Constructing a Socialist Community: The Victorian Socialist Party, Ritual, Pedagogy, and the Subaltern Counterpublic

Abstract

The Victorian Socialist Party (VSP) was a vital crafter of Australian labour's political culture in the early twentieth century. It engaged in a wide array of cultural activities, most often associated in historical literature as an attempt to create a socialist 'community' which operated as a replacement for mainstream religion. Here, I endeavour to demonstrate the political implications of the organisations' cultural activities and connect them to its broader project of social transformation. I do so by considering these acts of cultural creation against international literature on labour culture and propose a new understanding of the VSP as a subaltern counterpublic, as identified by Nancy Fraser, operating within a broader proletarian public sphere, a concept elucidated by Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge. This unique perspective enables an appreciation of the varying components involved in constructing labour's culture, and enables such cultural expressions to be considered as fundamentally political, connected to a project of social change.