Continuity or Discontinuity in the Recent History of the Australian Labor Party?

Abstract

Recent characterisations of the Australian Labor Party as a ‘cartel party’ suggest that there was, after the 1970s, a fundamental discontinuity in Labor's history. We assess this contention not only in terms of the ALP's policies but also the mechanisms which link it with different classes and social groups: Labor's electoral support, membership and local branches, the backgrounds of the Party's parliamentarians and leaders, the role of trade unions inside the ALP, and its sources of funding. While there have been some quantitative changes in these characteristics, we conclude that Labor remains, on balance, a ‘capitalist workers party.’

Notes

¹For a contemporary critique, see Kuhn (1992, 357–61). More recently, Maddox continued to defend the ‘Labor tradition’ and noted that ‘Labor has apparently become a party of business’ (Maddox 2004, 51–7).

²The dual and contradictory nature of working class consciousness is explored by Gramsci (1971, 333) and Lukács (1971).

³Although Ms Rein subsequently divested herself of her Australian investments prior to the 2007 election, she retained significant investments in her company's operations in the UK.

⁴We owe the general thrust of this paragraph to an anonymous referee.

⁵Marsh variously dates the shift ‘from the late 1970s’ or ‘after 1983’ (Marsh 2006b, 3; Marsh 2006c, 124–5).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tom Bramble

Tom Bramble is a Senior Lecturer in Industrial Relations at the Business School of the University of Queensland and researches in the areas of trade unionism and political economy. Rick Kuhn is a Reader in Political Science at the Australian National University. His research is in the areas of Australian politics and political economy, and Marxism. He was awarded the Deutscher prize in 2007 for his Henryk Grossman and the Recovery of Marxism.