The Mythtake of Nationalism

Arundathi Roy

All nationalism is based on mythical history and nations have to create their ideologies from whatever come to hand and Scotland is perhaps luckier than most with its many fairy-tales of a romantic. Nationalism is an enemy of working people. Nationalism is the belief that the members of a nation share common interests that are different from the interests of other nations and different from the interests of the human race as a whole. Any nationalism ultimately implies that those people are better than all others.

Scottish nationalism proclaims that the Scottish exploited have more in common with their Scottish exploiter than with their fellow workers. Nationalism is a heaven-sent way of diverting the  workers from pursuit of their class interests and provides the sugar-coating on an economic system based on wage-slavery. In a capitalist country, it is capitalists who own most of the wealth, who hold the power and who are accepted as spokespeople of the national interest. So when the specifics of any claimed national interest are looked at, it turns out that those specifics are the interests either of particular capitalists or of the capitalist class as a whole.  Nationalist employers will remain true to their class interests and abandon the workers with the lie that “It is in the country’s best interest if workers’  accept lower wages so that the products from our nation can undercut those from other nations.”

In The Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels insisted that “the working men have no country”. They argued that the nation state was alien to the interests of the working  class and that in order to advance their interests workers must “settle matters” with the capitalist class of each state, that workers must challenge the power of their “own” capitalist class directly. Marx maintained that workers must free themselves of patriotism and national superiority in their own interests, for without discarding these aspects of ruling class ideology they would never themselves be free. Independence does not constitute a departure from the status quo but rather stands for its continuation albeit under a different flag. Constitutional struggle is no substitute for class struggle.

As the Indian writer, Arundhati Roy, says
"It's disturbing to see how neatly nationalism dovetails into fascism. While we must not allow the fascists to define what the nation is, or who it belongs to, it's worth keeping in mind that nationalism, in all its many avatars—socialist, capitalist and fascist—has been at the root of almost all the genocides of the twentieth century. On the issue of nationalism, it's wise to proceed with caution."

The political position of the Socialist Party is the policy of uniting people on the basis of class rather than separating them on the basis of any other factor - whether it is gender, sexuality, religion, colour or nationality. The Socialist Party encourages workers to put their political loyalties in their class, rather than their nation. Nationalism turns people into rivals vying for the same jobs as both economies are forced to compete for investment, thus triggering a race to the bottom.

 Will Socialists find their work easier in an independent Scotland than now? Will the Left nationalists be the dangerous rebels then as they pretend to be now?  No matter how you clip and trim a poodle it always stays a poodle and regardless of how much you re-shape and re-fashion capitalism, it remains capitalism. Scots aspiring to enrich local culture, even if they have to wait for it, should be part of the world’s workers movement. To the Scottish nationalist, as to all other peoples, the Socialist Party says, “Your  struggles will be abortive or lead to mere disappointment unless you accept as your watchword, WAGE-WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES UNITE!”

" To oppose imperialism demanded, then a total rejection of all forms of nationalism, even that of the victims of imperialist aggression. Nationalism and imperialism were inseparable and had to fought with equal fervor. " - Paul Mattick on Rosa Luxemburg