James Connolly: The Great Irish Revolutionary

A system of society in which the workshops, factories, docks, railways, shipyards, &c., shall be owned by the nation, but administered by the Industrial Unions of the respective industries, organised as above, seems best calculated to secure the highest form of industrial efficiency, combined with the greatest amount of individual freedom from state despotism. Such a system would, we believe, realise for Ireland the most radiant hopes of all her heroes and martyrs. - James Connolly

James Connolly, the great Irish revolutionary was martyred in 1916, and is a man whose revolutionary legacy is, at any one time, being claimed by many diverse groups, many of them diametrically opposed to each other, from anarchists, to nationalists to communists and socialists.

So let us start at the beginning, where it all began. Connolly was born in 1868 to Irish immigrant parents in the Cowgate area of Edinburgh, Scotland. His father worked as a manure carter, removing dung from the streets at night, and his mother was a domestic servant who suffered from chronic bronchitis and died young from that ailment.

Anti-Irish feeling in Edinburgh at the time was so bad that most Irish were forced to live in the slums of the Cowgate and the Grassmarket areas, which became known as ‘Little Ireland’. Overcrowding, poverty, disease, drunkenness and unemployment were rife, most of the jobs available to Irish were selling second-hand clothes and working as a porter or a carter.

Though he attended St. Patricks School in Cowgate, at the age of ten he left in order to enter the workforce. He got a job with Edinburgh’s Evening News newspaper, where he worked as a ‘Devil’, cleaning inky rollers and fetching beer and food for the adult workers. His brother Thomas also worked with the same newspaper. In 1882, aged 14, he joined the British Army in which he remained for nearly seven years, all of it in Ireland, where he witnessed first hand the terrible treatment of the Irish people at the hands of the British. The mistreatment of the Irish by the British and the landlords led to Connolly forming an intense hatred of the British Army.

In 1889 while living in Dundee James first got involved in socialist politics joining the Socialist League while his older brother John was involved in a free speech campaign alongside the Social Democratic Federation and the local Trades Council.

He became active in Socialist and trade union circles and became secretary of the Scottish Socialist Federation, almost by mistake. At the time his brother John was secretary; however, after John spoke at a rally in favour of the eight-hour day he was fired from his job with the corporation, so while he looked for work, James took over as secretary. During this time, Connolly became involved with the Independent Labour Party which Keir Hardie formed in 1893.

By 1892 he was involved in the Scottish Socialist Federation, acting as its secretary from 1895, but by 1896 he had gone to Dublin to take up the full time job of secretary of the Dublin Socialist Society, which at his instigation quickly evolved into the Irish Socialist Republican Party (ISRP). The ISRP is regarded by many Irish historians as a party of pivotal importance in the early history of Irish socialism and republicanism. While active as a socialist Connolly was among the founders of the Socialist Labour Party which split from the Social Democratic Federation in 1903. While in America he was member of the Socialist Labor Party of America (1906), the Socialist Party of America (1909) and the Industrial Workers of the World, and founded the Irish Socialist Federation in New York, 1907. On his return to Ireland he was right hand man to James Larkin in the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. In 1913, in response to the Lockout, he, along with an ex-British officer, Jack White, founded the Irish Citizen Army (ICA), an armed and well-trained body of labour men whose aim was to defend workers and strikers, particularly from the frequent brutality of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. Though they only numbered about 250 at most, their goal soon became the establishment of an independent and socialist Irish nation. He founded the Irish Labour Party in 1912 and was a member of the National Executive of the Irish Labour Party when he was executed in 1916.

Syndicalism:

James Connolly was first and foremost a Marxist and a socialist, but when he himself was asked to elaborate upon the specifics of his position he would often advocate revolutionary or radical syndicalism, though he would mostly refer to his ideas as Industrial Unionism rather than syndicalism.

Broadly, Syndicalism refers to ideas, movements and tendencies which share the aim of transforming capitalist society through direct action by the working class on the industrial front, at the point of production. For syndicalists, labour unions are the potential means both of overcoming capitalism and of running society in the interests of the majority. Industry and government in a syndicalist society would be run by labour union federations.

However, in attempts to smear this part of his life and thought, and to promote their own rigidly dogmatic positions, Stalinists have often claimed that the syndicalism professed by Connolly was a youthful misadventure, an aberration that by the time of his martyrdom at the hands of the British following the 1916 Easter Uprising he had all but abandoned. However even a cursory reading of Connolly’s writings dispels this myth propagated by the Stalinists. In his last major work, The Re-Conquest of Ireland, published on the 14th of December 1915, just over five months before the Easter uprising, he fervently advocates syndicalism, or ‘Industrial Unionism’, writing:

The principle of complete unity upon the Industrial plane must be unceasingly sought after; the Industrial union embracing all workers in each industry must replace the multiplicity of unions which now hamper and restrict our operations, multiply our expenses and divide our forces in face of the mutual enemy. With the Industrial Union as our principle of action, branches can be formed to give expression to the need for effective supervision of the affairs of the workshop, shipyard, dock or railway; each branch to consist of the men and women now associated in Labour upon the same technical basis as our craft unions of to-day.

