Nationalism - From one prison to another

The Socialist Party is not concerned as to whether those who support the SNP and the nationalist movement are sincere or not. We are endeavouring to show Scottish working men and women the plain, bald facts of the position, regardless of whether these facts are palatable or not. We, who are working people, should concern ourselves with the chains that shackle us to the cogs and wheels of capital—that doom us forever to the toil and sweat of wage-slavery. Nationalism is nothing but a change of masters. Whether the government of Westminster or the government in Holyrood rules, whether the flag be the Saltire or the Union Jack, whether the Union ends or continues, you, as a worker, will in no way be any better off. Does our Scottish 'heritage' do anything to help us to overcome our actual working class heritage of poverty, insecurity and social degradation, the real heritage that workers of every nation shares in. Since the Holyrood parliament was established it has been a hunting-ground for ambitious politicians. It has also been the home of ignorant political leaders. The constitutional form of government makes no difference to the workers. Government implies subjects, and under the capitalist system of society the actual governmental machinery, Parliament, councils, and judiciary, etc., are representative of the capitalist class—the necessary machinery for ruling a subject class composed of wage-slaves. The boasted equality pledge of nationalists should be viewed as the fraud it is. For if there existed a real equality there could be no governing class or government, but only administrative assemblies charged with the administration of things in accordance with the wishes of the majority. But capitalism being a system wherein one class governs another, where one class is idle yet wealthy, and the other class producing wealth yet always poor, neither equality nor democracy can exist, the latter only being possible when the former is present.

Capitalist government is deliberately organised and maintained for robbery and oppression. Capitalism everywhere tends to reduce the workers to a minimum standard of subsistence, and steadily encroaches on their paltry rights and liberties. It is a false idea of the nationalists that the Scottish workers must struggle for national independence before they can tackle the problem of poverty. The working class everywhere is under one capitalist government or another. The continuance of the private property system remains the core belief of the nationalist movement, and so long as private property remains the miseries that necessarily flow therefrom will remain also and continue to afflict the workers under a “free” Scotland. To split territories, set up new governments, or to re-establish old ones will not help them nor even simplify the problem. Their only hope lies in the speedy establishment of socialism. They must join hands with the workers of the world, and make common cause against the ruling class. They must make ready for the last war—the war of classes, in which classes must be abolished and a real equality established on the basis of common ownership and democratic control of all the means of life.

Capitalism forces us accept our role of a propertyless, docile class. That enforcement cannot be accomplished by the police or authoritarian dictatorships. It is achieved by controlling our ideas, by manipulating how we think. By promoting among us, the working class who own nothing but our ability to work, the belief that we share ownership in a country or 'nation'; that patriotism somehow serves our interest or that religious superstition will earn us a good life in an afterworld if we meekly acquiesce to the miseries of being a wage-slave. Those who promote hatred and division among us, those who preach nationalism or patriotism, are playing the game according to the rules of capitalism.

Workers have no country and we have learned to understand that we have made a giant stride forward in acquiring class consciousness. The countries we live in, together with the machinery of production and distribution by which we live, are the property of the ruling class. The Socialist Party, therefore, urges the workers of Scotland to unite with workers elsewhere to set up a worldwide socialist cooperative commonwealth where the peoples of the world will join together to produce for their needs. This will be a society without frontiers, without nations, and without States. This is the real alternative to nationalist panaceas. From the point of view of the Scots workers, he or she would remain the wage-slave being bought and sold creating surplus value for the privileged. Post-independence a Scot might well consider him or herself as having achieved emancipation.but it will all be moonshine. The Socialist Party possesses no interest in nationalist movements. The Socialist Party strives for the elimination of countries and its replacement by a nation-less world devoid of frontiers, caste systems, and religious barriers. If nationalism was a recognised disease, its terrible toll of human life would excite the demand for a cure.

 SNP leaders blame the dreadful social conditions in Scotland on British rule when in fact these conditions are part and parcel of the capitalist system of society all over the world. To end them, calls not for a national revolution, but rather for the organising of the working- class all over the world in a social revolution. There is no essential difference between the capitalists of England and Scotland. Both are characterised by the same greed, the same ambition, the same hypocrisy, and corruption.  Would the working class be worse or better off under the UK or a sovereign Scotland? Would there be anything to choose between the two? Surely, in both an independent Scotland or the United Kingdom, the workers' standard of living would be much the same. So would the slums, the unemployment and the other problems of capitalist society. The Scottish Nationalists bait their ambitious schemes with fake promises of prosperity for the working class. And world socialism would still remain the only solution to these problems. It is time to turn a deaf ear to the empty promises of nationalism and look forward with hopeful eyes to the day when Scotland shall be a land where its wealth is owned and controlled by its workers—and a harmonious member of a world cooperative commonwealth.