Marxism and war

Big socialist debates before 1914

The best of the Second International is part of our renewal, as long as we discard the baggage that prompted its demise.

Capitalism, socialism, and war

Some hunger-gatherer societies have a lot of violence and (small) wars. Others are peaceful and gentle. War is not hardwired into humanity. If some propensity to violence is hardwired — maybe it is — we are malleable enough that societies can re-channel that propensity in harmless ways. Marx wrote in Capital that the rise of capitalism came with “the commercial war of the European nations, with the globe for a theatre. It begins with the revolt of the Netherlands from Spain [1568-1648], assumes giant dimensions in England’s Anti-Jacobin War [1792-1802], and is still going on in the opium wars...

Letter: The German SPD on Zimmerwald, 1915

In Solidarity 662 , Sean Matgamna discussed James Connolly’s response to the Zimmerwald internationalist-socialist conference of 1915 and his promotion of German right-wing (pro-war) socialist voices during World War One. Digging out the response to Zimmerwald in the German Social-Democratic Party (SPD’s) central newspaper Vorwärts , 29 September 1915, gives context. Despite the SPD majority’s rightly-notorious capitulation by voting for German war credits on 4 August 1914 (and again later), Vorwärts responded more warmly to Zimmerwald than Connolly, who printed only a report from French...

A continental revolution

Part of a series of articles on Connolly: workersliberty.org/connolly James Connolly started World War One as a partisan of the socialist movement’s Basle Manifesto of 1912, against war and against all the rival imperialisms. He then switched to backing Germany. This is one of the most eloquent of his “Basle” articles. The outbreak of war on the continent of Europe makes it impossible this week to write to Forward upon any other question. I have no doubt that to most of my readers Ireland has ere now ceased to be, in colloquial phraseology, the most important place on the map, and that their...

James Connolly, German warmonger (2)

Part of a series of articles on Connolly: workersliberty.org/connolly At first James Connolly responded to World War One in line with the international socialist movement’s Basle Manifesto of 1912. We saw that in the instalments of this series on Connolly in Solidarity 652 and 653. From late August 1914 he shifted to a pro-German stance in line with the previous writings of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Some perverted battle-lines Nothing is more remarkable in this war than the manner in which the ruling class in the countries of the Triple Alliance have appropriated and used for their own...

The Kaiser and socialists

Published in James Connolly's Workers' Republic, 4 December 1915, without comment, and attributed to the San Francisco Call . BERLIN, Oct. 15.—A sensation is being caused by the book, At the Front in an Auto , published by the South German Socialist, Anton Fendrich. The author is the first Social Democrat who obtained an interview with the Kaiser and he shows the ruler in a new light. "The author says the monarch has completely changed his views in regard to Socialists, and now considers them 'splendid fellows', at least most of them. “I had a long talk with the Chancellor, Dr, von Bethman...

James Connolly, German warmonger (1)

German soldiers in WW1 Part of a series of articles on Connolly: workersliberty.org/connolly At first James Connolly responded to World War One in line with the international socialist movement’s Basle Manifesto of 1912, as we saw in the last instalments of our series on Connolly, in Solidarity 652 and 653 . From late August 1914 he shifted to a pro-German stance in line with the previous writings of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. The war upon the German nation Now that the first drunkenness of the war fever is over, and the contending forces are locked in deadly combat upon the battlefield...

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