Some accuse THE SOCIALIST PARTY members in Scotland of being unpatriotic. We are in fact proud to be anti-patriotic. But just because we are not prepared to back the efforts of Scottish nationalists to break away from the United Kingdom does not mean that we are a Unionist party. We don’t support the Union. We just put up with it! Socialists are just as much opposed to British nationalism as we are to Scottish. Our rulers have again decided to ask us our opinion on the matter. We should be flattered, but don’t be fooled. Constitutional reform is of no benefit or relevance to us. So we won’t be voting “yes” or “no”. We’ll be writing the words “WORLD SOCIALISM” across the referendum voting paper.
The Socialist Party, part of the World Socialist Movement, argue that every nation state is by its very nature anti-working class. While we certainly sympathise with those oppressed and displaced on national grounds, we refuse to simply identify with the many "solutions" offered up by the liberals and leftists in support of the victims. The “nation” is a myth as there can be no community of interests between two classes in antagonism with one another, the non-owners in society and the owners (the workers and the capitalists). The state ultimately exists only to defend the property interests of the owning class at any given point in history – which is why modern states across the world send the police and army in to break strikes and otherwise seek to protect the interests of the capitalists and their businesses at every turn.
IMPERIAL CALEDONIA
The Scottish Wars of Independence and the 1314 Battle of Bannockburn were in reality a fight between two sets of Norman knights, English Norman and Scottish Norman, as in those days the ruling class in both countries was actually Norman.
The Act of Union was on behalf of the Scottish wealthy - a bailout. The disastrous Darien Scheme was backed by about a quarter of the money circulating in Scotland and its failure left the nobles and landowners – who had already been suffering a run of bad harvests – practically ruined. The Scottish ruling class voted to end its own parliament in Edinburgh. Did the Scottish ruling class, those "parcel of rogues", betray their country by accepting the Union? The hypothesis is only valid if we accept that those lords and merchants were somehow obliged to place "Scotland" above their own socio-economic interests. The surrender of Scottish sovereignty did not threaten the interests of them but indeed it specifically protected them. Scotland kept its own legal, church and education systems. More importantly, the Act of Union also gave the bankrupt Scottish ruling class access to the money markets of London. The Union was a very good deal for the Scottish ruling class. Most importantly, Scottish commerce got access to the growing empire that the English were carving out. Historically, the Scots were partners in the British empire, not an oppressed nation within it.
"It was not 'English capitalism' which caused the bones of countless Bengalis to bleach in the sun, but a fully integrated British capitalism in which the Scots played a leading role. Indeed, the capitalist class in Scotland was at the forefront, not only of colonial expansion, but also of the overseas investment characteristic of the imperialist stage of capitalism: during the late Victorian period Scotland invested abroad on a scale per head with no parallel among the other nations of the United Kingdom." - Neil Davidson (Scottish Imperialism and National Identity)
Today, the independence decision is again fundamentally a question of members of the capitalist class promoting their own particular self-interest.
The Scots are not an oppressed minority. Indeed, the idea that the Duke of Buccleuch is oppressed because he is Scottish is laughable. A worker in Glasgow or Edinburgh has more in common with his or her counterpart in Liverpool or Birmingham that he or she does with a landed Scottish aristocrat. Marxism explains how workers are exploited and unfree, not as particular nationalities, but as members of a class. To be in an "oppressed minority" at all it is usually necessary to first belong to the working class. From this perspective, identifying with the working class provides a rational basis for political action. The objective is a stateless world community of free access. Given that nationalism does nothing to further this understanding, however, it is an obstruction to world socialism.
THE MAKING OF A NATION STATE
Home is where the heart is; a place with feelings of belonging, security, comfort, childhood memories, bonds between people, habits and customs taken for granted, the familiar streets, smells and sounds. In a broader context, home may be perceived as a wider geographical area, a country, a homeland standing for something more than a family’s local community. It is surely the shared identity, that elusive quality, love of one’s birthplace that people feel when they talk of "their country", the tangible and intangible connections.
Yet the nationalists 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 an English, an American, or the Chinese wage-slave? 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 we will still be subject to the wages, labour and capital relationship.
Nations are manufactured, not born. A nation is not a natural community that existed before the state, but that it's the other way round: the state existed first and then proceeded to impose on those it ruled over the idea that they formed a “nation”. States pre-existed and in a very real sense created nations. Nations are groups of people ruled by a state or a would-be state.
The Polish nationalist Pilsudski observed that "It is the state that makes the nation, not the nation the state." What is a nation? It is simply the people and the territory which have been appropriated by a class of robbers at some point in history. It has less to do with a common language, religion, race, culture, and all the other things which nationalists imagine or pretend are essential ingredients in the making of nations.
The modern state is a product of bourgeois development. There exists a mistaken belief in a country's permanence - the myth of the "eternal nation", based on national character, or territory or its institutions and upon its continuity across many generations, the community's common ancestry.
Political scientist, Benedict Anderson, discusses nations as socially constructed "imagined communities," because "the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion."
