Guerrilla History - The Lost & Early Writings of James Connolly w/ Conor McCabe

Episode Date: December 6, 2024

In this exciting episode of Guerrilla History, we bring on the editor of the newly released The Lost & Early Writings of James Connolly: 1889 - 1898, a groundbreaking work that fits wonderfully within our Sources and Methods series of episodes.  Dr. Conor McCabe has done an incredible job of piecing together part of the lost James Connolly writings, and showing Connolly's engagement and adherence with Marxism, applied within the Irish national context.  You won't want to miss this conversation! This book was published by Iskra Books, which means that in addition to the book being available as a beautiful print edition, the PDF is also available for free at iskrabooks.org.  Of course download the PDF, but do also consider picking up a physical copy to support Iskra in their project of publishing revolutionary works and making them as accessible and freely available as possible! Conor McCabe is a historian, author, and scholar specializing in labor history, Irish socialism, and radical political movements. His extensive research has brought new insights into the intersections of class, colonialism, and economic power in Ireland. In addition to the Connolly book discussed today, he also has written Sins of the Father: Tracing the Decisions That Shaped the Irish Economy and has multiple projects ongoing.  Keep up to date with him on his website, and be sure to follow him on twitter @CMacCaba Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory 

You remember Den Bamboo? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to Gorilla History, the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckimacki, unfortunately not joined by my usual co-host today, Professor Adnan Hussein, who of course is a historian and the director of School of Religion at Queens University in Ontario, Canada, is unable to join us today.

He's off giving a lecture at Berkeley that he was invited for and hopefully on the show. soon we'll be able to hear about that lecture. It's talking about the crusading society and imperialism, so something that I'm sure, listeners, you all will want to hear more about and something that we've chatted about on our Patreon a bit before, as well as in other episodes. But in any case, without Adnan, we still have a terrific guest about a really fascinating and important,

and in many ways, groundbreaking, new book. But before I introduced the guest and this work, want to remind you listeners that you can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this by going to patreon.com forward slash gorilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-L-A history. And you can keep up to date with everything that Adnan and I are doing individually as well as collectively by following us on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod. That's again, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A underscore pod. So, as I mentioned, we have a really terrific guest today about a groundbreak new book. We're joined by Connor McCabe, who's a historian, author, and scholars specializing

in labor history, Irish socialism and radical political movements. He's the author of several works, including Sins of the Father, tracing the decisions that shaped the Irish economy, and he is the editor and introducer of a fabulous new book, which will be the topic of today's discussion, The Lost and Early Writings of James Connolly, 1889 to 1898, which is freshly out from Iskra Books, which of course, listeners, I am on the editorial board of. Connor, it's lovely to have you on the show. How are you doing today? I'm good. Thanks, Henry.

But, you know, that's terrific. I'm happy to have you here. Before we talk about this work, and we kind of game planned a bit, we're going to have roughly three sections of this conversation, listening. which will focus on who Connolly was the state of historical treatments of Connolly and portrayals of Connolly and then the works that are included within this terrific new work. So be sure to stick around for all of it because there's a lot of material that we're going to be covering here. Before we get to these three topics, though, Connor, I did briefly read your bio, but I'm

wondering if you can tell the listeners a little bit more about yourself and how you got involved in radical politics and the sort of work that you do? Yeah, I mean, the background on my kind of, my sphere in kind of virtual radical circles is more in terms of kind of research and kind of education. So it's kind of, it's working with kind of grassroots kind of groups, trade unions, parties kind of sometimes, you know, who are, you know, who are looking for kind of radical change in, in in Ireland so I kind of bring like you know those skills

then it's kind of wider kind of pot you know so it's kind of research skills and then kind of you know kind of education so that's my main kind of area in terms of kind of James Connolly I mean in in Ireland

by Connolly is he's he's known by his surname it's just Connolly you know he is a he's he's quite a famous kind of character in kind of of Irish history. But in terms of his

more radical kind of Marxist kind of writings, they tend to get kind of sidelined. So this book is a way of kind of trying to rediscover those kind of very kind of Marxist kind of writings by James Connolly and also trying to give him back his voice because we'll probably get into this later on. His works have not only They haven't been, well, censored would be too strong at word, but they've been edited in such a way to kind of back on a certain arguments rather than letting Connolly's arguments kind of stand for themselves.

So the project itself is to try and do something that the Irishman radicals have been talking about for 110 years, and that is to publish the kind of complete writings of James Connolly. And it's never been done. So this is the kind of first volume of trying to achieve that. That's a terrific overview of, you know, the broad scope of the conversation that we're going to be having. I want to turn towards that first portion in terms of who James Connolly was because while I'm sure that we've talked about James Connolly in passing on various episodes of guerrilla history, I'm thinking back as to what episodes those were, but I do know that we have talked about Connolly in the past.

We don't have any episodes that are devoted to Connolly or even to the Ivers struggle, which would have quite extensive discussion of Connolly in it. So some of our listeners, I'm sure most of our listeners are familiar with the name, but I'm sure some of our listeners probably would like a little bit more of a background on who Connolly was. So can you start this conversation off by telling us a little bit about who James Conley was, what the political milieu was that he was raised in, what the conditions were like in the place where he was raised. I know that he had several moves through his life and his involvement with politics, his influences, all of these sorts of things. Just give us kind of a broad sketch of Conley. We might dive in a little bit deeper with specific questions, but, you know, give us that broad sketch first. Sure. He was one of the leaders of the 1916 uprising against kind of British rule in Ireland. And that's pretty much where his kind of space in like history is like seeing. So he was born in Edinburgh in 1868 of the Irish parents. He grew up in a part of Edinburgh called Cowgate. And he was born in Edinburgh. It was. it was very much

the Irish kind of part of Edinburgh and his father worked for the city council as a

as a kind of street cleaner and Connolly himself kind of followed in this kind of role as like later on

in like 1890 we start seeing him getting involved in terms of radical kind of politics himself and he's brother John. His brother John was about six years older than him.

And they are in the thick of of kind of socialist and kind of Marxist, like activism in Edinburgh in the 1890s. If there's any group being organized, they're in it. If there are street demos being organized,

they're there. And while he was working, like as a character, he was also engaged in kind of street talks and then writing as well. So we start seeing him through kind of letters he's writing into the,

into the Berescan newspapers. So the earliest kind of piece of writing we have by him is from 18901 and it's an article he wrote called What is Wealth? And he lays out a pretty strong and cogent Marx's reading of money and finance.

