Marxism and war

Connolly and the Easter Rising

The final part of Michael Johnson’s series on the life and politics of James Connolly. The rest of the series can be found here . The date of the Rising was set for Easter Sunday. However, crisis struck the rebels’ plans when the arms shipment from Germany was intercepted. When the more moderate Volunteer leadership around Eoin McNeill became aware of the IRB’s plans, the orders for manoeuvres on Easter Sunday were called off at the eleventh hour, with an ad placed in the Sunday Independent just to make sure that the message was relayed. McNeill’s actions were, to Tom Clarke, “the blackest and...

Connolly and the First World War

Part 11 of Michael Johnson’s series on the life and politics of James Connolly. The rest of the series can be found here . In March 1914, Asquith made his new and final proposal on Home Rule, putting forward a scheme whereby the Ulster counties could exclude themselves from the new Irish constitution. It was supposed to be a temporary exclusion, for six years, but a general election in the interim delivering a Tory majority could make it permanent. It was clear that Ulster was holding out for permanent exclusion — partition — if could not prevent Home Rule from passing. Adding to the...

Treize questions sur le terrorisme, l’intégrisme et l’anti-impérialisme

* Ce texte a été publié en 2001 dans Workers Liberty, publication de l’Alliance for Workers Liberty, au moment de l’intervention américano-britannique en Afghanistan. (NPNF) 1. Comment peut-on affronter le problème du terrorisme et de l’intégrisme (1) ? Tout d’abord en ne soutenant pas le gouvernement américain. Pendant soixante ans, les Américains ont été les associés et les alliés du régime fondamentaliste saoudien. Ils ont aidé l’Etat pakistanais et l’Arabie saoudite à financer les talibans dans les années 1990. Ils ont fréquemment appuyé des mouvements fondamentalistes afin de contrer des...

Articles on socialists, the working class and "Remembrance"

Why the poppy is wrong (November 2010) "Our remembrance" - speech by Ed Maltby (November 2012) We need our own remembrance (March 2013) Plus materials on the 2012 University of London Union controversy, in which ULU Vice President Daniel Cooper was witch-hunted for taking an anti-militarist stand: Statement: defend the right to criticise war and militarism! (November 2012) Workers' Liberty routs Tories at packed anti-war meeting (November 2012) The lessons of "Poppygate" (March 2013)

Czech Imperialism and the National Question in Central Europe (1938)

Between the two imperialists world wars the Marxists considered Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Poland to be imperialist powers, because in these three states there were oppressed national minorities – Croats, Kosovars and others in Yugoslavia, Slovakians and Sudeten ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia, Ukrainians in Poland. If it could be taken apart from the entire context which in fact it had, and if German imperialism had not been German imperialism, Hitler's claim to the Sudetenland, where the majority wanted to unite with Germany, would have been more or less reasonable. In reality it was...

Another day

A reflection on the right to strike of British soldiers in the Second World War Download PDF

Collapse and resistance: the workers' movement facing World War One

In the twenty or thirty years before World War One, mass socialist and trade union movements were built across Europe, starting off very small in the 1880s and acquiring such strength by, say, 1905 that most of their activists believed that they would soon be able to overthrow capitalism. That inspiring advance came to a sudden end in early August 1914. With the start of World War One, most of the big socialist and trade-union movements rallied behind their own bourgeois governments. A permanent line of division was drawn in the labour movement, and remains to this day, between the...

The Peace Programme (1915)

I. What Is a Program of Peace? What is a program of peace? From the viewpoint of the ruling classes or of the parties subservient to them, it is the totality of those demands, the realization of which must be ensured by the power of militarism. Hence, for the realization of Miliukov’s “peace program” Constantinople must be conquered by force of arms. Vandervelde’s “peace program” requires the expulsion of the Germans from Belgium as an antecedent condition. From this standpoint the peace clauses merely draw the balance sheet of what has been achieved by force of arms. In other words, the peace...

Lenin on the collapse of the Second International

How socialists capitulated to the warmongers in 1914 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 PART 1 The collapse of the International is sometimes taken to mean simply the formal aspect of the matter, namely, the interruption in international communication between the socialist parties of the belligerent countries, the impossibility of converting either an international conference or the International Socialist Bureau, etc. This is the point of view held by certain socialists in the small neutral countries, probably even by the majority of the official...

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.