The Age of state socialism: government, economy, and society in the early twentieth century

One of the factors conditioning both the Federation and its constitutional development after 1901 was the underlying state of the economy. The colonial governments had already demonstrated a propensity to economic intervention, which was accelerated by the depression of the 1890s in Australia's eastern colonies. Here Andrew Buck argues that the 1890s economic downturn is critical to understanding the emergence of a form of state socialism in Australia that persisted beyond Federation, only fading with the growth in living standards and consumer spending power in the latter half of the twentieth century. In this analysis Buck contributes to a long literature that debates the origins and meaning of Australian egalitarianism.