He would have been 23 years of age at this time and so when we meet him forth in terms of its history we're meeting an already seasoned quite articulate Marxist socialist

who's working who's you know he was agitating in Edinburgh in the early kind of 1890s and by 1895 he's trying to make a living as a full-time kind of activist so he's given talks

he's doing some kind of party work so he's getting paid for that but things aren't going too well for him by this stage he has he's married and has a kind of young family and he decides to move back then to Ireland

and to Dublin itself so he arrives in Dublin in 1896 and helps form the Irish Socialist Republican Party which is the first fully kind of Marxist party in Ireland. In 1998 he sets up his own newspaper

and even though he is based in Dublin he's still heavily involved in Scottish politics. By 1903 there are kind of disagreements in the party that he had helped form and he is bolted out of his own party so he leaves for the US so he at that stage he had strong kind of contacts with the Social Labour Party of America

and ends up kind of working as an activist with them and then by 19 he settles in New York and he's based there then in like New Jersey but it's in the New York and the area but he always wants

to get back back to Ireland so in 1910 him and his family moved back then to Dublin and then to Belfast

he gets involved in like trade union politics or sorry trade unionism in the US he works for the IWW while he's in the US he learns

he learns Italian to try and kind of to work with Italian migrant workers on the Docks Inn at New York he's quite proud of his of his fluency and he wrote some articles

well he translated articles you know like from Italian into English then as well but by 1910 he's back then in Dublin and he gets involved in a trade union that had been on a set up there called

the Irish transport and kind of general workers union that was being led by another big figure in Irish labour history and that is kind of Jim Larkin. In 1913 there's a

there's a lockout of like tram workers and other workers in the city and Dublin descends into out and out class war for about five months it makes kind of work

kind of headlines so this class war it being kind of fall out in like Dublin and it's over at the right of the union to like unionise and there's a lockout to stop them at the same time because of the brutal kind of reaction from the state

from the police they formed their own citizen army so as a worker's kind of militia that is set up eventually led by Connolly himself and by 1914 the World War breaks out Ireland is part of the UK

and even though it is part of the UK there's no move to bring in conscription because the British government knew that this would lead to it would probably lead more to an insurrection than to actually people kind of join in up

at the same time there's a parallel a nationalist kind of movement and Connolly always had links with them and there are plans identified for an armed kind of insurrection and connolly takes part in this he is um it it it takes place in easter 1916 um they take over various parts of the city it lasts for about six days uh during the the fighting connolly is wounded twice

a once in the shoulder it was a flesh wound but then more seriously he's injured in his leg and he can't stand anymore they surrender and the British government starts then

to execute the leaders I commonly because of his illness is the last to be shot and he's shot sitting down so there's an image they're famous kind of image although kind of

no photograph it was taken the image is off kind of Conley like in the chair as he's then going to execute it so when he was executed it was 12 to make the 1916 Conley enters into

Irish history but he enters into the mainstream public Irish history as an Irish kind of martyr and that's that is where his legacy or his kind of vision has been contested kind of

ever since so we have there's a nationalist or imperialist kind of strand to an Irish nationalism and then there's

an equally anti-imperialist and nationalist kind of strand and conde but it was very much in the latter and so

that's pretty much I suppose an overview of the of the man himself which I realise now is

is a extremely simplistic, so I'm sorry. That's absolutely fine. And you know, you mentioned that there's these portrayals of him by various strands within Irish society and the way in which his image is utilized. Before we get to that, though, I am curious about, so of course I'm not a scholar of Connolly, but, you know, I do read it about Connolly. It seems to me like there are some points in his life where it's particularly difficult

to keep track of like where he is and what actions he's doing and what work he's doing and things like this. And then other moments he pops up. You notice him for a couple of months or even a couple of years. And then again, he kind of fades and you don't really notice what's going on or where he even is at some points. So I'm curious as somebody who is more of a scholar of Conley, what it is like to try to put together the story of his all too short life, where we have these big gaps in the historical record in terms of what was going on. And then also kind of as a related question, how these gaps then allow for some twistings of the image of him, which we'll talk about a little bit later. It seems to me, again, as somebody who's not a scholar of Connolly,

that by having these gaps in the historical record, it makes it that much easier to distort the image because you don't have this continuity from the beginning of life until the end of life where you can see the constant track, you can see the interactions with people, you can see the engagement with certain works, certain scholars, certain writers. So it does leave that bit open. I'm curious as to how you engage with that missing record and then how you analyze the impact of that missing record. Yeah, like maybe just to kind of can outline why I think it's worth

why I kind of, you know, have spent so many months and years kind of research and Connolly. Like for me, there are two things that are quite core to Connolly that make them irrelevant and, you know, and important but to read even today

the first is that he's a Marxist in Ireland in the 1900s at a time when there's a very strong anti-colonial

anti-imperial anti-imperialist kind of movement in the state or sorry in the country and what kind of brings to

that kind of national movement is a Marxist is a Marxist understanding of that imperialism

in the colonial setting. So what you get in in Connolly's writings when he's writing about kind of Irish society and Irish kind of class relations is that he identifies that part of the middle class who, although our kind of separatist and want to break with Britain, don't want to break with the empire. So they want kind of political separation, but they don't want imperial kind of separation and they don't want imperial kind of separation

and they don't want economic to change in any way or form the highly extractive colonial economic like processes that are going on. So Connolly brings

a kind of Marxist lens to that and when he does he sees that the Irish nationalism in a colonial setting is absolutely necessary for any kind of anti-colonial, anti-imperist kind of struggle. This is something that the other Marxists have also come to a conclusion in the so-called kind of global self

in the wake of the First World War and then in the Second World War then as well. Conley also comes to this kind of conclusion, but a nice kind of context and does so in the 1890s and doesn't lose it. in kind of any way, shape or form, you know, from the 1890s up until his kind of execution. So it's not that, it's, so even though kind of James Connolly is part of the nationalist kind of pantheon in Ireland, because he has to be, he's, he's, you know, he's executed, he's a maritor, he's part of the, of the great kind of pantheon. There are train stations and the yoke named after him and, like, statues, you know, in the city. And what's not celebrated is that anti-imperialist anti-colonial, you know, kind of analysis that Connolly kind of put forward.

And for me, that's, that's crucial because what he's doing there is that he's telling us something about actually existing Irish but capitalism in the 1890s and also even today then as well. And so for me, that's what's key then to him. And that's what I find in the writings, you know, Kandar as well. And because he is, you know, Ireland has that somewhat, you know, strange kind of history in that, like, it has a, if one of a better phrase, it's a, it's a clunky phrase. I don't really like it, but if one of a better one, you know, Ireland has this kind of global south history, but in a global north location. so it's a it's in this kind of strange space in terms of all of kind of capitalism but because of that it can offer I think great insights into the nature and kind of dynamic of kind of British kind of capitalism because British capitalism needs this kind of colonial extractive space so so close to the core

and what does that tell us about how it how how actually operates and that's what Connolly's doing you know he's analysing a British, you know, in Britishmen capitalism, its extractive kind of policies in terms of Ireland. And then also those those very particular

colonial class relations which emerge out of that setting. And I'd be in many ways kind of following Marx and Engels themselves, in the last kind of 15, like 20 years of all of their own writings, went from seeing Ireland, simply as just as the garden of or the pasture land of like England to actually an

a very important space of colonial resistance. Connolly also kind of has that kind of view, but as an Irishman nationalist himself wants to kind of see that from a working class perspective. So I think like before we get into the writings and into his history, As to why he's even worth while, you know, kind of talk about, like, today. I think that's it because, like, for me, like, that's where I study is kind of archival capitalism. It's what I write kind of books about. So when I read kind of James Connolly, I'm seeing him writing about this kind of intermediary middleman, compador class in Ireland. He's telling us if they, if and when we have an independence, if they have their way,

they will shape this new state in their own image. And I know from our history that is kind of precisely kind of what happens. So I see Connolly kind of writing about kind of artisan capitalism in the 1890s, and I see a direct kind of link with what he's kind of describing. And then Ireland there's a tax haven today. Yeah, I think that that's all wonderful. And, you know, you put out a couple of things that I'm going to try to thread into the next topic. So you've mentioned a few times already that.