Add to this the concept of one Big Union embracing all, and you have not only the outline of the most effective form of combination for industrial warfare to-day, but also for Social Administration of the Co-operative Commonwealth of the future.

A system of society in which the workshops, factories, docks, railways, shipyards, &c., shall be owned by the nation, but administered by the Industrial Unions of the respective industries, organised as above, seems best calculated to secure the highest form of industrial efficiency, combined with the greatest amount of individual freedom from state despotism. Such a system would, we believe, realise for Ireland the most radiant hopes of all her heroes and martyrs.

It is clear as day that, despite the revisionist claims of Stalinists and others, Connolly was not just an ardent supporter of socialism and Irish liberation, but also a supporter of revolutionary syndicalism. It is impossible to deny that Connolly was a major organizer of The Industrial Workers of the World during his years in the United States, an avowedly syndicalist organization. He was also heavily influenced by Daniel De Leon, and was even for a few years a member of De Leon’s Socialist Labour Party, considering himself for a number of years to be a De Leonist. However it would be wrong to try and place Connolly entirely within one of the two major schools of revolutionary syndicalism, namely De Leonism and anarcho-syndicalism. De Leon’s major revolutionary theory was that socialist revolution could only be achieved by the working-class electing a socialist party to power backed by a power and organized Industrial Union. Connolly thought this tactic to be incorrect, and he turned the model on its head, advocating rather for the Industrial Unions to seize power with the backing of a strong socialist party. The distinction may seem trivial, but it is an important one as it not only keeps him firmly outside of the De Leonist school of thought, but also the anarcho-syndicalist camp, which eschews political organization entirely in favour of industrial organization.

Nationalism

Connolly was also - as he is primarily remembered - a great Irish nationalist, something that has allowed his legacy, for better or for worse, to be claimed by Irish nationalists of all stripes. Unlike the many anarchists who also claim Connolly, I do not reject this part of his life and thought out of hand. Connolly’s Irish patriotism and his avocation of national liberation is one of the major parts of who he was. To excise national liberation from Connolly is to practically remove the memory of the Easter Rebellion. Despite the disingenuous, even outright wrong claims of many anarcho-syndicalists and anarchist communists, this is a type of nationalism that does not assume a common interest (that of national liberation) between the working-class and the national bourgeoisie. Connolly held true to the idea that the national revolution and the social revolution were linked, and that to separate them would mean failure, famously saying:

After Ireland is free, says the patriot who won’t touch Socialism, we will protect all classes, and if you won’t pay your rent you will be evicted same as now. But the evicting party, under command of the sheriff, will wear green uniforms and the Harp without the Crown, and the warrant turning you out on the roadside will be stamped with the arms of the Irish Republic.

Now, isn’t that worth fighting for?

And when you cannot find employment, and, giving up the struggle of life in despair, enter the Poorhouse, the band of the nearest regiment of the Irish army will escort you to the Poorhouse door to the tune of St. Patrick’s Day.

Oh, it will be nice to live in those days…

Now, my friend, I also am Irish, but I’m a bit more logical. The capitalist, I say, is a parasite on industry…

The working class is the victim of this parasite - this human leech, and it is the duty and interest of the working class to use every means in its power to oust this parasite class from the position which enables it to thus prey upon the vitals of Labour.

Therefore, I say, let us organise as a class to meet our masters and destroy their mastership; organise to drive them from their hold upon public life through their political power; organise to wrench from their robber clutch the land and workshops on and in which they enslave us; organise to cleanse our social life from the stain of social cannibalism, from the preying of man upon his fellow man.

One can see that Connolly could not, and would not separate the national and social revolutions, for him Ireland could only truly liberated if capitalism itself was also overthrown. He set the stage, even before Lenin and the Russian Revolution, for the post-Second World War socialist national liberation groups who viewed their cause as invariably part of the internationalist cause to bring down global capitalism and imperialism and establish global communism.