Nation is the name given by their rulers (or would-be rulers) to a collection of people with a distinct culture usually but not always based on a common language. The geo-political entity of the state and its machinery of government are not necessarily the same as the nation; and this forms the ideological basis for nationalism - the belief that a nation should become a state. Nationalism emphasises the distinctiveness of a nation and usually points to its statehood. Nationalist movements arose with the development of capitalism and the state. In the twentieth century, nationalism was, and still is, associated with movements for "self-determination". Nationalism, whilst a powerful tool of oppression, was created in part as a defence against imperialism and colonialism, against dominance from outside and in fear of being denied the rights of self-determination. It manifests itself like a sophisticated flag-waving tribalism, with pride, tradition, attitudes of superiority, enemies real and imagined. The concept of the nation is very real force in the minds of people today. The outlook of “us and them” is a strong notion in the lives of many people. The idea that the world is naturally divided into nations is widespread and deeply held.
Nations have taken a great deal of building. It wasn't always easy. There is almost no nation-state that has not had its borders drawn in blood, its foundations dug out of human flesh. The effort, though, has to be ongoing. States have required the use of an education system, to standardise learning, spread a national history and a sense of shared culture. The capitalist class needed the state, and its legitimising idea of nationalism and the nation. Culture resides in sets of ideas, values and practices. By imposing the idea of the nation upon a culture, complete with its inherent notions of territorial ownership and property, the ruling class impose their notions of property on the very self-image of the people within that culture. In school we are taught the history of the kings and queens, and of the wars in which the ruling class has been involved in over the centuries. The media reinforce this by reporting news from an almost exclusively parochial angle and encourage identification with “the nation” via identification with “our” sports teams and famous personalities.
THE “WE” CON-TRICK
Nationalists believe “we”, the workers, should hold allegiance to "the Nation". Socialists do not. Socialists look forward to and struggle for a new world of common ownership and democratic control of society's resources, uncluttered with the frontiers and class divisions which go hand, in-hand with "the Nation". As socialists, we view nationalism as a dangerous poison. Nationalism is anathema to socialists. Wage and salary workers have no country. The world of nationalism is full of contradictions, odd ideas and illogical beliefs. It comes almost as a reflex action for people born and brought up in Scotland to use “we” and to regard themselves as part of a Scottish “nation”. So people spontaneously say such things as “we beat the English at Bannockburn” or “we won five gold medals at the Commonwealth Games”. Such usage is music to the ears of the ruling class as they know it means they have succeeded in getting their subjects to identify with them and their interests. Wage slaves who instead of seeing “we” as their class, have come to see it as “the Nation”.
The most important word in the political vocabulary is “we” since to get someone to use “we” in relation to some group of people is to get them to identify their interest as the interest of that group. Socialists are trying to get all those excluded from ownership and control of means of production to recognise the fact of their common interest as one class within capitalist society, to regard themselves as “we” and to use “our” and “us” only in relation to that class and its interests. Those who do own and control means of production and who derive a privileged income from this, they seek to convince the people they rule over that the “we” they should identify with is “the nation” as the nation part of what they call the “nation-state” they rule. The idea of “we” as collectively joined and looked after by our rulers is the most profound falsehood. The notions of nationality were irrelevant during the time of feudalism, just as they are today where the capitalist class, not the people of “Britain” or "Scotland", privately owns the means for producing wealth. To say “this is our country” implies that we all own it collectively, where we most certainly do not.
The nationalist idea of a united Scotland is just a myth. The “nation” is a myth as there can be no community of interests between two classes in antagonism with one another, the non-owners in society and the owners (the workers versus the capitalists). Workers have more in common with people like ourselves in other countries than with the privileged owning class of the country where we happen to have been born and work. The world-wide working class has a common interest, to end its exploitation and solve its problems, to join together to establish a world without frontiers in which the resources of the planet will have become the heritage of all, so that there can be production to meet needs and not for profit. One World - One People, where cultural differences will still be celebrated, but where we’ll all be citizens of the world.
THE TOOL FOR FOOLERY
Nationalism is a relatively new concept for social control, (religion was once the principle method of control over the majority). The illusions of nationality are yet another tool of the ruling class, intended to 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. The presence of political nationalist ideas is an indication that some groups in society feel its real material interests are being frustrated by forces outside (or even inside the nation.) Of course, the desire to achieve their aims is never expressed in terms of their own needs only. In order to enlist the necessary working class support such arguments as “justice”, “freedom”, and “the nation” are used to justify the real bone of contention and to give it an aura of sanctity.
The current ruling class have cultivated such ideas as nationalism, propagating the illusion that we live in a society with a collective social interest. The more enlightened among them probably saw the effects of separating and alienating people from each other and their labour, and so stepped up the spreading of beliefs like nationalism in order to try and convince people that they were not so exploited as they really were, and that everyone had a common interest. The state ultimately exists only to defend the property interests of the owning class at any given point in history – which is why modern states across the world send the police and army in to break strikes and otherwise seek to protect the interests of the capitalists and business at every turn. As workers we have no real community of interests to gain from Scottish independence.
THE STOCKHOLM SYNDROME
So long as people think in terms of the "common good" of the "national economy", in terms of the overall performance of one unit in the world-wide division of peoples, they are, whether consciously or not, serving the interests of the capitalist class. All evaluations, priorities and hierarchies of value within a "national culture" are made from the point of view, from the self-interest, and, indeed, the apprehended self-hood, of the members of the capitalist class. When the economy is "doing well" it is doing so for the capitalists, when the economy is ailing, it is ailing for the capitalists. Workers, of course, do not share a common interest with their masters. It does not follow that if the "national wealth" increases, or if trade increases, or if profit increases, that higher wages will be gained by workers. In fact, capitalists can only make a profit by appropriating the wealth produced by the workers to themselves; but in the topsy-turvy world of ideology, it seems that workers will only have good pay and wealth when the capitalists are doing well. So it appears that workers and capitalists share a common interest. In fact, the interest of workers is conditioned by the interest of the capitalist, in exactly the same manner as hostages held by a kidnapper: unless the kidnapper-capitalists's demands are met, they will not allow the hostage-workers to have what they need to live. There is a well-documented effect of hostage situations, called "The Stockholm Syndrome" in which hostages under duress began to identify with their kidnappers, and believe in their cause. Nationalism works in much the same way. It is the Stockholm Syndrome on a grand scale. The working class who are dependent (under the current system) on the capitalists, to whom they are bonded by state-boundaries across which they are not permitted to escape, begin to believe that they share an identity with them.