Connolly was a Marxist operating within the Irish context. You talk about, you mentioned that Marx and Engels were thinking more about the Ireland question, the Irish question towards their later careers. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about Connolly's engagement. And of course, we also will be talking about this when we talk about what's included in this book. But can you talk a little bit about Connolly's engagement with the writings of Marx and angles and how Marx and Engels analysis of the Irish question in their later writings,

how that influenced his political thought, because in the next part, we're going to be talking about the way in which Connolly is portrayed in this kind of Marxist underpinning of his politics, the Marxist base of his politics is often shorn from his legacy and shorn from the way that he is portrayed, and by many, in lieu of this kind of national trade unionist persona, whereas, you know, as you'll discuss, that there is a Marxist base for his politics. So can you talk a little bit about his engagements with the writings of Marx, angles, and particularly how their writings on the Irish question perhaps influenced his. thought, particularly in those early years, because as you mentioned early on, he had already

had a Marxist analysis in his very, very young age when he was first starting his political writing. Sure. I think that's the most kind of, it's the most kind of fascinating and it's somewhat frustrating parts of this book is that what I can see is that Conley's part of it of a, of a Marxist group in Edinburgh from the from at least kind of 1890 onwards

called this Scottish Socialist Confederation and they are having like party meetings and kind of talks and like group meetings weekly

in their rooms and sometimes in their own kind of houses and wherever they are talking about we don't have records off because we don't have the minutes of of their kind of meetings.

We do have at the minutes of the meetings of the of the of our socialist Republican Party, which is absolutely fascinating. So it's just like seven-year, you know, kind of a weekly kind of minutes of their meetings and kind of what they're reading. But in terms of the, of when he's still in kind of Edinburgh, he's part of a group of like Irish kind of emigres,

as Scott's Obligarish parents who were analysing their own kind of situation but also kind of analysing kind of Ireland as well in the kind of reading group but what we get from that then

is that from around kind of 1895 onwards we can see Connolly or that group and then commonly as the writer then for them putting forward what we would kind of see now as an anti-colonial anti-Pierce kind of Marxism.

In terms of what he's reading by Marx and like Angles, we can see from some of the quotes that he's using, from some of the references, that it's wages, its wages, their prices and profit, it's capital itself, it's the Combscan manifesto, it's angles and the history of the family.

So what I find interesting is that at that point, not all of what we would say, seen now as being kind of Marx and Engst's kind of writings on Ireland had been published. But what I think is good are kind of really kind of healthy is that Connolly

and that group are able to take a Marxist kind of methodology and apply it to the wrong kind of reality. And I think that's what's been in the Belgium. And I think that's where the innovation really kind of comes from. You know, same as other kind of Marxists

and, you know, in various other kind of countries all across the world as well. It wasn't that Marx has been prescriptive to them in terms of this is what Artin is like. They're able to take that kind of methodology and that way of seeing the world and that way of kind of analyzing their own kind of reality and then applying it to the United States context

and seeing how different those classes that are being formed in the Dutch kind of colonial setting are different to the ones that have been formed in England and in the English core kind of setting. And I think that's this big on innovation.

So he him and his group, they identify this middleman compador dynamic in the Irish kind of middle class and see that as something that definitely needs to be challenged

and that they are the core of his kind of obvious kind of opposition at their onwards. So that's where I find kind of, you know, that's where I think his own kind of intelligence and his own

his own brilliance kind of comes to mind because he's taking, he's not just following the English kind of Marxist kind of route. He's taking kind of Marxism and he's applying it in a very creative way to the Irish kind of live in reality. He's doing what Marxists should be doing.

He's looking at the material is kind of, at the material conditions while using this wonderful intellectual kind of methodology to analyze those facts in order to change that world. Yeah, I think that that's really important to lay out because as I say quite frequently on this show, a Marxism is not a gospel. No, no. Marxism is a methodology, as you point out. And it's all about in order to actually get some material benefit from utilizing Marxism, you have to adapt it to local conditions and the historical moment in which you're operating in the material conditions that are operating within that historical

moment. That's why individuals who are utilizing but adapting Marxist methodology for local conditions, like Phnom, like Rodney, these are the key, you know, Mao, Lennon, they are all adapting Marxism as a methodology for local conditions and given the historical moment, which they find themselves. That is how you should be using Marxism. It's not just a gospel that you read a quote from and now, boom, you have socialism. There's some people that have this tendency that they think, you know, if they know all of the quotes of Marx and they can utilize these quotes when arguing with people online that they have achieved something, that's the practice

of quotation. And unfortunately, that is not how you achieve a political end. It is utilizing it within the context in which you're operating to achieve some revolutionary potentiality. Yeah, and like, you know, even, even, even Conley himself, I mean, you know, he has, he has suffered, his writings have, have, have, have suffered from that since he's on execution. Like, Conley is, in Ireland anyway, Connolly is one of the most quoted, at least read figures in the Irish history. He's the most quoted, but he's the least read. You know, because people are just like using him, the great martyr, to just fling outside each other, trying to prove or discprove.

They're already preconceived and very narrow kind of views as to materiality in LaGarland. You know, I'm super happy you brought that up because it's directly related to my next question, which is the way in which Connolly is portrayed and the way in which treatments of Connolly have been put together and edited in some ways and edited for specific means. So, can you talk a bit about the way in which Connolly is typically portrayed, and I understand that he's portrayed in different ways by different factions of people, but what is kind of the, I don't want to use the word hegemonic, but what is the mainstream view of Connolly within Ireland and perhaps even outside of Ireland? I know that I had mentioned previously this idea of associating him with trade unionism and trade unionism alone.

Can you talk a bit about what the portrayal of him is? And then also these treatments of Connolly in text form and the flaws that you point out in these sorts of treatments and maybe not unintentional flaws in some cases. These are flaws to advance a specific political view of Connolly in order to utilize that image of the martyr for various political ends that aren't necessarily what Connolly himself had said or would have said if he was able to. to just put his own words into print directly. So can you talk a bit about those past treatments and the way that he is portrayed and then that will lead into why this project that you undertook was so important?

