Class Struggle and the Nation

WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE

In the Communist Manifesto we read the following:

"Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie."

 This passage only means that the  British workers, for instance,  cannot wage the class struggle against the French capitalists, nor can the French workers wage the class struggle against the British  employers, but that the British  bourgeoisie and the power of the UK State can be attacked and defeated only by the British working class.

The nation naturally arises as a community of interests of the bourgeois classes. But it is the State which is the real solid organisation of the capitalist class for protecting its interests. The State protects property, it takes care of administration, puts the rmed forces in order, collects the taxes and keeps the masses under control. The "nations", or, more precisely: the active organisations which use the nation's name, that is, the pro-capitalist parties, have no other purpose than to fight for the conquest of a fitting share of influence over the State, for participation in State power. For  Big Business, whose economic interests embrace the whole State and even other countries, and which needs direct privileges, customs duties, State purchases and protection overseas, it is its natural community of interests, rather than the nation, which defines the State and its limitations.  State power is an instrument at the service of big capital.

Nations are not just groups of people who have the same cultural interests and who, for that reason, want to live in peace with other nations; they are combat organisations of the bourgeoisie which are used to gain power within the State. Every national bourgeoisie hopes to extend the territory where it exercises its rule at the expense of its adversaries; it is therefore totally erroneous to think that the bourgeoisie could through its own initiative put an end to these exhausting struggles, just as it is utterly out of the question that the capitalist world powers will usher in an epoch of eternal world peace, through a sensible settlement of their differences. Does the bourgeoisie really have an interest in putting an end to national struggles? Not at all, it has the greatest interest in not putting an end to them, especially since the class struggle has reached a high point. Just like religious antagonisms, national antagonisms constitute excellent means to divide the proletariat, to divert its attention from the class struggle with the aid of ideological slogans and to prevent its class unity.

 The struggle for socialism is a struggle for State power against the capitalist parties. State power is the fiefdom of the owning classes.  The workers  cannot free themselves, they cannot defeat capitalism unless it first defeats this powerful organisation. The conquest of political hegemony is not a struggle for State power; it is a struggle against State power. The social revolution which shall issue into socialism consists essentially of defeating State power with the power of the working class  organisation. This is why it must be carried out by the workers of the entire State. This common liberation struggle against a common enemy is the most important experience in the entire history of the life of the proletariat from its first awakening until its victory. The international character of the proletariat develops rapidly.

 The workers of different countries exchange theory and practice, methods of struggle and ideas, and they consider these topics to be matters common to all. The struggles, the victories and the defeats in one country have profound impacts on the class struggle in other countries. The struggles waged by our class comrades in other countries against their bourgeoisie are our affairs not only on the terrain of ideas, but also on the practical plane; they form part of our own fight and we feel them as such. The workers of the whole world perceives itself as a single army, as a great association which is only obliged for practical reasons to split into numerous battalions which must fight the enemy separately, since the bourgeoisie is organized into States and there are as a result numerous fortresses to reduce. This is also the way the press informs us of struggles in foreign countries: Occupy Movement, the Indignados, and the demonstrations on the streets of Rio or Phnom Penh are all of interest to our class organisation. In this manner the international class struggle becomes the common experience of the workers of all countries.

Through the overthrow of the State by the power of the working class majority, the State disappears as a coercive power. It takes on a new function: "The government of persons gives way to the administration of things." as Engels describes it in Anti-Dühring.

For the purpose of production, we need organisation and administration; but the extremely strict centralization such as that practiced by today's State is neither necessary nor can it possibly be employed in pursuit of that goal. Such centralisation will give way to full decentralisation and self-administration inside socialism.  According to the size of each sector of production, the organisations will cover larger or smaller areas; while bread, for example, will be produced on a local scale, steel production and the operation of railroad networks require regional-sized economic entities. There will be production units of the most various sizes, from the workshop and the local municipality to the district and the regions, and even, for certain industries, global . Those naturally-occurring human groups will they not then take the place of the vanished nation-states as organisational units? This may be the case in the beginning, for the simple practical reason, that they are communities of the same language and all of man's relations are mediated through language. Some regions will merge, others will dissolve.  All partially manage their own affairs and all depend upon the whole, as parts of that whole. National differences will totally lose the economic roots which today give them such an extraordinary vigour. The whole notion of autonomy comes from the capitalist era, when the conditions of domination led to their opposite, that is, freedom in respect to a particular form of domination.

The socialist mode of production does not develop oppositions of interest between nations, as is the case with capitalist competition and rivalry. The economic unit is neither the State nor the nation, but the world. This mode of production is much more than a network of national productive units connected to one another by an intelligent policy of communications and by international conventions; it is an organisation of world production in one unit and the common affair of all humanity. This material basis of the collectivity, organised world production, transforms the future of humanity into a single community.

 Linguistic diversity will be no obstacle, since every human community which maintains real communication with another human community will create a common language. Without attempting here to examine the question of a universal language, we shall only point out that today it is easy to learn various languages once one has advanced beyond the level of primary instruction. This is why it is useless to examine the question of to what degree the current linguistic boundaries and differences are of a permanent nature. Already we see English growing to be the lingua franca of the world. There cannot be independent communities of culture because every community, without exception, will find itself, under the influence of the culture of all of humanity, in cultural communication, in an exchange of ideas, with humanity in its entirety.

Powerful economic forces generate national isolation, antagonism and the whole nationalist ideology of the capitalist class. These features are absent among the working class. They are replaced by the class struggle, which gives the lives of the worker their essential character, and creates an international community in which nations as linguistic groups have no practical significance. Socialist tactics are based on the science of social development. The way a working class assumes responsibility for pursuing its own interests is determined by its conception of the future evolution of its conditions. Its tactics must not yield to the influence of every desire and every goal which arise among the oppressed workers, or by every idea that dominates the latter's mentality; if these are in contradiction with the effective development they are unrealisable, so all the energy and all the work devoted to them are in vain and can even be harmful. The priority of our tactics is to favour that which will inevitably realise our socialist goal. Nationalism is nothing but capitalist ideology which does not have material roots in the working class movement and which will therefore disappear as the class struggle develops. It constitutes, like all ruling class ideology, an obstacle for the class struggle whose harmful influence must be eliminated as much as possible.

 Nationalist slogans distract the workers from their own specifically class aspirations. They divide the workers of different nations; they provoke the mutual hostility of the workers and thus destroy the necessary unity of the proletariat. They line up the workers and the ruling clas shoulder to shoulder in one front, thus obscuring the workers' class consciousness and transforming the workers into the executors of plutocrat’s policy. National struggles prevent the assertion of social questions and proletarian interests in politics and condemn this important means of struggle of the proletariat to sterility. All of this is encouraged by ‘socialist’ propaganda when the left nationalists presents nationalist slogans to the workers as valid, regardless of the very goal of their struggle, and when it utilises the language of nationalism in the description of our socialist goals. It is indispensable that class feeling and class struggle should be deeply rooted in the minds of the workers; then they will progressively become aware of the unreality and futility of nationalist slogans for their class.

This is why the nation-State as a goal in itself, such as the re-establishment of an independent national State in Scotland, has no place in socialist propaganda. Socialism is based upon the recognition of the real class interests of the workers. It cannot be led astray by ideologies, even when the latter seem to be rooted in men's minds. Our tactic consists in making the workers more aware of their real class interests, showing them the reality of this society and its life in order to orient their minds more towards the real world of today. Socialists only speak of capitalism, exploitation, class interests, and the need for the workers to collectively wage the class struggle. In this way the mind is steered away from secondary ideas of the past in order to focus on present-day reality; these ideas of the past are thus deprived of their power to lead the workers astray from the class struggle and the defense of their class interests. Our emphasis is upon the class struggle, to awaken class feeling in order to turn attention away from national problems.

Our propaganda could appear to be useless against the power of nationalist ideology and it could seem that nationalism is making the most progress among the workers. But insofar as nationalist movements are in practice capable only of following in the wake of the ruling class and thus of arousing the feeling of the working class against them, they will progressively lose their power.