Without this ideology of nationalism, capitalist states would be unstable since, being based on minority class rule, they need a minimum allegiance from those they rule over.
PATRIOTISM DIVIDE AND RULE
Xenophobia becomes a useful ally in promoting nationalism. Jonathan Swift wrote, “the first principle of patriotism is to resent foreigners.” Setting one section of population against another, has been used ultra-successfully all around the world – so successfully that great swathes of people can now rouse themselves, with no apparent external cue, against the newest threat, the most recent immigrant group, anyone who looks or sounds like they may be from a group that’s not their own such as asylum seekers. Enemies are required by the state elite. Enemies within and without, social, cultural, economic enemies to keep the population vigilant against all possible threats, to keep them fully occupied, suspicious of each other, divided, protecting the national interest against any wayward individual or group – including themselves. Enormous damage has been done, throughout the world, by the notion that one country and its people are superior to the others.
The only way to define a national identity is to define it in terms of what (who) it is not, i.e. negatively. Thus nationalism sets itself as being against other countries, striving to define a uniqueness of national culture so as to once and for all set its country apart from others, to know itself by what is dissimilar. At one extreme this can include myths about race and blood, trying to attach the national abstraction to some trait of genetics or similar such nonsense. Since people have a strong desire to retain their own perceived identity, and to have a good opinion of themselves, often the creeds based on such identities function in a highly irrational, and ultimately, defensive way. And those who dare question the status quo become unpatriotic subversives.
Some socialists thought at one time that nationalist beliefs would fall apart as capitalism covered the globe and the entire planet became based on capitalist values. As nations became dependent on each other and general education increased among the masses, surely people would see that the concept of the nation would be obsolete? The next clear step would be to end the tyranny of the privileged minority that controlled the vast amounts of wealth and property and move towards common ownership. World socialism would be the end result. However, today capitalism is still here, and so is the idea of nationality. Nationality is perhaps more potent then it has ever been. People require something to sustain them. They feel lost in this vast meaningless world of capital, just another cog in the machine, and they would be right. Since the working class finds little meaning in its wage labour they search for meaning in other places. Often they find meaning in religion and/or the idea of the nation, as these ideas are clear and often connected, already set out by the ruling class and don't require much thought or struggle.
Tying nationality to sports can also sustain this backward nationalist mindset. People can hate other peoples or nations simply because they compete with them in sports. This can lead to acts of incredibly insane violence, since people, having no meaning in their work life, put great passion and meaning into their enjoyment of sports. Since the sport and the collective meaning and support of the sport tends to become their life, supporters of opposing teams and nations may seem like a threat to all they hold dear. This seeming threat to the very meaning of their lives can cause them to explode into open fighting. With no meaning from work, the sport, and sense of identity that comes with it, becomes their lives, and they defend it accordingly. It is no coincidence that a person with a immensely draining, alienating job and repetitive work, will tend to cling desperately to this collective idea of nationality, as they find meaning and comfort in this idea, since they have no meaning in their work. The illusions of nationality are yet another tool of the ruling class, intended to 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.
Patriotism groups people according to their land of origin, as decided by the vicissitudes of history and within every country, thanks to the patriotic link, rich and poor unite against the foreigner. Socialism, however, groups people, poor against rich, class against class, without taking into account the differences of race and language, and over and above the frontiers traced by history. No one country's exploiters are so superior to the rest that the workers should sacrifice themselves in defending them. We see the harm that is done by national boundaries, that prevent workers from moving to be with whom they want to be with; prevent them from sharing their skills and their knowledge as they see fit; prevent them from seeing their common cause.
The confusion of nationalism manifests itself like a sophisticated tribalism, with pride, tradition, attitudes of superiority, patriotism and flag-draped buildings. Ill-considered rhetoric needs to be confronted, contested at any and every opportunity. Self-replicating, regurgitated mantras built on lies, fears and hatred need overturning without hesitation. Chop up society into more and more pieces, more separate entities, create more divisions, more fears and suspicions and when the globe is totally criss-crossed with walls and border posts shall we allow ourselves to become so paranoid, afraid and suspicious of each other that we finally close the door to our minds? The challenge is to dismantle the barriers which deafen, blindfold, shackle and dehumanise us. One of the last things the world needs at the moment is more states, with their own armed forces and divisive nationalist ideologies.
The interest of the wage and salary working class in all countries is to reject all nationalism, to reject in fact the very idea of “foreigner”, and to recognise that they have a common interest with people in other countries in the same economic situation of being obliged to sell their mental and physical energies in order to get a living. That interest lies in working together to establish a world-wide society of common ownership, democratic control and production for use not profit.