Yeah, if maybe just give a brief kind of overview of the history kind of itself, in terms of the Garish history, what we talk about, like, at the moment, is from we, it's part of the consensus that from 1913 which is the start of the lockout,

the local lockout at the domestic earlier on where you see you know incredible kind of class war vicious and bloody class war being fought out in Dublin.

From 1913 onto about 1924 or 23 is that's considered that's known as the revolutionary period in a garage history. So Connolly is

is a huge part of that. But what you have is in 1801 Ireland is the entire kind of Ireland of Ireland is broad into the UK and the UK is formed as political

elegantly. There was a Celtic rebellion in 1798 with tens of thousands killed on but how Britain kind of handles that pressure is that it brings Ireland that

had its own kind of parliament it brings it forcefully into the UK so there's a there's a movement to repeal the active union that is it that's kind of set up what you get in 1922

is is or yeah in 22 is a treaty being formed after a short war of like independence it is a treaty formed between the Irish kind of rebels and and the British government and this causes a a civil war and there are there are parts of the of the garish nationalism that that I agree with its terms of it and

the side that wins out on that kind of civil war with kind of British guns they were backed by Churchill and Churchill made sure that that this new kind of Irish they had like British guns for it. What emerges from that? Like those who are in charge is the very class that Connolly had like warned about saying that they should never be left in charge. And this is your kind of middleman

and a compador kind of class up the middle classes. So what you get in like 1923 kind of 24 is this is that the island is like partitioned. the north stays in the UK and the South, which is now the Republic, that's called a kind of free state. But it's critical illegal independence only. So Ireland's currency is still linked with sterling. Its main export and import a business is still with Britain and and this free flow of people as well. So Ireland is exporting three things to like Britain in the 1920s, 30s and up to the 60s.

It's cattle, it's live cattle, it's people and its capital, its funds that are being transferred over. And there's a class in Ireland that benefited from this and they're the ones who are carving out this new state. this problem now because as they talk about the pantheon of the great leaders you have all this kind of nationalist kind of leaders who they can kind of can live with and then you have James

Connolly who is he was one of them so he's everything which they kind of despise he's a trade unionist he's a socialist he's a political he's a political agitator and he's a Marxist as well so

what do you do with the problem of like James Connolly. Well, you have to try and kind of bring them into your narrative because you can't and reject them, but you don't want to take all those other parts on those other criticisms that had been going to put forward. So they left out. So what's taken from like James Connolly is that, you know,

he was a socialist, but then he became a nationalist in the last months of his life. That is their way of not dealing with his anti-colonial, anti-imperial kind of, you know, kind of his anti-colonial anti-imperish nationalism, which was heavily informed and framed by his Marxist kind of reading of the actual kind of relations of the production on the island. So they have to try and sanitise them. This goes for the trade union movement as well. the Irish Trade Union movement

as a movement as you know in its kind of totality was and still is quite conservative and took its its main impetus

from Catholic social teaching rather than from socialism and said it not kind of Marxism so rare them no varum the Pope's kind of in cyclical of the duties

of the capital and ag labor you get a kind of corporateist a quasi kind of corporatist trade union kind of movement operating in the south in the 20s, 30s and 40s and the 50s. So they have a problem

as well to how did they deal with James Connolly. He was extremely kind of critical of this way of doing things. How do you do it is that they truncate his words. So they cut out as much as they can from his kind of writings and they print kind of selectively

parts of his writings with they can live with rather than agree with. His writings are in, after his death, his writings fall into two kind of main kind of blocks. There are his books and his pamphlets, these remaining in a circulation. But then there's hundreds of articles and letters and speeches which are kept in the archive of the head of the Irish and Trade Union movement really at that time who was kind of William O'Brien who knew Conno Connolly and I was a member

of the ISRP so the articles the letters the speeches they're held back in terms of being of being published including kind of today so they still haven't and when you see

some of the writings of his articles that were published we can see how Connolly's writings were changed were censored were cut to take as much of the socialism and the Marxism out of his writings as they possibly could

and there's also a move to reinvent James Connolly as a trade unionist and really as a as really as a trade unionist and to try and kind of take away from its kind of political or more kind of street kind of activism and it is quite, it's somewhat kind of successful until the 1970s and the rise of the, and the outbreak of

what's known in Ireland as the Troubles which is the events in the north of from 1968 and onwards and the rise of the original kind of the guerr and the battles

that have gone on there there is a rediscovery of sorts of that kind of James Connolly but he still remains somewhat kind of problematic because it's not that if what he was saying about Ireland was purely historical,

there wouldn't be such a need to truncate his words. It's because he is talking about those type of class relations, those kind of colonial class relations, which have been reproduced in the Southern Irish Day through its

institutional forms, through its institutions since 1920 that make him so problematic on it today. And because of that, because Ireland is this quite old compador capitalist state

I think it is worthy of study from it to actually see what does an intergenerational compitore kind of capital state

actually look like you know so that's why I think his words are it is kind of it is kind of problematic for let's say

mainstream institutional um like organizations to deal with his memory because what he's talking about is it is still quite relevant to the kind of capitalist kind of dynamics of the Irish state itself and its relationship with transnational and capital. Can you talk about any of the specific? So one of the things that really was

interesting from reading your introduction of the book was the fact that some of these treatments of Conley, like you mentioned, omit large chunks of his actual words. They'll either cut individual words, they'll cut sentences or in some cases they'll cut entire paragraphs out of his writings. But the interesting thing is how these additions of Connolly, and I'm putting of Connolly in quotations because, you know, if you're omitting large portions of the messages, it actually Connolly at this point. But these specific treatments of Connolly get perpetuated cyclically, and they get perpetuated by various other scholars through time to the extent where if you look for specific passages of Connolly, no matter where you look, you're going to find

the exact same addition with those omissions present within that. And what that leads to is that there is almost this acceptance that this is the true Connolly because of the fact that the same the same wording is used across so many different treatments but in reality as you point out they originate from a few original sources and then even when further work is done where they are going back into the archives and finding additional things from Connolly or republishing old articles that he had written or whatever when it comes to some of these things that were previously published they just lift those previously published bits from these flawed treatments of Connolly perpetuating that addition of that, even in new works.

So can you talk a little bit about, I mean, specifically, how some of these early treatments of Connolly, I know that you talked about the process of it, but can you talk a little bit about the specifics of, you know, who was doing this towards what political ends? If you have any specific examples of how things were being removed, that would be excellent. I don't know if you have anything on hand. You know, it just came to my mind. But then also discuss how this perpetuation of these flawed treatments of Connolly perpetuates itself down the line up until pretty much the present.

Yeah. In terms of those articles, of his around 600 or 700 of articles that he wrote over his lifetime, they were kept, his personal archive was passed on to, no, it ended up in the hands. of this figure called Buck Billiam O'Brien, he becomes a quite central figure to our trade unionism.