 We would, however,  have gone completely off the rails if we wanted to win the working class over to socialism by being more nationalist than the capitalist class as some on the Left appear intent upon doing. Such nationalist opportunism would allow the appearance of workers being   won over, but this does not win them over to our cause, to socialist ideas. Capitalist conceptions will continue to dominate their minds as before. And when the decisive moment arrives when they must choose between national and class interests, the internal weakness of this workers movement will become apparent, as is currently taking place in the separatist crisis. How can we rally the masses under our banner if we allow them to flock to the banner of nationalism? Our principle of class struggle can only prevail when the other principles that manipulate and divide men are rendered ineffective; but if our propaganda enhances the reputation of those other principles, we subvert our own cause.

Even though we do not get involved in the slogans and watchwords of nationalism and continue to use the slogans of socialism, this does not mean that we are pursuing a kind of ostrich policy in regard to national questions. These are, after all, real questions which are of concern to men and which they want to solve. We are trying to get the workers to become conscious of the fact that, for them, it is not these questions, but exploitation and the class struggle, which are the most vital and important questions which cast their shadows over everything. But this does not make the other questions disappear and we have to show that we are capable of resolving them.

To all the nationalist slogans and arguments, the response will be: exploitation, surplus value, bourgeoisie, class rule, class struggle.  If they speak of free higher education, we shall call attention to the insufficiency of all teaching dispensed to the children of the workers, who learn no more than what is necessary for their subsequent life of back-breaking toil at the service of capital. If they speak of  local job creation, we will speak of the misery which compels Scots to emigrate. If they speak of the unity of the nation, we will speak of exploitation and class oppression. If they speak of the greatness of the nation, we will speak of the solidarity of the workers of the whole world.

Only when the great reality of today's world—capitalist development, exploitation, the class struggle and its final goal, socialism—has entirely impregnated the minds of the workers, will the  ideals of nationalism fade away. The class struggle and propaganda for socialism comprise the sole effective means of breaking the power of nationalism.

Adapted from Anton Pannekoek’s Class Struggle and Nation,
available in full and unabridged here

The Bosses Game

In all capitalist societies, a tiny class of people owns the means of production and profits by exploiting the workers’ labour. United, the overwhelming tendency of the working class would be to fight for a decent life for all, which is incompatible with capitalism. Powerful united struggles of the working class would inevitably demonstrate the need to overthrow capitalism altogether. If a party does not want to abolish capitalist exploitation, it can only serve capitalism. Since the working class is the only class with the power to overturn capitalism, the capitalists use every possible divide-and-conquer tactic to prevent this development. Racism and nationalism has been major tools of the ruling class. Capitalism is the source of national oppression and only socialist revolution can put an end to this oppression and to all forms of oppression.  The Scottish  ‘nation’ is by no means homogeneous. It is made up of classes. The present referendum rivalry between the sections of the ruling class does nothing but divide working people and turn them away from their objective, the socialist revolution. As masters of production and of the economy, the bosses control the state and the mass media. All the big newspapers, radio and television defend the outlook of those who invest in them, and they try to turn the people away from the true problems. For there is more to be done than merely reducing the gas or electric bill of Scottish homes.

Left nationalists pretend to be revolutionaries. There are no shortcuts to the socialist revolution, and those who enter the nationalist paths divert the coming of a socialist movement by chasing illusions. They want to rally the working class behind the nationalist cause. But nationalism disarms the workers. Shall we fight only to have a Scots-born bosses instead of English one? Shall we unite with these small Scottish homeland  exploiters in order to defend “their” nation against the bad, bad English? That is pure folly.  Nationalism is a vain attempt to rally the working class behind the cause of our home-grown capitalists seeking a better place in the sun. Nationalism does not oppose capitalism. The social revolution is an immense task and Left nationalists are intent upon making it more difficult. Independence (now) and socialism (oh, we’ll see, perhaps sometime later...). The socialist revolution is clearly not a task on the Left nationalists’ agenda. No one is going to hand workers socialism on a silver platter...least of all nationalists.

All of us to get rid of capitalism we need to unite in a single organisation. What’s the result of the referendum? Give the bosses the chance they never miss;  turn us against each other, all the better to rake in the PROFITS. We need unity and nationalism leads us into isolation.

 Nationalism is used to divide the workers among themselves so they can ignore their real enemy. The working men and women of the world have but on common enemy — the capitalist class of the world. It is better to be a traitor to your country than a traitor to your class! The history of Scotland is full of heinous acts whose only purpose was to increase the power of a handful of capitalists. In contrast to the Scots Nats and Left Nationalists, the Socialist Party says that workers all across Scotland can be united against their common enemy; that a real party of the working class can be built to  build a new system for workers – socialism.

Socialism is not a complicated doctrine.

The capitalists are using the present economic crisis to increase their power of exploitation and oppression. At this crucial moment we must struggle for the abolition of capitalism. With the present crisis, a growing number of workers are realizing that the capitalist system has nothing to offer them. While their living and working conditions get worse, a handful of rich men are raking in billions in profits. Workers are looking for a solution, and the Socialist Party offers an alternative: socialism, a system where exploitation  is abolished.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain differs from other political parties in  that it wants to completely change society’s economical organisation for the social emancipation of the working class. The main reason for the imperfections of to-day’s society, is the capitalistic way of production.  The Socialist Party seeks  the political organisation of the working class so that it may take possession of the public power and  transform to common property all the means of production — the means of transportation, the forests, the mines, the mills, the machines, the factories, the earth. The interests of the working class are the same in every country with capitalist way of production. The working class stands alone in the struggle for its emancipation.

We live in a world dominated by capitalism. The only viable way forward is to achieve a classless and stateless society on a world scale where people do not oppress and exploit each other.

We  make it quite clear as to our exact aim and object. We are socialists, and by socialism we mean, the common ownership of all the agencies of wealth production, and this involves the complete supercession of the capitalist system.  Socialism proclaims that no change beneficial to the workers of the shop floor, the fields or the offices can be carried out as long as the political and administrative leadership  are monopolised by the capitalist class, and as long as the producers, organized in a class party, have not taken control of public powers. Socialism maintains that there is only one solution: it’s that all the centralized labor instruments, such as the railroads, factories, textile works, mines, large farming properties, be given over to the associated workers, who will operate them not for the profit of a few capitalists. Capitalism has only known how to cause humanity war and misery; socialism will establish peace and happiness for mankind.

Class Solidarity

Socialist Courier can do little better than the views on the independence referendum propounded by John Wight, writer and political commentator. Socialist Courier may not endorse all his other political opinions but on his views on Scottish nationalism we can only concur. They reflect the ideas presented by many posts on this blog.

 “ I will be voting ‘No’ in this year's referendum on Scottish independence. I will do so as a statement of solidarity with working people the length and breadth of the United Kingdom.

There is undoubtedly much that is regressive – make that despicable – about the British state. The monarchy, the House of Lords, the country’s history of empire, colonialism, and its recent history of sowing carnage and chaos in the Middle East – all of those things add up to a damning indictment of a state formed in 1707 in the interests of a rising mercantile class, committed to colonial expansion and the super exploitation of the planet’s resources.

However, the notion that Scotland and the Scots were not party to this history – or played only a marginal role – is an insult to truth. The ill-fated Darien Scheme of 1698-1700, an attempt by the then independent Scotland to establish a colony in what is now Panama, succeeded in bankrupting the country, which led inexorably to the bulk of the Scottish aristocracy and merchant class – who made up the Scottish Parliament of the day - voting to enter the current union with England in 1707. Thereafter Scots played a disproportionate role in building the British Empire as generals, officers, and soldiers in the army, colonial administrators, slavers, and merchants - in the process creating great personal fortunes, and establishing Glasgow as the second city of the empire.

The unintended effect of the 1707 union was the homogenization of the working class throughout the newly formed British state. This homogenization was based on the common misery they were suffering at the hands of the factory and mill owners who controlled their lives under an economic system of unfettered capitalism. The need to organize collectively in order to resist the brutal conditions of the lives of workers across Britain transcended every other difference – whether on grounds of nationality, race, religion, or gender. This gave rise to the emergence of the trade union movement followed by the Labour Party at the beginning of the 20th century, reflecting the growth in size and consciousness of a British working class. This class identity remains relevant today at a time when the nation is being ruled by the most extreme and callous Tory government in generations. Simply put, it dictates that a bus driver in Glasgow has more in common with a bus driver in Newcastle, Liverpool, or Cardiff than he does with a wealthy fellow Scot.

