Rag, Melbourne, 2005, contains five essays. The first three cover the history of Australianorganised labour from convict times up to Federation. The fourth covers genderand class, with the final essay discussing race and class. More info here.

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