condemned libertarian ideas as archaic forms of socialism that had died out. But as the stories from Russia began to leak out, and the Soviet Republic became a clearer example of state capitalism in practice, the more authoritarian the communist parties around the world became. They found it necessary to excuse more extreme instances of the arbitrary authority of the Bolshevik elites over the masses they led (as early as The Ukraine 1919–20 and Kronstadt 1921, long before Hungary 1956 or the Prague Spring of 1968). The capitalist class in Australia was only too happy to assist in portraying socialism as necessarily a dictatorship led by a bureaucratic elite. It was therefore in the mid-twentieth century that the spectrum between left and right popularly recognised today was established; of the right being seen as concerned with ‘freedom’ but having little regard for equality, and the left arguing for equality but harbouring a deep authoritarianism with little regard for individual freedoms. However, some of the language of direct action was resurrected after the 1950s when leftists were looking for an alternative to Stalinism. As part of the ‘New Left’ anarchism gained credence again, while Trotskyism gave Marxism a veritable facelift. Sometimes at the level of rhetoric, while sometimes in a genuine attempt to return to the libertarian emphasis of groups like the IWW, direct action re-entered the vernacular of the left, as more than the subject of ridicule. The Melbourne socialist magazine currently named Green Left Weekly was in the 1970s called Direct Action. In particular direct action was adopted by the environmental movement, were it was most obvious that parliamentary reform gained few results. Having their roots in the campaign to stop the Franklin Dam in the 1980s, even the Australia Greens sometimes still talk about direct action – although they have to be more careful than the Coalition of being associated with the radical left, let alone with the original meaning of direct action as the strategy for radical, anti-state socialism (anarchism). The irony of the adoption by Abbott of the language of direct action for state-led in-action cannot be overstated. Most obviously, his attempt to implement the policy through winning government (after which democracy will end and we will all have to live with whatever next pops into Tony Abbotts head) is the very definition of political, or parliamentary action. Secondly there is the content of the policy itself, which is to use state money to subsidise some of the wealthiest elites in the nation, in order to ensure that they maintain their monopoly of wealth as the economy makes
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