With this in mind, I have increasingly found some of the arguments being made in support of independence by progressives and socialists within the Yes campaign disappointing. The central of those - namely that voting ‘Yes’ will rid Scotland of the Tories - is not only weak, it is cowardly. Firstly, you may get rid of the Tories but that doesn't mean you will get rid of Tory ideas, a few of which are front and center in the SNP's recently produced independence manifesto (or white paper), titled ‘Scotland’s Future’. The Scottish Nationalist Party’s positions on corporation tax, the monarchy, and NATO membership would sit more than comfortably in the pages of a Tory manifesto.

More importantly, the idea that abandoning millions of people who've stood with us - and us with them - in trade union struggles, political campaigns, progressive movements, etc, for generations - the idea that this can be considered progress is anathema to me. The analogy of the Titanic applies, wherein rather than woman and children, it is Scots to the lifeboats and to hell with everybody else.

Nationalism, unless rooted in national oppression, is a regressive ideology. It obscures the real dividing line in society - namely class - offering instead an abstracted analysis of the world through a national prism that takes zero account of social and economic factors, thus offering nothing but more of the same under a different flag. It is no wonder that Albert Einstein described nationalism as an ‘infantile disease’.

Our nationality is an accident of birth. It means nothing. You can't eat a flag. A flag doesn't heat a home or put food on the table. Nationalism offers a largely mythologized history in the process of inviting us to embrace a national interest, one that can only relate to the world behind false divisions of national, ethnic, or racial differences. Even when it comes to culture, the terms national culture obscures more than it illuminates. The traditional culture of the Highlands in Scotland, for example, means little to me as a Lowland Scot. I can appreciate it, of course, but not anymore or with any more feeling than I do any culture anywhere in the world.

The concept of the modern nation state is a relatively recent one. It traces its roots to the Treaty of Westphalia in the mid-17th century, which brought to an end the Thirty Years War in Europe. Out of it emerged the concept of national sovereignty, a political concept reflective of the early stages of capitalist economic development, with the resultant growth in international trade and the need to expand and protect both markets and sources of natural resources required to feed burgeoning manufacturing industries in the interests of competing capitalists.

However, much has changed in 350 years. In 2013 economic sovereignty does not lie with national governments as it did at one time. Today economic sovereignty in the West lies with global capital under that extreme variant of capitalism known as neoliberalism - or the free market. The notion that separation from a larger state would allow said smaller state to forge a social democratic utopia without challenging neoliberal nostrums is simply not credible. A patchwork of smaller states plays into the hands of global capital, as it means more competition for inward investment, which means global corporations are able to negotiate more favorable terms in return for that investment. The result is a race to the bottom as workers in one state compete for jobs with workers in neighboring states. In this regard it is surely no accident that Rupert Murdoch is a vocal supporter of Scottish independence.

Support for Scottish independence among progressives in Scotland is rooted in despair over a status quo of Tory barbarity. This is understandable. For the past three decades working class communities throughout the UK have suffered a relentless assault under both Conservative and Labour administrations. The Labour Party, under the baneful influence and leadership of Tony Blair and his New Labour clique, came to be unrecognizable from the party that created the welfare state, including the NHS, the party that once held full employment as a guiding principle of its economic and social policy. The embrace of free market nostrums under New Labour meant that the structural inequality that obtained after 18 years of Tory rule remained more or less intact. The market was now the undisputed master of all it surveyed. The consequence of Labour’s shift to the right has been to give rise to cynicism, disappointment, and lack of faith in politics among large swathes of voters, evinced in ever lower turnouts at elections. Issues such as the lies and subterfuge surrounding Britain going to war in Iraq in 2003, the MPs’ expenses scandal of 2011, followed by the phone hacking scandal - during which the unhealthy relationship between the owners and editors of tabloid newspapers and politicians was revealed - has only deepened this cynical disregard for politics and politicians in Britain, giving rise to anti-politics as the default position of many voters.

In Scotland – for decades a Labour Party stronghold – devolution has allowed a protest vote to make the electorate’s feelings towards this Labour Party betrayal of its founding principles known at the ballot box. Regardless, the most significant protest has been a non-vote, with turnouts at elections in Scotland following the pattern of the rest of the country in remaining low. For example, there was only a 50 percent turnout at the last Scottish Parliamentary elections in 2011, out of which the Scottish National Party (SNP) emerged with an overall majority, the first time any party has managed to do so since the Scottish Parliament came into existence in 1999.

However the argument that Scotland is more left leaning than the rest of the UK is one that seeks to conflate conservatism with England in its entirety, rather than a specific region of the country, which in conjunction with the antiquated first past the post electoral system of Westminster elections has thrown up Tory governments that are unrepresentative of where the majority of England and the rest of the UK sits politically. Scotland is no more left leaning than the deindustrialized North East, North West, and Midlands of England. Nor is it any more left leaning than Wales. The working class in Scotland is not any more progressive than its English or Welsh counterpart.

As a consequence, my ‘No’ vote in September will be both a rejection of nationalism as a progressive alternative to the status quo and a statement of solidarity with all who are suffering under this Tory government – not only in Scotland but throughout the United Kingdom.”

Rather than vote No which will be taken as support for the present status quo and support for the current UK state, the Socialist Party unlike Wight recommends spoiling ones vote by writing World Socialism and if that is not possible - abstention. 

Fudging the Figures

The Scottish Government “airbrushed” the global financial crash from its official case for independence to avoid showing Scots would have been thousands of pounds worse off outside the UK. 2008 was omitted from the 670-page Scotland’s Future white paper because of the “temporary effect” it had on the long-term economic picture.

The blueprint for independence, unveiled in November, claims each Scot would have been £900 better off in recent decades with independence if the economy had matched other small European countries. The Scottish Government’s figures cover 1977 to 2007. But new figures published by Holyrood’s independent financial scrutiny unit yesterday cover the most recent 1982-2012 period and show that Scots would be about £2,500 worse off.

Alex Salmond  was accused of “handpicking” statistics to suit his own case and ignoring the most up-to-date picture. The financial crash had a major impact on Scotland and saw the country’s two biggest banks – Royal Bank of Scotland and Bank of Scotland – bailed out by the UK Treasury after falling victim to the sub-prime mortgage scandal.

Everything will change but stay the same.

WORLD SOCIALISM

“I really believe that if the political leaders of the world could see their planet from a distance of 100,000 miles their outlook could be fundamentally changed. That all-important border would be invisible, that noisy argument silenced. The tiny globe would continue to turn, serenely ignoring its subdivisions” - Michael Collins, Gemini 10 & Apollo 11 

“You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.’ ”- Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 

 “Clearly, the highest loyalty we should have is not to our own country or our own religion or our hometown or even to ourselves. It should be to, number two, the family of man, and number one, the planet at large. This is our home, and this is all we've got."— Scott Carpenter, Mecury 7


The Socialist Party’s Scottish branches admit its limitations in the independence referendum debate. All we can do is educate ourselves and as many people as we can, giving them the means and the methods to educate others so they too can change other people's minds. This is the continuous educational process that the Socialist Party of Great Britain engages in. Our immediate task is to counter all this nationalist propaganda, either for separatism or maintaining the union. It is painful to watch otherwise intelligent people lend support to something that’s such an obviously bad idea. Too many live in denial and it is time for the rest of us to proceed towards a rational discussion about the real solution. The only real option is a sane social system.

The SNP has been promised that Scotland will keep the same queen, the same single market and same regulatory regime of the Bank of England , the same currency and EU membership. Separatists pledge the same TV programming and continued membership of Nato. Yet, in Scotland,  as in all other parts of the globe, capitalism and the quest for larger profits control every single part of our lives – from the day we’re born, until we take our last breath. Throughout our lives, we are forced into wage slavery. Capitalism has a stranglehold on our entire existence, and it has turned our entire lives into a profit-making venture. It has  commercialised everything that we do and turned ourselves into actual marketable commodities. An independent Scotland won’t change that, although it may change the person who holds the chains. The SNP is a capitalist party. It works on behalf of the capitalists. Nothing could be further from the truth when Left-Nationalists claim the independence of Scotland would not mean a step forward towards socialism. It would be a step backwards.  Whatever twists and turns lie down the road in the fight for socialism, one thing is certain: the success of that struggle depends on achieving the greatest possible unity of the working class, it is utterly ridiculous to argue that the working class ought to divide itself into two different countries in order to accomplish this unity. It is completely absurd to justify this with the false argument, disproven many times, that the battle for socialism would be easier if it were led by a more militant, nationally pure and homogeneous working class. People are not going to win by dividing themselves. The Left- Nationalists would have us believe that the national demands of the Scottish people can only be met through independence. Thus, they claim, the task is to transform bourgeois independence into a socialist independence. In reality, they find themselves in the camp of those promoting division of the working class. Supporting independence for Scotland  in the name of socialism is a hoax.