Independence will not give the people of Scotland effective control over their own affairs. The only change that will do that is a change in the whole social system, replacing competitive production for profit and minority ownership by co-operative production. Neither devolution-max nor an independent Scotland can achieve this. It is only feasible in a frontier-free society. It is for the Scottish workers to see that their position demands that they should fight only for their class emancipation, and that nothing, constitutional reform or national independence, should draw them away from their determination to fight for the realisation of socialism. What is the “independence” some Scots yearn after, if it means being trapped inside the confines of capitalism?
THE “THEM AND US” MIND-GAMES
In Scotland today it’s true that there is a struggle - as there is in England and Wales or rest of the world for that matter. But the struggle in Scotland is not, as the SNP would have us believe, the struggle for self-government and self-determination. The struggle in Scotland, as in the world over, is a class struggle: the struggle between the working class and the capitalist or owning class. The SNP tell us, the workers, that independence from England and the control of our own purse strings will cure all our problems. They argue that the problems facing workers in Scotland are due to “Westminster rule”. If only there was an independent Scotland, they say, separate from the rest of Britain, then there would be full employment, higher wages, job security, better state benefits, an efficient health service and all the other things politicians promise at election times. What they do not realise is that the problems they are trying to solve are an integral part of the capitalist system, and history has shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that within this system there is no satisfactory solution to these problems apart from socialism. Independence leaves our lives and the problems the profit system causes completely unchanged. Exploitation through the wages system continues. Unemployment continues. A polluted environment, and the general breakdown of society all continue. As far as solving these problems is concerned, independence is just a useless irrelevancy.
INDEPENDENCE FOR WHO? FREEDOM FOR WHAT?
Independence would be an extension of democracy, we are told, bringing power nearer to the people, so how can socialists not be in favour of this? Yet supporters of capitalism who talk about “democracy” always mean only political democracy since economic democracy - where people would democratically run the places where they work - is out of the question under capitalism, based as it is on these workplaces being owned and controlled by and for the benefit of a privileged minority. 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 needs under capitalism. The people’s will to have their needs met properly is frustrated all the time by the operation of the economic laws of the capitalist system which no political structure, no matter how democratic, can control. If our rulers want to reform the machinery of capitalist government in this way, 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 profit system and its economic laws. And the answer is not political independence but the replacement of capitalism by socialism.
People are not machines, they feel lost in this vast meaningless world of capital, just another cog in the machine. They need something else, something to sustain them for do they get this from their work. People feel lost in this vast meaningless world of capital and its system of alienated labour. So naturally they seek meaning and often find that meaning in the idea of the nation and frequently tying nationality to sport to sustain this nationalist mindset. Other people are transformed into the "Auld Enemy" simply because they compete on the football pitch and the sense of identity that comes with the rivalry, becomes their lives, and they defend it accordingly from within the ranks of the "Tartan Army". Indeed "football nationalism" is of tremendous value to the capitalist class as it makes supporting "your country" socially acceptable. It not only diverts workers minds away from the problems that surround them, it allows politicians to reap the rewards of any "feel good" factor that springs forth from a good set of results. Many socialists play and watch football but it's a shame that nationalism has to taint what should be a wonderful event. As far as socialists are concerned, these attempts to try and make an appearance of a common interest with our exploiters is just like a thief playing on their support for the same football team as their victim. It does not change the relationship one iota.
One of the last things the world needs at the moment is more states, with their own armed forces and divisive nationalist ideologies. Nationalists like the SNP who preach the opposite are spreading a divisive poison amongst people who socialists say should unite to establish a frontier-less world community, based on the world’s resources becoming the common heritage of all humanity. Socialists and nationalists are implacably opposed to each other. We are working in opposite directions. Us to unite workers. Them to divide them.
OUT OF THE FRYING PAN INTO THE FIRE. WESTMINISTER OR HOLYROOD?
It is of no concern to workers in Scotland whether they are governed from London or by a separate government in Edinburgh. This is because the cause of the problems they face is the capitalist economic system of production for profit, not the form of government. And the capitalist economic system would continue to exist in a politically independent Scotland. In the end, the point at issue - independence which leaves profit-making, exploitation and all the other social problems untouched - is so irrelevant that it is not worth taking sides. We don’t see any point in diverting our energies to changing the constitution but we certainly want things to change. We want people to change the economic and social basis of society and establish socialism in place of capitalism. We don’t want or care about Scottish separatism (any more than we care or support a “United Kingdom” or the ”European Union”.)
But we do want world socialism and do know that the way to further this cause is to advocate that and that alone. So-called self-determination encourages workers to waste their efforts in chasing something which cannot be achieved. Not simply because the native capitalist class preserves their power but any newly independent nation-state immediately find itself having to come to terms with a worldwide economic system dominated by powerful blocs and integrated on a global scale. The room for manoeuvre within this framework is extremely limited. Either the dominant power relinquished direct political control but continues to exert its domination at an economic level. Or the client state frees itself entirely from the domination of one imperialist bloc only by switching to the all-embracing hold of a rival bloc. Competition between nation-states puts pressure on each state to maximise its power to avoid subordination to others. States that have little power are under pressure to ally themselves with stronger states that have major economic forces at their disposal. In neither scenario is the result any real independence for the local capitalists or any weakening of imperialism as a whole. The formation of new nation-states can no more put an end to imperialism than the formation of new businesses can put an end to capitalism.
The interest of the working class in all countries is to reject all nationalism, to reject in fact the very idea of “foreigner”, and to recognise that they have a common interest with people in other countries in the same economic situation of being obliged to sell their mental and physical energies in order to get a living.
