International socialism and Australian labour : a study of the impact of left-wing and internationalist doctrines and influences on the organised labour movement, 1918-32

Abstract

This thesis is concerned with a minor yet significant strand of thought in the Australian labour movement. It focusses on the various socialist parties and groupings amongst labour organisations and traces their reactions to local and overseas affairs. My main interests have been several: to record and analyse the changes in left-wing ideologies after the first world war; to measure the influence of socialist doctrines on the industrial and political activities of their adherents; and, more generally, to assess the nature and extent of left-wing and socialist internationalism in relation to its influence on the mass unions and the mass political parties of organised labour. The thesis is not principally an individual party history, nor a series of histories of socialist groups, but seeks to concentrate on the impact on the broader labour movement of the concepts which those on the far left wing professed.