Lenin on the ALP: The Career of 600 Words

Abstract

Lenin’s 600 word article of 1913, ‘In Australia’, included a very brief outline of the nature of Australian capitalism and the Australian Labor Party (ALP)2. It came to be a touchstone for the Communist Party of Australia’s (CPA’s) analyses of these questions. For a period, during the 1940s and early 1950s, the article was reinterpreted, sometimes to reach a diametrically opposed conclusion, each time the Party’s line changed. ‘In Australia’ became a talismen. The Australian career of Lenin’s little article illustrates the importance of real social forces, here the forces which shaped the Party line, in defining the content of political ‘ideas’.