We have the power to control our own destinies

Today, many thousands of workers are on the streets of Glasgow to demand Scottish independence. Those who think that an independent Scotland would make things any better, there is sorry news. 

The conflict between the national and international factions of the capitalist class would remain and it is crystal clear that the rich who run the current devolved Scotland would be the same as the rich who would run independent "free" Scotland. The capitalist class, either local or global, would still run the country with the connivance of an independent parliament. The SNP represent that section of the Scottish elite which feels it could do better in negotiating with international financiers as a separate entity than as a part the United Kingdom. The major companies would have little problem with the political power being transferred from UK to Scottish control, particularly since the SNP has indicated it is prepared to cut corporation tax. Globalisation has increasingly made redundant the question of "national sovereignty". The growth of multinational corporations, some with a turnover exceeding the GDP of most states, has dramatically transformed the role of government as the locus of economic decision-making. The most important decisions are now made, not by politicians, but in the boardrooms in the City of London, Wall St or Shangai. Even so, many locally-based businesses are indirectly tied into this economy as sub-contractors and the ever-deepening nexus of international linkages means they cannot escape economic crises emanating from elsewhere which impact upon the local economy. The limited leeway of governments to ameliorate such localised effects has been correspondingly reduced.

And, of course, the Scottish “business community” like transport operator, Brian Souter, who helps fund the SNP, do so not because they want to better Glasgow’s dismal life expectancy but because he believes that Scotland’s super-rich will benefit. Freedom is not intended for the people of Scotland, but for Big Business. The only independence is for corporations to maximise returns.

The Socialist Party opposes both the separatist Scottish nationalism and British unionist nationalism and supports only working-class unity for the establishment of world socialism. Members of the Socialist Party are against nationalism in all its forms, defying the rituals singing of "Flower of Scotland" and the flag-waving of the Saltire or any other expression of loyalty to the nation-state, that help enforce the idea of nation in our minds. We are in fact proud to be anti-patriotic. There is no “national interest” for workers. Self-determination just equates with self-determination for a ruling class. It must be opposed in favour of self-determination for people and their self-emancipation from wage-slavery. Nationalism and patriotism must be opposed with socialism, a “society organised as a conscious and planned association” and "a community of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in common," as Marx describes it to be.

Independence would be a purely political and a mere constitutional change which would leave the basic economic structure of society unchanged. There would still be a privileged class owning and controlling the means of production with the rest having to work for them for a living. Just as now. An independent sovereign Scottish government would still have to operate within the constraints of the world capitalist system. It would still have to ensure that goods produced in Scotland were competitive on world markets and that capitalists investing in Scotland were allowed to make the same level of profits as they could in other countries. In other words, it would still be subject to the same economic pressures as the existing London-based government to promote profits and restrict wages and benefits. Should independence eventually arrive, workers will discover that they cannot legislate away the problems of capitalism.

Our fellow-workers on this demonstration today for Scottish independence are wasting their time when they struggle to make some aspect of capitalism better, to make capitalism more acceptable. Capitalism is not a system that can be humanised or reformed 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. You can have the most democratic constitution imaginable but this won’t make any difference to the fact that profits have to come before meeting people's needs under capitalism. If our rulers want to reform the machinery of capitalist government, that’s up to them. But spare us the pretence that nationalism is some great extension of democracy. It is not imperfections in the political decision-making process that’s the problem but the exchange economy and its economic laws. And the answer is not sovereignty but socialism.

The problems of capitalism can only be solved within the framework of a socialist world. Socialism will be a co-operative world wide system. National frontiers and governments and armed forces will disappear. Groups of people may well preserve their languages and customs but this will have nothing to do with claiming territorial rights or military dominances over pieces of the world surface. To move forward, the dispossessed majority across the world must now look beyond the artificial barriers of nation-states and regional blocs, to perceive a common identity and purpose. There is but one world and we exist as one people in need of each other and with the same basic needs. There is far more that unites us than can ever divide us along cultural, nationalistic or religious lines. Together we can create a civilisation worth living in, but before that happens we need the conscious cooperation of ordinary people across the world, united in one common cause—to create a world in which each person has free access to the benefits of civilisation, a world without borders or frontiers, social classes or leaders and a world in which production is at last freed from the craving to accumulate capital and used for the good of humanity.

The 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 possess real vision, who look forward to a new world of common ownership and democratic control of society's resources. The Socialist Party recognises the essential unity of the human family 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.

Our fellow-workers can waste their time supporting parties that openly stand for capitalism; they can delude themselves into believing that there is a half-way house between capitalism and socialism; they can even bury their heads in the sand and say they are not interested in politics. Or they can study the case for world socialism. They have the choice of enduring the miseries of capitalism within the confines of national frontiers or enjoying emancipation in a socialist world.