Nationalists promote a romantic picture of the future. In their ideal scenario, in a ‘free’ Scotland the economy would bounce back into a robust recovery, jobs would be plentiful, and all those paycheques would bolster a lively and politically stable economic scene with the Edinburgh government aiding entrepreneurial ventures with tax incentives. They would like us to believe and have others accept that home-grown national monopolies are somehow less exploitative than foreign monopolies and less subject to the impact of the general capitalist crisis. Capitalist enterprises, inevitably move towards becoming monopolies, regardless of the nationality of their owners.

The real referendum question is this - “Do you want to take your chances with fake promises of a better Scotland through independence or work towards a positive socialist future through revolution?"

At the onset of 2014, many people are now anticipating the prospect of a ‘global revolution'. There is no way of predicting where a mass protest movement will kick off next or what form it will take, but expect it to be an even larger-scale version of an Occupy movement. There is a  growing understanding among everyday people that we cannot rely on governments to affect the necessary transformation. In the now-famous words of Russell Brand there will be a “total revolution of consciousness and our entire social, political and economic systems”. In short, a revolution in our sense of self as global citizens , in which we equate our own interests with those of people anywhere in the world and we no longer conform to the capitalist vision of society in which we are forced to compete with everyone else as ‘others'. The Socialist Party is for a revolution in every sense of the word – in our values, our imaginations, our lifestyles and our social relations, as well as in our political and economic structures. The growing call for revolutionary change is shared beyond national borders and is for the common good of all people in all countries.

 Realistic proposals for planetary change do exist, as individuals and groups everywhere are discussing the necessary objectives for how the economy should be run democratically at all levels, from the local to global. An abundance of  thinking outlines the need for changes in every aspect of our economic and political systems which altogether articulate a basic but an effective blueprint for a new and better world. The Socialist Party calls for global revolution, not devolution. It is up to the working class to show that it will not be duped by nationalist nonsense and deceitful rhetoric.

 “The view of the earth from the moon fascinated me—a small disk, 240,000 miles away. It was hard to think that that little thing held so many problems, so many frustrations. Raging nationalistic interests, famines, wars, pestilence don’t show from that distance. I’m convinced that some wayward stranger would certainly know instinctively that if the earth were inhabited, then the destinies of all who lived on it must be inevitably interwoven and joined. We are one hunk of ground, water, air, clouds, floating around in space. From out there it really is one world.” 
“When you're finally up at the moon looking back on earth, all those differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend, and you're going to get a concept that maybe this really is one world and why the hell can't we learn to live together like decent people."— Frank Borman, Apollo 8

One World-One People-One Class-One Struggle

Workers of the World Unite

The problems of black and brown people are not caused by whites.  It is the social system that people the world over live under, that make poverty and other miseries a part of a person's life. There is only one race, that is the human race so let us realise that we must all work together or the enemy may never be destroyed. Coloured workers, take notice, when it is a question of exploitation you are in the same position as your white brothers and sisters. Skin colour is no safeguard. Black capitalists are just as brutal as white ones. Humans can only be united by their belief in a set of principles. The colour of a man's skin can never be the basis of unity. The black liberation movement although it take different form in each country is set on the premise of the unity of black  against white and  often express the false assumption, that all white people are united against black. The truth is that any black and white capitalist, have more in common between them than all the white workers with the white capitalist, or the black workers with the black capitalist. Race have now become a very damaging factor towards working class unity. IT IS THE SOCIAL SYSTEM THAT WE LIVE UNDER AND NOT OUR RACE THAT MAKE POSSIBLE THE PROBLEMS WE FACE. Racism only serve to obscure the real enemy, world capitalism, and in fact help to keep it going that much longer. A man's economic interest determine his action. The capitalist as an individual is not our target, it is the system that we hate and want to change. The choice facing us today, is not black, against white. but whether we want to continue with this strife ridden system capitalism, or replace it with a system of common ownership socialism. The racial issue in our present time have been described as the most crucial in the world today. This view have been expressed by leaders in government, to the man in the street. To these people there will be some massive explosion sometime in the future, with the races lined up against each other.

As socialists we do not see the racial issue as the major problem in the world. We see the world divided into those who possess the means of production, the capitalist class, and those who seek work in order to live, the working class. It is because of this class division in society that give rise to racism in the first place. When capitalism goes through one of its frequent bad period, some of the workers of the dominant race usually blame their condition, on some other race. Observe how racial feeling run high in Britain during a period of high unemployment. It serve as an easy excuse for people who look around and can see nothing in their frustrating existance.

Nationalism, which serves as encouragement to racism, is preached from the highest level in society. They tell us that we should love our country. Capitalism is a system of exploitation, humiliation, and degradation for the working class. These features won’t go away because the people who administer the system are "your own kith and kin".

Look around the world and observe, how in some countries, racism is actively supported by governments. Racism only serve to divide and confuse the working class and lead them away from the important question of how they produce the wealth of the world, and share so little of it. It is our position as working class people that we should consider, and throw away the idea of race. In the words of our declaration of principles "the emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all mankind without distinction of race or sex."

Salmond v Nehru

At a fund-raising do,  Salmond quoted Pandit Nehru, the first prime minister of an independent India: "A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance."

Socialist Courier can counter with our own Nehru quote: “What exactly is nationalism? I do not know, and it is extremely difficult to define. In the case of a country under foreign domination it is easy to define what nationalism is. It is anti-foreign power. But in a free country it is something positive. Even so, I think that a large element of it is negative or anti-, and so sometimes we find that nationalism, which is a healthy force, becomes—maybe after liberation—unhealthy, retrogressive, reactionary, or expansive.”

Buying a nationality

Malta set a price tag for acquiring citizenship: 650,000 euros (£548,000)
Spain grants residence to foreigners who spend at least 500,000 euros on real estate or invest at least 2m euros in Spanish government bonds.
Hungary grants residence to foreigners who invest at least 250,000 euros in government bonds.
Cyprus cut the amount of investment required to be eligible for citizenship, from 10m euros to 3m, in its existing "citizenship by investment" programme.
The UK also offers a fast-track residence scheme for foreigners prepared to make a big investment.
Wealthy foreigners can settle permanently in the UK if they have been officially resident for at least two years. The continuous residence requirement is two years for individuals who have at least £10m in personal wealth in the UK; three years for those with at least £5m in the UK and five years for those with at least £1m.
Netherlands plans to give residence to foreigners with more than 1.25m euros in their bank account.

Rich people who want to get abroad and can 'buy' a residence permit for Canada, Singapore or the USA [and Thailand.]

What immigration problem?

From here

Nasty Nationalism

Myanmar's Muslim minority, demonised and persecuted for decades, is facing a fresh wave of violence amid media silence. Rohingya Muslims  number 1.3 million out of the country's 60 million people.

 The Oxford-educated, daughter of a General,  Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi,  characterises the waves of organised violence and  hate campaigns currently being committed by her fellow Buddhists - monks and non-monks alike - as violence of two equal sides, claims that Burmese Buddhists live in the perceived fear of the rise of great Muslim power worldwide.

The Rohingya and other Muslims make up more than 90 percent of the victims of violence, which has displaced more than 140,000 in Rakhine State. Anti-Muslim violence spread to 11 different towns elsewhere in the country, resulting in 100 Muslim deaths, displacing 12,000 Muslims, and destroying 1,300 Muslim homes and 37 Mosques. Since the 1990s, Rohingya Muslims of northern Arakan state have been confined within a web of security grids where they are subject to extreme restrictions of movement, preventing them from accessing adequate healthcare, education and jobs. Summary executions, rape, extortions, forced labour and other human rights atrocities, mostly at the hands of state security forces, are rampant. Restrictions on marriages and births have resulted in over 60,000 Rohingya children who are not registered or recognised by the Burmese government, in violation of the Rights of Child, hence depriving them of access to basic schooling. In a country that has one of the highest adult literacy rates in Asia, a staggering 80 percent of Rohingya adults are illiterate. The doctor-patient ratio among the Rohingya Muslims is 1 to 75,000 and 1 to 83,000 in the two major ancestral pockets of the Rohingya respectively, as compared with the national average of 1 to 375.

