The World Struggle

Left nationalists will argue that Scottish nationalism is somehow progressive and different to British nationalism and therefore Scots should vote Yes in the referendum. We say that this is a dangerous poison that is being spread by Leftists. It has served to divide workers. We argue that every nation state is by its very nature anti-working class. There can be no community of interests between two classes in antagonism with one another, the non-owners in society and the owners (the workers and the capitalists). And the state ultimately exists only to defend the property interests of the owning class at any given point in history – which is why modern states across the world send the police and army in to break strikes and otherwise seek to protect the interests of the capitalists and “business” at every turn.

Basically, the SNP is just another reformist party angling for support on a programme of reforms styling itself on the Nordic social democrats. They are endeavouring to outbid all the other parties by proposing that the wealth from North Sea Oil be divided among five million plus people only, instead of fifty million, and paint a picture of how, given self-government, oil revenues will provide a paradise in Scotland. Predictably the nationalists claim that their first priority is to launch a "war on poverty". The important thing to note is that the nationalists are merely making promises, and politicians have always found that far easier to make than fulfil. They pretend to the workers that should independence come then all the oil revenues will automatically go into the Scottish exchequer and be used mainly for the benefit of the workers. They must know that the capitalist class in Scotland would insist that oil revenues be used to reduce the burden of taxation which rests on them. The other people to benefit from Scottish independence would be the local politicians, who would be able to award themselves grander titles and grander salaries.

Should a sovereign Scotland be established Scots will discover that they cannot will or legislate away those problems of capitalism. No country in the world, no matter how independent or rich in resources, has yet succeeded in eliminating poverty, unemployment, insecurity, etc. For the working class there will be wages while they are working and pensions when they are too old or infirm. It is of no concern to workers in Scotland whether they are governed from London or by a separate independent government in Edinburgh. This is because the cause of the problems they face is the capitalist economic system of production for profit, not the form of government. And the capitalist economic system would continue to exist in a constitutionally independent Scotland.

The goal of the socialist movement is to establish a real world community without frontiers. The Left Ntionalists proclaim themselves visionaries but they cannot see beyond the narrow confines of the nation-state, conceived in medieval times and as outmoded as the clan system it replaced. It is the Socialist Party who are the true men and women of vision, who look forward to and struggle for a new world of common ownership and democratic control of society's resources, and uncluttered with the frontiers and class divisions which go hand-in-hand with "the nation".

We don’t want or care about Scottish independence any more than we care or support a “United Kingdom”.  We do want world socialism, where the means of life will be owned in common by the whole of the world socialist community. The real liberation struggle for freedom is the class struggle.