1320 - Declaration of Arbroath

2020 is not 1320 and 700 years makes a big difference to the meaning of language and the intent of the Declaration of Arbroath which tens of thousands of Scottish nationalists are commemorating this month. Scotland in 1320 was a very different country to the Scotland of today therefore we should not give to the medieval mind-set of the authors, an interpretation of a later modern age.

The Declaration of Arbroath, or to give its proper title, "Letter of Barons of Scotland to Pope John XXII, should be seen for what it really was – primary as an expression of the interests of nobles determined to protect their privileges against the king.

According to the historian Neil Davidson, a key passage in the Declaration :

‘Yet if he [Robert the Bruce] shall give up what he has begun, seeking to make us or our kingdom subject to the king of England or to the English, we would strive at once to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter of his own rights and ours, and we would make some other man who was able to defend us our king; for, as long as a hundred of us remain alive, we will never on any conditions be subjected to the lordship of the English. For we fight not [for] glory, nor riches, nor honours, but for freedom alone, which no good man gives up without his life’.

Stirring patriotic stuff but rather than represent the prototype for modern nationalism, historian Neil Davidson suggests it describes the function of the noble estate ‘as the defender of the kingdom against the claims of the individual monarch in a way that was entirely typical of absolutist Europe.’ Neil Davidson also observes, ‘The sonorous wording of the Declaration is in fact a clear statement of, among other things, the fact that the feudal ruling class still considered themselves to be a nation in a racial rather than the modern sense.’

It was putting out two messages. The first was directed at the English king, Edward II, informing him that it was pointless for him to attempt to depose Robert the Bruce with a more subservient king, since the remainder of the Scottish aristocracy would not cease its resistance. Secondly, it was addressed to Robert the Bruce, making it clear that, considering his dubious past record, they would not brook his jeopardising their interests – which lay in their god-given right to unhindered exploitation of the peasants – through making concessions to Edward.

The claims that the Declaration challenged the traditional belief in the Divine Right of Kings and promoting in its place the notion that the nation itself was foremost and the monarch merely its steward, is argued solely to justify Bruce usurping the rightful king John Balliol. The section of the Declaration reading “if this prince [Bruce] shall leave these principles he hath so nobly pursued, and consent that we or our kingdom be subjected to the king or people of England, we will immediately endeavour to expel him, as our enemy and as the subverter both of his own and our rights, and we will make another king, who will defend our liberties” should be read as a cautionary warning and a veiled threat to Robert the Bruce himself for he had switched his allegence several times in previous years.

The preamble to the Declaration traces the wanderings of the ‘Scots nation’ from ‘Greater Scythia to Scotland, celebrates its triumphs over Britons and Picts, and survival from attacks by ‘Norwegians, Danes and English. In a propaganda war, the Scots were at a disadvantage. The Pope in Rome had excommunicated Bruce who had decided to being more than just an English lord and to achieve that goal murdered his chief rival in a church. He sent three letters to the Pope. The first was a letter from himself, the second from the Scots clergy, and the third from the nobles of Scotland that became known as the Declaration of Arbroath.

The lesser-known earlier 1310 Declaration of the Clergy (the clergy being usually the younger sons of the nobles) proclaimed the Kingship of Robert. It begins by stating that John Balliol was made King of Scots by Edward Longshanks of England, but goes on to criticise Balliol’s status, because an English King does not have any authority to determine who will be the King of Scots. Such authority rests with the Scots themselves and alone, ignoring the fact that the Scottish nobles had given up that right in negotiations with Edward over twenty years beforehand.

That Declaration stated: ‘The people, therefore, and commons of the foresaid Kingdom of Scotland,...agreed upon the said Lord Robert, the King who now is, in whom the rights of his father and grandfather to the foresaid kingdom, in the judgement of the people, still exist and flourish entire; and with the concurrence and consent of the said people he was chosen to be King, that he might reform the deformities of the kingdom, correct what required correction, and direct what needed direction; and having been by their authority set over the kingdom, he was solemnly made King of Scots...And if any one on the contrary claim right to the foresaid kingdom in virtue of letters of time past, sealed and containing the consent of the people and the commons, know ye that all this took place in fact by force and violence which could not at the time be resisted.’

Like a lot of such grandiose statements we've seen down through the ages, the Clergy's declaration was nothing more than misleading propaganda, which sought to disguise the facts of history.

