Page:Schüller - Jim Connolly and Irish Freedom (1926).djvu/12

 revolutionary struggle in Ireland. The 1916 rising made by troops mainly composed of workers, agricultural laborers and laboring peasants, and the work of that great Irish Marxist who led this insurrection, played a most important role in this struggle. Here we have the opportunity of studying the strong and weak sides of the young Irish Labor movement, since Connolly himself in his qualities and faults was a typical representative of the best section of the working class of his country.

The British oppressor has always been a past master in the art of keeping not only Europe but also his own country in the dark about conditions and events in Ireland, thereby isolating the Irish fighters for freedom. This isolation was not without effects upon the workers also, and thus it happened that the works of a James Connolly must today be dug out, so to speak, while the workers are almost ignorant of the fact that in Ireland a revolutionary Marxist of the first water worked and struggled. A Marxist far beyond his contemporaries in the Labor movement of the Anglo-Saxon countries, he understood despite his early end, and put into practice, the basic theories of Leninism. The title of honor must be given him, in the following pages we will show how he applied this point of view to the basic questions of the Irish working class.

A biographer of Connolly who examined the origin of his popularity amongst the Irish workers refers to the problem of "Connolly's secret." As a solution he finds only a few general phrases about understanding how to subject the lesser to the greater, etc. "Connolly's secret," however, is quite clear. It is THE COMBINATION OF THE NATIONAL REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE AND OF THE REVOLUTIONARY CLASS STRUGGLE OF