Independence For Whom And From What?

The SNP has now formally requested a second referendum for independence. The position of the Socialist Party has not changed since 2014

Nationalism has swept the world with increasing force. And the more the workers’ movement wallows in the doldrums, the more nationalism blossoms, despite the fact that national differences between the peoples are vanishing more and more. The socialist position on nationalism is simple. The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. The Socialist Party, however, will be turned by nationalist slogans and has always resisted the siren call of patriotism and national chauvinism by proclaiming the unity and indivisibility of the class struggle. Separatism weakens the workers' sense of solidarity and frequently drives them to strike-break on a national level. The principle of international solidarity of the workers is an essential element for the triumph of the working class. It is critical for working people to organise themselves independently of all capitalist interests. This is not just  sloganising, but the reality of the world we live in. The Scottish "national interest" is simply the interest of capital within Scotland. It is the interest of the Scottish ruling class. Nationalism distorts class struggles. 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. 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.

The fact that nationalism is a dead-end does not stop people going down it. The idea of the division of humanity into nations is etched into people’s consciousness under capitalism. If one national state fails them, the easiest thing is to turn to the idea of creating a new nation. Independence seems to offer a quick way for people to break from the hold of a Tory government and the effects of Britain’s recessions and austerity policies and so support for nationalism has grown. Nationalist influence is greatest where demoralisation among workers is strongest. The political field is left to those who preach nationalism when the economic battle-ground is deserted. Nevertheless, the parties that established new capitalist states means inevitably them turning against their own workers. When the nationalist frenzy fades, the economic problems – and with them the class struggle – suddenly move back to the centre of the stage.

The independence-then-socialism strategy doesn’t bring us closer to socialism, only farther away from it. We’re not going to get any closer to socialism by strengthening the SNP, a party that represents the interests of Scottish business. Whether they like it or not, the left nationalists by giving the SNP conditional and tactical support end up in class collaboration, supporting the ‘lesser evil’. By refusing to subordinate the national struggle to the class struggle for socialism, their option helps keep capitalism alive.

Economic Freedom and Industrial Democracy

Faced with the current environmental emergency there is a crying need for economic and social reorganisation of society. It must be the socialisation of the means of production and distribution. Privately owned industry and production for individual profit hinders progress towards humane ends. Despite monumental achievements in the technology and sciences, this world of ours has not yet learned how to feed itself. All the resources and forces must be released from private ownership and control, socialized, democratized, and set into motion for the common good of all instead of the private profit of the few. A world based upon private property and the pursuit of profit can never be a free world. Such a world of warring classes is a world of strife and hate and such a society can exist only by means of force and coercion.

To stir the people, to set them thinking for themselves, and to hold before them a future world based upon mutual interests, is the cause of humanity and the aim of the Socialist Party. The education of the people in the principles of industrial democracy and along the lines of socialist development is the task of the people and that task can be performed only by themselves.

Too many times in the past has been state capitalism misleadingly been designated as socialism. Whenever the State nationalised an industry, whenever the State imposed its control over industry, the so-called “socialists” naively said this was an abandonment of capitalism, and the growing  acceptance of socialism, a step in the transformation of capitalism into socialism. What was being ended was not capitalism, but laissez faire capitalism; what came was not socialism nor an first stage of socialism, but the centralised command economy of state capitalism.  

The Socialist Party rejected the  policy of state ownership, it rejected the argument that state capitalism was an initial phase of socialism, and insisted upon the democratic and common ownership of the world’s production and distribution. State capitalism is not socialism and never can become socialism. State intervention is in the interest of the capitalist class. the separation of ownership and management does not mean that capitalism is “not capitalism” any more, in the sense of any basic change in class relations. It simply separates the functions of exploitation and management, formerly combined in the person of the capitalist himself, now become a government ministry official. Management is made the function of civil servants. Management no longer need to own, but it manages as appointees and employees. They control; they exploit. The state bureaucracy privileged caste, become beneficiaries, a privileged caste, in varying degrees from the subjection and exploitation of the workers. Unlike the investing financial capitalist the bureaucrat (or corporate CEO) is a worker, but a working capitalist, an exploiter of the labour of others.The capitalists are a class, a useless, dangerous, parasitic minority that can be dispensed with.  

 Democracy can be broadly defined as the provision of the opportunity and the right for all members of a community or organisation, no matter what their level, to participate in the decision-making process which affects their daily lives without fear of recrimination. This is in contrast to the way most institutions work today whereby it is only people at the top who have the right to make or influence decisions.

Why should the voter cast his or her ballot for the Socialist Party? Why should someone become a member of the Socialist Party? 

First, that the Socialist Party is the only party that squarely stands for social and economic democracy. The Tories and the Labour parties are one in their allegiance to the City of London and capitalist supremacy. A vote for either of these parties is a vote for plutocratic misrule and wage slavery. 

The Socialist Party is the party of the working class. Its emancipation, which will follow the abolition of the wage system, will mean the freedom of humanity, based upon cooperative industry; and it will also mean the end of the dog-eat-dog struggle for existence in human society and the beginning of the first real civilisation the world has ever known. 

The Socialist Party, therefore, is the coming party, regardless of its present small size. 