Will “independence” make the Scottish workers better off and happier?
Is it “London rule” that is responsible for the problems faced by workers in Scotland, or is it capitalism?
It can be seen in retrospect that independence for the vast majority of the people has simply meant the exchange of one set of exploiters for another. The realisation of "political independence" by a country leaves the workers' conditions untouched (or actually worsens them in some cases). As socialists, we don't take sides in this inter-capitalist argument. We don't support one section of the capitalist class or the other, and we don't have any illusions about the "sovereign power" of Parliaments to pass reformist legislation that can make capitalism work in the interest of the exploited class of wage and salary earners. Capitalism just cannot be reformed to work in this way; so transferring the powers of the House of Commons to a Scottish Parliament sitting in Edinburgh makes little difference.
Supporters of Scottish independence who talk about “democracy” always mean only political democracy since economic democracy - where people would democratically run the places where they work is out of the question under capitalism, because these workplaces are owned and controlled by and for the benefit of a privileged minority. 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 needs under capitalism. The peoples’ will to have their needs met properly is frustrated all the time by the operation of the economic laws of the capitalist system which no political structure, no matter how democratic, can control.
Nationalism is anathema to socialists. Wage and salary workers have no country. We have more in common with people like ourselves in other countries than with the privileged owning class of the country where we happen to live and work. The interests of workers who live in Scotland are not opposed to the interests of those who live in England - or France or anywhere else in the world. Nationalists like the SNP who preach the opposite are spreading a divisive poison amongst people who socialists say should unite to establish a world commonwealth, based on the world’s resources becoming the shared heritage of all humanity, as the only framework within which the social problems which workers wherever they live face today.
The world-wide working class to end its exploitation and solve its problems has to join together to establish a world without frontiers in which the resources of the planet will have become the heritage of all, so that there can be production to meet needs and not for profit, where cultural differences will still be celebrated, but where we'll all be citizens of the world.
Socialists oppose both the separatist Scottish nationalism and the unionism of British nationalism and support only working-class unity to establish a socialist world. So it is clear, then, that socialists must oppose nationalism in all its forms: not just refusing to espouse their creed, but defying the rituals, the singing of "Flower of Scotland", the flag-waving of the Saltire or Lion Rampant or other expressions of loyalty to the nation-state, that help enforce the idea of nation in our minds. There is no national interest for workers. Self-determination for "nations" just equates with self-determination for a ruling class. It must be opposed in favour of self-determination for people, their self-emancipation. It must be opposed with socialism.
INDEPENDENT? - NAE CHANCE
Independence would be a purely political, 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 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 self-government eventually be established workers will discover that they cannot will or legislate away the problems of capitalism. No country in the world, no matter how independent or rich in resources, has yet succeeded in eliminating poverty, unemployment, insecurity, etc.
An independent Scotland 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. The workers 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 or transformed 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.
Those in favour of independence argues that the problems facing workers in Scotland are due to "Westminster rule". If only there was an independent Scotland, they say, separate from the rest of Britain, then there would be more employment, higher wages, increased job security, better state benefits, an improved health service and all the other politician promises. But it is patently absurd. There is no truly independent country in the world, because international capitalism has made sure of this, and our own experience here in Britain should have brought it home to us. The lesson of the past few years should have shown us just how independent Britain is, when foreign financial institutions and global corporations tell the British government how to spend money, and how it must not spend money, in order to keep the international capitalist class happy
Capitalism knows no boundaries, The language of money is universal and has no accent. Independence is just not possible within the context of globalised capitalism. Certainly, formal political independence, or sovereignty, is possible, only where states have the full power to make decisions without reference to any supra-national rules or decision-making procedures. But there’s a difference between the mere legal power to do something and what can be done in practice. In practice all states, when exercising their sovereign power to make decisions, have to take into account the economic reality that there exists a single world market economy on which they are dependent. A state can exercise some degree of influence on how the world market operates in relation to it - it erect tariff walls, subsidise exports, devalue its currency - but this depends on its economic clout (such as the productivity and size of its industry and the extent of its internal market). Over the years capitalism has become more and more international, more and more globalised. This has tended to reduce the margin of manoeuvre open to states, i.e. has reduced their "sovereignty". The vital decisions affecting the local economy have little to do with Holyrood or Westminster. The inexorable process of globalisation has increasingly made redundant the question of "national sovereignty". Yet regional nationalists imagine they can buck the trend without even being against capitalism.
The inexorable process of 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. Many of the most important decisions are now made, not by politicians, but in the boardrooms of these multinationals in Wall St or Shanghai. Likewise, the proliferation of trading links between different states has effectively blurred the lines of demarcation between nominally separate national economies. It would be more realistic now to speak of there being a single global economy. Even so, many locally-based businesses are indirectly tied into this economy as sub-contractors to multinationals. Not only that, the ever-deepening nexus of international linkages means they cannot escape recessionary perturbations emanating from elsewhere when these impact upon the local economy. At the same time, the limited leeway of governments to ameliorate such localised effects has been correspondingly reduced.
The nationalists emphasise a Scottish Parliament's "constitutional right" to control the economy, completely ignoring the fact that experience has shown this to be a purely paper right. The capitalist economy works according to certain economic laws which no government or legislative body can over-ride. So the argument about sovereignty is not really about what the constitution may or may not say. It's about the effective power that a capitalist state can exercise within the capitalist economy.
An independent 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.
