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Cutting a figure: Baracchi, Love and Communism.

Article Excerpt
Communism: A Love Story (Melbourne University Press, 2007) by Jeff Sparrow

Jeff Sparrow's very readable Communism: A Love Story, and more particularly what I saw at the launch of his book, set me rethinking the history of Australian communism. The book recounts the life of Guido Baracchi and the one abiding love affair of his life, with communism. This was punctuated with multiple one night stands, short passions and marriages, in none of which Guido remained faithful. In the jargon of his era, Baracchi the militant was a bounder.

Guido Barrachi was born into a very wealthy upper middle-class family in Melbourne in 1887. His Italian father, who was State Astronomer, put him through the best private schools and then the University of Melbourne. In this progress, Guido mixed with the best Melbourne society. Little augured the radical he would become after he reached university. Then began an almost cliched progress through the debating club, to invitations to members of the newly elected ALP to speak 'in hall', to the editorship of the student magazine Fleur de Lys. The author describes a youth wearing a 'socialist cravat' and writing under the pseudonym of Libertas. But Guido was more than a poseur. Being rich, he was able to take up the place organised for him at the London School of Economics. After traipsing through Paris and listening to reactionary luminaries like Henri Bergson, he arrived as Fabianism became the rage among undergraduates.

So, when he returned home, he became a lonely voice against the jingoistic preparations for World War I, entering into public debate with Robert Menzies, who was starting his long and illustrious career on the Right. Baracchi's views, especially once the war had started, were not tolerable to either the staff or the bulk of the students at the university. The first forced him to make a public recantation and the second nearly drowned him in the university pond in what has since become one of the mythical events...

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