The Socialist Party proposes to transfer the sources, means, and machinery of production and distribution from the private hands to the collective people, so that wealth may be produced in abundance, not to enrich a small class, but for the comfort and enjoyment of all. People who prefer freedom to slavery, peace to war, love to hate, plenty to poverty, happiness to misery, should support the Socialist Party. 

Socialism is industrial democracy, by, for and of the workers, first, last and all the time. As those of us in the Socialist Party understand we’ve still got time to turn things around concerning climate change. But the time to act, to educate, to build stronger movements, to scale up our best practices, to gain political power, is now.

Homes of the Rich

The top 20 most expensive streets in Scotland are:

Golf Place, St Andrews - £1.877 million

Northumberland Street, Edinburgh - £1.687 million

Regent Terrace, Edinburgh - £1.613 million

Napier Road, Edinburgh - £1.541 million

Ann Street, Edinburgh - £1.405 million

Heriot Row, Edinburgh - £1.336 million

Oakhill Grange, Aberdeen - £1.276 million

Wester Coates Gardens, Edinburgh - £1.243 million

Saxe Coburg Place, Edinburgh - £1,213m

Danube Street, Edinburgh - £1.184 million

Rubislaw Den South, Aberdeen - £1.171 million

Kingsborough Gardens, Glasgow - £1.140 million

Corrennie Gardens, Edinburgh - £1.137 million

Manse Road, Glasgow - £1.123 million

Brigghouse Park Rigg, Edinburgh - £1.113 million

Garscube Terrace, Edinburgh - £1.095 million

Castle Avenue, Glasgow - £1.093 million

Warriston Crescent, Edinburgh - £1.093 million

Woodhead Drive, Glasgow - £1.092 million

The Scores, St Andrews - £1.092 million 

The hour is late. The situation dire.

The Socialist Party aims at common ownership and democratic control of the world and its resources and the consequent abolition of class society. We also recognise that until this is achieved we have to organise ourselves for class struggle along the most militant and democratic lines. Mainstream trade unions increasingly fit neither of these descriptions. So is it time for a new beginning? The leaders of the trade union movement are devoid of a class understanding of society, so lacking ideas of how to get out of their present rut that they see no alternative, indeed no other policy, than supporting the return of a Labour government. Official trade unionism is like a toothless tiger that when attacked has no choice but to cower in a corner. The need to engage in collective organisation emerges in a society which is divided into two classes, a minority class who own and control the means of wealth production and distribution and a majority class who have to sell their abilities to work for a wage or salary in order to live. On an individual basis the relationship between employer and employee is one of gross inequality to that to defend themselves against the inevitable encroachments of capital, workers have to organise collectively.

This need has nothing to do with rights, but has everything to do with economic necessity, a vital weapon for workers in the class struggle. Collective organisation and immunities from prosecution in trade disputes were conceded by the state through years of working-class struggle. In recent years these immunities only remain if workers and their organisations abide by a whole set of restraints in organising their disputes with employers.

Unions which were never exactly revolutionary organisations, are now beginning to lack any trace of being class-based organisations. Whether by deliberate design or not, many unions seem to have abandoned sections of the working class who are suffering from the worst aspects of modern capitalism. Many workers are employed on part-time contracts or limited to temporary or casual employment and find the comparatively high subs unions ask difficult to afford. The unions now seem totally resigned to working within the reactionary industrial relations legislation which has developed, particularly during the last seventeen years. This acceptance makes them less effective organisations for workers in their struggles with employers. If workers are having to spend as much time fighting the union bureaucracy as they are their employers, then many may start, indeed, surely will start, to think about the need to form or join industrial organisations which are controlled by the membership and not paid officials.

What socialists support is sound collective industrial working-class organisation not particular institutions of trade unions. We have always stressed the need for workers to control their own disputes, to democratically decide when to take action, what that action should be and at what stage their dispute has been satisfactorily settled or is no longer worth pursuing. It is workers themselves and not officials divorced from the workplace who should decide whether to make agreements with employers and what such agreements should be. Collective industrial organisation also needs to reach out beyond the workplace to include community involvement. Even in the defencive struggle to defend ourselves within the capitalist system, let alone an offensive one to help end it, the business-type unions which dominate in Britain at the moment offer little more than employment insurance and personal services. They are losing, or have already lost, their capacity for workers to use them as organisations of self-defence and are seemingly too bureaucratic to change. For groups of workers who have retained good militant anti-official unionism, it may be possible to build something within their existing organisations. For those who lack this base, alternative forms of industrial collective organisation may need to be built. Only working class solidarity can get rid of capitalism and achieve world socialism and any expression of such solidarity is a good thing, whether at work, in communities fighting to protect their local environment, or in the various getting-togethers to resist the bosses' latest laws. At least it shows that people will never roll over and die, as the ruling class so dearly wants us to. Obviously none of the above will do much at present to bring about a free society because the required mass class consciousness isn’t there.

However, now more than ever, people involved in defencive struggles are likely to approach the only conclusion there is: that the money system as a whole is the problem. Attacks on the working class are getting more savage by the day, every way of running capitalism has been tried and discredited and there is widespread rejection of the parties of capitalism (including the lefties and their sorry antics). Life itself is an education and the Socialist Party exists to spread the socialist case as widely as possible.

Socialists are all for working class solidarity, but are "under no illusions" that it is mass solidarity for the abolition of capitalism that is so desperately needed.