Both of the great upswings in class conflict in twentieth-century Australia, in the 1910s and the 1940s, produced a burst of socialist argument about class relations and political change, and both produced an outstanding critic, researcher, and analyst. The first, Vere Gordon Childe, served an apprenticeship in the NSW Labor Party, and out of the depth of his anger produced what is still the most informed, sustained, and biting critique of Australian labour politics. But his anger also drove him from the country, and so the most brilliant intellectual Australia has produced never gave a full-scale analysis of his own society – though it drew him back to a strange death in the end. The task was taken up by Brian Fitzpatrick, in a series of books and pamphlets produced in the years 1939 to 1946. Sharing with most socialists a conviction of the importance of economic process, Fitzpatrick produced a detailed economic history of Australia as the product and field of British imperial expansion. From this base he moved to a history of the Australian people and of the labour movement, reading this partly as the bearer of democracy and partly as a means of social integration in the interests of capital. As a radical activist he produced a vivid analysis of power and ownership in Australian business, and fought a sustained battle against censorship and repression by successive governments.