Ebook: Connolly's Marxism

James Connolly, born in
Edinburgh 1879 and executed
by the British in Dublin 1916,
was a major socialist theorist.
He worked his way out of a
poverty-stricken Scottish childhood,
through lengthy spells in the army
and as a trade union organiser
in America. He emerged as Ireland's
most clearsighted and resourceful
socialist organiser and thinker.
In this interpretative study
Bernard Ransom presents a complex
Connolly — historian, philosopher,
strategist and activist. In particular
he shows how Connolly made
marxism relevant for Ireland by
reconciling nationalist and
socialist ideas; and how he
restored a viable, realistic use of
marxist theory as a guide to action,
at a time when most of its
practitioners treated it as an
unchallengeable 'scientific' dogma.
What emerges is a consistency
of thought and action by a man
not afraid to be inspired by
Irish history and christian
traditions; a man whose life's
work, including the apparently
'hopeless' Easter Rising of 1916,
was an attempt to establish
the theoretical and organisational
basis for socialism in Ireland.