Caoimhin O’Muraile ✒ with the second in a three part series on the person he thinks might contend for The Complete Revolutionary Socialist. The focus of the piece is on James Connolly in the USA.  

In September 1903 James Connolly set sail for the USA where he had hoped to secure employment as a printer for the US Socialist Labour Party paper, edited by Daniel DeLeon, which unfortunately did not come about, though he still became a member and activist in the SLP. 

He then moved inland to Troy to his cousin’s home where he found work as an insurance collector. It took some time for him to save up enough funds to rent a house and send back shipping tickets to his family in Ireland. By the summer of 1904 Lillie and his six children were ready to join him.

Unfortunately, and tragically on the last day before departure his eldest daughter, Mona, and her sister Ina were sent to the house of a family friend, “Aunt Alice”, on the other side of Dublin. It was here the tragedy happened, as Mona decided to do the washing for Alice, noticing it had not been done, she filled the largest saucepan available with clothing and hot water and placed on the floor. She then removed the ring cover from the stove and stooped down to lift the saucepan, which she held with her apron. Unfortunately, the apron became caught under the saucepan and somehow caught fire from the now open heat. Mona was quickly engulfed in flames resulting in her death. Mona Connolly died on 4th August 1904 aged 13 years. The family still had to go to the USA and Lillie kept the news of their daughter’s death from James. On their arrival Connolly noticed that Mona was not with the party. On receiving the news, he was understandably devastated. It took all his socialist friends and comrades to console the heartbroken father, grief which hitherto Lillie had shouldered alone, and convince him to go on, which he did.

Not too long after their arrival in the United States Lillie Connolly gave birth to their seventh [sixth surviving] child which the couple called Fiona. A case of one door closing and another one opening? This may have eased their grief over Mona’s tragic early death, without in any way forgetting the little girl. The Connolly children were a genuine international group, being born in Scotland, Ireland and the USA.

It was the firm belief held by many Marxists including Marx himself that the USA would become the first socialist country in the world, a view echoed by James Connolly and many others. They all came to this conclusion based on the United States massive industrial lead over the rest of the world, including by that time Britain. And as we know the USA was/is a bastion of capitalist greed and exploitation, the opposite of Marx and Connolly’s predictions. 

In 1904, Daniel De-Leon, the leader of the socialist Labour Party of America, and at the time Connolly’s new mentor who he was later to disagree with profoundly, declared to delegates of the still unified Second International (which would later split over the issue of World War One), that “America was the theatre where the crest of capitalism would first be shorn by the falchion of socialism.” How wrong they all were! Two years later at an Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) convention it was proclaimed (in similar language) "the prophesy of Marx will be fulfilled and America will ring the downfall of capitalism the world over.” This prophesy by so many eminent socialists has proved the greatest overstatement and misconception of thought possibly in the movement’s history. 

Connolly became an activist in the IWW becoming its New York Building Workers organiser, though the backbone of the union was the Western Federation of Miners. It was through the IWW that Connolly became a convinced syndicalist, something he would remain the rest of his life. The IWW or Wobblies as they were sometimes known faced many prejudices and not only from the bosses. The snobbery of the craft unions in the USA, as was the case in Britain often came to the surface. The IWW represented predominantly the unskilled workers and were considered revolutionary by both the employers and the state. Their motto of One Big Union (OBU) would later be adopted by Jim Larkin in Ireland when he formed the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU) in 1909 on syndicalist lines. The Wobblies saw the strike as a means of achieving political as well as industrial power for the working-class and considered an “injury to one as a concern to all”. This was the kind of militant trade unionism which suited James Connolly’s political ideology. 

The craft unions considered it inappropriate for unskilled workers to be unionised at all, let alone consider themselves fit to replace the bosses as the dominant class. Similar to the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE) in Britain around the mid-nineteenth century who considered themselves an “aristocracy of labour” the craft unions of the USA held similar if not greater snobberies. The ASE had a motto; “defence not defiance” meaning defend what we have and do not antagonise the employers. Many members of the ASE considered themselves, and were thought of by some, as almost bosses themselves!

Not long after his arrival in the USA Connolly visited Newburgh in New Jersey, George Washington’s headquarters during the War of Independence.

Washington’s house there was stocked with mementoes of the war and of George Washington and his family. Connolly noticed one memento in particular: the will of Washington’s mother. Among the items of her will was a paragraph where she left to one of her children, a slave girl, sanctimoniously referred to as one of her children (whatever this child meant to the Washington’s it was not as a member of their family) – my negro wench, “Little Bit” and all her future increase’ (Striking Similarities, 2017; Kevin Morley P28-29). 

