Table Of ContentClass in Australia
Marxism, Populism
and Social Science
HENRY PATERNOSTER
Reimagining Class in Australia
Henry Paternoster
Reimagining Class
in Australia
Marxism, Populism
and Social Science
Henry Paternoster
La Trobe University
Mornington, VIC
Australia
ISBN 978-3-319-55449-5 ISBN 978-3-319-55450-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-55450-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017940222
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Acknowledgements
The book builds on the core arguments of my doctoral thesis, which was
completed under the supervision of Prof. Peter Beilharz and Dr. Trevor
Hogan at La Trobe University, Bundoora, in December of 2015. This
work is my own, but it would not exist without years of engagement
with friends, colleagues and supervisors. It would be even less possible
without the previous generations of thinkers and activists whose contri-
bution I have spent the past several years reflecting on. I am grateful for
the activists that introduced me to the analytical potential of Marxism,
and to my supervisors Peter Beilharz and Trevor Hogan, for their men-
torship as a scholar. I had the privilege of being among Peter’s last
cohort of students at La Trobe. It is doubtful that I would have written
the present book under any other supervision team. Peter’s unrivalled
and expert attention to detail, expertise, intellectual rigor and sensibility
has shaped my thinking deeply. Being supervised by someone so famil-
iar with the discourse of Trotskyism in Australia has been a blessing for
the task of working my way out of that intellectual labyrinth. Trevor’s
ambitious enthusiasm for radically transforming my project has meant
that it became much more than just a demythologisation of estab-
lished texts. Thank you to the reviewers and editors who have improved
v
vi Acknowledgements
sections of the original thesis, as they became journal articles for Labour
History and the Journal of Australian Political Economy; Chaps. 4 and
5 of this book have benefited from their comments. I am particularly
grateful for the opportunity that the editors of (and reviewers for)
Palgrave Macmillan have given me by publishing this as a book. A few
names demand mention before closing: Andrew Gilbert, who gave criti-
cal feedback on drafts of the thesis; Arwen Crawford, for her editorial
comments on the final draft of the thesis; Aviv Gazit, for helping me
to finesse sections of prose for this book; finally, Raewyn Connell, who
generously took the time to talk to me about CSAH before I had written
about it; and Terry Irving, for taking the time to respond to my critique.
Any errors that remain in this book are my own.
Contents
1 Introduction: Why Class? 1
2 Imagining Class in Australian History 21
3 The New Left and Marxism 67
4 Connell and Irving’s Class Structure in Australian History 97
5 Wells’ Constructing Capitalism and Political Economy 141
6 Andrew Metcalfe and Working-Class Consciousness 179
7 The Death of Class and Its Afterlife 219
8 Conclusion: Reimagining Class 255
vii
viii Contents
Bibliography 273
Author Index 275
Subject Index 277
Abbreviations
Text
CSAH R.W. Connell and T.V. Irving’s Class Structure in Australian History
(1980; 1992)
RCRC R.W. Connell’s Ruling Class, Ruling Culture (1977)
Economic Terms
LTV Labour Theory of Value
OCC Organic Composition of Capital
Organisations
IWW Industrial Workers of the World
CPA The Communist Party of Australia
ALP The Australian Labor Party
CPA-ML The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist). Also known
as the ‘Hill Party’, or the ‘Maoists’
SDA Society for Democratic Action
SDS Students for a Democratic Society
WEA Workers’ Educational Association
APEM Australian Political Economy Movement
Journals
JAPE Journal of Australian Political Economy
ix
1
Introduction: Why Class?
Why Class?
One thing is obligatory while writing about class in Australia: the author
must begin with an assertion that class still exists and that, yes, it is wor-
thy of discussion. Academics are keenly aware of the controversy sur-
rounding the concept, and often begin by drawing attention to this fact,
by defending the discipline, or by presuming that the audience believes
in the myth of a classless society (e.g., Kuhn and O’Lincoln 1996;
McGregor 1997: 1; Connell and Irving 1974, 1992: 1; Pietsch 2005).
Is there any other field that has to repeat itself so? Like Sisyphus, class
analysts feel the need to get the boulder to the top of the hill every day.
In some cases, the boulder rolled is mere preamble. However, it becomes
truly mythological when the whole project is consumed within this
labour; the task completes when it manages to justify its own premise.
For this reason, there are more attempts to revive the study of class
than there are to deepen its project; more surface-level rearticulations
than attempts to move beyond first principles. It has been stuck in a
survival mentality for decades. Class analysts are consistently nerv-
ous about its mortality—either pronouncing it dead or, miraculously,
© The Author(s) 2017 1
H. Paternoster, Reimagining Class in Australia,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-55450-1_1
