Socialism Made Easy: Property (5)

A house is not a home. And property rights, in general, protect social assets from the majority. In Part 5 of the Workshop Talks James Connolly does away with the notion that a socialist government would confiscate people’s property. On the contrary, it would extend access to property by tackling the real confiscators in a [...]

Modern Warfare Made Easy

Our series of articles based upon James Connolly’s ‘Socialism Made Easy’ seem to have taken a bit of a break. In the meantime, I thought it would be a good idea to explore some of Connolly’s other contributions to socialist thought. One passage in particular has always stuck out for me, in which Connolly discussed [...]

Socialism Made Easy : Practicality (4)

Practical; concerned with actual use or practice; “he is a very practical person”; “the idea had no practical application”; “a practical knowledge of Japanese”; “woodworking is a practical art”. It is the first defence of the capitalist to accuse socialists of being utopian dreamers, with no grasp on the immutable realities of the world. So, [...]

Socialism Made Easy : The Individual And Society (3)

“Socialism? It’s against human nature. A man has to be dependent on himself” The organs through which capitalist ideology is transmitted (the media, state institutions, religion etc) have done a pretty good job in convincing the masses that the dependence of the rich on their labour is somehow natural, and threatens no great harm to [...]

Socialism Made Easy : Internationalism (2)

“Charity begins at home” – so goes the cry of the vast majority. However, this admission of class dispersion is increasingly untenable in a joined-up world. The interconnected nature of the global political economy means that what happens in one hemisphere directly impacts on events in the other hemisphere. Commodity speculation for the sake of [...]

Socialism Made Easy : A Universal Philosophy (1)

James Connolly, the famed Irish Marxist executed by the British during the 1916 Easter Uprising, remains one of capitalism‘s most formidable critics. His ability to distil the essence of socialist thinking on a wide range of matters so it could be understood by the average layman – in bars, on buses and in factories – is as [...]