The Australian Labor Party 1

Louise Overacker

American Political Science Review, 1949, vol. 43, issue 4, 677-703

Abstract: In The Politics of Equality, Leslie Lipson points out that modern party organization has “exorcised some of the old devils from the body politic but has invoked others that are new and, as yet, untamed.” Applying to parties John Dewey's statement that “Individuals can find the security and protection that are prerequisites for freedom only in association with others—and then the organization these associations take on, as a measure of securing their efficiency, limits the freedom of those who have entered into them…. We have now a kind of molluscan organization, soft individuals within and a hard constrictive shell without.…,” Lipson adds: “How to harden the individuals and to soften the shell, both to the right degree, remains one of the outstanding political problems of our century.” American parties are extremely soft-shelled mollusks—if, indeed, they have any shell at all. In contrast, the Australian Labor party has as hard a shell as any mollusk in the political zoo.

Date: 1949
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