"Tell people that patriotism is bad and most of them will laugh and say: ‘Yes, bad patriotism is bad, but my patriotism is good!’ " - Leo Tolstoy
Many accuse members of the Socialist Party's branches in Scotland of being unpatriotic. We are, in fact, proud to be anti-patriotic. But just because we are not prepared to back the efforts of Scottish nationalists to break away from the United Kingdom does not mean that we are a Unionist party. We don’t support the Union. We simply accept it under sufferance. The Socialist Party are just is much opposed to British nationalism as we are to Scottish or European.
Once more the nationalists seek the people's approval on the matter of independence and as before our counsel to fellow-workers is don’t be fooled by constitutional reform as a benefit to us. Once again our members won’t be voting “yes” or “no”. We’ll be writing the words “world socialism” across any future referendum voting paper.
This time around, the outward reason for a second referendum is Brexit where most regions in the UK voted to leave but Scotland chose to vote remain. Those on the first referendum who suggested a No vote because of the threat of breaking the labour links with fellow Britons must now re-evaluate whether a Yes will restore the labour relationship between Scottish and European workers. Our view is that the state or a bloc of states such as the EU ultimately exists only to defend the property interests of the owning class at any given point in history, to protect the interests of the capitalists and their businesses at every turn. Capitalism is not a system that can be humanised or reformed or transformed into something better. It is a profit system subject to economic laws which can only work in one way: as a system of profit-making and accumulation of capital in the interest of a tiny minority of profit-takers.
Scottish separatists see themselves as visionaries but they cannot see beyond the narrow confines of the nation-state, conceived in pre-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. Socialists recognises the essential unity of the human race and the urgent need to celebrate it by building society on that basis. In a socialist society the traditional knowledge and expertise held by small communities will be respected, especially where this relates to local ecology and sustainable systems of land use, and hence priority given to local decision-making over whatever has to be delegated to wider regional or global democratic control. In a socialist society communities, towns and cities will have the opportunity to thrive – and people will no doubt feel an attachment to places that are real and tangible – but the nation states will be consigned to the history books where they belong. We will recognise ourselves, not as Scottish, British, or European but as members of humanity. Then nationalism will have been well and truly buried.
The world-wide working class to end its exploitation and solve its problems has to join together to establish a world without frontiers in which the resources of the planet will have become the heritage of all, so that there can be production to meet needs and not for profit, where cultural differences will still be celebrated, but where we'll all be citizens of the world. The Socialist Party supports only working-class unity to establish a socialist world. Socialism will be a global co-operative commonwealth, a free world for a free people.
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