Those medieval signatories to the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath were merely feudal barons asserting their claim to rule and lord it over their own tenants and serfs, not leading any ‘liberation struggle’. In fact, John de Menteith, who turned William Wallace over to Edward of England put his seal to the Declaration of Arbroath. 

Not long after the signing, the document was forgotten for a few hundred years until it was rediscovered by Sir George Mackenzie in 1680, who viewed it not really as an expression of nationalism but as support for those who wished to curtail royal power. It was only later that the Declaration of Arbroath came to be seen in purely nationalistic terms. 

What did the signatories of the document actually mean by ‘we’ and ‘freedom’? The ‘we’ who attached their seals to the document were all noblemen. And it was their ‘freedom’ that it concerned. The authors when they spoke of the ‘people’ they meant ‘people like us’, not the peasant in the fields. The ‘people’ of Scotland were the nobles, the majority of whom at that time were still fairly much culturally Anglo-Norman, despite inter-marriage within the indigenous Scoto-Gael ruling families and ownership of the land. No-one who signed the Declaration believed that the common-folk of Scotland had any say in the issue. Or in anything else, for that matter. The Declaration signatories certainly had no concept of popular sovereignty.

A modern myth persists that the Declaration of Arbroath inspired the American Declaration of Independence because both enshrined that sovereignty rests with the people. Firstly, it was not a ‘declaration’ in the sense of the American Declaration of Independence or the French Declaration of the Rights of Man but a plea to the Pope.

If true ‘freedom-fighters’ are required then Scottish workers should look to those brave weavers who rose up five hundred years later on April 1820, in what was known as the Radical War, not the winners and losers of aristocratic family feuds over the throne of Scotland.

Build the Cooperative Commonwealth

The aim of the Socialist Party is the establishment by democratic means of a cooperative commonwealth in which the supplying of human needs and enrichment of human life shall be the primary purpose of our society. In spite of great economic expansion and technological innovation, large sections of working people do not benefit adequately. Wealth and economic power continue to be concentrated in the hands of a relatively few private corporations. The gap between those at the bottom and those at the top of the economic scale has widened. Millions around the world still live in want and insecurity. Slums and inadequate housing condemn families to a cheerless life. In short, our world is still characterised by glaring inequalities of wealth and opportunity and by the domination of one class over another. The growing concentration of income and wealth has resulted in a virtual economic dictatorship by a privileged few. Our political democracy which will attain its full meaning only when our people have control in the management of the means by which they live. Our planet’s resources are not fully utilized. Its use is governed by the dictates of private economic power and by considerations of, private profit. Similarly, the scramble for profit has wasted and despoiled our soil, water and air. The lack of social planning results in a waste.

Unprecedented scientific and technological advances have brought us to the threshold of a second industrial revolution. Opportunities for enriching the standard of life are greater than ever. Unless there is a fundamental change in our economic structure, the evils of the past will be multiplied in the future and will result in even greater concentrations of wealth and power and will cause widespread distress through unemployment and the displacement of populations. Economic growth accompanied by widespread suffering and injustice is not desirable social progress. The Socialist Party reaffirms its belief that our society must must build a new relationship among mankind--a relationship based on mutual respect and on equality of opportunity. In such a society everyone will have a sense of worth and belonging, and will be enabled to develop his or her abilities to the full. With the creation of the Co-operative Commonwealth regulating production and distribution to satisfy peoples needs and not the making of profits will be the over-riding principle.

The goal of the Socialist Party is to replace the present capitalist system, with its inherent injustice and inhumanity, by a social order from which the domination and exploitation of one class by another will be eliminated, in which economic planning will supersede unregulated private enterprise and competition, and in which genuine democratic self-government, based upon economic equality will be possible. The present order is marked by glaring inequalities of wealth and opportunity, by chaotic waste and instability; and in an age of plenty it condemns the great mass of the people to poverty and insecurity. Power has become more and more concentrated into the hands of a small irresponsible minority of financiers and industrialists and to their predatory interests the majority are habitually sacrificed. When private profit is the main stimulus to economic effort, our society swings wildly between periods of feverish prosperity in which the main benefits go to speculators and profiteers, and of catastrophic recession, in which the working [people’s normal state of insecurity and hardship is accentuated. We believe that these evils can be removed only in a planned and socialised economy in which our natural resources and principal means of production and distribution are owned, controlled and operated by the people. The new social order at which we aim is not one in which individuality will be crushed out by a system of regimentation. What we seek is a proper collective organisation of our economic resources such as will make possible a much greater degree of leisure and a much richer individual life for every citizen.

