Re: [Marxism] Was there ever a movement of "the 'white' U.S.working class?

[Alan Bradley <alanb1000@xxxxxxxxx>]

From: "Paul Flewers" 
> In relation to Australia, not all postwar
> immigrants were anti-communists from East
> Europe; there were also the 'Ten Quid Poms',
> immigrants from Britain. 

As I wrote earlier:
> All through this period, and continuing to the
> present day, the majority of immigrants to Australia
> are British or Irish. This includes *illegal*
> immigrants.

---

In my earlier post I pointed out the Irish influence
on the anti-conscription struggle during WWI. Another
interesting mass struggle emerged during the early
1930s, around the question of responses to the Great
Depression. In this situation national questions
weren't (overtly) involved, but the crisis came to a
head in a standoff between the New South Wales and
Federal governments. Both sides actually began
organising and arming their supporters...

This was a polarisation on class lines, despite the
questionable nature of the New South Wales ALP
government (led by Jack Lang). I think we would have
to count this in as a movement of the ("white")
working class - civil war is the most sincere form of
class struggle, after all, and this was an incipient
civil war.

The roots of this were clearly based in economic
conditions - the Depression. It escalated the way it
did when the NSW ALP government attempted to use the
state to reduce its impact on the working class,
however mildly. In other words, this was a reformist
movement, which did not seek to overthrow capitalism,
and in fact fed off Australian nationalism. It was,
however, wildly popular, with sympathisers far beyond
New South Wales.

The fact that it almost led to a crisis of state power
was more related to the ruling class response to it
than to its own radicalism.

In the end Lang was dismissed by the NSW governor,
backed down, and was voted out in a landslide in the
following election. He was, incidentally, from the ALP
right, not its left.


       
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