INDEPENDENCE - NAE CHANGE
Those who think that an independent Scotland would necessarily make things any better, there is sorry news. The conflict between the national and international fractions of the capitalist class would remain and it is perfectly plain that the rich who run the current devolved Scotland would be the same as the rich who would run independent "free" Scotland. The Scottish capitalist class run the country with the connivance of the Executive and they would continue to do so with the connivance of an independent parliament.
Since the creation of the Scottish Parliament, business representatives have had access to the Executive and civil servants have been seconded to the private sector. Umder such circumstances the distinction between civil servant, public official, elected representative and business people begins to break down.
Academic David Millar points out:
"Scotland is governed not simply via the institutions of formal governance (meaning the political institutions of Scotland), and not simply via the traditionally understood “Scottish elite”, meaning either the various elite groups in the Scottish village or the Scottish capitalist class. Scotland is also run by political and economic decision-makers only some of whom are based in Scotland. Other centres of decision making are obviously London and Brussels, the Headquarters of the WTO/IMF/World Bank and the board rooms of the transnational corporations, including those which have no interest or base in Scotland."
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. As an ex-Royal Bank of Scotland oil consultant, Alex Salmond and now leader of the nationalist breakaway party, Alba, no doubt intends cashing in on Scotland's North Sea oil reserves. Those oil and gas reserves play a large role in the opposition of the UK and unionist parties to separation. The major international oil corporations would have little problem with North Sea oil being transferred from UK to Scottish political control, particularly if any new Scottish government. The SNP has always been courting the oil companies.
There exists members of the “business community” who fund the SNP, and they do so not because they want to raise Glasgow’s life expectancy from the lowest in Britain, but because they believe that Scotland’s super-rich will benefit.
As already mentioned, independence would be a purely political 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 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.
But even if it is likely that the Scottish working class will be promised a share of the oil revenues should they vote yes in 2023, like all politicians, the SNP will fail to make good on any pledge to increase working class living standards. And if the unionists prevail, Westminster politicians will also want to continue reaping the rewards for increased exploitation of the Scottish working class, not because they are Scottish, but because above all they are workers.
Many foreign corporations would be quite happy if Scotland became a separate nation but it would probably lead to an economic "race-to-the-bottom" between the different regions of the UK, with the promotion of benefits to the corporations and the rich.
The wannabe Scottish ruling class will cooperate with the British ruling class and big business to prevent a too radical break-up of the UK and ensure that as much as possible remains of the UK state machinery by upholding the Crown Powers and protecting the City of London's economic control by retention of sterling. It leaves the Scottish ruling class in control within Scotland, but also free to profit from the existing global corporate economic order.
Freedom is not intended for the people of Scotland, but for big business. The only independence is for corporations to maximise profits
CLASS OR NATIONHOOD
Class existed before the nation state. Throughout history one ruling class or another has attempted to impose its view on those they ruled over, manipulating their passions and pretending that its interests and their interests were the same. So, in another of life's ironies, the masses waste their energy fighting amongst themselves, believing their interests and the interests of their rulers are linked.
To the socialist, class-consciousness is the breaking-down of all barriers to understanding. The conflict between the classes is more than a struggle for each to gain from the other: it is the division which reaches across all others. The class-conscious working man knows where he stands in society. His interests are opposed at every point to those of the capitalist class. Nationalism is not their interest but their rulers'. The presence of nationalist ideas is an indication that some groups in society feel its real material interests are being frustrated by forces outside or even inside the nation.
Nationalism is the ideology of always putting one's nation first. It is not necessary to be a powerful nation to carry out nationalistic policies and practices. Governments and corporations of every shade engage in nationalistic practices in the name of patriotism. National media and political parties manipulate patriotic feelings to forward agendas for personal profit. Nationalism is foremost about propping up the power of dominant groups and legitimising their rule. To speak of "the nation" or its "people” as if these are the same flies in the face of the reality that capitalist society is divided into mutually antagonistic classes.
"The People" have never determined their own political, social and economic affairs. In every country, those policies are drawn up by, and in the interests of, the ruling class. The nation is the camouflage which cloaks the struggle between classes. Nationalism has nothing to offer most of the time except blood, toil, tears and sweat. Nationalism is an ideology of sacrifice. What is presented as being for the good of the nation is purely for the benefit of the bosses. Any ideology which denies this, is a barrier which must be broken down if the working class is to assert its own independent class interests. Nationalism conceals the real nature of capitalism, turns worker against worker and serves to impede working-class solidarity. Workers must know that under capitalism nationalism is now doing them great deal of harm, far more harm than the advantages it confers. Independence only enhances the power of the local boss class. Nationalism is an ideology of class collaboration. Socialists will not provide succour and support for the section of ruling class whose antecedents depopulated the Highlands for the sheep and the grouse.
Despite supposed barriers of culture, those of us who are working class are all part of one globalised exploited mass with more in common with each other than with our "native" bosses. Scotland, like every other country or state in the world, is class-divided: a minority of rich owners and the rest of us. Workers have no interests in common with them and anything which encourages the illusion that all the people of Scotland form a community with a common interest can only serve their interests. They need us to believe this because their rule and privileges depend on our acceptance. It benefits them to see the workers placing meaning and identity in things that are irrelevant and mythical to the truth of class struggle. Keeping the workers unable to see the true state of affairs in the world works to the ruling class's advantage. Throughout history one ruling class or another has attempted to impose its view on those they ruled over, manipulating their emotions and pretending that its interests and their interests were the same. So, in another of life's ironies, the masses waste their energy fighting amongst themselves, believing their interests and the interests of their rulers are linked. Nationalism has served to divide workers ideologically. Today it is probably fair to say that a majority of workers - to one extent or another - align themselves to their domestic ruling class. Historically, nationalism and national feeling have been the means of the capitalist class for both winning and retaining power. To promote and cultivate the notion that the area of our birth (“our” country) transcends or neutralises our class status or gives us a common cause with a class that socially deprives and demeans us, that imposes either mere want or grave poverty on our lives and the lives of our families, is to be cruelly deceived by the political machinations of capitalism.