This social and economic transformation can only be brought about by political action, through the election of a political party inspired by the ideal of a Co-operative Commonwealth and supported by a majority of the people. We do not believe in change by violence. We consider that both the other parties are the instruments of capitalist interests and cannot serve as agents of social reconstruction, and that whatever the superficial differences between them, they are bound to carry on government in accordance with the dictates of the Big Business interests who finance them. The Socialist Party aims at the capture of political power in order to put an end to this capitalist domination of our lives. It is a democratic movement, financed by its own members and seeking to achieve its ends solely by constitutional methods, if possible. It appeals for support to all who believe that the time has come for a far-reaching reconstruction of our economic and political institutions and who are willing to work together for the carrying out the transformation of our social system. Reforms are of only temporary palliative, for the mortal sickness of the whole capitalist system, and its social ills cannot be cured by the application of ameliorations. These leave untouched the cancer which is eating at the heart of our society, namely, the economic system in which our natural resources and our principal means of production and distribution are owned, controlled and operated for the private profit of a small proportion of our population.

The Socialist Party will not rest content until it has helped to eradicate capitalism and establishment the Cooperative Commonwealth.

The Socialist Party and Socialism

 Private ownership of the means of production and distribution of  wealth has caused society to split into two distinct classes with conflicting interests, the small possessing class of capitalists or exploiters of the labour force of others and the ever-increasing large dispossessed class of wage-workers. The capitalists’ ownership of the means of production, is responsible for the insecurity of subsistence, the poverty, misery, and degradation of the ever-growing majority of our people. Either we adopt socialism, the common ownership of the means of production for the common good and welfare, or the result could possibly be the destruction of civilisation.

 The Socialist Party declares its object to be the establishment of a system of cooperative production and distribution through the restoration to the people of all the means of production and distribution, to be administered by organised society in the interest of the whole people, and the complete emancipation of society from the domination of capitalism. Wage-workers should sever connection with all capitalist and reform parties. The control of political power by the working class will be tantamount to the abolition of capitalism. The workers have never yet developed or made use of their political power. They have played the game of their masters for the benefit of the master class - and now many of them, disgusted with their own blind and stupid performance, are renouncing politics and refusing to see any difference between the capitalist parties financed by the ruling class to perpetuate class rule and the Socialist Party organised by the workers themselves as a means of wresting the control of government and of industry from the capitalists and making the working class the ruling class of the nation and the world. The solidarity of labour connecting us with millions of class conscious fellow workers throughout the world will lead to world socialism, the unity of humanity.

The means of production will be for the common benefit of all. There will be an end to all exploitation. Wealth will be the property of the people and not of individual capitalists. The resources of society will be shared and distributed according to the needs of the people, not to satisfy a few capitalists’ hunger for profits as is the case today.

Socialism will be a planned economy. Workers will participate directly in running the country from top to bottom. This planning will guarantee the well-being of all the people and guide the process of socialist economic construction. Gone will be the anarchy of capitalist production. Gone, too, its resultant economic crises which today bring so much misery to workers. Unemployment and inflation will be things of the past, unknown under socialism. We will eliminate the terrible waste of human resources as is the case today with a million unemployed. It will be impossible for idle parasites to live off the backs of the workers as the capitalists  do today. Through planning we shall build up and modernize the factories and other productive facilities and eliminate backward and backbreaking labour. We will construct new houses and medical, cultural and sports facilities for the working people. The quality of everyday life will improve vastly. Socialism means tremendous progress.

 Socialism is the future of humanity, a radically new society where classes and the state will have been completely eliminated. The state is simply an instrument by which one class dominates another. It became a necessity when society split into classes. Just as the ancient slave state served the slave owners to suppress the countless slave rebellions, so too the modern capitalist state is a tool of the bourgeoisie to maintain its dictatorship over the working class. In abolishing classes in society, socialism will change the form and type of governments which exist today. Governments will become administrative bodies regulating production and consumption. They will not be the instruments of the capitalist class, i.e., capitalist governments whose main reason for existence is to guarantee the political as well as the economic rule of big business, their profits, their private ownership of the instruments of production, and the conduct of war in the economic and political interests of this class. 

With socialism there will be no rich and no poor, and all members of society will contribute to the common good. All social inequalities will have been banished. Socialism, and only socialism, will create a world without national barriers a world  without master and slave. 

Socialism will end the root evil of modern society, i.e., the private ownership of the means of production, the factories, mines, mills, machinery and land, which produce the necessities of life. 

