James Connolly Quotes
State ownership and control is not necessarily Socialism - if it were, then the Army, the Navy, the Police, the Judges, the Gaolers, the Informers, and the Hangmen, all would all be Socialist functionaries, as they are State officials - but the ownership by the State of all the land and materials for labour, combined with the co-operative control by the workers of such land and materials, would be Socialism.
Connolly, James. "State Monopoly versus Socialism." The Workers' Republic, 10 June 1899.
At the time extreme socialist doctrine was that the state should own the factories and the other means of industrial production. The socialists believed that the people through their government had to be able to control the economy and the private owners’ greed would always drive the economy for themselves and not for the society in general. Deal was one of the first who argued that there were other, less draconian modes of economic control like government regulation and central banks. Deat turned traitor during WWII and served in the Vichy Nazi cabinet of Pierre Laval. He was sentenced to death for treason but escaped to Italy where he assumed a new identity and then was sheltered by a right-wing Catholic religious order in the convent of San Vito, near Turin, where he wrote his memoirs and lived undiscovered until his death.
This book became the basic English textbook on socialism. Astoundingly, it sold over 2 million copies at a time when few books other than the Bible ever sold in that quantity. The fact that it was so popular alarmed many of the more conservative politicians of the day.
James Connolly was an Irish republican, socialist and trade union leader. Born in the Cowgate area of Edinburgh, Scotland, to Irish parents Connolly left school for working life at the age of 11, and became involved in socialist politics in the 1880s.