He sees quite right wing. He's very conservative. He hates Jim Larkin and he probably would have sidelined kind of Jim Connolly if he could, but because the fact that he's a martyr,

he has to deal with him somehow. So from 1948 until 1951, he brought out three, volumes of kind of of James Connolly's articles and like writings and I think the sample of of some of the stuff that was taken out

that I'm talking about now there's an article by kind of by James Connolly it's one of his most famous ones it's one of his first kind of quoted ones and he it's called socialism and like nationalism which you wrote for an Irishman newspaper called Shantan Vacht

It's the old, it's the old Irish woman, it's the old woman. And he wrote it in, or it's published in January 1897. And it is, you know, he lays out this idea that, which was not, which was certainly not of the mainstream in English or British kind of social circles, that the Ireland needs to have its own kind of independence. So he tackles this in in James Conn's kind of like usual way he tackles the problem kind of head on so he writes this article

called socialism and nationalism and when William O'Brien kind of published it he took out as much like there's one paragraph here that he took out there from that so

what he was a what can William O'Brien published was just a quote from it. It will apparently there's a line here where Connolly says

it may be pleaded that the ideal of a socialist republic implying as it does a complete political and economic revolution

would be sure to alienate all our middle class and aristocratic sympathizers who would dread the loss of their privileges

and property. So it's quite bland, you know isn't really kind of saying anything there. But there's a missing section to that. And what was taken out was Conley's definition

as to what a socialist republic for Ireland would look like. So what Connolly wrote himself was, he may be pleaded that the ideal of a socialist republic implying as it does a complete political and economic revolution, that is, investing the entire ownership of land, railways, machinery and instruments of labour generally in the hands of those who use them in town and country to be controlled by their own associations,

really elected on a basis of perfect equality and universal suffrage, subordinate to and represented in the Democratic Congress of an independent Irish state. All completely kind of taken out because that would have been extremely problematic for a quite conservative trade union movement in 1940s conservative Catholic Ireland.

The problem today is that in the early 2000s when the James County writings were put up on Marxist.org unfortunately they were taken from it's the edited versions that were in the main it's not all but for many of the articles

it's the edited ones by William McBride that are up online and not the actual original kind of words so where so that part here where kind of James Connolly puts flesh in the bones to what he means by an Irish social public that was taken out and it's still missing from that there as well and there are dozens of examples of these

I mean in the volume I have here that I did there are 50 pieces of like writings by kind of James Connolly in them 18 of them were ones that were previously unknown, they were lost so these are brand new writings that no one knew about that I was able to source

another 17 of them are ones that were kind of printed but only printed in part with bits kind of taken out usually parts that would relate to what a social kind of public would look like and then there are the other writings that that Walker

published then in full so just as one kind of example I mean that was one example of the type of stuff where this quite conservative kind of trade union movement is having to deal with a Marxist in a very conservative Catholic

state that is operating under you know not so much kind of fascist but definitely corporateist lines you know it's it's been wrong on these kind of corporatist, you know, kind of viewpoints. And you don't want these arguments being kind of

put forward in terms of this is what kind of people should be fighting for. So the project in terms of these writings is not just to bring together all these writings in like one volume. One is to publish

writings that have been lost. And then secondly, it's to publish in full writings that have been cut and are kind of censored over kind of decades. And unfortunately, they remain so even online. You know, that omission is absolutely remarkable to hear that that was cut out because as you mentioned, that kind of is the main point, you know, when you're talking about what is an Irish socialist republic. If you cut out what an Irish socialist republic is, what is really the point of the other bet. So that is remarkable. And I'm really happy.

that you had that on hand. So thanks for, you know, being on the ball, Connor, because I did not warn you that I was going to ask that. But I do want to turn now, so you mentioned that this was kind of the origin of your project in terms of the necessity of it. So can you talk, now we'll turn to the book at hand. Can you talk a little bit about how you decided to go about working with this project? You know, you talked a little bit about the impetus for the project earlier, but I'm thinking more in terms of the digging up of these lost or original writings of Connolly that either haven't been published before or have been published but in omitted form or edited form and not the original Connolly. What was that work like in terms of trying to find

and source these original documents that you then include in this book? You know, what did you have to do? How did you verify these sorts of things? I should mention for the listeners. This is very much within our sources and methods series talking about how history is done. So, Connor, just take it away. Tell us about what you had to go through in order to get this project underway. Well, the starting point was what's known as the William O'Brien Archive that's in the National Library in Dublin. So even though it's called the William O'Brien Archive, it contains the James Connolly Archive. It was a just filed under kind of William O'Brien's name.

But William O'Brien, Brian, being a good bureaucrat, kept meticulous kind of notes. And he, when he was working on his volumes, on his kind of three volumes of Connolly's writings, what he did was that. He listed all the known articles by Connolly, and it's a list of 577. So for me, that was my baseline.

was to just go to, like, he lists the title, the, it's the newspaper, it's in the date and the year of publication. So it's an extremely useful list of 20 pages or so of these 500 and 77 articles. So that was my baseline. So my first job was to source all of them, then go to the originals and then transcribe from the original documents that meant going to archives in Dublin in Ireland to Edinburgh in Scotland and to London in England

I was able to find some of the... I was able to find a lot of the US kind of writings because he lived four or seven years in the US and Connolly is someone who just couldn't stop writing he just couldn't stop writing. He's a natural writer and he just, he had to have that output. But because the newspaper

of the Social Slave Party of America has been more or less digitized, I was able then to source the American kind of writings. So what it did first of all was I start from 1893, which was the earliest kind of article

that William of Brian kind of mentioned. up to 1916, which is the last thing he wrote, which was his statement to the court marshal that gave the guilty verdict for his kind of execution. And I transcribed all of them because I wanted to do a first draft of his kind of complete writings before I went into individual kind of volumes. So we've done one volume, 89 to 1898, it's about 10% of the writings that I have, in rough form, in the transcript. So the document itself, it's around 800,000 words. So his writings are on a par with the Bible in terms of size.

And of them around 300,000 have a printed kind of so far, so around 40%. So there's a huge chunk of the known. writings, and in fact, the majority of the known writings of James Connolly have not been republished in over 100 and like 10 years, which is startling really. But then in the, in the course of just doing the grunt work, which you do as a, you know, as a researcher and as a historian, and as you know, kind of historians, you know, historians love that grunt work. They always kind of boast about it, but we do. It's. it's one of our kind of weaknesses

is to kind of boast about how we love just to go to uninsolved like documents. So for me, this was just this is what you do. But in the course of doing that, I was coming across other writings which weren't known about. Mainly because newspapers have been kind of digitised. So because the British Library has digitised

a fair proportion of its obvious newspaper kind of holdings, I was able to just sit in a home do that kind of meticulous work that you do as a researcher but do it online and you know and like two kind of various kind of key words

misspellings of his name which is always kind of important that I don't just search for James Connolly it's the other kind of variance in terms of spellings and when I found and then like it came across a new kind of pseudonym that he used so because they were around

there was a block of short stories by James Connolly for them that I was able to link to James Connolly through the use of four kind of distinct kind of phrases that are unique to James Connolly and I was able to find these because of that 800,000 word personal that I have searched a database that I have compiled

so by going to the end that did help me in terms of finding new work because I had a breakdown of his or his entire work, his non-work there. So when that happened, so it was talking about how do you publish this? How do you get it out there? So because I found so much new stuff from 1891 until 1898,

I decided that it would probably work as a standalone kind of volume. And also just to test whether there is an interest working on James Connolly. The reason why I read them or the reason why I'm doing this kind of project, it is for my own semi kind of selfish kind of reasons

because again going back to my own kind of research which is the nature and kind of dynamic of actually existing Irish kind of capitalism. For me you know

when Marxists look at history it's not in terms of events, but it's really history, it's a canvas that allows us to observe deep social and economic forces in motion. So it's true history that you are able to observe the dynamics of the mode of production and exchange and then the very particular class relations that emerge of that mode of production and exchange. And Conley, he's our man in the 1900s. He's a Marxist in the 1900s writing precisely about these things. So by looking at his work, I'm able then to get a bigger picture of the dynamics of the Irish kind of capitalist kind of competitor kind of class even today.