 Human Rights Watch has called it "ethnic cleansing" and "crimes against humanity." Suu Kyi's denial and silence on the racially-motivated violence against a Muslim minority, that only makes up about 4 percent of the total population, has led to a growing chorus of international criticism.

The Rohingya and other Burmese Muslims are confronted with threats to their very existence. They pose no existential threat to the Buddhist way of life, national security or sovereignty.Governments such as the US and the UK have chosen, out of their own strategic needs and commercial pursuits, to embrace the military leadership that has tacitly backed the Islamophobic perpetrators and hate-preachers.

 From here

We

The text of the Socialist Party's identity leaflet.

Somebody once remarked that the most important word in the  political vocabulary is “we”. It was a shrewd observation, since to get someone to use “we” in relation to some group of people is to  get them to identify their interest as the interest of that group.

In the battle for “we”, socialists are trying to get all those excluded from ownership and control of means of production to recognise the fact of their common interest as one  class within capitalist society, to regard themselves as “we” and to use “our” and “us”  only in relation to that class and its interests.

Those who control one or other of the two hundred or so armed states into which the  world is divided have to try to prevent this practice emerging, and deliberately seek to  undermine it, in the interest of the other main class in capitalist society – those who do  own and control means of production and who derive a privileged income from this. They seek to convince the people they rule over that the “we” they should identify with is  “the nation” as the nation part of what they call the “nation-state” they rule.

Immigration causes a problem for them since immigrants, having been brought up  under some other state, have not gone through the same process of brainwashing and  conditioning as have the “native” population. Those born and brought up in Britain have  been taught, through what’s been drummed into them in school and through what they  continuously read in the papers or hear on the radio or television, to regard themselves  as British. In school they are taught the history of the kings and queens of England, and  of the wars in which the British ruling class has been involved in over the centuries, and  of the evolution of the British state. The media reinforce this by reporting news from  an almost exclusively British angle and encourage identifi cation with “the nation” via  identification with “our” sports teams and performers.

It therefore comes almost as a reflexaction for people born and brought up in Britain to use “we” in relation to the British state and to regard themselves as part of a British  “nation”. So people spontaneously say such things as “we beat the French at Waterloo”  or “we won the Second World War” or “we got fi ve gold medals at the Olympics”. Even  opponents of particular policies pursued by the British state, yesterday as well as today, fall into the same trap and say such things as “we should never have conquered India”  or “we shouldn’t join the euro”. Such usage is music to the ears of the ruling class as they know it means they are on  top in the battle for “we”. They have succeeded in getting their subjects to identify with  them and their interests. Wage and salary workers, instead of seeing “we” as their class,  have come to see it as “the nation”.

Nation-building

It wasn’t always so easy. Historians have demonstrated that a nation is not a natural existed first and then proceeded to impose on those it ruled over the idea that they  formed a “nation”. The longest-standing states of Western Europe – England, France  and Spain – emerged at the end of the feudal era and then had to create a national  feeling amongst the population living within their frontiers. These frontiers were accidental and had been determined by a number of key battles amongst dynastic rulers  in feudal times. Had the outcome of these battles been different, then southern Britain  might have been part of the same state as northern France, while northern Britain might have been part of a state with Scandinavia, and southern France part of a state with Catalonia and northern Italy. That’s not how things turned out, but the point is that they  could have done. States pre-existed and in a very real sense created nations. Nations  are groups of people ruled by a state or a would-be state.

States that have been formed more recently – and most of the world’s states today  were only formed in the last 80 or so years, i. e., have only been going for two or three  generations – have had, and some still have, a serious problem in convincing all those  they rule over that they form part of a single nation with a common interest. It is why  their nationalism tends to be more shrill and authoritarian. It has to be, to overcome  the tendency of some of their subjects, especially those speaking a minority language  within their state, to identify themselves with some other nationalism particularly that of a  neighbouring state.

Even a long-established state such as Britain has not solved this problem entirely, as  witness Northern Ireland, where a considerable proportion of the population use “we”  not in relation to Britain but in relation to the Irish State and the “nation” it fosters. On the mainland the British state’s problem in this respect has been amongst the immigrants  from its former Empire, many of whom, notoriously to Norman Tebbitt’s annoyance, refuse to support the English cricket team and continue to support that of their country  of origin or that of their parents. More seriously, the ruling class were shocked by the  number of immigrants from Pakistan and their descendants who supported the Taliban  in the most recent of the Afghan Wars.

Until recently the dominant opinion amongst those in charge of the British state about how to deal with this was to make a virtue of necessity and pursue a policy of  “multiculturalism”. It didn’t work. In fact, it has encouraged division, by getting people  to identify with their “culture” rather than with the British “nation”. (Socialists, too, see “multiculturalism” as divisive but for the different reason that it gets workers to identify  with some other group over and above their class.) Now a change of policy is under  way, a swing towards “assimilationism”.

The fi rst to experience this change of policy are new applicants for British nationality.  They have to be able to show some knowledge of the British state, its institutions and  the history of its rulers, before being accepted into the British “nation”. The expectation  is that they will say “we beat the French at Waterloo” and “we should/should not join the  euro” as readily as any true-born Briton. Perhaps too they will support England in test  matches.

Feudal relic

They are also now required to publicly pledge allegiance to the queen in ceremonies akin  to the patriotic flag-worshipping that applicants for US citizenship have to go through.  This is a farcical revival of feudal times, but it brings out the importance of the royal family  to the British ruling class. The royal family’s role is to act as a focus for loyalty to the  British state. The 19th century Tory Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, is credited with first  having thought this up.

The royal family may be a relic from feudalism but it is easier to  get people to identify with it than with some abstraction like the constitution. Nor is any superannuated politician dubbed “the president” ever going to be able to act as such a  focus. It is also less hypocritical, because members of the British “nation” are called what they  really are – “subjects”, people subjected to the rule of a ruling class. Tony Benn finds this abhorrent. He wants us to be called “citizens” not “subjects”, as people are in France. But  the people of France are no less subjects of the French ruling class and its state for being called citizens. Let a spade continue to be called a spade.

 What we should object to is  not to being called subjects, but to being subjects Republicanism and “citizenship” could become a useful alternative way of ensuring loyalty  to the British capitalist state if ever the royal family becomes too unpopular, but even  though royalty is much less popular than it was even 25 years ago, it is still an asset that  the British ruling class want to hold on to and use to the full. It serves to get wage and salary workers to be loyal to the British state and to use “we” in relation to the interests of  its ruling class.


The “we” that socialists say that all those, wherever they were born, wherever they live  or wherever they come from, who are not members of the privileged ruling class should  identify with is people in a similar position throughout the world. “We” are all members of  a world-wide excluded class of wage-working wealth producers – the world working class  – who have a common interest in coming together to abolish so-called “nation-states” and  establish a frontierless world community in which all the natural and industrial resources  of the Earth will have become the common heritage of all Humanity, to be used for the  benefit of all instead of, as to today, to make profits for the few. Then we would all really be members of the Human Race, citizens of the World - Earth-people.

Our time is now.

Alex Salmond told the SNP  conference that it was Scotland's time to be independent.

Marx helped to replace an early international organisation of the working class that had the fairly passive slogan “All Men Are Brothers” with the watchword with the instructive “Working Men of All Countries, Unite!”  They did so because history was demonstrating conclusively that the proletariat is the revolutionary class, that the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie is the struggle propelling mankind forward to the communist society which will liberate mankind from the reign of classes forever. The struggle of the working class takes place on a world-wide scale to defeat the capitalists on a world-wide scale. Socialists  “always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole”. This means the simple solidarity of one worker with another, irrespective of nationality.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain views the modern world as one inter-linked and inter-dependent economic unit. No country is self-sufficient. It is impossible to solve the accumulated problems of the present day, except on a world scale; no nation is self-sufficient, and no nation can stand alone. We believe that the wealth of the world, the raw materials of the world, and the natural resources of the world are so distributed over the earth that every country contributes something and lacks something for a rounded and harmonious development of the productive forces of mankind. We visualise the future society of mankind as world  socialism which will have a division of labour between the various regions according to their resources, a comradely collaboration between them, and production of the necessities and luxuries of mankind according to an overall world plan.