Generally I tend to view any anarchist attack on Connolly’s nationalism as highly facetious and disingenuous. It is based on the flawed anarchist understanding of national liberation and internationalism. This flawed understanding of the struggle also demonstrates why anarchism and anarchists are generally no friends of the struggles for national liberation. Finally, concerning his views on national liberation and the social revolution Connolly makes it clear that the Irish are the working-class and the working-class are Irish, saying:

We are out for Ireland for the Irish. But who are the Irish? Not the rack-renting, slum-owning landlord; not the sweating, profit-grinding capitalist; not the sleek and oily lawyer; not the prostitute pressman - the hired liars of the enemy. Not these are the Irish upon whom the future depends. Not these, but the Irish working class, the only secure foundation upon which a free nation can be reared.

The cause of labour is the cause of Ireland, the cause of Ireland is the cause of labour. They cannot be dissevered. Ireland seeks freedom. Labour seeks that an Ireland free should be the sole mistress of her own destiny, supreme owner of all material things within and upon her soil. Labour seeks to make the free Irish nation the guardian of the interests of the people of Ireland, and to secure that end would vest in that free Irish nation all property rights as against the claims of the individual, with the end in view that the individual may be enriched by the nation, and not by the spoiling of his fellows.

The United Front:

Connolly was also an early proponent of the idea of a united leftist front. He believed, as do I and many other revolutionary socialists, that a successful social revolution can only be carried out by a united front of various anti-capitalists groupings.

In support of the United Front he said:

the development of the fighting spirit is of more importance than the creation of the theoretically perfect organisation; that, indeed, the most theoretically perfect organisation may, because of its very perfection and vastness, be of the greatest possible danger to the revolutionary movement if it tends, or is used, to repress and curb the fighting spirit of comradeship in the rank and file.

For Connolly, the struggle for socialism, for the co-operative commonwealth, for a workers’ republic, for the re-conquest of Ireland; for the new social system, should be conducted on every front. He recognized revolutionary potential in all autonomous working class organisations and movements. He fully supported to the co-operative movement as well as the Irish language movement. Despite rather cynically observing that “you can’t teach a starving man Gaelic” , Connolly saw the Irish language movement as one “of defiant self-reliance and confident trust in a people’s own power of self-emancipation”.

It is because of, not in spite of his views on working-class and left unity that Connolly railed against the evils of craft unionism. Connolly’s attack on craft, or trade, unionism has the same basis as the modern attack on it, namely that it divides the workers into unions based on crafts, despite being employees of the same industry and struggling against the same bosses. This type of unionism of groups like the AFL-CIO plays right into the hands of the bosses and the managers because it turns the workers against themselves in struggles for shorter work days and higher wages, providing for a sort of divide and conquer strategy for the capitalists. To this end Connolly was a supporter of the One Big Union concept put forward by groups like the Industrial Workers of the World. He believed that all workers of all crafts should be united in one union in the common struggle against the bosses and capitalism. On this he said:

The enrolment of the workers in unions patterned closely after the structure of modern industries, and following the organic lines of industrial development, is par excellence the swiftest, safest, and most peaceful form of constructive work the Socialist can engage in. It prepares within the framework of capitalist society the working forms of the Socialist Republic, and thus, while increasing the resisting power of the worker against present encroachments of the capitalist class, it familiarizes him with the idea that the union he is helping to build up is destined to supplant that class in the control of the industry in which he is employed. The power of this idea to transform the dry detail work of trade union organisation into the constructive work of revolutionary Socialism…It invests the sordid details of the daily incidents of the class struggle with a new and beautiful meaning.

I believe today that the only way we can achieve an effective socialist revolution is to follow Connolly’s model of the united front. Do we have to include traitors to the working-class such as authoritarian socialists and centrist social democrats? No, I would not think so, because to do so would mean having to make more than compromises than most revolutionaries would be comfortable with. Again, it is disingenuous of anarchists to claim that any sort of united front would have to include these movements, it is simply an attempt to come up with excuses for not working with those you may have slight ideological differences with. We must recognize that no one group, be it syndicalists, revolutionary democratic socialists, anarchists etc are going to have all the best ideas, militants or organizers, so we must work together for the creation of a socialism, the details can be hammered out later. To deny this is handicap the movement to overthrow capitalism and to only further entrench the shameful sectarianism that divides us.

Parliamentarianism:

As was discussed above, the American syndicalist and revolutionary socialist Daniel De Leon was a major influence on the thought of Connolly. Connolly never abandoned the idea of a revolutionary party of the working-class, as hose who would later come to be known as anarcho-syndicalists would. But, as was also discussed before, Connolly turned the De Leonist revolutionary model on its head, advocating for the seizure of power and the overturning of capitalism by the unions who would in turn be backed by a strong, revolutionary socialist party. De Leon agitated for a political revolution that would in turn lead to a social revolution. Connolly was arguing for a social revolution outright.