So for me, that's why I want to have his writings there, because this feeds into my work in terms of Ireland and modern kind of transnational kind of capital. So by doing that, then we get this sense. then of obvious kind of work and what is kind of missing. And so that would be the main thing was to look at what was the known knowns before we moved into stuff and that isn't. And then certainly helped by modern technology like 20 years or, yeah, like 20 years ago, if I was doing on this project, I would have been doing, you know, what you would do then, which is that you would look at, you would go. go to a Markle Film kind of reader and you would go page by page by page for weeks and months at end, just working through the newspapers. We're able to do that now in a matter of days or even weeks. So part of being able even to do this in 18 months, even though it is just

for that period, is also being helped by kind of technology in the last kind of 15, 20 years. So listeners, you can tell from Connor's last answer that this is very much not the end of the project. But before I get to future directions in which this project is going to go, I just first want to remind the listeners, I haven't mentioned this yet on this episode, but I'm sure that they remember from previous guerrilla history episodes, that all Iskra books are available for free as PDFs at Iskrabbooks.org. And of course, you can pick up a physical copy wherever you get your books, depending on what country you're in. There's various options. And again, And if you go to iskerbooks.org, we have options in the U.S., the U.K., Scotland, and Ireland listed

on the page for this book specifically. So if you go to that book page, you will have some options available to you there. But, you know, if you have a local bookseller, either check out if they have it or request that they stock at. But I just want to make one flippet comment before the next question, Connor, which is Connor had said that this is, you know, in some ways a selfish thing for him. if providing this kind of resource to people a wonderful resource that we can all utilize and through a publisher that offers the PDF literally for free to anyone who wants to download

it if this is you being selfish I shudder to think of what you all being altruistic would look like so you know good on you that you think that this was selfish but well I mean like I mean well I mean like that was the clincher for me for or going wake kind of ischka books was the fact that like you know it has that that kind of

pulption kind of model of I mean the books are so elegant like dentism like it's just they are beautiful anyway so people who

who like books they'll buy them and I buy all the Ishka books because they're just so well they're so wonderful but also because it's dealing

a bit of radical text it makes those radical texts available free as like PDFs. And that for me is absolutely marvelous. I mean, like end of the day, these are not my words. These are James Connolly's.

You know, and if I want to, I can't at one point, at one end say that part of my reason for doing this is to try and undo some of the damage that has been done in the very highly edited and censored

kind of versions of these writings that are out there. I can't highlight that as a criticism and then put a paywalk in place for accessing them it would be that would be

kind of hypocritical so the Ishka kind of model is like fantastic at the same time Conley would probably

he would I know he would he would give out to me because his whole thing was you have to pay your activists

you can't if you can't do this shit on a free model And we get this kind of all the time where activists get borne out or they have to work a job in order to do their kind of activism. It's not a really consistent model medium to long term.

So by no means am I saying that work that's done by researchers, if it's radical, it should be free. No, it shouldn't. It should become sustainable. But I think that the Ishka model is because, I mean, like, the books are good and they will sell, but the PDF is free as well for those who can't cut it forward it. It's a wonderful kind of model. And for radical text, it should be the kind of default set, I think, anyway. Yeah, I mean, I'm happy that you say that is somebody who is, you know, everybody that works at Iskra is, I say works, is a volunteer. Yeah.

So it's wonderful for us to hear that the people that choose to work. with us are doing so because of the sort of model that we set out in terms of liberating this sort of knowledge and allowing it to be as accessible as we can possibly make it. But at the same time, you know, keeping in mind that we do need, you know, if we sell things, of course, we want to compensate those who do the labor on that. But anyway, I was more or less making a flippant point that, you know, this is a selfish project of yours. You being altruistic is truly a terrifying thought.

But I do want to tend to what's actually in this book. So, you know, you unearth quite a few new Connolly texts and you restore many others. Can you talk a little bit about what can be gleaned specifically from the passages that are present within this book? Because, you know, as the title would suggest and as the listeners, I'm sure have figured out, this is the early part of James Connolly's writings. Can you talk about what we can find in this text that is new, either because the entire document is new or because you have restored something that was previously shorn away from Connolly's original message?

What can we be gleaning from these early writings about James Connolly's political thought, but then also about what James Connolly was analyzing itself? I think, like, for me, kind of what is, like, one of the things that is, that is definitely, but not new, but it's definitely kind of important, it's just, it's just how, how much of a funny writer he was, you know, he was, he was quite witty. One of the things about having, there were bureaucratic trade unionists edit your work is that you turn the person of your editing into a dower, bureaucratic, trade unionists, edit your work is that you turn the person of your editing into a dower, bureaucratic. trade unionists, you're, you know, they, they, like the image of like, like, Connolly is not no for his wit in terms of, like, in Ireland anyway, and he's extremely witty. He's extremely funny. There are, there, there, there were moments when, you know, like, like, I would kind of laugh out loud because, like, you know, like, it, in many ways, kind of like Marx himself.

I mean, like Marx has, we, well, no. I was literally just going to say that, Connor. It's like people say Marx is dry and then you read Marx and you laugh. If you read his like like read kind of Marxist's kind of journalism like even the Civil War in France. Like you know like you know like he is just and I can't

have that as well as sharp, biting you know and like quite witty. So that's why I think you know can really like and that's not me saying that you know one of the things about this as well is that I'm able to talk freely about

what I see James Connolly asked because I haven't censored his words I'll stand or fall on my analysis because everything I found is in this book

everything every letter every article every speech every secondary report and every new snippet that I could possibly find it's all there

to try and give a complete kind of picture that won't be possible due to size constraints or the violence going forward it'll have to be just his writings and maybe his speeches but

we put everything in so then that then frees me up because like then I'm going to say well listen my conno is based on my reading of what I's here I am confident enough in that reading that I don't have to change his words or to cut them in order to prove myself right

you know but that was the main thing was that like you know he is he's quite witty he's here he's quite funny and also like one of the things that we like one of the debates that is held in again this is in terms of Ireland is that

was commonly a socialist or was he a nationalist and it's an either or kind of type of thing and what you see and there's an argument even among kind of you know left kind of scholars is that he lost his path

his socialist path in like 15 and he fell in with a bad crowd he wore these kind of nationalists and then he had this kind of nationalist uprising. And I'm missing that in a colonial kind of setting it's an imperative

you have to be nationalists, you have to become a separatist because the state that's there is completely kind of tied in it's in with the imperialist a colonial kind of nature of the state that is that you're part of.