Socialism groups men, poor against rich, class against class, without taking into account the differences of race and language, and over and above the artificial frontiers traced by history. The appeal to workers to a fake “cultural” identity and fake "national" unity are toxic to the real interests of the working class. The bonds which bind worker with worker, irrespective of nationality, are those of class solidarity. For as long as workers are deceived into viewing the world from a "national" perspective, they will fail to understand their condition in capitalism. The working class is deluded by nationalism. Such beliefs actively encourage people to co-operate with their "national" exploiters operating within borders determined purely by historical accident. Nationalism conceals the real nature of capitalism, turns worker against worker and serves to impede working-class solidarity. Since it is this class-divided, profit-motivated society that is the cause of the problems workers face in Scotland, as in England and in the rest of the world, so these problems will continue, regardless of whether Scotland separates from or remains part of the United Kingdom.
THE SOCIALIST OPTION
Just as capitalism is a world system of society, so too must socialism be. There never has been, and never can be, socialism in just one country. Socialism will be one world-wide community without national boundaries, a united humanity. It would also share a world administration. This is the socialist alternative to the way that capitalism divides the planet into rival states and sets people against each other. But this does not rule out local democracy. A world administration will not mean the power of central control over local democracy. In fact, a democratic system of decision-making would require that the basic unit of social organisation would be the local community. However, the nature of some of the problems we face and the many goods and services presently produced, such as raw materials, energy sources, agricultural products, world transport and communications, need production and distribution to be organised at a world level. One of the great technical developments under capitalism has been communications and the rapid processing and distribution of information. This will alter our awareness of being in the world and the boundaries between what is local and distant are shifted or become blurred. So, as well as the face-to-face contacts of our daily lives at home and at work with friends, neighbours and relatives, and as well as our part in local affairs, at the same time we would be involved with all other people in world issues and events of every kind.
The motivation for this new world comes from the global problems thrown up by capitalism. There are no parochial solutions to world problems like world poverty, hunger and disease. Ecological problems make a nonsense of the efforts of national governments. War and the continuing threat of nuclear war affect us all. The problem of uneven development means that many producers in the Third World suffer starvation, disease and absolute poverty. All of these problems of capitalism can only be solved within the framework of a socialist world.
Socialism will be a co-operative worldwide system. National borders, 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 parts of the world. To move forward, the dispossessed majority across the world must look beyond the artificial barriers of nation-states and regional trading blocs, to perceive a common identity and purpose.
THE SOCIALISTS’ TASK
Because political power in capitalism is organised on a territorial basis each socialist party has the task of seeking democratically to gain political power in the country where it operates. This however is merely an organisational convenience; there is only one socialist movement, of which the separate socialist organisations are constituent parts. When the socialist movement grows larger its activities will be fully co-ordinated through its world-wide organisation. It is suggested that socialist ideas might develop unevenly across the world, and that socialists of only a part of the world were in a position to get political control. This relates to the possibility that the socialist movement could be larger in one country than in another and at the stage of being able to gain control of the machinery of government before the socialist movements elsewhere were as far advanced. The decision about the action to be taken would be one for the whole of the socialist movement in the light of all the circumstances at the time. It would certainly be a folly, however, to base a programme of political action on the assumption that socialist ideas will develop unevenly and that we must therefore be prepared to establish "socialism" in one country or even a group of countries like the European Union. For a start, it is an unreasonable assumption that socialist ideas will develop unevenly.
Given the world-wide nature of capitalism and its social relationships, the vast majority of people live under basically similar conditions, and because of the world-wide system of communications and media, there is no reason for socialist ideas to be restricted to one part of the world. Any attempt to establish "socialism" in one country would be bound to fail owing to the pressures exerted by the world market on that country's means of production. Those who become socialists will realise this and also the importance of uniting with workers in all countries. The socialist idea is not one that could spread unevenly. Thus the socialist parties will be in a position to gain political control in the industrially advanced countries within a short period of each other. (It is conceivable that in some less developed countries, where the working class is weak in numbers, the privileged rulers may be able to retain their class position for a little longer. But as soon as the workers had won in the advanced countries they would give all the help needed elsewhere. The less developed countries might present socialism with a problems, but they do not constitute a barrier to the immediate establishment of socialism as a world system.)
"...By creating the world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the Earth, and especially the civilized peoples, into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others...It follows that the communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized countries – that is to say, at least in England, America, France, and Germany...It is a universal revolution and will, accordingly, have a universal range...The nationalities of the peoples associating themselves in accordance with the principle of community will be compelled to mingle with each other as a result of this association and thereby to dissolve themselves, just as the various estate and class distinctions must disappear through the abolition of their basis, private property." Engels
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 artificial constraints of profit and used for the good of humanity—socialism. There is in reality only one world. It is high time we reclaimed it.