We think that the solution of the problem of the day—the establishment of socialism—is a world problem, we believe that the advanced workers in every country must collaborate in working toward that goal. We have, from the very beginning of our movement, collaborated with like-minded people in all other countries in trying to promote the socialist movement on a world scale. We have advocated the international organisation of the workers, and their cooperation in all respects, and mutual assistance in all respects possible.  The Socialist Party is opposed to all forms of national chauvinism, race prejudice and discrimination.  Nationalism  belittles, humiliates and rejects all that is foreign, and proclaims everything of its own as "pure". There is  no country superior to any other.

Everywhere in the world, a study of the national question reveals the use of differences by the ruling class as the foundation for its strategy of "divide and rule," of fomenting strife and friction between the toilers of various nationalities. In the ideology of race, the dominant classes have a much more potent weapon at their disposal than even religion and language. The latter, as social phenomena, are historically transient; whereas race, a physical category, persists. Unlike the white immigrant minorities, the black or brown immigrant, wears the badge of colour, which sets the seal of permanency on his inferior status.

In next year’s Independence referendum  there are only two groups officially sanctioned to campaign – those for the YES and the others for the NO.  It prevents the working class from freely propagating its own position. We unequivocably reject this.

A YES vote is a vote to reorganise capitalism in favour of Scotland’s bourgeoisie, which is after its share of the wealth. The SNP would use its power to collect tax to continue to subsidise Scottish capitalists. In an independent Scotland, the SNP would ask us to further tighten our belts in the interests of the “nation,” i.e. to profit Scottish employers. In an independent Scotland exploitation will still exist. The privileged handful that dominates our country will continue to profit from our exploitation .

Many workers are still drawn towards a YES vote despite the SNP’s alliance with capitalists. At least, they say, it is a step in the right direction, since independence will put an end to 300-odd years of “oppression”.  Scottish workers in order to maintain the competitiveness of Scotland’s business interests will always come second. Nor can the SNP’s plans for separation cannot eliminate the inequalities faced by the vast majority of Scottish workers.

Independence and separation means dividing the working class. This would divert the revolution from its socialist objective by weakening it in the fight to overthrow the capitalist class. Workers must unite to become the greatest possible force against capitalism. But separation would leave  the working class more isolated in the fight against the capitalist class.

A NO vote means simply supporting the status quo and a vote for Westminster and UK bosses. A choice of the pox against the plague.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain affirms an independent working class position that refuses to line up behind either of the two capitalist camps. We are fighting ALL nation chauvinism and for the unity of the WORLD working class. Our alternative is to continue the battle for socialism in Scotland and Britain, in Europe and throughout the globe.

Spoil your referendum ballot with the revolutionary slogan “world for the workers”

No "Free" Scotland

Alex Salmond opened the SNP's annual conference with a rousing call for independence – but quickly had to leave for talks that are an illustration of the lack of economic independence Scotland would possess.

Switzerland-based since it moved its HQ in 2010 to reduce its tax bill, after the Labour government refused to allow it to defer payments at the peak of the credit crunch in 2008,  Ineos has put proposals over pay and pensions to workers at the Grangemouth complex, which has 1,400 employees and many more contractors. The proposal includes freezing the basic salary and offering no bonuses until at least the end of 2016. The shift allowance would also be reduced from £10,000 to £7,500 per year, while pensions would be transferred from a final salary to a defined benefits scheme. It has also asked for guarantees that no further strike action will be held by workers. The company has said Grangemouth is "financially distressed" and must reduce costs. The company had told staff they could lose their jobs and be re-employed on poorer terms unless they agreed to the new conditions by 18:00 on Monday. Ineos delivered a  warning that the plant will have to be shut within three years, with heavy job losses, unless the company secures a government loan guarantee and cuts. The union disputes the company's analysis of the financial situation at the plant, and says that the company as a whole is making large profits. Unite  released an analysis of Grangemouth's finances by tax consultant Richard Murphy. He disputed Ineos's claims and said Grangemouth Chemicals – the only accounts he could find – made a profit in 2012 and was expecting £117m of tax gains that could only occur if the company earned £500m over the next few years.  Murphy said total labour costs, including exceptional pension expenses, were 16.9% of revenue and total labour costs "should not be a critical cause for concern".

Pat Rafferty, Unite's Scottish secretary, said: "This is cynical blackmail from a company that is putting a gun to the heads of its loyal workforce to slash pay, pensions and jobs...It is increasingly clear that the company is deliberately generating a dispute and hiding behind fancy accounting to attack its own workforce."”

For the Socialist Party of Great Britain neither geographical boundaries, race, nor creed makes rivals or enemies; for us there are no nations, but only varied masses of workers and friends, whose mutual sympathies are checked or perverted by groups of masters whose interest it is to stir up rivalries and hatreds between the dwellers in different lands.  The Socialist Party embraces all humanity. Socialism, founded the class struggle, has thoroughly killed in our hearts all national sentiment. It is better to be a traitor to your country than a traitor to your class. What matters it to the poor who are starving whether the country in which he or she is hungry is owned by this ruler or that ruler, if his or her miserable status changes not?

What are nationalities or nations? Among peoples there are no nations and nationalities any more, in the sense of a racial community. The Italians are a hybrid people: Romans, Greeks, Germans, Arabs, Celts, Phoenicians (Carthaginians);  so are the Spaniards: Celts, Iberians, Carthaginians (Phoenicians), Romans, Germans; so are the French: Celts, Greeks, Romans, Germans; so are the British: Celts, Romans, Germans; so are the Germans: Celts, Germans, Romans, Slavs.  No one any longer has a fatherland or motherland in the large and heterogeneous modern nations.

The love for the land of our birth is foolish, absurd, and the enemy of progress. We are taught that Britain is the land of the brave, the country of generosity and chivalry, and the refuge of liberty and we all, in the innocence of our hearts, believe it even though the same things are said of their countries by Germans, by the Russians, and the French. Our history  books on every page  reek with race hatred, national vanity and idolatry of the military.

All countries whatever may be the government ideology  with which they are labeled – are composed of two groups of men, one by far the less numerous, the other embracing the immense majority of the people.

The first group is seated at a well-spread table, where nothing is lacking. At the head of the table, at the place of honour, are seated the great financiers. Some are Jews, yes; others are Catholics; others, again, are Protestants, some even atheists. They may be in disagreement on religious or philosophic questions, and even on questions of interest, but, as against the great mass of the people, they work together like thieves at a fair. On their right and on their left are the cabinet ministers, the great officials of all the state services, civil, religious and military, and the gentlemen of the courts of law, judges and lawyers. And then there are the big shareholders of the mines, factories, railways and shipping companies, and the big stores, great squires and great landed proprietors, they are all at that table.

Far from that table are the beasts of burden, condemned to forbidding, dirty, dangerous and mindless toil, without respite or repose, and, above all, without security for the morrow; small tradesmen, confined to their counters 24/7, and more and more crushed out every day by the competition of the big stores; small industrial employers, ground out of existence by the competition of the big factory owners; small-holder farmers, brutalised by long hours of labour, 16 to 18 hours a day, and only working to enrich the big middlemen and the super-markets. Still farther off from the table of the prosperous are the great mass of the proletarians, those who for their whole fortune have only their arms and their brains; working men and women of the factory, exposed to long periods of unemployment; petty officials, clerks, and other employee, obliged to bow their heads and hide their opinions; domestic servants of both sexes, flesh for toil, flesh for cannon, flesh for lust.

Monstrous social inequality, monstrous exploitation of man by man, that is what a country is nowadays, and that is what the workers take off their hats to when the flag is carried by. They seem to say: “Oh, how beautiful is our country! Oh, how free”

The national struggle is harmful to the workers.  Nationalist slogans and goals distract the workers from their specifically proletarian goals. They divide the workers of different nations; they provoke the mutual hostility of the workers and thus destroy the necessary unity of the proletariat. They line up the workers and the bosses shoulder to shoulder in one front, thus obscuring the workers' class consciousness and transforming the workers into the executors of capitalist economic policy. National struggles prevent the assertion of social questions and  condemn the class struggle to sterility. All of this is encouraged by “socialist” propaganda when it presents nationalist slogans to the workers as valid and when it uses the language of nationalism in the description of our socialist goal. The re-establishment of an independent Scotland has no place in socialist propaganda.