In socialism, these instruments of production will become the property of society, owned in common, producing for use, for the general welfare of the people as a whole. With the abolition of the private ownership of the means of life and with it the factor of profit as the prime mover of production, the sharp divisions of society between nations and classes will disappear. Then, and only then, will society be in a position to become a social order of abundance and plenty for all, for socialism will create a new world of genuine cooperation and collaboration between the peoples of the earth. The preoccupation of socialism will be to assist in the elevation of society, to improve continually the living standards of the people, to extend their leisure time and thus make it possible to heighten the cultural level of the whole world. Socialism will eliminate all forms of dictatorship, political as well as economic. World socialism will be the freest, most democratic society the world has ever known, truly representing the majority of the population. A citizen of a socialist society will look back upon the capitalist era with its wars, destruction and bloody and cruel dictatorships as we now look back upon the brutality of slave and serf societies.

A world socialist administration will assess the industrial potential of the world, determine its resources, the needs of the people and plan production with the aim of increasing the standards of living of a free people, creating abundance, increasing leisure and opportunity for cultural enjoyment. Socialism will not concern itself with profits and war, but with providing decent housing, a multitude of schools and colleges, an integrated healthcare structure for all the people as its  paramount consideration. 

Above all, work will be without exploitation. For the aim of socialism is not the increase intensification of labour, but the utilization of machinery, technology, science and invention to diminish toil, to create time in which to permit all the people to enjoy the benefits of social progress. The modern world contains all the pre-conditions necessary for socialism. All about us we observe gigantic industrial establishments containing machinery which could produce the goods of life in abundance. Mankind has developed marvellous technology. Socialism will place at the disposal of science and the scientists all the material means to help create an ever-improving social life for mankind. Under capitalism, scientists are mere wage workers hiring out their skills to private industry. The fruits of their intelligence, learning arid research become the exclusive property of the capitalists who profit from the talent of these scientists. Thus, science has become subordinated to profits rather than to the common good of all mankind. Yet the future society depends in large measure on changing this relation of science to society. Only socialism can place science where it properly belongs: in the service of the people.

Humanity is at a crossroads. We can travel the road of capitalism, i.e., we can travel the road of chaos, war, poverty and barbarism, or we can choose to take the socialist road toward true freedom, peace and security, the road toward a society of plenty for all which would end the exploitation of man by man for all time.

Scottish Justice Comes to an End

We expected the Scottish government to take some far-reaching action to try and cope with the COVID-19 crisis. Many we view as necessary common-sense decisions despite the personal inconvenience it may cause.

However there may well be limits to our acceptance of the government's response. One of those is its attempt to maintain law and order in the country. The Scottish government is pushing through a swathe of emergency powers to help the criminal justice system and which are expected to be approved by Holyrood on Wednesday in a single day.

The bill would prevent landlords from evicting tenants for non-payment of rent; empower Holyrood to allow the release of prison inmates nearing the end of their sentences. No complaints there.

However, there are  plans to suspend jury trials for up to 18 months to cope with the coronavirus crisis which many in the legal profession have criticised as a “knee-jerk reaction instigated by panic and at worst something far more sinister.”

The Scottish Criminal Bar Association, which represents courtroom lawyers, said it was furious that ministers wanted to temporarily suspend jury trials and to dilute rules on evidence and witness statements, to ensure cases could go ahead.

Judges will be allowed to take pre-recorded witness statements - which cannot be challenged under cross-examination - and time limits requiring cases to come to court within 140 or 110 days would be waived.

Unlike with the Diplock courts in Northern Ireland, where a single judge sits without a jury in terror trials, there is no automatic right of appeal allowed under the new bill.

“What is proposed includes attacks on principles that have been built over more than 600 years and are the very cornerstone of not just Scotland’s criminal justice system, but those of almost every advanced liberal democracy in the developed world,” the association said. “These measures are premature, disproportionate and ill advised."

