It certainly does not require a great genius to understand that Scotland, like every other country, has a population which is divided into a majority who are non-owners and a minority who are owners. And that after centuries of joint development with England that all means of producing wealth are owned and controlled by large businesses whose shareholders are spread throughout Britain and the rest of the world. Just as certainly it does not need extraordinary intelligence to know that workers in specifically "Scottish" companies merely receive in wages enough to continue working—barely enough, as for workers everywhere.
Scottish workers don't have to attend a university to know that the ruling class of Scotland since the days of the Highland "Clearances" are any less brutal and avaricious than their English counterparts. The Scottish nation, whether independent or united with England, is divided into classes, as is society elsewhere. It is this division which accounts for the existence of the evils from which the Scottish workers suffer. English rule did not account for the fact that the depopulation of the Scottish Highlands led to the congestion in its industrial slums. The Scottish chieftains themselves turned out their own clansmen in order to make way, first for sheep and later for deer, in order to fill their own pockets. The notorious Duchess of Sutherland, for example, had 15,000 people hunted out in the six years 1814-20 and called in British soldiers to enforce the eviction. The political union merely facilitated the development of capitalist robbery with violence.
Capitalism was born and flourished on brutality, both at home and abroad. The history of Scotland, while differing in detail from that of England, followed the same general course. By their divorce from the land, a nation of peasants were converted into wage-slaves, exploited by a class ready to convert the world into one gigantic market. The forces of competition thus let loose may be held in check to some degree by national legislatures, but no final solution for the havoc they create can be found along such lines. The problem is essentially an international one, and must be internationally solved. That, however, calls not for nationalist parties, but for parties in all countries which clearly recognise the common interest of the workers of the world, namely, to achieve their emancipation as a class. The simple truth is that capitalism will be just the same as far as the working class are concerned. What is required is another system of society, not new administrators for the old one.
The defenders of capitalism adopt sundry devices to hide this fact of life and one of the handiest ones has been for years to play on the difference of nationality and the seat of government. Their anti-working class nonsense and buffoonery rests upon the political ignorance of the Scottish workers whose political and social interests—like their fellow-workers everywhere—are opposed to those of their masters and does not lie in schemes which will enable their employers to wring yet more surplus value from their skill and energy. Capitalism in Scotland, in England, America, Germany, Russia, in every country in the world produces the same set of problems to workers—poverty, unemployment, insecurity, war, and so on. These problems arise with sublime impartiality as to forms of government, climate and previous political history, they arise in democracies and dictatorships in the two hemispheres and in big and wee countries. Scotland is only a small part of an economic system which embraces the whole world. It could never enjoy any real autonomy or self-sufficiency in the face of the world market. From day one it will be buffeted by hostile economic forces entirely beyond its control.
The defence against this stratagem is, as always the re-statement of the socialist case and an iron confidence in the working-class ability eventually to solve their own problems without the assistance of any Lairds. The duty of the Scottish workers—like the workers the world over—is to-day—not tomorrow—to attempt an understanding of the basic nature of their problems and having done so, to organise democratically to take political power to establish socialism.
There are many parties claiming to be socialist who ally themselves with the capitalist class for temporary gains, ignoring the fact that working men and women will not make a distinction between those parties. If their votes are asked for in support of reforms which do not make any fundamental difference to their social position or problems, the workers naturally tend to support the political party that will make the most enticing promises, whatever be the label. Those who do not fulfil their promises are simply deserted. Too often, so-called ‘progressives’ and ‘radicals’ publish a mish-mash menu of wishful goals as an election manifesto. Such electioneering opportunism tries to give a movement size without substance and only raises false expectations and leave the way open for the inevitable disillusionment and collapse. On the other hand, had those parties based their case on sound principles, had all compromise been excluded, the parties in question would have been smaller, but would have raised no false hopes nor brought to many the inevitable despair. Socialist education demands that besides advocating the establishment of socialism, the obstacles that stand in its path must be pointed out. So they offer their support and their vote for political parties that offer them half-a- loaf instead of the bakery and the wheat-fields.
When the workers get on the right track of understanding their position they will cease to worry over comparatively trivial differences in their conditions, whether as between nations or between districts or separate towns. They will recognise that they suffer varying degrees of poverty because at present they exist merely to produce profits for their masters and that it is a matter of comparative indifference to them whether these masters are English or Scots, Germans or Japanese. Their aim will be to abolish masters of every nationality and to organise the production of wealth for their common good.
The socialist case will continue to be heard and advocated in this part of the world despite our few numbers.
No comments:
Post a Comment