Straw man arguments on Connolly

■ Caoimheann O’Faolain (‘Appalling attack on Connolly’, Letters, Irish Independent, June 9) and James Connolly Heron (‘Burke and Connolly’s beliefs’, Letters, June 11) construct straw man arguments in their responses to my criticism of James Connolly’s ideology, by reminding us that Connolly aspired to free Ireland from British occupation (as if I said he didn’t) and should be remembered (as if I said he shouldn’t).

They both fail to notice that I attacked Connolly’s ideology – Marxism – and not the man himself (unlike Patrick Pearse, who told Desmond Ryan that “Connolly is most dishonest in his methods”.)

Mr Connolly-Heron notices that “Burke in his time supported revolution to overcome tyranny” but he doesn’t notice that the ideology of the American Revolution was quite the opposite to that of the French Revolution (which Burke didn’t support): while the former was based on the separation of powers and the free market, the latter was based on Barère and Robespierre’s amalgamation of all powers through terror – a theory later radicalised by Marxism-Leninism and its concept of “the dictatorship of the proletariat” (somehow I doubt that Burke would have supported Lenin, as did Connolly).

As to Connolly’s economic illiteracy, I have yet to find in his (and Lenin’s) writings any reference to Eugen Böhm von Bawerk’s marginalism – an economic analysis which refuted the labour theory of value.

Grzegorz Kolodziej Bray, Co Wicklow