Connolly wrote to his colleague, Daniel O’Brien outlining the paradox of this ambiguous, to say the least, narrative: 

Here we have the family of the greatest patriot of revolutionary America – a patriot passionate with the love of freedom – consigning to perpetual servitude, not only the living Negro woman, but all her children yet unborn. It forms another illustration of the necessity for insisting upon a clear definition of the term freedom as of all other terms is glibly used in political warfare’ (James Connolly, A Full Life Donal Nevin P 197). 

As Connolly noted. freedom - according to Washington’s mother - was very much dependent on a person’s skin colour, views actually held by Washington himself who was a supporter of chattel slavery of the black population. The point Connolly was making is this form of freedom is in fact no freedom at all, it is merely the freedom to enslave others like the employers, through wage slavery, use to the keep workers in their place even in present times. “An injury to one is a concern to us all!”

On the same thorny issue of race and ethnicity Connolly often berated Irish/American workers over their treatment of Italian and Polish fellow workers. The Irish often taunted these workers, occasionally leading to physical assault which Connolly forcefully opposed. He remonstrated with those workers who engaged in this activity reminding them of the treatment meted out to themselves and their parents by the indigenous workers on their arrival in the US. He argued we are all workers, all part of the same class and exploited by the same system. By some of your actions, a minority, the employer’s hands are strengthened simply because there is disunity amongst us, disunity on such a meaningless issue as race or country of birth. If we are going to be strong in the face of oppression, was the theme of his argument, forget about where your brother is born, his or her skin colour, or any other irrelevances and concentrate on the class issue, the class which we all belong, the working-class.

On his arrival in the United States Connolly received a fantastic welcome as the acknowledged representative of the Irish working-class. While he was in New York he was introduced to a man with who he would have a turbulent relationship, Daniel DeLeon. The two men shared, at the time, much ideology both being what would later, around 1920, be described as “ultra-leftists” despite which they were at constant loggerheads (though many of Connolly’s later writings bore a remarkable similarity to some of those of Daniel DeLeon). Ultra-leftism is a term used to describe certain types or positions on the far-left that are extreme and uncompromising. There are times when this position should be taken and others when perhaps a more conciliatory note should be struck. For example, a group of workers are on strike for a pay increase of say 30% and a reduction in hours. Support among the wider proletariat (working-class) is tepid at best and the employers come across with an offer of 10% and a one hour per week reduction in working hours. To adamantly turn this offer down, sticking to the 30% demand with little chance of support from other workers would be pig headed and “ultra-leftist”. 

This was a lesson Connolly was to learn and he began, where circumstances demanded, to take a more conciliatory position. This stance would serve him well in years to come, particularly in 1911 Wexford, the “Wexford Lockout” a precursor to that in Dublin 1913/14. Women have been known to be affected by ultra-left ideas, being told to “wait for the revolution” and not accept any minor improvements in their status until such time, as it plays into the boss’s hands compromising the broader revolutionary position which is, of course, nonsense. To do so would undermine the revolutionary mood of others, usually men! The wait for the revolution comrades, then you will be liberated as part of the working-class as a whole, the revolution is just around the next corner, which alas, it never is! Connolly at this point was in the process of refining his ideas, the learning curve so to speak, and, like Marx, his mentor, he shifted ground here and reclaimed there. Late Connolly differed strategically from early Connolly but the aims remained the same, the establishment of socialism under working-class control.

Pay increases was another area Connolly differed from Daniel DeLeon. DeLeon maintained that any increases in wages were automatically cancelled out by a price increase in goods and services and therefore “an increase of wages through unionism is a barren victory, inasmuch as the men would have to pay for what they buy as much more than they get”. Put simply DeLeon appears to argue that wage increases are pointless as the employers would increase the prices of their goods over and above the rate of the pay increase afforded their workers, making any pay increase redundant. He appears to have forgot the role of the trade union is to maintain workers living standards, and any unions ability to fight and achieve a pay rise is a strong barometer of that union's capability. It also empowers the members to take on and defeat the employers and, who knows, go on to greater heights! It may be true that the prices of goods would increase so as the employer recoups his layout on the pay rise but this has more to do with who owns the means of production and as the employers do then the goods belong to them, produced by the workers, to decide the prices of. Some of the goods, luxury items - the workers who receive the criminalised (in DeLeon’s calculation) wage rise could never afford such goods in the first place irrespective of the pay increase. James Connolly argued that it was not pay increase which were responsible for price hikes but, moreover, the other way round. 

