For courses in political science and sociology.
Class and struggle in Australia is written in a lively and accessible style and provides an integrated and coherent Marxist account of fundamental features of Australian politics and society. It emphasises that classes are not only objective aspects of society but are also capable of subjective action. How they behave and consciousness of them is shaped by peoples experience, especially of social struggles.
Mick Armstrong is a long standing left activist and writer. He is the author of 1,2,3, What are we fighting for? The Australian student movement from its origins to the 1970s and The origins of the Labor Party. He is active in the Victorian Peace Network and Socialist Alternative.
Sandra Bloodworth co-edits the Marxist magazine Socialist Alternative. She has been active in many campaigns including Queensland civil rights 1978-79, anti-uranium, abortion, and Aboriginal rights campaigns, as well as many trade union strikes. She has written about womens struggles, working class resistance in the Middle East and Australian imperialism.
Tom Bramble lectures in industrial relations at the School of Business in the University of Queensland. He has published extensively on the Australian labour movement for the past two decades and has also published articles and books on the union movements of South Africa, New Zealand and South Korea.
Diane Fieldes has been a left-wing activist since campaigning against the Vietnam War while at high school. She teaches industrial relations at the University of New South Wales and is active in her trade union, the campaign to free the refugees and Socialist Alternative.
Phil Griffiths teaches politics, most recent at Sydney University and UWS. He is a former editor of The Battler (1976-78) and Socialist worker (1985-94), and from 2000-2003 was convenor of the Refugee Action Committee, Canberra. His PhD thesis deals with the development of the White Australia policy in the years 1876-1888.
Graham Hastings is a long standing left activist. He is the author of It can't happen here: a political history of Australian student activism. He works as a research officer with the National Union of Students and is active in the Refugee Action Collective and the International Socialist Organisation.
Rick Kuhn teaches politics at the Australian National University. His recent publications have addressed issues in Australian political economy and labour history, and the work of the Marxist economist Henryk Grossman. He is an activist in his union, the anti-war movement and Socialist Alternative.
Rachel Morgain is an activist and researcher with a major in women's studies. After several years in family and youth policy in the Australian Public Service, she is now undertaking postgraduate research in anthropology at ANU. In recent years, she has been involved in anti-war, refugee rights and student campaigns.
Tom O'Lincoln is the author of Into the mainstream: the decline of Australian Communism and Years of rage: social conflicts in the Fraser era; and co-editor of Rebel women in Australian working class history and Class and class conflict in Australia. He maintains the Marxist interventions website, www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/interventions/
Sam Pietsch became active in social struggles while studying history and political science at the ANU. A native of Canberra, he has finished his compulsory stint in the public service and has returned to the academic world. He is currently completing a study of Australia's military intervention in East Timor.
David Pope has been drawing cartoons for the labour movement and alternative press in Australia since the mid-1980s. He is the author of three books of political cartoons, and three books of cartoons on Australian English. His cartoons are distributed on the web by Scratch! Media (www.scratch.com.au).
Jeff Sparrow is the co-author (with his sister Jill) of Radical Melbourne: a secret history and radical Melbourne 2: the enemy within. He is the reviews editor of Overland magazine, and is completing a postgraduate degree in professional writing at RMIT.