CONCLUSION
The idea that a line of a map should actually mean something of significance to the workers is laughable. Let's imagine that a human, born in England,and another human is was born in Scotland, yet within sight of each other. Are these two people utterly alien to one another? Any difference in attitudes and behaviour that do exist are minor and trivial. Both have to sell their labour power for wages, and are manipulated and exploited by a capitalist class. It does not alter the fact that they are all part of one oppressed mass with more in common with each other than with their indigenous bosses.
Differences of language, food, culture and the like will continue to exist in a socialist world. Indeed, we would no longer be subjected to the “McDonaldisation” of global brands that we have today under capitalism. Different customs and traditions can co-exist in the same geographical area and that individuals can partake of elements of different cultures. People living in the north of an island, off the north-west coast of the Eurasian land mass, can enjoy Irn-Bru, mutton pies and bagpipe music without being nationalistic. But the socialist does object to the manipulation of differences for political ends and economic advantage. Nationalism and patriotism has run through politics like a malignant sore. That its workers should be patriotic is vital to each national ruling class and this, it is fertilised by official lies, fostered by all governments. The very idea that a given country is owned by some inclusive “we”, based on common descent or culture which “we” all have an interest in defending; that “we” owe loyalty towards our own “fellow-countrymen” over others from other lands – is the very premise that the nationalists latch onto and tout as their glorious cause. The professional politicians do their craven best to pander to this supposed collective identity. Independence for Scotland therefore is a myth put about by the SNP, which further confuses the Scottish section of the working class and blinds them from the real struggle - the class struggle.
Once again the Socialist Party stress that the illusions of nationality are yet another way the ruling class dupe 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.
Constitutional reform such as Scottish independence is of no benefit or relevance to us. It leaves our lives and the problems the profit system causes completely unchanged. Exploitation through the wages system continues. Unemployment continues. A crumbling health service, a chaotic transport system, a polluted environment, failing schools, rising crime, abuse addiction and the general breakdown of society all continue. As far as solving these problems is concerned, constitutional reform is just a useless irrelevancy. The Scots should turn a deaf ear to the siren song of Scottish independence where any prosperity would as always only be for the elite ruling class and not for the working class.
We are told by the nationalists that it would be an extension of democracy, bringing power nearer to the people, so how can socialists not be in favour of this? Yes, socialists are in favour of democracy, and socialism will be a fully democratic society, but full democracy is not possible under capitalism. Supporters of capitalism who talk about “democracy” always mean only political democracy since economic democracy, where people would democratically run the places where they work, is excluded under capitalism, based as it is on workplaces being owned and controlled by and for the benefit of a privileged minority. An independent Scotland can have the most democratic constitution imaginable but this makes little difference to the fact that profits remain the foremost priority under capitalism. The people’s will to have their needs met properly is frustrated all the time by the operation of the economic laws of the capitalist system which no political structure, no matter how democratic, can control.
The Scottish separatists think themselves as visionaries but they cannot see beyond the narrow confines of the nation-state, conceived in medieval times. 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 humanity and the urgent need to celebrate it by building society on that basis. In a socialist society, the traditional knowledge and skills of small communities will be respected, especially where this relates to local ecology and sustainable systems of land use, and precedence will given to decentralised decision-making over whatever does not require delegated to a wider regional or global democratic control.
The socialist position on nationalism is simple.
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 uninterested in politics. Or they can study the case for world socialism. They have the choice of enduring the miseries of the capitalist system within the confines of national frontiers or enjoying emancipation in a socialist world. Socialism is a sane society, where the means of life will be owned by the whole of the world socialist community. By the means of life we mean the land, mines, factories, railways, and the like - in short, the means of production and distribution. In socialism the rule of life will be: from each according to his or her ability, to each to according to his or her need. There will be no need for buying and selling, just a free world for a free people. Socialism will facilitate the fullest linguistic and cultural diversity.
It could be like that now, so why not do something about it? The world is ours for the taking. So why not take it ?
Members of the Socialist Party understand the urge to do something now, to make a change. That makes us all the more determined, however, to get our message across, to clear away the barrier of the wages system, so that we can begin to build a truly human society.
As socialists we re-affirm that all peoples should seek their emancipation, not as members of nations or religions or ethnic groups, but as human beings, as members of the human race. They should unite to abolish the division of the world into so-called nation-states and to establish a world cooperative commonwealth of which we will all be equal world citizens, not subjects of nation-states.The goal of the socialist movement is not to assist in the creation of even more states but to establish a real world community without frontiers where all states as they currently exist will be destroyed. In a socialist society communities, towns and cities will have the opportunity to thrive – and people will no doubt feel an attachment to places that are real and tangible – but the nation states will be consigned to the history books where they belong. We will recognise ourselves, not as Scottish, British, or French but as members of the human race. Then nationalism will have been well and truly buried.
It is clear, then, why socialists don’t take sides in the debate about whether it is better for workers to be ruled from Holyrood or from Westminster. The alternative to Scottish nationalism is not British unionism. Because one "nation" rules another, one does not have to chose one or the other. Socialism is the self-liberation of working class people, by their own efforts, creating and using their own organisations. As we live in Scotland we struggle for socialism here.
A plague on all their houses. Neither London nor Edinburgh, but World Socialism.
"The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality. The workers have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got" - The Communist Manifesto
2 comments:
Typical long-winded ramblings from Alan Johnstone. Yawn!
I'm sorry you couldn't stay sufficiently interested in the debunking of nationalist delusions.
Post a Comment