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Article Excerpt
The notion of 'identity', according to Amory Starr, has become a resource, a frame and a political opportunity. It has reshaped notions of constituency, constrained solidarity, and created a new language of legitimacy: 'But most importantly, it has reached the status of a paradigm, shaping the way we conceptualise movements and the tools we use to build them. It has been naturalized as a way of understanding how individuals and groups make politics.' (1) In the burgeoning of 'identity politics' from the 1980s onwards, it was assumed that the principal identities underpinning progressive action were gender, race or ethnicity, and sexuality. Class went missing. Yet, as we survey the historical record, including the very recent past, it is not difficult to find instances where Australians have resolutely identified themselves as working-class or economically disadvantaged and mobilised effectively upon such a basis.
In countless parades and protests in the past, working-class people have proudly presented themselves, in many and varied ways, as producers, creators of the wealth expropriated unfairly from them by the exploiting classes. As in other forms of identity politics, agitation and propaganda have been crucial components, for the formation of social identities is accomplished in large part in and by language. (2) Acknowledgement of the important role of language in identity formation and as a means to political mobilisation need not constitute a 'linguistic approach' or a 'descent into discourse', (3) so long as we remain clear that reality is not structured by language and that material being precedes communication. Language is nonetheless the means by which people articulate responses to reality and learn to understand its consequences for themselves and others like them; it is through communication that people recognise what they hold in common with others, situations which exist prior to and independently of language. In other words, it is through talking and writing that people form their identities, even if most people merely read and listen. It is primarily through language, too, that people with shared identities then develop collective ways to express interests and needs.
The anti-war demonstrations of the Industrial Workers of the World in Sydney during World War I, the unemployed workers' struggles of the 1930s in Sydney and Brisbane, and the S11 movement against corporate neo-liberal globalisation in Melbourne in 2000 provide examples of people mobilising on the basis of common interests. They reveal the important role of agitation and propaganda in initiating and sustaining these mobilisations. Moreover, analysis of the content of this agitation and propaganda suggests that these parades and protests express a politics of identity based on class.
'Let Those Who Own Australia Do the Fighting'
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)--commonly known as the 'Wobblies'--was an American-based organisation that aspired to form One Big Union of all the world's workers, to contest more effectively the exploitation of labour by capital and ultimately to assume control of the means of production and abolish capitalism. The IWW appeared in Australia in 1907, two years after its establishment in Chicago, and it grew rapidly from 1912 onwards amongst militant workers and especially during World War I, when its critique of the senseless slaughter from a working-class perspective earned it much attention and thousands of loyal adherents.
No organisation in Australia at the time opposed the war as promptly and determinedly as did the Wobblies, and it did so in the name of clearly defined internationalist working-class interests--interests diametrically opposed to those of the wealthy warmongers. On 10 August 1914, the front page of the IWW newspaper, Direct Action, declared:
WAR! WHAT FOR? FOR THE WORKERS AND THEIR DEPENDENTS: DEATH, STARVATION, POVERTY AND UNTOLD MISERY. FOR THE CAPITALIST CLASS: GOLD, STAINED WITH THE BLOOD OF MILLI0NS, RIOTOUS LUXURY, BANQUETS OF JUBILATION OVER THE GRAVES OF THEIR DUPES AND SLAVES. WAR IS HELL! SEND THE CAPITALISTS TO HELL AND WARS ARE IMPOSSIBLE.
On 22 August, in Direct Action, leading Wobbly propagandist Tom Barker urged: 'LET THOSE WHO OWN AUSTRALIA DO THE FIGHTING. Put the wealthiest in the front ranks; the middle class next; follow these with politicians, lawyers, sky pilots and judges. Answer the declaration of war with the call for a GENERAL STRIKE.' The workers in Austria, Germany and Japan were 'as ruthlessly robbed and exploited as the workers of Australia'. (4) In response to Labor Prime Minister Fisher's promise to fight for the British Empire to the last man and the last shilling, Direct Action of 1 October 1914 implored:
Workers, you have nothing to gain by volunteering to fight the battles of your masters. Dismiss from your minds, all geographical boundaries; tear down once and for all those rags of flags that have long helped to keep the workers of the world divided ... Make class before country your motto ... you have interests in common with workers of all nations. Organise to fight the war promoters! Workers of the World! Unite! You have no country to defend. You have a common enemy to fight! (5)
The war was being prolonged, Direct Action suggested in 1915, because workers did not understand their class interests. (6) Mr Simple, the cartoon character lampooned in Direct Action, was the type to go to war, devoid of class-consciousness and therefore lacking the insights into the nature of capitalism and imperialism. (7)
As time went on and as casualties mounted still higher, the most extreme allegations of the IWW seemed more plausible; here was imperialist capitalism at its ugliest, with a seemingly ruthless disregard for the lives of those it enrolled in its defence. As Fred Coombe recalls of this time, people were sickened by the war: 'the thoughts in people's minds they couldn't articulate, but the old Wobblies could'. (8) The circulation of Direct Action grew and covered a wide area of the country. The IWW had a team of speakers who were, according to Norman Jeffery, 'unrivalled in their agitational vigour' and capable of drawing huge crowds to antiwar meetings in cities and towns around Australia. (9) Workers in their thousands were now interested in hearing the senseless slaughter denounced by those whose understanding of the phenomenon seemed so clear and systematic. (10)
A recurring theme in Wobbly propaganda was the discrepancy between the lives offered up by the working class and the profits secured by many capitalists in the course of the war, the class-based inequality of the sacrifices demanded and the privations imposed. Jock Wilson's deportation resulted from an anti-conscription speech in the Domain in which he declared: 'I am not going to the war to have Broken Hill lead pumped into me by the Germans.' (11) When a Manly councillor in Sydney denounced the IWW speakers in the Domain for preventing many would-be recruits from performing their patriotic duty, a Direct Action editorial promised that it would take up a collection to get this councillor to where the bullets were flying: 'Let these cowardly wind-bags stop bleating and howling for blood.' (12) Direct Action leapt to the attack when the Sydney Morning Herald lectured workers on the need to become accustomed to a lower standard of living; it deplored the 'spectacle of our wealthy classes cynically increasing their private wealth and economic status while calling upon the poor to sacrifice both'. (13) It noted that landlords evicted the wives and children of men who had joined the army, even of...
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