A slightly different version than others of a piece by Connolly originally published in the August, 1897 issue of Dublin’s Shan Van Vocht. The S.L.P. began to positively point to and republish Connolly’s work years before they sponsored his 1902 tour of the U.S., with his writings relatively known among well-read Socialists, including through pamphlets, by 1900.

‘Patriotism and Labor’ by James Connolly from The People. Vol. 8 No. 7. May 15, 1898.

Irish Socialists—Their Timely Manifesto

The below well-drawn documents, Issued by our Comrades in Ireland, as the expression of the Irish Socialist Republican party on “Patriotism and Labor” has just now such a general and special application here that not only our American working class Irish should take it to heart but the whole working class of the land, with whose hard-earned wealth the labor-grinding class of the Helen Goulds are now indulging in displays of “superb patriotism.” Here is the document:

What is patriotism? Love of country, some one answers. But what is meant by “love of country? “The rich man,” says a French writer, “loves his country because he conceives it owes him a duty, whereas the poor man loves his country as he believes he owes it a duty.” The recognition of the duty we owe our country is, we take it, the real mainspring of patriotic action: and our “country,” properly understood, means not merely the particular spot on the earth’s surface from which we derive our parentage, but also comprises all the men, women, and children of our race whose collective life constitutes our country’s political existence. True patriotism seeks the welfare of each in the happiness of all, and is inconsistent with the selfish desire for worldly wealth, which can only be gained by the spoilation of less favored fellow-mortals.

Viewed in the light of such a definition, what are the claims to patriotism possessed by the moneyed class of Ireland? The percentage of weekly wages of £1 per week and under received by the workers of the three kingdoms is stated by the Board of Trade report to be as follows: England, 40; Scotland, 50: and Ireland, 78 per cent. In other words, three out of every four wage-earners in Ireland receive less than £1 per week. Who is to blame? What determines the rate of wages? The competition among workers for employment. There is always a large surplus of unemployed labor in Ireland, and owing to this fact the Irish employer is able to take advantage of the helplessness of his poorer fellow-countrymen, and compel them to work for less than their fellows in England receive for the same class of work. The employees of our municipal corporations and other public bodies in Ireland are compelled by our middle class town councillors–their “compatriots” to accept wages of from 4s. to 8s. per week less than English corporations pay in similar branches of public services. Irish railway servants receive from 5s. to 10s. per week less than English railway servants in the same departments, although shareholders in Irish railways draw higher dividends than are paid on the most prosperous English lines. In all private employment in Ireland the same state of matters prevails. Let us be clear upon this point. There is no law upon the statute book, no power possessed by the Privy Council, no civil or military function under the control of Prime Minister, Lord Lieutenant, or Chief Secretary, which can, does, or strives to compel the employing class in Ireland to take advantage of the crowded state of the labor market and use it to depress the wages of their workers to the present starvation level. To the greed of our moneyed class, operating upon the social conditions created by landlordism and capitalism, and maintained upon foreign bayonets, such a result is alone attributable, and no amount of protestations should convince intelligent workers that the CLASS WHICH GRINDS THEM DOWN TO INDUSTRIAL SLAVERY CAN AT THE SAME MOMENT BE LEADING THEM FORWARD TO NATIONAL LIBERTY.

It is the mission of the working class to give to patriotism a higher, nobler significance. This can only be done by our working class, as the only universal, all-embracing class, organizing as a distinct political party, recognizing in LABOR the corner stone of our economic edifice and the animating principle of our political action. Hence the rise of the Irish Socialist Republican party. We are resolved upon national independence as the indispensable ground-work of industrial emancipation, but we are equally resolved to have done with the leadership of a class whose social charter is derived from oppression.

Our policy is the outcome of long reflection upon the history and peculiar circumstances of our country. In an independent country the election of a majority of Socialist representatives to the Legislature means the conquest of political power by the revolutionary party, and consequently the mastery of the military and police forces of the State, which would then become the ally of revolution instead of its enemy. In the work of social reconstruction which would then ensue, the State power–created by the propertied classes for their own class purposes–would serve the new social order as a weapon in its fight against such adherents of the privileged orders as strove to resist the gradual extinction of their rule.

Ireland is not an independent country, but up to a certain point the progress of the Irish people towards complete freedom must lie along the same lines as those indicated, proven as they have been by the matured experience of the Socialist parties of the world. Freedom, in its fullest and only real sense, can only come by national action. The steps to be taken here, as elsewhere, are:

First, to obtain possession of all representative positions in order to concentrate the efforts and demonstrate the strength of the revolutionary forces;

and

Next, peaceably if possible, forcibly, if necessary, to conquer the powers and material resources of national government, so that the working class in possession of these powers may proceed to enforce its will upon society.

As the economic conditions which inspired the class governments of the past to make war upon the national and social liberties of mankind (in the hope of personal aggrandizement) will disappear before that universal entrance of the workers into their class inheritance, the SOCIAL REVOLUTION, in the free society of the future the subjection of one nation to another will be an organic impossibility. A vote in favor of an Irish Socialist Republic will therefore be constructively, a vote for that system of society in which the free voice of the people of each nation will be regarded as final in all matters affecting their national and international relations, and in which they will be forced into no union or alliance against their will, but will have their independence guaranteed by the enlightened self-interest of the free peoples of the Socialist Republics of the world.

But even amid the environment of the present social and political order, the adhesion at the ballot boxes of a majority of the Irish people to Socialist Republican principles would have a most important effect. Every reform Ireland has yet gained has been wrung from the fears of our rulers, and a party proceeding upon the lines indicated would excite more wholesome fear, and consequently win more reforms than would possible for any party seeking a mere re-arrangement of the British Constitution (e.g., Home Rule). Thus alike for immediate benefits and for future freedom, the Socialist Republican policy is the best, and is the only possible safeguard against all attempts to coax the workers into submission by sham measures of political freedom.

The Irish Socialist Republican party, by calling attention to evils inherent in that social system in which the British Empire is but the highest political expression, founds its propaganda upon discontent with social iniquities which will only pass away when the Empire is no more, and thus implants in all its followers an undying, ineradicable hatred of the enemy, which will remain undisturbed and unmollified by any conceivable system whatever of political quackery.

An Irish Socialist Republic ought, therefore, to be the rallying cry of all our countrymen who desire to see the union and triumph of patriotism and labor.

New York Labor News Company was the publishing house of the Socialist Labor Party and their paper The People. The People was the official paper of the Socialist Labor Party of America (SLP), established in New York City in 1891 as a weekly. The New York SLP, and The People, were dominated Daniel De Leon and his supporters, the dominant ideological leader of the SLP from the 1890s until the time of his death. The People became a daily in 1900. It’s first editor was the French socialist Lucien Sanial who was quickly replaced by De Leon who held the position until his death in 1914. Morris Hillquit and Henry Slobodin, future leaders of the Socialist Party of America were writers before their split from the SLP in 1899. For a while there were two SLPs and two Peoples, requiring a legal case to determine ownership. Eventual the anti-De Leonist produced what would become the New York Call and became the Social Democratic, later Socialist, Party. The De Leonist The People continued publishing until 2008.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/the-people-slp/980515-thepeople-v08n07.pdf