Once widely regarded as the workers greatest hope for a better world, the ALP today would rather project itself as a responsible manager of Australian capitalism. Labor's Conflict provides an insightful account of the transformations in the Party's policies, performance and structures since its formation. Seasoned political analysts, Tom Bramble and Rick Kuhn offer an incisive appraisal of the Party's successes and failures, betrayals and electoral triumphs in terms of its competing ties with bosses and workers. The early chapters outline diverse approaches to understanding the nature of the Party and then assess the ALP's evolution in response to major social upheavals and events, from the strikes of the 1890s, through two World Wars, the Great Depression, and the post-war boom. The records of the Whitlam, Hawke, Keating, Rudd and Gillard governments are then dissected in detail. The compelling conclusion offers alternatives to the Australian Labor Party, for those interested in progressive change.

Labor's Conflict: Big Business, Workers and the Politics of Class

Politics & Social Sciences

Bramble, Tom

Kuhn, Rick

Politics & Government

Cambridge University Press

The horrors of 20th century capitalism threw up numerous challenges by workers and peasants, who rose up in their millions to fight the system. Inspired by the successful 1917 Russian Revolution, they repeatedly created their own institutions of collective power and in doing so demonstrated not just how to organise their struggles in the present but also how to build a world free of capitalists, landlords and generals. 
But these revolutionary movements quickly confronted counter-revolutionary forces, both in the repressive machinery of the state and in the workers' movement itself - trade union and political leaders with no interest in seeing workers take power. Defeating such forces required that at least the leading militants be organised in revolutionary parties dedicated to seeing the struggle through. The victorious Russian revolution brought hundreds of thousands of working class militants together in new Communist parties dedicated to working class emancipation, but tragically the revolution's defeat at the hands of the dictator Joseph Stalin turned these parties into vehicles for betrayal. 
From Britain to China, from Hungary to Australia, this book tells the story of these inspiring working class struggles and uprisings and recounts the fights within the workers movement over strategies and tactics to take the struggles forward.

The fight for workers' power: Revolution and counter-revolution in the 20th century

Armstrong, Mick

Interventions Inc

Introducing Marxism: A theory of revolutionary change

Business & Money

Economics

Red Flag Books

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