What Connolly argues quite forcefully, and he's not divorced and he said he wasn't the last, is that in a colonial setting you need to be an anti-imperi, York and nationalism demands

that it is anti-imperialist and it's anti-colonial. And this is the theme that runs through Connolly's writings in this volume. It's him trying to convince English kind of socialists that he's not being

a sectarian kind of nationalist by calling a fork in separation and also trying to explain to conservative or to even kind of seemingly kind of radical kind of nationalists in Ireland that you cannot be radical really and you can't be a radical kind of separatist

unless you can tackle the imperialist nature of the colonial dynamic that routes itself through Ireland so what we get from them is that like I mean in the in the introduction I praise some

I place kind of commonly in the canon of people like the Cabal and Amel and so forth you know who also made these arguments and also keenly kind of you know keenly kind of understood that in a colonial situation

where there is an imperialist biodynamic, it demands a nationalist, stroke, and separatist element to your socialism. It demands it because that is, that's the reality of the actually existing mode of production and exchange, and very crucially,

it is part of the, of the, very particular class relations, which are kind of colonial, that have kind of emerged out of this. Like from 1920 years onwards, like Mao and the Chinese kind of, you know, the Communist Party developed a theoretical framing for this, which is kind of a compador kind of theory and this kind of compador kind of class. In terms of that element of the mental class, who may be kind of nationalist or also pro-imperialist. and you have to watch them. What happens in Ireland is that that class,

which Mao kind of warns his fellow communist and other kind of nationalists in China about they take over in Ireland in like 1920 and they form that state. So we get a sense of kind of what will happen if they're allowed. So for me, that's what's important is that there is no early or late kind of James Connolly from around 1895 onwards.

He has come to the kind of core elements of his thinking are more or less there. And from then on, he is, he's working within a theoretical template that he has developed among himself and among him and his brother and his kind of group that they can develop pretty much on their own, if more to see, because it's not coming from the mainstream. a form of a better word, British kind of social movement. Apart from people like Gerhardy, who's head of the Independent Labour Party,

in Britain, he was quite supportive of James Connolly in setting up an independent socialist Republican Party in Ireland, even though it would seem to go against this idea of an

of an old rock but you know confederation so I think you know that for me is what's important

is that even even in terms of kind of Marxist kind of thinking and it's

it's very like it's very interesting seeing this Marxist in in Ireland in this kind

of hybrid semi-colonial messed up kind of fucked up kind of you know electronic

and he's analyzing from a Marxist kind of you know kind of perspective

what he's seeing and then he's partner, then back to us. It's a one way kind of conversation, but it's a very useful one. So, yeah, I mean, like, that's what I think is, is kind of quite kind of interesting about the whole work. Have I ranted on there too much? No such thing is ranting too much on this show, Connor. Literally no such thing. We love that. But I do, I do want to talk a little bit about,

you know, you mentioned that you were coming up with all of this new material, some of which you knew you were going to be coming up with and some which, you know, in your process of digging up things that were intended for this collection, you were finding even more and even more and even more. And now you have this huge basis of material that is for future directions that you can take this project that you've undertaken in terms of cataloging and documenting Connolly's writings and speeches and things like that. So can you talk a little bit about what are some of those future?

directions that you are planning with this work? What are some of the forms in which you're envisioning that you are going to go with this project? And can you also talk about anything that you're particularly excited about in regard to what you're coming up with that isn't within this book, but will be in some of those upcoming works within the same umbrella project? I was I had planned myself to maybe kind of take a break from Connolly after this book had like come out but sure I can't so I'm back into volume two now so so I've I've started the data process for for the writings from 1898 until 1903 and this volume here stops just before the first issue of his newspaper, which he edited himself, A Workers

Republic. It seemed like it's a good place to stop because I knew that Volume 2, that would be a good place to start. But the difference being is that whereas the writings alone in this volume comes to around

80,000 words and then there's you know, appendices and those kind of snippets and so forth and that brings up more. Of the ratings alone from 1898 until 1903, even now, that comes around 250,000 words. And that's the forefoot noting and intros and they're going to do stuff. So it's going to be a biggie. But I started into it.

And just in the last week, I've already found two new previously lost letters. So it's going to be mad. but I reckon I can get up to 1903 done pretty much just being based in Ireland once I go past 1903 Connolly moves to the States and I need to do some digging over there because like some of the journals

that are newspapers that he did write for they haven't been kind of digitised as at the same extent as the English ones so I need to physically kind of see those kind of copies. So I reckon I can get 1903 done fairly sharpish and then after that we'll have to wait and see, you know, but that's the, that's the next one now is 1898 until 1903, but I'd be writings mainly. It'd be writings and maybe speeches. And will that be coming out through Esker books, Connor? If they still have me. I mean, I'd have to wait and see, you know.

Oh, well, I'm pretty sure I can answer that question. I'm just trying to get you to say yes. Henry, of course, it will be coming out via IskraBooks at iskerbooks.org. I'd be very surprised if it isn't. I put it that way, you know. Again, your bets. I like the typical scholar here. Well, it's also, well, I mean, like again,

just going back to that, it's that kind of, like, it just makes sense or something like on James Conno's writings because of the, of that hybrid kind of, of that, they stick kind of model. Again, like, I'll say, it's, you know, you know, there's, I, I really have a problem with that culture in the left where you do things for the cause and, yeah, and do things for free. You just see borne out. So, like,

I'm a firm believer that we should pay, we should fund our, you know, or kind of work towards kind of funding kind of, you know, kind of, you know, levels. Having said that, the free PDF is, is brilliant, you know, and for something like kind of James Connolly's kind of writings, it doesn't. just makes perfect sense. Wow. I'm very pleased to hear that. But also, Connor, in terms of closing, you know, you do work outside of Connolly as well. Can you talk a little bit in closing about some of your other research interests in case listeners, I'm certain that listeners who'll listen to this conversation and listen to you speak at length about your work and your interests are going to want to check out more of.

