Connolly's Marxism Edition: 1

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.