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by *Liam O Ruairc* This article will question the thesis that Connolly’s stance on the First World War was similar to that of Lenin’s and argues that he favoured a German victory on socialist grounds. Lenin saw the First World War as a product of the general crisis of capitalism and imperialism and sought to transform the imperialist war into civil war. Connolly’s stand on the first world war as W.K. Anderson notes “frequently been compared with Lenin’s” (W.K. Anderson (1994),*James Connolly and the Irish Left*, Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 63). It is often assumed that Connolly’s position on the question of the First World War was, with only minor if any qualification, similar to that of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. C. Desmond Greaves, for instance, argues that “Connolly’s thought ran parallel with Lenin’s… almost phrase by phrase” and only the Irish labour movement together with the Bolsheviks and the Serbian socialists opposed the war (C.Desmond Greaves (1961), *The Life and Times of James Connolly, *London: Lawrence & Wishart, 353). Bernard Ransom’s study of Connolly’s marxism has argued along similar lines that Connolly’s stance on the First World War was substantially similar to that of Lenin’s (Bernard Ransom (1980), *Connolly’s Marxism*, London: Pluto Press, 79). Such has been the accepted viewpoint for many studies of Connolly. This has less to do with Connolly’s actual stance on the First World War than using Connolly as a trojan horse to introduce Leninism in Ireland. Joseph O’Connor related in a letter to the *Irish Times *(5 August 1976 page 11) the circumstances behind the construction of the ‘Leninist’ Connolly myth: “I was involved, though somewhat passively, in an earlier cycle of this controversy. It was not conducted publicly but within a limited circle of members of the British Communist Party and some members of the. . . full at: https://theirishrevolution.wordpress.com/2015/12/03/james-connolly-germany-and-the-first-world-war-was-connolly-a-proto-lenin/ _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
