What did James Connolly stand for?

James Connolly participated in a nationalist uprising but his politics were staunchly Labour and syndicalist. His detractors are invariably revisionists who do not accept that he did not believe in the Bolshevik or statist path to power. He was a revolutionary democrat.

If you are curious,in the first place,you should go and read his writings if you want to know about one of our leading modern political figures and the only republican who wasn't in hock to the British State. His writings are available from any reputable bookshop.

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27.8.2022

Old bores in Ireland such as Gerry Adams and Owen Carron and the republican seigneurs claim Connolly as part of their ideological patrimony. However,they have no knowledge of the social and trade union  and political background to his writings or insights into the era when he lived.

Those people are only messenger boys for publicans and small businessmen. Adams and the Communists extract a few worthless phrases of Connolly to throw in a few of their own and portray themselves as revolutionary figures of greater stature.

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The heart of the matter

Connolly was like many of his trade unionist contemporaries,a syndicalist. That is obvious to anyone who reads his writings.

Syndicalism bases its revolutionary prognosis for an overturn on the mass strike. Syndicalism belongs on the spectrum of anarchism as articulated by the Italians and, earlier, the Russian Bakunin type.

But why remember James Connolly if he was also the polar opposite of a syndicalist,an insurrectionist?

Because the slaughter of the First World War drove him into the arms of Walter Mitty-types,nationalist types such as Pearse, Costello and Griffiths who any normal society locks up in a psychiatric hospital because they are dangerous pyromaniacs. 

Labour is a party of socialist moderation and progressive sanity in this country,not the developing mafia in our midst or front groups.

Syndicalism holds the key to contemporary developments experienced by Russia in the period of drama of the  years1989-1993 and the political events in Eastern Europe as it struggled to shake off the Soviet yoke.

The outcomes of the strikes and riots of 1989-1992 in the Eastern Bloc were social outbursts and bouts of economic chaos lasting into the period 2005-8.

 Chaos was the outcome of the adjustment from a centralised authoritarian state to a decentralised federation and multiparty democracy. 

Democracy?

Such a change should have taken place in the 1920's. If the turn from socialist dictatorship to a political model on democratic lines had taken place earlier, there would have been no world war and Hitlerism would never have gained traction after 1928.

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It is very easy to believe in conspiracies and plots as O Riordain did but the claims of revolutionary socialists and republicans and Communists to inherit Connolly's legacy bear no relation to reality.

 Knowing that Connolly represented syndicalism-that which Lenin referred to as Economism in his pamphlet Two Tactics of Social Democracy (1902-3)-requires knowledge of contemporaneous trends in twentieth century social democracy.

 Once again,Connolly's syndicalism bases its proposals on democracy and a general strike. 

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Contemporary echoes of the trade union struggle 

The real legacy of Connolly is the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.

The ICTU is equable and thoroughly democratic.

People who consider Connolly to be a socialist are living in a fantasy world of their own creation. Connolly was a syndicalist who believed in the general strike, industrial trusts and trade union democracy. That latter trend was something Lenin adopted in 1919 when he claimed that Soviet Power was trade union government and the electrification of the Soviet Union.

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Connolly's syndicalism finds its modern expression in the politics and practice of republican labourism.

Whereas,Connolly despite the misleading impression given by some historic reprints did not consider himself a nationalist the Adams trend as articulated by Northern Sinn Fein is his truest manifestation in politics.

It must be remembered that the Ireland of Connolly's era was the Ireland of agrarian socialism and agricultural cooperation.

All things change and do not exist in a vacuum.

Connolly would have very little part in a modern Ireland which is saturated with Church politics in the North and social conservatism in the South.

Take note,those of you with pens but no book knowledge of his template,Karl Marx.