Rethinking national marxism
James Connolly and 'Celtic Communism
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3473809 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David Lloyd (0000-0002-0325-2006) |
| Year | 2003 |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 345-370 |
| Publication date | 2003-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Interventions (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1369-801X • E-ISSN: 1469-929X |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/1369801032000135611 |
| OpenAlex | W2037801703 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 10 |
| References cited | 3 |
Recent discussions of the life and writings of the Irish socialist and nationalist James Connolly have tended to see him as having betrayed Irish socialism through an infatuation with nationalism, while his seminal historical work on Irish labour is seen as 'romanticizing' an imaginary 'Celtic communism'. In this dismissal of Connolly, Irish leftism coincides with a larger left antagonism to what it considers 'identity politics'. This essay argues that far from hypostasizing an essential Irish identity, Connolly sketches an approach to the historical formation of cultural difference, and projects a revolutionary transformation based on the cultural differences that colonial capitalism itself produces. The history of Irish labour is at once constitutive of and marginal to the history of global capitalism, and out of this ambiguous position Connolly traces the radical potential of peripheral working classes. What he proposes, in accord with other 'national Marxist' thinkers from Mariátegui to Fanon or Cabral, is a critique of metropolitan leftism that assumes the primacy of an industrial proletarian subject. Connolly envisages the possibility of revolutionary agencies that emerge out of recalcitrance to, rather than passage through, colonial capitalist modernity. Keywords: Antonio Gramscicolonialism in IrelandIrish labour historyJames ConnollyJosé Carlos Mariáteguisyndicalism'the southern question
Ancient history · Celtic languages · Communism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Evelyn Waugh and Hans Urs von Balthasar Studies · Irish and British Studies · Political and Economic history of UK and US · History · Law · Philosophy
Ireland, Revolution, and the English Modernist Imagination
“Did that play of mine …?”
The Irish Idea
Roots of anticolonial universalist communism
From toxic industries to green extractivism
The Political Economy of the Potato
Why Read Connolly
Ancient Erin, Modern Socialism
Atlantic networks, antagonisms and the formation of subaltern political identities
Connolly, the Archive, and Method
| Unique citing works | 10 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,48 |
| Citation span | 2005 - 2025 (21) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 10 |