A colorful polemic ranging from 1787 to approximately 1935, increasingly lamenting the Australian citizenry’s failure to adopt an egalitarian social democracy. The country’s first political issue was whether the rights of convicts revived with manumission or were forever forfeit. By 1835, there were two methods of seeding European civilization: 1) a leveling, seen in early New South Wales and lastingly in Western Australia, due to high price of labor which produced social regression, and 2) slave labor in New South Wales, Tasmania, and Queensland. Through the end of the transport to NSW in 1840, civic officials and pastoralists were supported by forced labor; the 1818 arrival of surplus convicts enabled Macquarie to initiate Sydney’s public works. Emancipists looked past judicial rulings to affirm civic restoration, and notwithstanding Lord Bathurst’s 1823 pronouncements (e.g., no land grants to ex cons but only those with capital for improvement), eventually settlers concluded reform could occur without forced labor. By 1828, ¼ of the population over 12 was native: taller, hardier, irascible but not vindictive. However, bushranging carried elements of Irish vengeance on Anglo society, and settler-Aboriginal relations were conquest. Governors such as Macquarie and Bourke, aware of the skills shortage, tolerated emancipists whereas Tories favored ‘exclusive’ legislatures, the contest playing out in the writing of provincial constitutions. Only South Australia was different because of its balance of sexes, no penal labor, and orderly German population.

By the mid-19th century, the population had doubled, convicts become numerically insignificant, wool exports grew by a factor of seven, and Catholics rose to one-quarter the population. The problem of transitioning from a penal to a working-class society was evident in the lack of an enforceable penal code, native social institutions, and persistent labor shortages. The economy’s dependence of commodities (including wool) promoted reliance on British capital, draining the settlers’ creative energies and entrenching metropolitan social institutions (e.g., education and law). The exclusives-emancipists rivalry changed into a contest between oligopolistic pastoralists and urban egalitarians (who notably eschewed American-style democracy). The first NSW constitution combined requirement for land ownership to vote with government appointments and concessions to bourgeois merchants, but raised the price of land, thus discouraging immigration to the ‘workman’s paradise’. 1852’s gold rush prompted Britain to hasten the provincial charters (and also the independence of Victoria). NSW aimed at a landed, hereditary Whig society to stave off socialized masses, Victoria following suit. In SA, worker aspirations for land were acceptable and manhood suffrage granted. But the proto-governments of the goldfields showed indigenous Aussie political views and even practical outcomes such as the eight-hour workday. The Selection Acts of 1860, intended to promote agriculture and closer settlement while responding to diggers’ dream of landownership, created conflict with pastoralists as well as squatters. Only SA had achieved a stable class of wheat farmers; in WA dependence on convicts made the state most fragile; failed farmers turned to crime. Aussies learned to sympathize with failure without becoming cynical. Clark considers that the aspirations of petty bourgeois for respectability and the working class for land ownership held back the country.

Between 1870-90 both Melbourne, which was protectionist, and Sydney, favoring free trade, reached population of 300,000; manufacturing grew notably in clothing, printing, iron works, furniture, and foodstuffs so as to reach 10 percent of GDP; women worked in the putting-out system. Simultaneously, wool sent to English mills increased another five times. Unionism sprang up in shearing and spread to shipping. In VIC and SA, the working class was immigrant, seen as deserving of the vote; in NSW and QLD, it was convict on the way to socialist; TAS and WA remained ‘feudal’, Europeans aligned against Aboriginals. The 1891 retirement of NSW premier Henry Parkes was the end of the chance to build a middle class from bushrangers and city labor. It was also contemporaneous with the start of the economic downturn, in which era legislatures blocked social reform. Liberals saw Federation as a way to circumvent revolution but the white Australia policy ended the country’s working-class reputation(!). Further, independent Australia remained dependent on Britain for defense. Clark laments conscription’s dividing labor and contends Gallipoli and World War I failed to liberate the country from is colonial history.

Postwar electrification promoted bourgeois values, while government plans such as national insurance undermined labor’s polemics. The national mythology touted liberty and freedom from poverty. Jack Lang exemplified Labor’s role as its social conscience. During the Depression, the NSW premier sought to suspend payments of British credit, but a centrist faction led by Joe Lyons accepted the recommendations of the Bank of England’s Otto Niemeyer that Australia was living beyond its means. Lyons would subsequently help found a party of the non-communist left; the 1932 controversy over England’s ‘bodyline’ cricket was fueled by the debt argument. Wrapping up in the middle of the Depression, Clark’s postwar coda accuses Menzies of cultural cringe and hails Whitlam as a liberator.

Even as abridged, Clark’s telling is full of poignant anecdotes, effectively showing the author’s sociopolitical views but also revealing his lack of dispassionate inquiry. Ever watchful for egalitarian ideals and social revolution, Clark never articulates those foundational concepts which make these inevitable: tellingly, Herzen comes closest in theorizing the petty bourgeois’ transformation is the final work in any society based on property. Why should vast Australia not permit its citizens to own land?