The worker has nothing to do with the necessity of competition between the vying bourgeois classes, with their will to constitute a nation. For us, the nation does not mean the privilege of securing a customer base or market positions. Under the rule of capitalism the nation can never be synonymous with a labour monopoly for workers or guaranteed opportunities for work. In the trade union struggle, workers of different nationalities see themselves confronted by the same employer. They must wage their struggle united.The absurdity where the workers in the same workshop are organised in different trade unions and  stand in the way of the common struggle against the employer is obvious. These workers constitute a community of interests; they can only fight and win as a cohesive mass and therefore must be members of a single organisation. The separatists, by introducing the separation of workers by nationalities shatter the power of the workers in the same way.  This is not only true for the workers in one factory but for workers the world over. To all the nationalist slogans and arguments, the response will be: surplus value,  class rule, class struggle. When nationalists speak of the unity of the nation, we will speak of exploitation and class oppression. If they speak of the greatness of the nation, we will speak of the solidarity of the workers of the whole world. The class struggle and propaganda for socialism comprise the sole effective means of breaking the power of nationalism. The  power of nationalism will  be broken not by independence, whose realization does not depend upon us, but  by the strengthening of class consciousness.  Our politics and our agitation can only be directed to awaken class consciousness in workers.

Together against the bosses

It is true that socialists are not indifferent to the nature of the capitalist state and must struggle constantly to democratise that state. We count every one against us who is not with us and opposed to the capitalist class, especially those “reformers” of chicken hearts who are for everybody, especially themselves, and against nobody.

In the Independence referendum it would be folly and utterly useless to conduct any kind of a campaign other than a revolutionary socialist one. And that means a campaign the fundamental purpose of which is to teach the necessity of the destruction of the capitalist system and the substitution therefore of a socialist society. Failing that there is no conceivable justification for the participation of our party in this campaign. To distinguish ourselves fundamentally from all reformist groups by carrying on a campaign for socialism is not only theoretically correct but in this case also coincides with the demands of “common sense.” It must be clearly recognised that if we don’t conduct such a campaign there is no use having one at all. The campaign affords us an opportunity to teach thousands and tens of thousands of workers the meaning of socialism. In spite of handicaps socialists are in a position to conduct a revolutionary campaign and thereby increase the prestige and membership of the party. The activities in the Socialist Party must see in this campaign an opportunity to increase our numbers and influence.

Some of the unions have put forward all sorts of dubious ideas dreamed up by various little bands of Trotskyists in a patriotic effort to persuade the working class that Scottish independence would mark a step forward towards its own liberation, a step towards socialism. Nothing could be further from the truth. With the conditions that prevail today in this country, the independence of Scotland would not mean a step forward towards socialism. it would be a step backwards. However, this is not obvious to everyone, and warrants some attention. The people who parade the banner of “independence and socialism” around, to catch the attention of Scottish workers, are hard at work perpetuating a number of falsehoods. The referendum is not about independence. If the Yes side wins, Scotland will not be independent. The Scottish capitalists, even the most nationalist among them, never held to the idea of separating from London and Brussels Wall St. The reason is quite simple: it goes against their interests. A “socialist” Scotland will still face the same enemies regardless of whether Scotland is part of the rest of the UK or not. The working class faces a powerful and aggressive enemy which is solidly united despite some contradictions within its ranks. The people are not going to win by dividing themselves. Working class unity is a must right now if effective resistance is to be mounted to the austerity measures imposed by the capitalists. Unity is necessary to stand up against all the attacks on our democratic rights. Those who dress up as socialists in order to push nationalism in the working class are the objective allies of the capitalists.

Supporting independence in the name of the light for socialism is a monumental hoax. It flows from the same kind of logic that leads others to preach the nationalization as the cure for all our ills.  It is up to the working class to show we will not be duped by  political nonsense and deceitful rhetoric.

Don't repeat mistakes

Nationalism serves as a powerful wedge, weakening the workers’ movements and preventing them from uniting against capital. My “nationality” first feeds the sentiment that it is non-natives  rather than the capitalist ruling class which is responsible for exploitation. It  retards the process of building class unity and consciousness.

Our task as socialists is to expose and condemn  nationalist organisations as agents of the capitalists who can lead only to further oppression  of the workers. Marxism views classes and class struggle as the fundamental contradiction of modern society. The struggle between the working class and the employers conditions the whole of social life, and creates the contours for the development and transformation of society from one stage to another. The class war, then, is the most profound dividing line in modern times. As Marxists we never put the rights of nations above the rights and duties of our class. We must always and everywhere advance the class line over every other, whether it is colour, sex or nationality.

 Jim Larkin says that one of the last things that he said to James Connolly was not to go into the nationalist movement, not to join the Irish Volunteers, which was the armed force of the nationalist movement. Connolly did go into the Easter Rebellion. Sean O’Casey, the Irish playwright, in a pamphlet he wrote on the Irish Citizen Army, declares baldly that James Connolly died not for Irish socialism but for Irish nationalism. In all events, the Irish Citizen Army was decimated, and crushed in the Easter Rebellion. There were few left to carry on the “socialistic” side of Connolly’s doctrines. The entire movement was swept along in arise of Irish patriotism and Irish nationalism. Sinn Féin was in complete control of the movement. Instead of discussing socialism, they discussed Ireland.  After all the sacrifice of blood, the Irish people  changed masters, and a new Irish bourgeoisie developed and grew. The Scottish worker is now counselled to repeat the mistake of Connolly and subordinate socialism to nationalism. Our place of birth was accidental, but our duty to our class is worldwide.

 There cannot  be any national unity in a real sense as long as 1% of the population lives off the fat of the land because they OWN the machines, while 99% do all the useful WORK of society. And you certainly don’t have national unity when the government speaks and acts as the protector of the 1%. The bosses consider “national, unity” to be achieved when labour quits striking against pay cuts and co-operates with speed-ups.

Neither Westminster nor Holyrood but World Socialism

The Socialist Courier once more risks raising the the ire of our nationalist opponents who accuse us of being British unionist enemies of the Scottish people. A lack of confidence in a common socialist  future has caused sections of workers in Scotland to take shelter under a nationalist banner. Some organisations and individuals calling themselves ‘socialist’ have been infected by the disease of nationalism. We fight these “left nationalists" most energetically, because of the fact that they call themselves enemies of capitalism and because they are just as much enemies of the working class movement. Their propoganda threatens to divert the workers from the most important part of their struggle, the conquest of the power of the State and the establishment of socialism. And so it is interests of the practical struggle, that we regard the “left nationalists" as opponents who do not belong to our socialist movement.

 Thomas Johnston wrote in his The History of the Working Classes in Scotland: “Scotland was not a nation: it was a loose aggregation of small but practically self-supporting communities, and scanty supplies and high prices at Aberdeen may quite well have been coincident with plenty and comparatively low prices in Dundee and Glasgow”.

The Scottish commentator, George Kerevan, observed:“The notion that illiterate peasants, who lived and died their short brutal lives within a few hundred yards of their village, had a conception of nationalism beyond a gut xenophobia for everyone beyond the village is stretching the imagination”

Scottish nationalism starts from the assumption that Scotland was a nation from medieval times, if not earlier.  Some even trace the origin of Scotland to the time of the Picts, or the arrival of Scots from Ireland, or MacAlpine kings in the 9th century. Others among the nationalists assert that Scotland achieved nationhood from the war of independence against the ‘English’, William Wallace’s victory at Stirling Bridge (1297), the battle of Bannockburn (1314),  the Declaration of Arbroath (1320) and also by the ‘independence’ of the Kirk, the education system and the law.  Even the dynastic fights between the Stewarts and the Hanoverians of Jacobite rebellions of 1715 and 1745, are presented as expressions of Scotland’s national resistance against English colonialism.

The assertion that William Wallace led a people’s revolt in a ‘war of national liberation’ against the ‘English’ does not stand up to scrutiny. The kings and the nobility of  Scotland – were feudal lords, who did not even understand, let alone entertain, modern-day ideas of nationhood, nor could they. They were possessed of a culture drawn from the Norman French, who married across the whole of the north-western part of Europe and were, in this sense, cosmopolitan to their fingertips. To them the very concept of wars of national liberation would have been entirely alien. Their domains of exploitation, their rivalries and their commonalities invariably coincided. They were lords in Scotland who also held large tracts in England. For example, Robert Bruce, the Earl of Carrick and a vassal of Edward I, held 90,000 acres of land in Yorkshire, while his rival, John Balliol, held large tracts of land in Normandy and England, as well as Scotland. Members of the nobility from the kingdom of Scotland, for example John Comyn, fought on the side of Edward I in the latter’s conquest of Wales, while the armies of Edward I and II, deployed in the wars in Scotland, which were firmly rooted in feudal, not national rights, were recruited from their feudal realms in France, Wales and Ireland.

