Nationalist Nihilism

Socialist sympathies are with the oppressed, they relate not to emerging nationalism but to the particular plight of twice-oppressed people who face both a native and foreign ruling class.  Yet it is an illusory hope that the impoverished can improve their conditions through national independence. National self-determination has not emancipated the laboring classes in the developed nations and the developing countries in Asia and Africa. Nationalism promises little for the poor save indulging on more equal terms in national prejudices. No doubt, this means something to those who have suffered from a particularly arrogant colonial system.

The SNP is a capitalist party. It works on behalf of the capitalists. The difference between the SNP and the other capitalist parties is not that it is calling for a different social system. What’s different is that they are looking for a new sharing of constitutional powers. The sharing will just be between groups of capitalists. They are intent on keeping it in the family. What the Socialist Party wants is real independence. What we want is genuine freedom from capitalist exploitation and domination.

Whatever twists and turns lie down the road in the fight for socialism, one thing is certain: the success of that struggle depends on achieving the greatest possible unity of the working class, it is utterly ridiculous to argue that the working class ought to divide itself into two different countries in order to accomplish this unity. It is completely absurd to justify this with the false argument, disproven many times, that the battle for socialism would be easier if it were led by a more nationally “pure” and homogeneous working class. Working class unity is a must right now if effective resistance is to be mounted to the crisis measures imposed by the capitalists. Unity is necessary to stand up against all the attacks on our democratic rights. The working class faces a powerful and belligerent enemy which is solidly united despite disputes within its ranks. The people are not going to win by dividing themselves. Those leftists who dress up as socialists in order to push nationalism in the working class are the objective allies of the capitalists who have seized the leadership of the nationalist movement and who are busily readying themselves to join the ranks of global capitalism. Capitalist enterprises, inevitably move towards becoming monopolistic corporations, regardless of the nationality of their owners.  The left-nationalists claim the task is to transform bourgeois independence into a socialist independence. In reality, they find themselves in the camp of those promoting division of the working class and promoting austerity policies. This “independence leads to socialism” thesis must be thoroughly demolished in all industrialised countries. Supporting Scottish independence in the name of socialism is a monumental hoax.  It flows from the same kind of logic that leads others to preach the nationalisation as the cure for all our ills.  In this upcoming General Election, it is up to the working class to show these pretenders that it will not be duped by their political nonsense and deceitful rhetoric.

For sure the British nationalists are intent upon using the various immigrant populations living in the UK as scapegoats to mask who is the main enemy – the employing class.  The enemy of the people is not the migrants and refugees nor the “English”. The enemy of the people is the owning class. The Scots have nothing to gain from nationalism.  The Socialist Party refutes the idea that it could be in the interests of the working-class movement to support a capitalist party such as the SNP.  The left- nationalists believe that it is necessary to achieve independence first and then socialism. This is the kind of argumentation that was used to channel people into support for a capitalist party. Socialism is put off until “later”. It is never a struggle to begin right away. The SNP is no more interested in a socialist revolution than the capitalists of Scotland as a whole. Surely, fewer and fewer people still believe that independence is a step forward in the struggle for socialism.

 The way to put an end to national oppression is to attack the root of the problem. The proletariat will not win victories in either the struggle against capitalism or the struggle against national oppression if it fights in dispersed formation against the same enemy. All it will do is make a “breach” in its own ranks. Scottish workers must unite with the only class whose interests lie unreservedly in eliminating both national oppression and capitalism – the global working class.