The socialist left in Australia achieved an influence at the end of World War I that they never enjoyed before, or since. In a country with a small population, thousands participated in this current which spanned from revolutionary syndicalist groups seeking to emulate the recently disbanded Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), to the Labor socialists of the Victorian Socialist Party (VSP). Socialist activists had been leading figures in the successful movement to prevent conscription and in many wartime strikes including the Great Strikeof 1917 centred on NSW. They were also the target of substantial state persecution. While unified by their desire for a socialist transformation of society, the movement was a myriad spectrum of competing groups and tendencies across every state.
After only a few short years, all these groups had either disappeared or been reduced to tiny rumps that survived only as long as their aging leaders. The main explanation for the precipitous decline of the socialist movement in the 1920s is the emergence of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), which united many of the previously competing groups in its early stages. However, the CPA similarly went from promising beginnings to thoughts of disbandment by 1925, when their active membership slumped to less than 100. This book seeks to answer why the revolutionary hopes of Australian socialists at the end of the first World War had become shattered dreams by 1925.