Pay increases are generally a response to price hikes not the cause of them. This principle applies as much today as it did then. Connolly added:

the shallow thinkers who fasten upon this theory do not stay to reflect that in the United States, for example, the workers only receive fifteen per cent of the total product of their labour, and that therefore the price of the other 85 per cent is a matter of indifference to them.

The other 85 percent is surplus value, profit for the employers which is the cornerstone of capitalism. Today it is profit on profit, year on year. In all likelihood the employers, owners of the means of production, would increase the price of their goods anyway irrespective of any pay increase the workers through their trade unions, often having to take industrial action, had achieved so it is price hikes which precede a rise in wages, not follow such rises. Wages and wage increases are a response to the higher profits, usually through price increases, and sometimes pay cuts, amassed by the employer. These arguments put forward by James Connolly are as relevant today as they were back then.

As the organiser of the building workers section of the Wobblies in New York Connolly travelled daily from his home in Newark to the state capital. He rapidly became an excellent organiser and was soon organising tramway workers, dockers and milkmen. These experiences gained by Connolly in the USA were to come in very useful in the future back in Ireland when he organised the men of Wexford during their dispute in 1911 and later deputised for Jim Larkin during the Dublin Lockout of 1913/14. Connolly recognised the importance of bringing out key workers in support of others, this is true OBU fashion. For example, during a metro strike in New York it failed because, although the strike was solid among drivers and ticket men the failure to bring out the power men, those who supplied the electricity which powered the trams, allowed scab labour to drive the vehicles. The power men were card carrying member of a trade union, a different union who were not perceived to be involved. Therefore, they continued to supply the power, had they been on strike not one tram could have operated, scab drivers of not! Again, this principle applies as much today as then, the Miner’s Strike in Britain, 1984/85 springs to mind and the case of NACODS (see Striking Similarities 2017 Kevin Morley P.183). James Connolly was involved in many trade disputes while in the USA as a representative of the IWW. He was involved in many political initiatives and, as has been pointed out, often locked horns with Daniel De Leon.

By 1910 Connolly had decided, after consultation with Lillie, that a return to Ireland was desirable. To this aim he strived and in the same year the move home was on. On his return he immediately involved himself with political and trade union work, as well as the national liberation question. This was to be James Connolly’s final chapter.

Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent 
Socialist Republican and Marxist

James Connolly In The USA

Caoimhin O’Muraile ✒ with the second in a three part series on the person he thinks might contend for The Complete Revolutionary Socialist. The focus of the piece is on James Connolly in the USA.  

In September 1903 James Connolly set sail for the USA where he had hoped to secure employment as a printer for the US Socialist Labour Party paper, edited by Daniel DeLeon, which unfortunately did not come about, though he still became a member and activist in the SLP. 

He then moved inland to Troy to his cousin’s home where he found work as an insurance collector. It took some time for him to save up enough funds to rent a house and send back shipping tickets to his family in Ireland. By the summer of 1904 Lillie and his six children were ready to join him.

Unfortunately, and tragically on the last day before departure his eldest daughter, Mona, and her sister Ina were sent to the house of a family friend, “Aunt Alice”, on the other side of Dublin. It was here the tragedy happened, as Mona decided to do the washing for Alice, noticing it had not been done, she filled the largest saucepan available with clothing and hot water and placed on the floor. She then removed the ring cover from the stove and stooped down to lift the saucepan, which she held with her apron. Unfortunately, the apron became caught under the saucepan and somehow caught fire from the now open heat. Mona was quickly engulfed in flames resulting in her death. Mona Connolly died on 4th August 1904 aged 13 years. The family still had to go to the USA and Lillie kept the news of their daughter’s death from James. On their arrival Connolly noticed that Mona was not with the party. On receiving the news, he was understandably devastated. It took all his socialist friends and comrades to console the heartbroken father, grief which hitherto Lillie had shouldered alone, and convince him to go on, which he did.

Not too long after their arrival in the United States Lillie Connolly gave birth to their seventh [sixth surviving] child which the couple called Fiona. A case of one door closing and another one opening? This may have eased their grief over Mona’s tragic early death, without in any way forgetting the little girl. The Connolly children were a genuine international group, being born in Scotland, Ireland and the USA.

It was the firm belief held by many Marxists including Marx himself that the USA would become the first socialist country in the world, a view echoed by James Connolly and many others. They all came to this conclusion based on the United States massive industrial lead over the rest of the world, including by that time Britain. And as we know the USA was/is a bastion of capitalist greed and exploitation, the opposite of Marx and Connolly’s predictions. 

