SNP and their Scotch Myths

The SNP's annual conference takes place in Aberdeen over this weekend so it is apt that we remind ourselves of the poison of nationalism.

The SNP talk about the Scottish culture and the Scottish way of life. But in what way is the life of a Scottish wage-slave basically different from that of any other nationality.  There is no basic difference in the way of life of the world’s working class because we all suffer from the same problems such as poverty and insecurity. Independence from England will not cure the poverty and insecurity of the Scottish workers, because they will still be the wages, labour and capital relationship. There is no truly independent country in the world because international capitalism has made sure of this.

The illusions of nationality are yet another way the ruling class trick workers into thinking that this really is some kind of collective society, and to misplace their passions that could otherwise be directed into the class struggle. Nationalism is the ideology which seeks to justify the capitalist division of the world into separate “nation-states”. We utterly reject this view of the way humanity should organise itself. We condemn all nationalisms equally. When countries achieved independence little changed except the personnel of the state machinery, the local politicians, who would be able to award themselves grander titles and grander salaries.

The SNP 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 recognise the essential unity of the human race and the urgent need to celebrate it by building a 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.