Of the top 100 economies on the planet, 40 are corporations, the wealth of certain corporations dwarf the economies of some nations. Another little known fact is that less than 1% of corporations, mainly banks, control the shares of more than 40% of all global businesses. When it comes to who is big in this corporate world it is oil and gas, 7 out of the top 10 companies in the world are oil and gas.
The Scottish economy is controlled by the same hedge funds the same banks and the same multinational giants as the rest of Britain. Edinburgh is the UK's second financial centre after London and Europe's fourth by equity assets. Glasgow also has the third highest GDP Per capita of any city in the UK (after London and Edinburgh) Glasgow is now one of Europe's sixteen largest financial centres. The Financial Services Sector provides employment for 1 in 10 of the population and the Scottish economy is hugely dependant on it. Scotland' GDP is £124 billion (excluding revenues from North Sea oil). Prior to the 2008 financial crisis Scotland ranked second only to London in the European league of headquarters locations of the 30 largest banks in Europe as measured by market value. Scotland is one of the world's biggest fund management centres with over £300bn worth of assets directly serviced or managed in the country.
Glasgow and Edinburgh are both in the top 50 of the bi-annual Global Financial Services Index, at positions 41 and 37, close to Dublin, Oslo, and Copenhagen and far ahead of Moscow, Madrid and Rome. The sector manages £750 billion of assets, while 24 percent of the UK’s insurance and pensions sectors are based in Scotland. Edinburgh in particular hosts a large percentage of finance industry headquarters and up to 80 percent of all security brokers and fund managers in Scotland. Edinburgh is Europe's 14th largest financial centre. Glasgow has the third highest GDP per capita of any city in the UK (after London and Edinburgh) Glasgow is also now one of Europe's sixteen largest financial centres.
Capitalism is a mode of production. It does not disappear one day just because there is a constitutional change and a re-location of a parliament. It does not change into some kind of “good” capitalism just because it becomes more localised. The problem isn’t "free-enterprise capitalism", “crony capitalism,” “monopoly capitalism,” or even "state capitalism" and “neo-liberal capitalism.” You can add whatever prefix to “capitalism” as you see fit, but its internal contradictions, exploitation, instability and absurdities don’t lie in the words. They are all inherent features of capitalism, plain and simple. Any proposed solution to the inherent problems of capitalism which essentially boil down to more capitalism, are inevitably doomed to failure.
Socialists must tell the workers the truth. And the truth is that nationalism, regardless of how it is camoflaged with Marxist terminology, represents no way forward for the working people. The establishment of a separate Scottish state is the creation of a capitalist state. Scotland envisage by the SSP would be hundreds of thousands of small businesses thriving as would many large companies such as call centres. There's no virtue in being a small business. They make their money the same way as large ones, by paying workers less than the value that they produce. Often the working conditions of small businesses are worse than in bigger enterprises: wages tend to be lower, insecurity of employment higher, less health and safety oversight making the work riskier, the pollution more worse. The SSP are simply spouting populist rhetoric. Being against big business but in favor of small business shows little understanding of capitalism or of class.
Somehow in this "socialist" Scotland profit would no longer be the raison d'etre of businesses. The logic of capitalist production is the preservation of the capital invested and the creation of surplus-value – the origin of profits. This is a logic which is fundamental and cannot be suspended. Instead of being siphoned off to shareholders (who would of course receive fair compensation for their loss), the surpluses produced by workers would be used to increase wages, reduce hours, improve working conditions. Socially owned companies such as workers co-operatives or council own. Even the model of Standard Life and other mutual insurance companies are evoked by the SSP. Banks would become more like building societies again or nationalised. The creation of community banks or credit unions is not really doing anything that is in anyway revolutionary. It's definitely not challenging capitalism and property ownership. It is not questioning the parasitic relationship of capitalist production which is all about money -- money expanding into more money, the accumulation of capital. Yes, their vision of a "socialist Scotland" is a nice not a nasty capitalism. The SSP imagine that businesses in their " socialist" Scotland will no longer be concerned with costs or competition or commercial confidentiality or market share. Capitalism is now more than ever a global system of production. Competition is a fact of life for the capitalist mode of production. It has destructive effects upon the lives of working people. However, competition is also frequently destructive to capital. It is so destructive that large capitalists try to eliminate competition by buying up competitors, ruining them in various ways or forming ‘agreements‘ such as cartels and monopolies. For one country to be competitive means having a higher productivity, lower labour-costs and lower infrastructure and taxation costs than another country. Capital looks for places where production can be set up with low wages, low taxation, low levels of regulation and few restrictions on pollution. To be such a competitive location for capital investment – on any serious scale – would require that advanced capitalist countries such as Scotland will have to lower wages, taxation, regulation, welfare provision and pollution regulations to a standard level or below the current average available in Asia, Eastern Europe elsewhere. Or increase productivity to such a high level that massive levels of relative over-production would occur and increase pollution and resource destruction. Competition on the world level requires mass-production and mass-production conducted with fewer and fewer workers. And if each country adopts this path – a competitive race to the bottom of welfare standards will ensue. So increased competition will lower wages, lower environmental standards, lead to more exhaustion of raw material resources and more crises down the competitive road of economic growth.
Of course, the SSP seek to save their "socialist" Scotland by increased taxation. Taxation, is revenue extracted from wages, salaries, profits and sales of commodities. Under capitalism wages and salaries come from the payment for two main types of labour – productive-labour and unproductive-labour. Productive-labour is that which is employed by capital and preserves value as well as creating surplus-value. This value and surplus-value is the source of money-capital from which, wages, profits, rents, interest and those taxes collected from these sources, is paid. In other words surplus-value is the source of direct tax revenue for governments. Even the taxes paid on consumption also comes out of the wages and salaries of workers which have their origins in surplus-value.
The oppression and exploitation of working people is a product of capitalist society and can only be removed by the genuine socialist transformation of society, not pretend state or municipal socialist imaginations of a make-believe Scotland. This requires the unity of all workers, irrespective of nation, colour, creed, sex or language. It is our role as socialists to put across the case for socialism openly and honestly and not try to dupe our fellow workers into joining through the advocacy of so-called "transitional demands" and the like. The only way capitalism will come to an end is if a majority of workers decide to consciously replace it with non-market, non-statist alternative.
For a world without capitalism
For a world without countries
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