Like many revolutionary democratic socialists, Connolly believed that a true revolution could not be made simply by seizing state power away from the capitalists. Capitalism maintains its rule through the instrument of the state, which is the collection of armed forces (police, military, etc.) into a centralized power. In order for capitalism to be replaced, these bodies of capitalism’s agents must be dissolved or disbanded, and replaced by bodies of workers’ defence forces, fully accountable to the new society. Concerning the institutions of the state Connolly said:

The political institutions of today are simply the coercive forces of capitalist society they have grown up out of, and are based upon, territorial divisions of power in the hands of the ruling class in past ages, and were carried over into capitalist society to suit the needs of the capitalist class when that class overthrew the dominion of its predecessors.

Also concerning state ownership he said:

State ownership and control is not necessarily Socialism - if it were, then the Army, the Navy, the Police, the Judges, the Gaolers, the Informers, and the Hangmen, all would all be Socialist functionaries, as they are State officials - but the ownership by the State of all the land and materials for labour, combined with the co-operative control by the workers of such land and materials, would be Socialism

Anarchists reject this out of hand, deeming it to be state socialism, but again this demonstrates their flawed understanding of such matters as the state and private property. One has to remember the Marxist approach of the overthrow of capitalism into socialism followed by the transition from socialism to fully-fledged communism. It is my belief that the anarchist requirment of a direct transition from a heavily stated society to an acepholous society is both philosophically and practically unreasonable.

Connolly’s understanding of the state and the workers’ republic was radically different than that of the Stalinist dictatorships that grew up following the Second World War. Rather he advocated for something called the co-operative commonwealth. In such a society the productive property is owned collectively and managed by democratic co-operatives, which are in turn organised along co-operative lines, industry-by-industry, region-by-region. This is very similar to the ideas put forward by Council Communism and true Jeffersonion democracy (something else I am researching), it is true social democracy, not the kind espoused by many ’social democratic’ political parties around the world. Simply put, he wanted a society that was democraticly run and organized for the benefit of society.

Connolly’s support of parliamentarianism and socialist parties puts him firmly at odds with anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists who try to claim him, but keeps himin the realm of Marxism and the revolutionary movements based on it.

Legacy:

His legacy in Ireland is mainly due to his contribution to the republican cause and his Marxism has been largely overlooked by mainstream histories. However, as was said before his legacy as a socialist has been claimed by a number of diverse groups including the Communist Party of Ireland, Connolly Youth Movement, éirígí, the IRSP, the Labour Party, Sinn Féin, the Socialist Party, the Socialist Workers Party, the Workers’ Party, the Scottish Socialist Party and a variety of other left-wing and left-republican groups. Also, despite claims to the contrary, Connolly’s writings show him to be first and foremost a Marxist thinker.

Connolly was among the few European members of the Second International who opposed, outright, World War I. This put him at odds with most of the labour leaders of Europe - but meant he was a co-thinker of those that would come to later call themselves communists, such as Lenin, Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg. He was influenced by and heavily involved with the radical Industrial Workers of the World labour union and the theories of Daniel De Leon.

Also, despite their ideological and theoretical differences, Lenin was apparently a great admirer of Connolly, though it is likely the two never met. Lenin berated other communists, who had criticised the Easter Rebellion in Ireland as bourgeois. He maintained that no revolution was “pure”, and communists would have to unite with other disaffected groups in order to overthrow existing social orders. He was to prove his point the next year, during the Russian Revolution.

In Scotland, Connolly’s thinking was hugely influential to socialists such as John Maclean, who would similarly combine his leftist thinking with nationalist ideas when he formed his Scottish Workers Republican Party.

To return to the beginning, Connolly’s legacy has seen attempts to co-opt it by people of almost every political stripe in Ireland from anarchists, to nationalists to Stalinists. However, while Connolly was a lot of things, there were also a lot of things he was not. Chief among these he was not an anarchist, despite the claims of many anarchist thinkers and writers. If you do a quick Google search on James Connolly and anarchism you will find many sites calling Connolly, among other things an “anarchist union organizer.” However, as I hope I have shown, while he did side against the Marxist De Leon in the I.W.W. split in 1908, he never abandoned parlimentarianism or the idea of a socialist party, something that is the very antithesis of anarchism, especially anarcho-syndicalism. He was a committed Marxist and an revolutionary Irish nationalist, two other strains of thought that place him outside of anarchism. But in the end Connolly will always be remembered as someone who struggled for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and imperialism, and someone who gave his life for it. I finish with probably my two favourite Connolly quotes:

The great only appear great because we are on our knees, let us arise!

If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of our prisons or graves we will still evoke a spirit that will thwart you, and perhaps, raise a force that will destroy you! We defy you! Do your worst!

Taken from the weblog By Any Means Necessary
Edited by Larry