Forthcoming

Bibliography on Australian Communism

Bibliographic Data

ID2761071
AuthorsBeverley Symons (corresponding author)
Year1994
Issue66
Pages129
Publication date1994-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLabour History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0023-6942 • E-ISSN: 1839-3039
PublisherLiverpool University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.2307/27509242
OpenAlexW2312330658
LanguageEN
References cited61

In October 1920,26 socialists gathered in Sydney to found the Communist Party of Australia (CPA). A little over 70 years later, in March 1991, some 60 delegates assembled in Sydney at the CPA's 31st National Congress to formally wind up their Party as a political entity. The bare facts of the CPA's history during the intervening years would be familiar to most labour historians: the rocky path towards ideological and organisational coherence during the 1920s, with the Party coming close to collapse in the latter part of the decade; the process of 'Bolshevisation' at the end of the '20s and early '30s, when the Party came under closer direction from the Communist International (Comintern); its consolidation as a political force in the labour movement during the Depression years; and its period of illegality from mid 1940 to December 1942. The 'Popular Front' years of WWII were the high point of the CPA's membership growth, public support and influence; followed by the adverse effects on the Party and many individual communists of Cold War anti communist attacks in the late 1940s and the 1950s, together with its own political misjudgments. The CPA's activities and ideological-political changes during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s have not been as well documented as the highs and lows of its previous 40 years. There is, however, much in those three decades that merits closer attention concerning its break from Stalinism and the Soviet Union, its moves towards internal openness and receptivity to 'New Left' ideas, the significant contribution made by communists to the anti-Vietnam war movement and to the new social movements of the 1970s-80s, including women's and gay liberation, the anti-nuclear movement, Aboriginal rights and environmental concerns

Bibliography · Communism · Economic history · Library science · Media studies · Political science · Sociology · Australian History and Society · Computer Science · History · Labor Movements and Unions · Law

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