In 1904, Daniel De-Leon, the leader of the socialist Labour Party of America, and at the time Connolly’s new mentor who he was later to disagree with profoundly, declared to delegates of the still unified Second International (which would later split over the issue of World War One), that “America was the theatre where the crest of capitalism would first be shorn by the falchion of socialism.” How wrong they all were! Two years later at an Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) convention it was proclaimed (in similar language) "the prophesy of Marx will be fulfilled and America will ring the downfall of capitalism the world over.” This prophesy by so many eminent socialists has proved the greatest overstatement and misconception of thought possibly in the movement’s history. 

Connolly became an activist in the IWW becoming its New York Building Workers organiser, though the backbone of the union was the Western Federation of Miners. It was through the IWW that Connolly became a convinced syndicalist, something he would remain the rest of his life. The IWW or Wobblies as they were sometimes known faced many prejudices and not only from the bosses. The snobbery of the craft unions in the USA, as was the case in Britain often came to the surface. The IWW represented predominantly the unskilled workers and were considered revolutionary by both the employers and the state. Their motto of One Big Union (OBU) would later be adopted by Jim Larkin in Ireland when he formed the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU) in 1909 on syndicalist lines. The Wobblies saw the strike as a means of achieving political as well as industrial power for the working-class and considered an “injury to one as a concern to all”. This was the kind of militant trade unionism which suited James Connolly’s political ideology. 

The craft unions considered it inappropriate for unskilled workers to be unionised at all, let alone consider themselves fit to replace the bosses as the dominant class. Similar to the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE) in Britain around the mid-nineteenth century who considered themselves an “aristocracy of labour” the craft unions of the USA held similar if not greater snobberies. The ASE had a motto; “defence not defiance” meaning defend what we have and do not antagonise the employers. Many members of the ASE considered themselves, and were thought of by some, as almost bosses themselves!

Not long after his arrival in the USA Connolly visited Newburgh in New Jersey, George Washington’s headquarters during the War of Independence.

Washington’s house there was stocked with mementoes of the war and of George Washington and his family. Connolly noticed one memento in particular: the will of Washington’s mother. Among the items of her will was a paragraph where she left to one of her children, a slave girl, sanctimoniously referred to as one of her children (whatever this child meant to the Washington’s it was not as a member of their family) – my negro wench, “Little Bit” and all her future increase’ (Striking Similarities, 2017; Kevin Morley P28-29). 

Connolly wrote to his colleague, Daniel O’Brien outlining the paradox of this ambiguous, to say the least, narrative: 

Here we have the family of the greatest patriot of revolutionary America – a patriot passionate with the love of freedom – consigning to perpetual servitude, not only the living Negro woman, but all her children yet unborn. It forms another illustration of the necessity for insisting upon a clear definition of the term freedom as of all other terms is glibly used in political warfare’ (James Connolly, A Full Life Donal Nevin P 197). 

As Connolly noted. freedom - according to Washington’s mother - was very much dependent on a person’s skin colour, views actually held by Washington himself who was a supporter of chattel slavery of the black population. The point Connolly was making is this form of freedom is in fact no freedom at all, it is merely the freedom to enslave others like the employers, through wage slavery, use to the keep workers in their place even in present times. “An injury to one is a concern to us all!”

On the same thorny issue of race and ethnicity Connolly often berated Irish/American workers over their treatment of Italian and Polish fellow workers. The Irish often taunted these workers, occasionally leading to physical assault which Connolly forcefully opposed. He remonstrated with those workers who engaged in this activity reminding them of the treatment meted out to themselves and their parents by the indigenous workers on their arrival in the US. He argued we are all workers, all part of the same class and exploited by the same system. By some of your actions, a minority, the employer’s hands are strengthened simply because there is disunity amongst us, disunity on such a meaningless issue as race or country of birth. If we are going to be strong in the face of oppression, was the theme of his argument, forget about where your brother is born, his or her skin colour, or any other irrelevances and concentrate on the class issue, the class which we all belong, the working-class.

On his arrival in the United States Connolly received a fantastic welcome as the acknowledged representative of the Irish working-class. While he was in New York he was introduced to a man with who he would have a turbulent relationship, Daniel DeLeon. The two men shared, at the time, much ideology both being what would later, around 1920, be described as “ultra-leftists” despite which they were at constant loggerheads (though many of Connolly’s later writings bore a remarkable similarity to some of those of Daniel DeLeon). Ultra-leftism is a term used to describe certain types or positions on the far-left that are extreme and uncompromising. There are times when this position should be taken and others when perhaps a more conciliatory note should be struck. For example, a group of workers are on strike for a pay increase of say 30% and a reduction in hours. Support among the wider proletariat (working-class) is tepid at best and the employers come across with an offer of 10% and a one hour per week reduction in working hours. To adamantly turn this offer down, sticking to the 30% demand with little chance of support from other workers would be pig headed and “ultra-leftist”. 

