A few interesting points to highlight, but the whole thing is well worth a read.
- [The Irish] "have also the strength of character that keeps their heads from being filled with the clap-trap of the Red Irish. "They have, as a race, a moral sense so highly developed," said I, " that even the unlettered among them, generally speaking, have hearts unpolluted by those Socialist immoralities that logically flow from the application of Marxianism to the conduct of man."
- "...it riled, the Lehanes, Larkins, Connollys, Gurley Flynns and other Hibernians to have a man with a Yiddisher name tell them that socialism is the deadly enemy of things Catholic, and to do so while speaking under Catholic auspices."
- The Irish Socialists were, "enmeshed in something foreign to their inheritance."
- "Connolly had taken Marxian Socialism and whittled it down to his shillalah proportions. This he did by cutting out its anti-God and free-family philosophy, what he called its excrescences."
- "James Connolly, who had come from Ireland full of enthusiasm and ready to rally the Irish for socialism, finally came to the end of his socialistic tether. He was taught something in our country that all too many sincere Socialists have yet to learn: It is what I have said a dozen times already, that socialism is something more than a political and economic movement in the superficial sense of the term, that it's economics mean a revolution in every department of human activity."
- Connolly, "dealt with Socialism in the same manner as the man who separated water into its component parts, oxygen and hydrogen, consuming the oxygen and imagining he was drinking water. Connolly separated the oxygen of socialism -- its economics -- from the hydrogen of socialism -- it's Marxian philosophy -- and imagined he had real socialism."
- "To James Connolly was due the organisation of this racial group into the Irish Socialist Fellowship. Like Connolly, it held Socialism to be economic and nothing but economic...Therefore it adopted the following resolutions...
Socialism as we hold it is not synonymous with atheism...
...does not advocate 'free love,' the abolition of parental authority, or of marriage, or the destruction of the family.
... is purely and absolutely an economic theory...
... We emphatically repudiate the attempt of any individual or publication to identify the Socialist movement with the dissemination of agnosticism, atheism, race suicide, free love, dietetics, ideas concerning marriage, etc."
- In 1921 Goldstein was worried about being accused of "connecting the Irish with Lenin, which would have been an offense."
I'll do a few more summary points later.
- [The Irish] "have also the strength of character that keeps their heads from being filled with the clap-trap of the Red Irish. "They have, as a race, a moral sense so highly developed," said I, " that even the unlettered among them, generally speaking, have hearts unpolluted by those Socialist immoralities that logically flow from the application of Marxianism to the conduct of man."
- "...it riled, the Lehanes, Larkins, Connollys, Gurley Flynns and other Hibernians to have a man with a Yiddisher name tell them that socialism is the deadly enemy of things Catholic, and to do so while speaking under Catholic auspices."
- The Irish Socialists were, "enmeshed in something foreign to their inheritance."
- "Connolly had taken Marxian Socialism and whittled it down to his shillalah proportions. This he did by cutting out its anti-God and free-family philosophy, what he called its excrescences."
- "James Connolly, who had come from Ireland full of enthusiasm and ready to rally the Irish for socialism, finally came to the end of his socialistic tether. He was taught something in our country that all too many sincere Socialists have yet to learn: It is what I have said a dozen times already, that socialism is something more than a political and economic movement in the superficial sense of the term, that it's economics mean a revolution in every department of human activity."
- Connolly, "dealt with Socialism in the same manner as the man who separated water into its component parts, oxygen and hydrogen, consuming the oxygen and imagining he was drinking water. Connolly separated the oxygen of socialism -- its economics -- from the hydrogen of socialism -- it's Marxian philosophy -- and imagined he had real socialism."
- "To James Connolly was due the organisation of this racial group into the Irish Socialist Fellowship. Like Connolly, it held Socialism to be economic and nothing but economic...Therefore it adopted the following resolutions...
Socialism as we hold it is not synonymous with atheism...
...does not advocate 'free love,' the abolition of parental authority, or of marriage, or the destruction of the family.
... is purely and absolutely an economic theory...
... We emphatically repudiate the attempt of any individual or publication to identify the Socialist movement with the dissemination of agnosticism, atheism, race suicide, free love, dietetics, ideas concerning marriage, etc."
- In 1921 Goldstein was worried about being accused of "connecting the Irish with Lenin, which would have been an offense."
I'll do a few more summary points later.
A few more interesting points to highlight from the above chapter:
- " 'The James Connolly Literary Society' leads one to believe that you seek to attract Irishmen to the cause for which the martyrs of the Dublin Easter Day Rebellion gave their lives, which is certainly not the cause of socialism."
- Connolly "was given his last chance to proclaim to the world the motive of his activity, neither directly nor indirectly did he refer to Socialism. But rather, Mr. Connolly clearly set forth his burning desire to rehabilitate Ireland as a nation."
- "It was, no doubt, providential that this brave man, who would have laid down his life for the socialism he held to be socialism, sacrificed his life for the independence of his native land. "
Goldstein, a contemporary of Connolly and a man intimately aware of the socialist movement in America during his time there confirms what we have been saying is obvious for all to see;
James Connolly was a socialist, but of his own version of socialism.
- " 'The James Connolly Literary Society' leads one to believe that you seek to attract Irishmen to the cause for which the martyrs of the Dublin Easter Day Rebellion gave their lives, which is certainly not the cause of socialism."
- Connolly "was given his last chance to proclaim to the world the motive of his activity, neither directly nor indirectly did he refer to Socialism. But rather, Mr. Connolly clearly set forth his burning desire to rehabilitate Ireland as a nation."
- "It was, no doubt, providential that this brave man, who would have laid down his life for the socialism he held to be socialism, sacrificed his life for the independence of his native land. "
Goldstein, a contemporary of Connolly and a man intimately aware of the socialist movement in America during his time there confirms what we have been saying is obvious for all to see;
James Connolly was a socialist, but of his own version of socialism.
" Thus while the rich proceed with their schemes for the aggrandisement of their class, the working class are betrayed by their representatives who spend their time in political intrigues for personal profit."
"We do not like to theorise upon the function of force as a midwife to progress – that, as we have ere now pointed out, is a matter to be settled by the enemies of progress – but we cannot afford to remain blind to the signs of the time. If, then, we see a small section of the possessing class prepared to launch two nations into war, to shed oceans of blood and spend millions of treasure, in order to maintain intact a small portion of their privileges, how can we expect the entire propertied class to abstain from using the same weapons, and to submit peacefully when called upon to yield up for ever all their privileges? Let the working class democracy of Ireland note that lesson, and, whilst working peacefully while they may, keep constantly before their minds the truth that the capitalist class is a beast of prey, and cannot be moralised, converted, or conciliated but must be extirpated."