The All for Australia League
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2758444 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Trevor Matthews (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1969 |
| Issue | 17 |
| Pages | 136 |
| Publication date | 1969-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Labour History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0023-6942 • E-ISSN: 1839-3039 |
| Publisher | Liverpool University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.2307/27507959 |
| OpenAlex | W2330561765 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
A radical rhetoric?popular government, social equality and state intervention to secure economic justice?has been a persistent motif in Australian politics. Historians once regarded it as the almost exclusive possession of the labour movement. But it has also been influential among non-labour forces: the early Country parties that emerged after the first war and many Liberal politicians of a reformist stamp exhibited a marked radical cast to their thought and action.1 To recognise the significance of radicalism, however, is not to say?as does R. N. Rose crance2?that it has been the sole political ethos in Australia. It is not to argue that Australia was 'born radical' and consequently never had a liberal or a capitalist ideology; or that Australian businessmen were 'the domestics of the radical myth' and that 'Australian capitalism was kept by the radical ethos'.3 These arguments of Rosecrance are mis leading and strange. Misleading, for they seriously misrepresent the political ideology of Australian capitalists. Strange, for the rhetoric of capitalist ideology in Australia (at least to 1950) was very similar to the 'new whiggery' or 'democratic capitalism' of American business that Rosecrance's mentor, Louis Hartz, has discussed in his book The Liberal Tradition in America.* Indeed, the very similarity indicates that a rugged and possessive individualism has not been an unknown strand in Australian political thought. In fact, the journals of chambers of commerce and employers' federations, the addresses and speeches of businessmen on ritualistic occasions, the values advocated by a number of middle-class 'reform', 'economy' and 'anti-socialist' movements,5 not to mention the ideas expressed by some leading non-labour personalities,6 all exhibit, in their separate ideologies, an individualistic liberal rhetoric that cannot be labelled 'radical'
Economic history · Economics · League · Management · Media studies · Physics · Political science · Project commissioning · Publishing · Sociology · Australian History and Society · History · Law
| Citations per year | 0.12 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1977 - 1995 (19) |
| Highly cited | No |