This was a lesson Connolly was to learn and he began, where circumstances demanded, to take a more conciliatory position. This stance would serve him well in years to come, particularly in 1911 Wexford, the “Wexford Lockout” a precursor to that in Dublin 1913/14. Women have been known to be affected by ultra-left ideas, being told to “wait for the revolution” and not accept any minor improvements in their status until such time, as it plays into the boss’s hands compromising the broader revolutionary position which is, of course, nonsense. To do so would undermine the revolutionary mood of others, usually men! The wait for the revolution comrades, then you will be liberated as part of the working-class as a whole, the revolution is just around the next corner, which alas, it never is! Connolly at this point was in the process of refining his ideas, the learning curve so to speak, and, like Marx, his mentor, he shifted ground here and reclaimed there. Late Connolly differed strategically from early Connolly but the aims remained the same, the establishment of socialism under working-class control.

Pay increases was another area Connolly differed from Daniel DeLeon. DeLeon maintained that any increases in wages were automatically cancelled out by a price increase in goods and services and therefore “an increase of wages through unionism is a barren victory, inasmuch as the men would have to pay for what they buy as much more than they get”. Put simply DeLeon appears to argue that wage increases are pointless as the employers would increase the prices of their goods over and above the rate of the pay increase afforded their workers, making any pay increase redundant. He appears to have forgot the role of the trade union is to maintain workers living standards, and any unions ability to fight and achieve a pay rise is a strong barometer of that union's capability. It also empowers the members to take on and defeat the employers and, who knows, go on to greater heights! It may be true that the prices of goods would increase so as the employer recoups his layout on the pay rise but this has more to do with who owns the means of production and as the employers do then the goods belong to them, produced by the workers, to decide the prices of. Some of the goods, luxury items - the workers who receive the criminalised (in DeLeon’s calculation) wage rise could never afford such goods in the first place irrespective of the pay increase. James Connolly argued that it was not pay increase which were responsible for price hikes but, moreover, the other way round. 

Pay increases are generally a response to price hikes not the cause of them. This principle applies as much today as it did then. Connolly added:

the shallow thinkers who fasten upon this theory do not stay to reflect that in the United States, for example, the workers only receive fifteen per cent of the total product of their labour, and that therefore the price of the other 85 per cent is a matter of indifference to them.

The other 85 percent is surplus value, profit for the employers which is the cornerstone of capitalism. Today it is profit on profit, year on year. In all likelihood the employers, owners of the means of production, would increase the price of their goods anyway irrespective of any pay increase the workers through their trade unions, often having to take industrial action, had achieved so it is price hikes which precede a rise in wages, not follow such rises. Wages and wage increases are a response to the higher profits, usually through price increases, and sometimes pay cuts, amassed by the employer. These arguments put forward by James Connolly are as relevant today as they were back then.

As the organiser of the building workers section of the Wobblies in New York Connolly travelled daily from his home in Newark to the state capital. He rapidly became an excellent organiser and was soon organising tramway workers, dockers and milkmen. These experiences gained by Connolly in the USA were to come in very useful in the future back in Ireland when he organised the men of Wexford during their dispute in 1911 and later deputised for Jim Larkin during the Dublin Lockout of 1913/14. Connolly recognised the importance of bringing out key workers in support of others, this is true OBU fashion. For example, during a metro strike in New York it failed because, although the strike was solid among drivers and ticket men the failure to bring out the power men, those who supplied the electricity which powered the trams, allowed scab labour to drive the vehicles. The power men were card carrying member of a trade union, a different union who were not perceived to be involved. Therefore, they continued to supply the power, had they been on strike not one tram could have operated, scab drivers of not! Again, this principle applies as much today as then, the Miner’s Strike in Britain, 1984/85 springs to mind and the case of NACODS (see Striking Similarities 2017 Kevin Morley P.183). James Connolly was involved in many trade disputes while in the USA as a representative of the IWW. He was involved in many political initiatives and, as has been pointed out, often locked horns with Daniel De Leon.

By 1910 Connolly had decided, after consultation with Lillie, that a return to Ireland was desirable. To this aim he strived and in the same year the move home was on. On his return he immediately involved himself with political and trade union work, as well as the national liberation question. This was to be James Connolly’s final chapter.

Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent 
Socialist Republican and Marxist

2 comments:

  1. An excellent article, your texts are greatly appreciated

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Lal, it is very important we view James Connolly tbrough the lens of internationalism and socialism,and not just Easter Week, heroic and important as that week was.

    ReplyDelete