You Can’t Beat the Enemy While Hoisting His Flag

“The workingmen have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself THE nation it is, so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.” - Marx

There is certainly good reason to recall this elementary truth that Marx and Engels put forth in the “Communist Manifesto”, for it is a truth that capitalist ruling classes are always seeking to camouflage. We live today in an era of populism – simplistic solutions to complex questions. All kinds of nationalism pervade the world today, especially in countries that have nothing to offer their people but ideologies, hopes and promises.

Although the SNP have successfully jettisoned their "Tartan Tory" image for a more radical garb it would be mistaken to make an alliance with a political party that threatens the unity of the working class. Scottish nationalism divides the working class before its common enemy, the British capitalist class. It chains Scottish workers to the interests of “their” bourgeoisie. Only socialism can guarantee an end oppression.  An independent Scotland would be intrinsically neither better nor worse than any other capitalist state. Scottish independence is something that the capitalist class can live with and it is not intrinsically contrary to the interests of the bourgeoisie. The truth is that nationalism (no matter how it is dolled up with pseudo "socialist" phrases) represents no way forward for the working people.  Without class unity, there is no way forward for the Scottish workers. That should be our starting point. The Socialist Party sets out to defend the common interests of the workers of Britain, Europe, and the entire world against the common enemy — the Scottish, English and Welsh and global capitalist class. The unity of the Scottish, English, and Welsh workers has been forged in common struggle and organisation for generations.

There is wholly false assumption that Scottish people are automatically more left-wing than the English. There is no separate "Scottish Road to Socialism". It is the false demagogy of the "left" wing of the nationalists. The Tories were the only party ever to achieve an absolute majority in a general election in Scotland, as recently as 1955, even if they came close to meltdown in the Thatcher years. And when it comes to working class militancy, the Scottish record is by no means one of automatically being better than England. The militant heart of the great mining strikes of 1972, 1974 and 1984–85 was Yorkshire, not Scotland, while the language of separate Scottish interests was used to keep the Ravenscraig Steel Works operating on scab coal through the 1984–85 strike. The Tory Industrial Relations Act of the early 1970s was defeated by the defiance of London dockers. The Poll Tax was finally destroyed by a riot in Trafalgar Square, even if the non-payment campaign that started in Scotland played a role. Neither national group of workers has an intrinsically higher class consciousness than the other.

Nevertheless, some argue, Scottish independence on a left wing basis, with a government majority of Solidarity, Scottish Socialist Party, Green, and Labour left MSPs would surely pose a challenge to capital. In fact, even if a majority of MSPs were socialists, an independent Scottish Parliament would no more be able to introduce socialism than the Westminster parliament.  The State would not be destroyed simply by transferring its functions from London to Edinburgh, any more than it was destroyed after these functions transferred from London to Dublin in 1922 and a very conservative Irish government.  If the scenario of a left-wing breakaway is to occur, it could only happen in conditions of massively heightened class struggle, but in what possible circumstances would this take place in Scotland and not the rest of Britain? And if the main reason why Scots are attracted to independence is precisely because it promises a road to socialism, why would they embrace independence at the very point when this appeared to be happening across England and Wales also. The only conditions under which the scenario is possible are the same ones that would render separation irrelevant.

Nationalism and socialism are antagonistic ideologies. The SNP is not at all interested in destroying the capitalist system – far from it. They want to make much more profit for the “national” capitalists and profit is extracted from the unpaid surplus labour of the working class. The SNP pushes independence to protect the interests of our national capitalists, to build up the illusion that by fighting against “foreign” capitalists in order to put “our” economy in the hands of “our own” bosses

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The struggle against nationalism within the working-class movements must be intensified and this struggle is an integral to rebuild a genuine socialist party, without which the social revolution is impossible. Many in the media rejoice that nationalism has triumphed over socialism – it is time to prove them wrong. We live in the epoch of potential social revolution – the rise of world socialism and the overthrow of global capitalism. In this epoch the capitalists are counter-revolutionary, and its ideology, including nationalism, is completely reactionary. There is now only one class capable of overthrowing capitalism: the working class. There is no middle road between the capitalist system and socialism. There is no ideology that serves the interests of both the bourgeoisie and the working class. The results of socialists burying their class independence beneath the mantle of national independence has been disastrous. The exploitation of wage labour, competition, the squeezing out, suppressing and swallowing of rivals among the capitalists themselves, the resorting to war and even world war, the utilisation of all means to secure a monopoly position in its own country and throughout the world - such is the inherent character of the profit-seeking bourgeoisie. This is the class basis of nationalism. At home, the capitalist subordinates the interests of the nation as a whole to its own class interests. It places its class interests or the interests of a certain top stratum of society above the interests of the whole people. Moreover, it tries to monopolize the concept of the nation, posing as the spokesman of the nation and the defender of national interests in order to deceive the people. Abroad, at the same time, it counterposes the interests of its own nation (in essence, of its bourgeois top stratum) to the interests of other nations. The bourgeoisie strives to place its own nation above other nations and, whenever possible, to oppress and exploit other nations, completely disregarding their interests. Such is the nationalist concept of the nation and the class foundation upon which it is based.