Talk:Communist Party of Australia/arvhive1

Memo from mainman

The suggestion of starting a progressive page on CPA/Australian Left history is perfectly acceptable to me, as long as it's protected so that conservatives can't vandalise it. This is particularly critical in an area as important as CP and labour history.

As a note to Dr Carr: do think it's in any way possible that your membership of the Australian Labor Party and your employment as an ALP spin doctor might just be a teeny, weeny bit of a conflict of interest, that might just preclude you from writing objectively on such a topic? John

No. Adam 10:13, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'm glad to see rhetoric is not dead in the Australian Labor Party. John

Ok, let me spell it out then.

• I have a PhD in Australian history, and my thesis dealt extensively with CPA history. I therefore know what I am talking about. As a professional historian, I am perfectly capable of writing objectively about political parties whose views I do not share, whether they are the CPA or the Liberal Party.
• Is it your position that only Communists can write Communist history? Presumably you therefore also think that only Nazis can write the history of Nazism. This is nonsense.
• As a matter of fact, although I am (obviously) not a Communist, I have no particular animus towards the CPA. I had many friends who were CPA members in the 1970s and 80s and I have a high opinion of most of the former CPA members I have met. Nevertheless the CPA failed, and it failed for clear and identifiable reasons, and any article about the CPA's history must reflect that, whoever writes it.
• Your edits to the article were not done to correct errors or add material, they were a blatant attempt to impose a pro-Communist POV on the article. I reverted that and will continue to do so.
• So far you have made no serious effort to discuss whatever issues you have with this article, instead merely making flippant remarks and childish insults. Until you adopt a different attitude the article will remain as it is.

Adam 03:26, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Oddly enough, I find myself completely in agreement with the aforementioned comrades: the article as it stands is complete and utter rubbish, that basically has no reference to historical reality. It's quite clear that the article -- as it is -- has no point for existing other than as anti-communist propaganda. But for a website that purports to be an 'encyclopedia' that is not really good adequate.

Realistically, the article should be prefaced with the disclaimer that it is a conservative, anti-communist view of the CP.

Edward

I'm in complete agreement. --Pete Travail 10:16, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Please stick to the one account. Sockpuppetry is bad. Ambi 10:23, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

What the hell are you on about, idiot? And as for your ludicrous claim that "As the author is an ALP member, and I'm even further to the left, accusing us of being conservative is laughable. "

I'm absolutely fascinated. How do YOU define conservatism? Personally, I'm a bit too old to believe in empty rhetoric, and what I prefer to believe in is actions not words, policies not propaganda.

And how about this for a definition of conservatism -- say, support for the US Free Trade Agreement? By that definition, the ALP pass effortlessly, as they supported and passed the FTA in the Senate, with the support of the other conservatives.

How about another definition of conservatism, say, support for privatisation? Again, by that definition, the ALP also pass as conservatives, as they so deftly proved by the privatisation of QANTAS and the Commonwealth Bank, and allowing the partial sell-off of Telstra.

By almost any definition of conservatism -- as just another example, preferencing the DLP and Family First before the Greens, as occurred in the last election -- the ALP do indeed pass as conservatives. And by defining the ALP as conservatives merely means that we are identifying historical reality. But they are not idle words, used lightly. --Edward 04:42, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC)

The idea is for an article to be neutral, and favour neither side, not to be either a puff piece or an attack piece - while the current version may well have flaws, it's certainly more neutral than the alternative. And as for accusing me of being biased in my judgment, I don't see any of you complaining about the article I wrote on Fred Paterson. Ambi 05:50, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Have you actually read the article, in question, from start to finish? It is filled with factual errors, and lies and slanders, and value judgements that have no bearing to reality, other than conservative, anti-communist propaganda.

You want an example?

See the section on the 1949 miners strike -- apparently carried out by the party "on orders from Moscow": what utter bullshit! There are no other words that can describe that section: there is also absolutely no existing, collaborative evidence to support that statement, other than in the bizarre fantasies of R. G. Menzies and other conservatives. The revised section is closer to actual historical reality than the original, which is, to put it bluntly, complete revisionist crap.

PS your article on Fred Patterson contains factual errors. --Edward 06:23, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC)

IWW in early CPA

Just to let everyone know, can you please not revert-war my recent edit, adding in the period the IWW (I think it was the Industrial Union Defence League due to its illegal nature, but it was basically the Australian IWW) was in the CPA. Thanks. Fifelfoo 06:56, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It's true that the remnants of the IWW were active in the early CPA, but they were not the only organisation. Members of the Australian Socialist Party were heavily involved in the early CPA, also. It simply isn't true, however, that all old members of the IWW left the CPA: many stayed.

Mainman was going to rewrite that initial section to include the early Party formation, the role of the IWW and ASP and it's historical current but he hasn't done it yet and until the current political difficulties are resolved with the Wikipedia page, he's unlikely to do it. However, reference to the IWW will be included in the article when it finally takes it's completed form.--Edward 07:28, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC)

Who said the Cold War was over?

I read this article and I'm convinced it was ghost-written by Bob Menzies and Bob Santamaria. What a load of cold-war bullshit.

--Peter Jackson 04:35, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Specific matters of fact and interpretation can be debated. General insults will be ignored. Adam 11:33, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree with you totally, Peter. The article as it stands is complete bourgeois crap. --Edward 07:17, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC)

You're both right, I think: the entire thing needs to be completely rewritten.

Think, just for a second, about what's omitted:

• The CP's primary role in creating the ACTU

• The CP's role in opposing the White Australia policy

• 60 years of campaigning for the full democratic rights of Aborigines

• 60 years of building the Peace Movement

• The CP's role in Australian workers getting the 44 hour week, the 40 hour week, the 38 hour week and sections getting the 35 hour week

All of these things are just completely omitted, as though they didn't happen. It's what happens when history is written by the ignorant and revisionists.

