Australian Left Review
Article Title
A Hundred Years of Socialism in Australia
Abstract
(Based on a paper given at the Communists and the Labor Movement Conference, Melbourne, August 1980.) Beliefs and theories cannot be understood separated from the society in which they exist and which gives rise to them. I will outline the main changes in Australia over a century, the setting for socialist ideas. I will not be able to say much about the other side of the coin, the ruling classes and their dominant ideologies, against which the socialist ideas were put forward. I have also to leave aside, largely, the individual men and women who formulated and fought for revolutionary principles, many of whom are commemorated and some of whom, themselves, are participants at this conference. My purpose is to show that, for a hundred years, socialism has been a force in the making of Australia.