Nationalism - A change of masters.

Whether the flag is the Saltire or the Union Jack,  you, as a worker, will in no way be any better off. Your problems will still continue, will still confront you—worrying you and causing you many a headache—while the present system of society lasts. To solve those problems—which never leave you, be you in an independent Scotland, Britain, America or any other part of the world—you’ll most certainly have to struggle. Let your struggle be one against the real origin of your problems, against the system of capitalism, and against those who support it. Struggle against the system which condemns all workers, regardless of the place of their birth or residence, to a life-time of toil and poverty, from cradle to grave; struggle against the wealthy few who, because they own the factories, mines, railways and all of the means and instruments for producing wealth, compel you—because you own nothing—to labour for their benefit.

Your struggle, in common with the struggle of workers everywhere, to be successful must be a revolutionary one. Your aim? To take from the capitalist class its ownership of the means of production and make them the common property of all mankind, without distinction of race or sex. When you’ve achieved that—when you’ve won that revolution — living will really be worthwhile then, it will be a joy and an adventure. Then things will be produced because people need them and not in order to sell for the purpose of making a profit; then poverty will disappear, insecurity vanish, and wars will be nothing but memories.

Our purpose is to show both the “nationalist” worker and “unionist” counterpart, that the struggle “for” or “against” independence does not materially affect his lot as a worker; that the “freedom” much-talked-of on both sides, is but the right of a minority class (the capitalists) to exploit the mass of the people. We would make bold to assert that the real struggle of the workers, in Britain, north and south of the border—as elsewhere in the world— should be against that more evil border that divides the workers from the capitalists.

You depend for your living upon selling your mental and physical abilities to an employer. There exists a constant struggle between you and your employer over your wages and conditions. Never would you dare to think that as wealth is produced from the resources of nature, by the application of human labour-power, it should wholly belong to those who, as a social class, produce it.

In other words, you accept the class ownership of society; you are prepared to let a minority class (the CAPITALISTS) own and control the means whereby you live. As a consequence of their favoured position these Capitalists can live in any part of the world they choose; they can sell, barter, or gamble away, the VERY MEANS WHEREBY YOU LIVE, AND THE NATIONALITY OF THE NEW OWNER IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.

Such an economic set-up makes nonsense of the claims made by nationalists or unionists, that the people can control their own destinies, by raising one flag or lowering another. The problems that beset us in Scotland are problems inherent in the capitalist system.

To us of the working-class, Capitalism means the continuation of all the rotten, miserable conditions under which the mass of the people suffer. No amount of reforming can change the basic nature of the system, and its effects are not mollified by a flag. It matters not which party administers capitalism, whether it is Nationalists, Unionist. Each may apply the screw of policy; bless it, curse it, nationalise or de-centralise; the effects, as far as the working-class are concerned, are the same—poverty, insecurity, slums, ignorance, depressions, and wars.

The Socialist Party affirms that there is but one solution to the problems confronting the working-class; that solution is SOCIALISM. By Socialism we mean the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production (the factories, land, mills, mines, transport, etc.), by, and in the interests of, the whole community, without any distinction whatsoever. No wages system, no exchange, no buying and selling, but instead, the application of the principle; from each according toability; to each according to needs. That is socialism, and the way out for the workers of the world.