--Mainman 06:54, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)

Firstly, please spare us this silly sockpuppet game. We all know you are all the same person. Secondly, some of those points are in fact made in the article. Thirdly, as I have said several times, you are perfectly free to edit the article in a constructive way. If you want to add information on the points you raise, go ahead. But if you again fill the article full of stalinoid crap, you will again be reverted. Adam 10:30, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Actually, comrade, we aren't all the same person.

--203.213.55.107 19:00, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Whatever. However many of you there are, you have not managed to make a single useful contribution to this article between you. Incidentally, your claim that the CPA had a "primary role" in establishing the ACTU is not supported by Hagan's history of the ACTU, or by Davidson or Macintyre's histories of the CPA. The CPA had only a few hundred members in 1927 and controlled no unions. Jock Garden did play a leading role in establishing the ACTU but he had left the CPA in 1926. Adam 02:44, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

To Dr Carr: sorry about the late reply on your query, but I forgot all about it.

Jock Garden didn't leave the CP: he was formally expelled in December, 1926. And Garden's departure didn't really alter the Party's influence on Sydney Trades Hall, or it's growing influence in Brisbane and Melbourne Trades Halls, as it's influence existed, by and largely, independently of Garden.

It appears to be a little known point amongst bourgeois historians that the Sydney Labor Council affiliated -- in 1921 -- with the Moscow-based Red International of Labour Unions (the RILU or Profintern, as it became known): and this affiliation lasted for more than a decade, even after Garden's opportunistic tendencies made him persona non grata with the CP. Garden himself was elected to the International Executive of the RILU 18 months after his formal expulsion from the CP: and the relationship between the RILU and Sydney trades hall continued up until the early 1930s. And Garden required the RILU support to maintain his position within Sydney Trades Hall: he was still cruising on his RILU position years after, even after he kissed and made up with Jack Lang.

The formation of an Australian peak trade union body was one of the very first CP policies. It was formal Party policy from 1923: it was NOT ALP policy, and quite a number of ALP aligned bodies were vehemently opposed to the ACTU's formation. It might be instructive for you to read up on the Australian Workers Union (AWU) -- then the most influential ALP-aligned union -- attitude to the ACTU: the AWU boycotted the ACTU founding conference -- calling it a conference that would allow the domination of the labour movement by communists and 'red-wreckers' -- and maintained it's opposition for much of the century.

The AWU's opposition to the ACTU can be compared to it's original support for the One Big Union (OBU) campaigns of 1918-1921. The AWU initially supported the formation of the OBU, essentially because it saw it as an opportunity to place the entirety of the Australian labour movement under AWU/ALP control. But this was also the sticking point of the OBU with the overwhelming majority of craft-based unions, who saw through the ruse and realised the opportunity it gave to the AWU to body-snatch, which many saw as being detrimental to their own organisational interests and that of their membership. AWU -- and ALP -- opposition to the OBU only began after it became clear that the AWU was not going to be the dominant political force in any OBU that would eventually emerge: by the early 1920s, various State and Federal ALP governments had already alienated sections of the labour movement, particularly the rail unions.

The CP's policy and view was that Ausralian labour movement needed a peak, national body, modelled after the English Trade Union Congress and the All-Russian Council of Trade Unions. This policy received widespread support throughout the majority of the craft-based unions, in some areas being considered a realistic and viable extension of the OBU. Quite a number of CP members had been involved in the OBU campaigns: many of the original OBU activists had joined the 'Sussex Street' or 'Trades Hall' CPA, one of the two CPs that originated after the intitial CP founding congress in October, 1920, the other being the 'Liverpool Street' CPA, based around the membership of the old Australian Socialist Party (ASP).

It should hardly be surprising that conservative historians downplay the role of the CP and the RILU in the formation of the ACTU, given the political climate of the 1920s and today.

The Bruce-Page conservative government had introduced legislation -- the Crimes Amendment Act -- to ban the CP, making it a gaolable crime to promote policies of radical political change; membership of the CP was formally a crime in the eyes of the law, that could result in a lengthy gaol sentence. In NSW, the right-wing Lang ALP formally made CP membership an expellable offence; and the right-wing ALP government in Queensland was waging a vicious attack on Communists and progressive trade unions, particularly the rail unions. These factors all combined to ensure that CP trade union agitation had to occur informally, even covertly in most areas: no other practical course was realistically possible.

--Mainman 20:15, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

Allowing for your polemical spin, that is all broadly correct. The historic role of the Australian Workers Union in opposing Communism and other forms of extremism in the Australian trade union movement is something the union doesn't get nearly enough credit for. But you still haven't provided any evidence that the CPA as a party, or even CPA members in the capacity of trade union officials, played any actual role, let alone a "primary role" (your words) in the formation of the ACTU. The initiative for founding the ACTU came from the Melbourne Trades Hall, whose secretary was Ted Holloway - a radical but certainly not a Communist. The main motive for establishing it was so that the unions could present a united case to the Arbitration Court, which was quite contrary to the CPA's policy at that time. I'm not aware that any Communists were even present at the ACTU's founding congress. I don't recognise any CPA names (apart from Garden) in the illustration on page 30 of Hagan's Short History of the ACTU. (Bob Ross is there, but he of course was the leading Marxist opponent of forming a Bolshevik-type party in Australia.) It's true that the ACTU founding congress decided to affiliate to the PPTUS, a Comintern front, but that was Garden's doing, not the CPA's. So I am still waiting. Adam 04:11, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Four months later. Still waiting. Adam 12:05, 23 July 2005 (UTC)