Your Life - Their Country

Scottish independence is a gesture of despair but for many Scots, and it is also a beguiling idea full of promise of a nation. Nationalism facilitates the efforts of various national bourgeoisies as they seek to obscure class conflict. So long as the workers form the “tail” by following any section whatsoever of the bourgeoisie, they will remain tame and incapable of gaining their true freedom. They will merely secure the ends of those very bourgeois against whom they think they are fighting; and since they are not looking after their own interests, they will either forget those interests or be unable to distinguish them.

Scottish nationalists seek to merely re-arrange the existing national boundaries by establishing a new state. This new Scottish state would be just as much an enemy of the working class struggle as are the existing United Kingdom state. In overthrowing capitalism the Socialist Party agitates for the abolition of all nation states and national boundaries. The real enemy of the working class is the entire capitalist system itself. What is wrong with the working class taking sides in struggles is that it amounts to encouraging the working class to co-operate with one enemy in order to defeat another, in order later to be suppressed by the first. If the independence movement succeeds profits are intended to rise at the expense of the Scottish worker. The ruling class - or those who aspire to become the ruling class - have always been able to rope the working class into fighting their battles for them. Certainly no one country's exploiters are so superior to the rest that the workers should sacrifice themselves defending them. There can be no relief for Scots in changing an English robber for an Scottish one. The person of the robber does not matter—it is the fact of the robbery that spells misery. Let the thieves fight their own battles!

"The nation" and "The people" are not identical. "The people" have never determined their own political, social and economic affairs. In every country, political, social and economic policies are drawn up by, and in the interests of, the ruling class. What is presented as being for the good of the nation is purely for the benefit of the bosses. Any ideology which denies this is so, is a barrier which must be broken down. Pro-independence advocates encourages workers to waste their efforts in chasing something which cannot be achieved. An independent Scotland cannot be free from external control. The rulers of any newly "independent" nation-state immediately find themselves having to come to terms with a worldwide economic system dominated by powerful blocs and integrated on a global scale. Their room for manoeuvre within this framework is extremely limited. Of course, nationalists say that the working class would be better off in a Scotland controlled by Edinburgh but international capital based in the City of London, Brussels and Wall St will still determine its affairs. The best that it can be achieved is to mitigate some of the worst effects. The  capitalist class is still to remain the proud possessor of the land, factories, the mines and transport.
"As long as we have not broken the world capitalist order, we remain exploited by the mercantile relations of production."  Ben Bella, a leading figure in the Algerian Front Liberation Nationale during the struggle against French colonialism and who became President of newly independent Algeria in 1962, speaking of his disillusionment following their success.

Scottish nationalist does not strengthen the real force for socialism, a united, class-conscious working class, but fragments and weakens it. National divisions are a hindrance to working-class unity and action, and national jealousies and differences are fostered by the capitalists for their own ends. The Socialist Party of Great Britain does not defend the unity of the United Kingdom in any way but that does not mean we are in favour of separatism. Our abstention distinguishes us from the Left. The interests of the workers of all countries are the same – the establishment of the socialist world. What workers has to realise clearly is that the interests of their fellow workers in other lands are nearer to theirs than are those of their masters in their own country. The bonds which bind worker with worker, irrespective of nationality, are those of class solidarity. Struggles over the environmental is just as much part of the class struggles as the workplace and encompasses solutions that go beyond the factory floor and national boundaries. Socialists claim membership to the whole of humanity not just a part of it.

For the triumph of socialism organisation is essential, but the organisation must be for socialism and based on socialist principles or such organisation can be nothing to the workers but a delusion and a snare. To the Left unity is the Holy Grail, always sought but never found. Insistence upon the necessity for agreement on principles, on methods, and above all on the aim, appears to be scorned as sectarianism. True unity is a means to an end. First of all the essentials regarding the end to be sought and the means to that end must be agreed upon, for “unity” without this is unity in impotence, being without everything that makes unity useful, namely, common principles, methods, and object. Unity under any other conditions than that of agreement on the essentials of aims and methods is doomed to failure. This type of unity does not prevent certain members of the party from calumniating '"fraternally" against their "dear comrades", nor discourage persecuting them with venomous bile. We need look no further than the  the SSP and Sheridan and the other Trotskyist groups. And now they urge unity with our class enemy to achieve Scottish sovereignty!

We of the Socialist Party are few in number but our mission is simple. We  proceed with educational propaganda until the working class have understood the fundamental facts of their position - that they do not own the means by which they live, that they are but commodities on the market, never hired unless employers can profit, always discarded when a liability. We have to emphasise the fact that no appreciable change is possible in the working-class condition while we all remain commodities. There are no short cuts. Naturally, we wish the work to be accomplished as soon as possible, and that is why we oppose and expose those who, sometimes with the best of intentions, blur the issue that must be kept in clear view, and so prolong the task of emancipation. For the worker in Scotland there is hope. Join the local branches of the international socialist working class and make common cause with the socialist workers of all countries for the end of all forms of exploitation; saying to both English and Scottish capitalists: "A plague on both your houses". For the true battle-cry of the working class is more significant and more inspiring than mere nationalism, and that rally cry is: THE WORLD FOR THE WORKERS!