A James Connolly Reader - (Paperback)

About the Book

A stirring collection of James Connolly's most important speeches and writing.

Book Synopsis

Considered by many Ireland's most important revolutionary, James Connolly devoted his life to struggles against exploitation, oppression, and imperialism. Active in workers' movements in the United States, Scotland, and Ireland, Connolly was a peerless organizer, sharp polemicist, and highly original thinker. His positions on the relationship between national liberation and socialism, revolution in colonized in colonized and under developed economies, and women's liberation in particular were often decades ahead of their time. This collection seeks to return Connolly to his proper place in Irish and global history, and to inspire activists, students, and those interested in history today with his vision of an Ireland and world free from militarism, injustice, and deprivation.

Review Quotes

"James Connolly was an uncompromising fighter for Irish freedom and a socialist for all the world. He lived in tumultuous times in dire poverty in Scotland, Ireland, and the United States. Everywhere, he enriched the working class. Connolly was a teacher of socialism and a militant unions organizer. He wielded words like a scimitar, slicing through the thickets of lives to get to capitalism's noxious heart. He wrote socialist songs which can still ring the rafters today. Connolly died in the struggle for national liberation in Dublin in 1916, having never given an inch to patriots who couldn't stand socialism. With an erudite introduction and a glittering selection of his penetrating, polemical, incisive, inspiring writings, Shaun Harkin has produced the Connolly book which socialists across the world have been waiting for." --Eamonn McCann

"admirably researched" -Irish Independent

"Many [books about James Connolly] tend to be quite partial and serve more to try and make Connolly's memory serve the political agenda of the author, rather than illuminate the actual thinking of the man. For a handy alternative to this sort of thing, Haymarket books have brought out this paperback that will make an extremely good starting point for anyone who wants to know more about his real thoughts and beliefs." -Counterfire

"A book that should be on school shelves, as much as those of someone who wishes for a fairer society. Essential." -NJ McGarrigle, Irish Times

"The legacy of James Connolly, Ireland's pre-eminent Marxist revolutionary, has been appropriated and sanitised by every political tradition including the Irish state to such an extent that his historical role has often been obscured. Shaun Harkin's selection of Connolly's writing shines a penetrating light through this fog and allows him to speak for himself." -Socialist Review

About the Author

Shaun Harkin: Shaun Harkin is an activist and writer presently based in Derry City, Ireland. He is a member of the Irish Socialist Workers Party and the People Before Profit Alliance. He is a regular contributor to Socialist Worker (U.S.), the International Socialist Review, and? Socialist Worker (Ireland).

James Connolly: James Connolly (1868 1916) was an Irish republican and socialist leader, aligned to syndicalism and the Industrial Workers of the World. He became one of the leading Marxist theorists of his day. He was executed by a British firing squad because of his leadership role in the Easter Rising of 1916.