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/mar/31/scottish-lawyers-call-plan-to-suspend-jury-trials-kneejerk-reaction

Socialist Standard No. 1388 April 2020

 

Socialist Standard April 2020

Socialist Standard Apr 2020 PDF

• Editorial: Capitalism struggles to cope
  
• Pathfinders: Under Siege
  
• The trade in footballers
  
• Coronavirus: The Italian experience
  
• Market Panic : Capitalist Hysteria
  
• Cooking the Books I: Capitalism catches a cold
  
• Wood for the Trees: A ‘Man of his Time’
  
• Material World: Proxy warring in Syria
  
• Arbroath 1320-1820: A History of Them and US
  
• Irish Capitalism: Who Cares Who Runs it
  
• Inequality: Labour’s Straw Men
  
• Socialism, Communism, Association—A rose by another name
  
• Transport : Future Travel
  
• Plastic: Container Crisis
  
• Cooking the Books II: Iron asteroids and golden meteorites
  
• Proper Gander
  
• Reviews
  
• Atheism: Transcending superstition
  
• 50 Years Ago: French “Communists” support wages system
  
• Letter: A good question
  
• Rear View
  
• Free Lunch
  

We herald the dawn of the Socialist Commonwealth

 Exploitation and the plunder of a property-less class through the wages system is the very essence of the present system, and will accompany it to the end. The key to mankind's splendid future is POLITICAL POWER. When the workers understand their present wage-slavery and the plundering of their class by the capitalist system, they will see also, if they study socialism, that in freeing themselves from the bondage of capitalism they will set the whole world free. They will then TRUST THEMSELVES to do so. Organising on the economic field, in factory, workshop, and. every sphere of toil, they will fit themselves for controlling wealth-production for society's needs and benefit. Organising, above all, on the political field for the capture and control of political power, they will, in obtaining it, hold the key to freedom in their hand, and will use it for the paramount purpose of establishing the Socialist Commonwealth.

 

There is an element of uncertainty about the growth of the socialist movement. Not even the Socialist Party can tell how far the minds of the workers are turned to receive the principles of
socialism, or how many, already understanding them, are only waiting a popular movement basis on socialism. The number of members to-day may be small but it is the soundness of the principles, and the ease with which they can be understood, and the growing realisation by the workers that their accustomed methods achieve nothing, that keeps the Socialist Party going.

The master class and their lackeys never weary in their campaign of extolling the "virtues" of capitalism. The aim of the Socialist Party is to tear away this the veil of illusion and see capitalism in all its hideous deformity, and use our knowledge to bring to our way of thinking the men and women of the working class, without whose assistance our ultimate object is unattainable. We must show that capitalism has outlasted its usefulness; must emphasise and criticise the evils which are now the inevitable consequence of its continuance; we must point out that capitalism as a social force has played its part and that the time is ripe for the next stage in the evolution of society to be born.

Many people, while sympathetic to the idea of socialism, hesitate to join up with the Socialist Party because they are unable to visualise what conditions of life, other than the material, will obtain when the old system of Capitalism has passed and the new system of Socialism has taken its place. Many people consider, for instance, that under a system where the necessities and comforts of life are assured to everyone, society will lapse into a state of apathy and lethargy. They cannot understand that, where people work for use and not for profit, the better the work done by the individual, the greater the benefit bestowed upon the society of which the better worker is a unit. The workers under the socialist society will work for themselves as a collective body and not, as now, for a comparatively few social parasites, who by reason of their class position as capitalists as against the workers' position as wage-slaves, hold in their hands the power of dealing with the very lives of the majority of the community, not as they will, but as the fluctuations of economic circumstance may force them to.

 

One word more to those who, although themselves members of the working class, have such a poor opinion of the potentialities of their fellows. Why not change your tactics? Why not employ the powers you possess in helping to found a state of affairs wherein the members of the working class—your own class— shall have a chance of showing what they can do? Understand socialism. Organise for socialism. Propagate socialism. Work for socialism. Do not worry so much about the future. The future, you may be assured, will be quite safe in the hands of an intelligent democracy. We ask for the co-operation of all who accept the principles of socialism, so that when the inevitable disintegration of capitalism takes place, we, the workers as a whole, shall be ready, equipped for any emergency, to enter into the new world to be won.

 
 Fellow worker, have you ever thought what your support of capitalist society means to you and your class? It means a life of toil and poverty, and at the end of the journey, when you are no longer useful as a profit-producing machine, vegetating in a care-home  stares you in the face. The fact that in society to-day there exists underfed children and hungry mothers is part of the indictment against capitalism. The cause of poverty in the midst of plenty is to be found in the private ownership of the means of life. Social ownership can alone effect the change. And this the Socialist Party stands for. Look around you and you will see signs that there is an antagonism of interest between the two sections in the community— a class war—which can only be terminated by the abolition of classes in and through the institution of the Socialist Commonwealth. Socialism is not an end in itself, but the means to a fuller and more richly endowed way of life. The spirit of harmony can only come with socialism, when the means of wealth-production are socially owned and controlled for the use and benefit of all.