Book Review

This book is intended as a sequel to the authors’ earlier No Paradise for Workers, which covered the period in Australian history from 1788 to 1914. The authors begin by suggesting that their study is not intended as comprehensive. Rather it focuses on those periods and issues which constitute important moments ‘in the evolution of capitalism and its impact on the common people’ (p. vii). At the same time, the authors do not claim to be unbiased, and acknowledge their credentials not only as left-wing academics but as radical activists as well.	1
When this study concentrates on economic history there is a sureness and conviction about the argument. For example, the explanation as to why the Depression of the thirties hit Australia with a particular venom is succinct and persuasive. Similarly, the discussion of how Australia began to improve its economic performance in the mid-1930s, ahead of countries like the United States is also useful and informative.	2
But the argument is about more than the history of capitalism and industry in Australia from 1915 to 1955. For it is a central argument of this book that what developed in this period was a close relationship between state and capital, with the former both providing the resources and the legislative support to reinforce and boost the latter. At the same time the state used its police and intelligence agencies to repress dissent, to disempower those who challenged the capitalist orthodoxy. Even Labor Governments were implicated in the capitalist agenda, with Scullin and his ministers both weak and culpable. Through their welfare policies and their proposals to regulate capitalism, Curtin and Chifley sought to make capitalism more humane and less exploitative, but even they were guilty of betraying their working class constituency by passing up a real chance to improve workers’ conditions in the 1940s (chapter 11). It’s a pretty straightforward argument, not one bothered too much by complexities and it carries with it more than a hint that the relationship between the state and capitalism added up to a conspiracy.	3
At the beginning the authors insist that their focus is on capitalism and class relations and so they have not sought to deal with cultural history, religion, sport, or other leisure activities (p. 2). I found this to be an odd statement, in fact an extraordinarily odd statement. Since the seventies in the United Kingdom and the United States and more recently in Australia labour historians have produced a multitude of studies showing the relations between religion, sport, entertainments, and popular culture as a whole on the one hand and the nature and role of class on the other. What these studies have revealed, amongst other things, is the changing role and meaning of class. And it is precisely because Buckley and Wheelwright ignore this historiography that they treat class and its relationships as a constant. But what about the processes of cultural resolution that were taking place after World War I as the working classes increasingly embraced both suburbia and respectability while the middle class abandoned ‘wowserism’ for the ‘hedonism’ of drinking and gambling? To maintain a simple worker capitalist /dichotomy, albeit with a conservative middle class aligned with the capitalists, is just too simplistic and ignores Australian culture and history as complex and contradictory processes.	4
Sometimes the authors, despite the limitations they place on themselves, do write about culture, always with unfortunate consequences. We are told that ‘the Anzac Legend is based on a lie’ because Australian soldiers were no more brave than those of other nations (p. 26). My understanding is that this legend is built on more than just the alleged bravery of Australian troops. The authors cite George Johnston’s My Brother Jack to inform readers that between the wars the lives of young workers and their womenfolk consisted of dancing the Charleston and challenging accepted mores (p. 53). The work of several historians has shown that inter-war urban popular culture was a great deal more complex than this. Similarly, we are twice told that the ‘Americanization of Australia’ in cultural terms largely dates from World War II and the presence of so many American servicemen in this country (pp. 9, 156-157). But of course, Americanisation dates from the mid-nineteenth century and became pervasive in the early twentieth century via the popular stage, the gramophone, cinema and radio. It was already firmly entrenched before the arrival of ‘septic’ soldiers. There is a considerable literature on this subject, a literature that goes unacknowledged in this book.	5
Some may find the economic history in this book useful. I would not set it as a book for undergraduate reading both because of the reductionist nature of many of the arguments and because it ignores so much of the important historiography and so many of the issues in recent labour history. It reads like a book belonging to an earlier era of scholarship.	6
And one final quibble. In the conclusion the authors acknowledge that, despite periods of considerable hardship, the living standards of Australian workers rose appreciably in the period examined, more especially in the period from the late thirties. I know that didn’t mean this country had finally become the long promised ‘workers’ paradise’, but on the authors’ own evidence it wasn’t exactly a ‘False Paradise’ either.	7
University of Sydney RICHARD WATERHOUSE

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