Undoubtedly Edward I laid claim to the kingdom of Scotland and sought to include it into his own kingdom. With 13 rival claims to the throne of Scotland, the barons turned to Edward to settle the dispute. He marched his army to the border, proclaimed himself lord paramount of Scotland, and decided that John Balliol had a better claim than Robert Bruce.  John Balliol was accordingly crowned king and duly paid homage to Edward in 1292. Conflicts within the feudal elite in Scotland, and harsh demands made by Edward on his vassals, drove John Balliol into revolt, but he and his forces were defeated. Balliol was captured and humiliatingly ceremonially stripped of his feudal trappings in 1296, with his tabard, hood and knightly girdle physically removed. Following several shifts of alliances, the feudal elite in Scotland turned the tables on Edward I and then Edward II – at Stirling Bridge (1297).  Moray and Wallace came to be Guardians in Scotland, in the name of the “illustrious king” in exile, John Balliol, not the people.
The so-called war of independence soon turned into a mutually ruinous war between the Bruce and Balliol families. These internecine struggles between competing feudal dynasties were based on the  belief systems of  the then-prevailing notions of fief and vassalage, not on the present-day concepts of nationhood.  The  lords in Scotland were engaged in a desperate struggle to defend and safeguard their traditional monopoly to exploit their peasant serfs against the centralising power of Edward I.

Declaration of Arbroath

The real content behind the Arbroath Declaration, was to allow the feudal elements to continue this exploitation of the peasantry. It was not as nationalist historians claim the clearest “....statement of Scottish nationalism and patriotism in the fourteenth century” nor the finest “... statement of a claim to national independence... produced in this period anywhere in western Europe.”  Far from it.  As the historian Neil Davidson rightly wrote, “The sonorous wording of the Declaration is in fact a clear statement of, among other things, the fact that the feudal ruling class still considered themselves to be a nation in a racial rather than the modern sense”

The preamble to the Declaration is characteristically medieval: it traces the wanderings of the “Scots nation” from “Greater Scythia” to Scotland, celebrates its triumphs over Britons and Picts, and survival from attacks by “Norwegians, Danes and English” .  As Davidson remarks, those who assert that these statements serve to “prove the existence of a primordial Scottish nation must logically also accept the existence of primordial ‘British’ and ‘Pictish’ nations”. Apart from anything else, the names of Roger Mowbray and Ingram Unafraville, among the signatories, are evocative of a descent from Anglo-Norman settlers invited to settle in Scotland during the reign of David, who themselves descended “...from earlier Viking invaders of what is now France from what is now Norway – a place somewhat removed from Scythia” .

A key passage in the Declaration runs thus: “Yet if he [Robert the Bruce] shall give up what he has begun, seeking to make us or our kingdom subject to the king of England or to the English, we would strive at once to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter of his own rights and ours, and we would make some other man who was able to defend us our king; for, as long as hundred of us remain alive, we will never on any conditions be subjected to the lordship of the English. For we fight not [for] glory, nor riches, nor honours, but for freedom alone, which no good man gives up without his life”.

The above passage has been represented by some as the prototype for modern nationalism.  Some have even gone so far as to assert that this represents “the first national or governmental articulation, in all of Europe, of the principle of the contractual theory of monarchy which lies at the heart of modern constitutionalism.”

In truth, this passage suggests the function of the noble estate “as the defender of the kingdom against the claims of the individual monarch in a way that was entirely typical of absolutist Europe” says Davidson.  Its message was two-fold.  First, it was directed at Edward II, informing him that it was pointless for him to attempt to depose Robert with a more subservient king, since the remainder of the Scottish aristocracy would not cease its resistance.  Second, it was addressed to Robert, making it clear that they would not brook his jeopardising their interests – which lay in their god-given right to unhindered exploitation of the mass of the peasantry – through making concessions to Edward.

To attribute to the Declaration of Arbroath modern connotations of nationhood is as false as to impart similar meanings to the Magna Carta.  Both these documents should be seen for what they really were – an expression of the interests barons of the respective kingdoms and their determination to hang on to their privileges, against the monarch. To read into the Declaration the notions of a modern nation, not merely obscures its motives but “establishes a false identity” and “confers legitimacy on a key element in nationalist ideology, namely the primordial continuity of ‘the nation’ throughout history”, according to Davidson.

1707 Union

 The loyalty of the feudal lords to the Scottish Crown took second place to their own local, particular interests. It is hardly surprising that one of the important concessions conceded by the English parliament during the 1707 treaty negotiations was the inclusion of Article 20 which explicitly retained the heritable jurisdictions which were the bedrock of the power of the Scottish lords over their tenants. In the absence of peasant revolts, which were not known in Scotland until the mid-17th century, the peasantry was by and large quiescent, the danger from below which might have compelled the Scottish aristocracy to strengthen the monarchy, instead of exploiting its weakness, never surfaced.  In the absence of the need for an absolutist monarchy to suppress the direct producers, absolutism remained weak, with the result that “the individual lords retained a local weight unparalleled elsewhere in western Europe”.  Between 1455 and 1662, the Stuarts attempted on no fewer than seven occasions to outlaw the jurisdictions that were the basis of the nobility’s power, but they failed – a failure which speaks eloquently of the balance of power between the Crown and the nobility.

The union of England and Scotland in 1707 was the rising Scottish bourgeoisie which began to forge a British identity. This Scottish bourgeoisie found great impetus following 1746 and the victory of the British state over feudalism after the Jacobite uprising. From here the British nation was born. The question of whether Scotland was/is an oppressed nation, a victim of English colonialism albeit, the concept of 'internal colonialism', can be rebutted by presenting various statistics such as to  illustrate the strength of Scottish industry, which  in terms of coal, linen and tobacco, in the 18th century, outstripped the rest of Britain. Success in industry continued into the 19th and 20th centuries. Scottish participation in politics and other professions is well-documented.  The eviction of Scottish crofters in the 18th century was the product of the rise of capitalism, not English 'foreign' aggression. The Scottish bourgeoisie played a leading role in Britain's colonial plunder of the world, most graphically recorded in the account of the rape of India.

The few with their million of pounds demand that the millions with their few pounds be ready to shed their life blood, fighting for what they have conceived and still conceive to be "their" country, when few of them can show title-deeds to so much as a square foot of it. They do not yet perceive that the country they fight for is the master's country and that they fight only because they are hypnotized by the press and political orators into the insubstantial belief that it is their duty and glory thus to fight. The land on which we must live is the property of a class who are the descendants of men who stole the land from our forefathers, and we who are workers, are, whether in town or country, compelled to pay for permission to live on it.  The houses, the shops and factories, which were built by the labour of our forefathers at wages that simply kept them barely alive are owned by a class which never contributed an ounce of sweat to their construction, but whose members continue to draw rent and profit from them while the system lasts. The wealthy took over common land by ruse or violence, declaring themselves its owners; they have established by law that it will always be theirs, and that the right to property has become the foundation of the capitalist constitution. The right to property has extended itself by logical deduction from the land to other instruments: the accumulated products of labor, designated by the generic name of capital.

 Founded on conquest, which has divided the Scottish population into victors and vanquished, neither the instruments nor the fruits of labour belong to the workers, but to the idle rich. Servitude does not consist solely in being  a lord’s serf. He or she is not free who, deprived of the instruments of labour, remains at the mercy of the privileged who are their owners. The nationalists talk of  a “community of interests”,  of solidarity between the capitalist and the worker. How artistically embroidered are the lies and many are fooled.

Let us immediately say that equality doesn’t consist in the partitioning of land or equalising wages. The splitting up of land or lessening income differentials will really change nothing concerning the right of property. It is the re-distribution of poverty and with wealth growing from the ownership of the instruments of labor, rather than through labour itself, the spirit of exploitation left standing would soon through the reconstruction of large fortunes, how to restore social inequality. The free association of the producers alone, in place of private property, will serve the welfare of the people. The Socialist Party struggles for freedom from all tyrants, both foreign and native.  It is the task of all workers regardless of their place of birth to unite and present one front to the common enemy in the common struggle — the fight against the exploitation of those who work by those who own — the fight against capitalist slavery