your work and will be interested in forthcoming work that you have outside of this Connolly project. So can you talk a little bit about some of your other research interests and what else we can be expecting to see from you in terms of work outside of Connolly going forward? Yeah, like the book I am working on, like the James Connolly one, because I have the book of the stuff kind of transcribed, but the process of the next volume, it's a lot more kind of, it's a lot more, mechanical than beforehand and that was on purpose. So I can actually do this, should we say, in my spare time. What I am kind of working on is, have you come across the Apple tax case at all, the Ireland's Apple tax case? Yeah, yeah. I've been, I can't say I'm following it

incredibly closely, but I've read several articles on it. And I have a PDF of a book that was written on it, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. All right. But that would like a one I'm planning to do now is write a book on Ireland on the Apple tax case and the first line of which it will be this is not about Apple and the Arkansas case because like for me it's a good

kind of narrative book we're talking about pretty much all the things I'll be talking about here now is that in order to make sense as to why Ireland is a tax haven and why Ireland they why the south you look like is it kind of tax haven and like you need, I think, to have an understanding

of that kind of compador intermediary class that Connolly warned us about and which is pretty much is the core of my right things anyway. So for me, but the next book is, will be,

it's a book on the Ireland and the Apple tax case, but using that as a narrative hook really just to kind of delve into the kind of those relations of

production and exchange and the very particular hybrid mutated kind of colonial class relations which Ireland

is kind of saturated with you know because it has that strange deposition you know it's you know

where it is very much part of the global north but it still has this kind of colonial mix

that is going on, you know? So that's the next book is really about Ireland and the applicant tax case and Conley is actually, he's quite important for that because, for me, because I'm able then to help map that class from the 1800s onwards.

You know, I mean, you know, it's what Marxists do. Like, it's the same as, you know, how I explain it, just the people who were. It's, not for this audience, but outside of kind of Marxist's circles, I mean, I always kind of bring up kind of climate studies

because I mean that's what climate studies does and you know like you can't they can't kind of analyze climate change by looking at the weather over three or four weeks like you need those 2030, 50, 100, 200 year time frames

in order to observe these movements over time and that's what we do as kind of Marxist kind of historians but we just apply that to two kind of class relations and when we do that in an Irish context, we see those very particular colonial class relations and how they move. And for me, the Apple case is a really good way.

It's a very kind of solid kind of materialist way in to those very abstract kind of class relations. And then trying to explain them to a, you know, non-technical and, like, non-Marxist kind of audience. Like my whole thing is I was trying to, you know, reach a non-max or, you know, an audience and by doing so, but, you know, hopefully raise kind of class and the context kind of that way, you know? I think that's marvelous and I'm certainly looking forward to that. You know, before I tell you, I ask you to tell the listeners where they can find more of your work, I do want to pitch a couple of conversations and an upcoming work, not only to the listeners, but also I think they'll be of interest to you, Connor. So long time listeners of the show will be familiar that we've had many episodes, probably yet close to, if not more than 10 episodes that have been devoted to analyzing the climate and the capitalist world system.

So, you know, you can just go to the guerrilla history feed wherever you are looking for podcasts and type in climate and you'll find a bunch of episodes on there with a bunch of different scholars. But I do want to earmark one in particular, which is socialist states and the environment. environment, a book that was, it's about a book that was written by my best friend and also my frequent collaborator, Salvatore Engel de Mauro, who is an environmental scientist, soil scientist, and somebody who is one of the foremost experts on eco-socialism, and he has several books on eco-socialism coming out in the very, very near future. But his book, Socialist

States and the Environment looks at not only climate, but other environmental factors. and makes these various analyses looking at socialist states and socialist systems and compares them to capitalist models in various ways, but with a historical materialist approach, which is not something that we typically see when we look at climate science. You know, climate science in the mainstream is a very bourgeois field, whereas Salvatore takes a very, very explicitly Marxist, historically materialist framework on his work. And so that's a terrific book, but also we have an almost three hour long episode on that

book on the show. It was the first time I met Salvatore actually, but terrific conversation. And then we have an upcoming book, which is coming out through Iskra Books, which is why I'm also pitching it here, that is going to be titled communism, the highest stage of ecology, which is a translation project that Salvatore and I are undertaking together. much in the same way that we did the Le Sordo-Stalin book. But this book is coming from French, and it's an agro-ecological history of the Soviet Union and Cuba, and again, is looking at all of these different components of not just climate, but agro-ecology more broadly.

It's a really fascinating book, and since you brought up climate studies, I would be remiss to not mention that this book is going to be coming out sometime in the winter, I believe in the late. winter. I don't have a specific date, but by the time this episode comes out, we might have locked in a specific date for that book. So be sure to check out the Iskrabook social media pages as well as Iskrabbooks.org. Now, Connor, I'm going to pass it back over to you. Is there anywhere that you would like to direct the listeners to find more of your work or maybe keep up with you on social media? You do have an entertaining Twitter page. I see some of your tweets on there on my timeline. I mean, you know, Twitter is blocked where I am and the country has

blocked it and so I don't go on very often because it's inconvenient to do so. But when I do, I occasionally see tweets from you and I'm always very amused by them and often quite enlightened by them as well. So be sure to let the listeners know where they can find that as well. Yeah, like, like, but I am still on kind of Twitter, God knows why, but I am still there. And Twitter, kind of, you know, like Instagram, but like Instagram is probably the main place now because it's a it's a relatively safe space really

you know like Twitter in Ireland as another kind of states wherever it's just it's just racist far right

racist little fucks like you know but they are I'm still able to block people so I still use it you know but like yeah

it's kind of Instagram but as where most writers and kind of research as I have horrendous social skills so it's probably So I just basically just like sit at home and kind of give out and that's where it's like

Not not at all the problem. I will link to it in the show notes though because I want people to follow you and keep up with what you're doing. But yeah, I think that that's a great place to end this conversation. I want to thank you again, Connor, for coming on to the program. Thanks for having me on, Harriet. But I hope I didn't. It's a wonderful way that you have. You just let people kind of talk.

But I just hope that people, that's awesome. I'm sure that they were more than entertained and listeners. Be sure to let on Twitter and on Instagram, let Connor know what you thought at this conversation. We'll have him tagged in our social media posts when the episode comes out. So if you follow us on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod and on Instagram, I believe our handle there is Gorilla underscore History. Be sure to, if you're listening to this, go and find those posts and let Connor know what you thought. But again, listeners, the book that we talked about today was The Lost and Early Writings of James Connolly, 1889 to 1898, which was edited by my guest today. Connor McCabe, book is freshly out from Iskra Books.

I'm going to let you know how you can find my co-host on Twitter, even though Adnan was not able to make it today. You should certainly follow Adnan on Twitter at Adnan A. H-U-S-A-I-N. Follow his other podcast, The Mudge List, which is on the Middle East Islamic World and Muslim Diaspora's M-A-J-L-I-S, and it's a project through MSGP-P-U, Muslim Society's Global Perspectives Project at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. You can find me listeners on Twitter at Huck 1995, that's H-U-C-K-1-995. And you can keep up to date with what we're doing collectively by following Gorilla History on Twitter, as I already mentioned, Gorilla underscore Pod, G-U-E-R-R-R-I-L-A-U-L-A-U-Skore pod, and help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this

by going to patreon.com or with slash guerrilla history. Again, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And until next time, listeners, solidarity. We're going to be able to be. I'm going to be able to be. I'm going to be. Thank you.