Nationalist Nonsense and Cant

 

Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon plans to hold a second referendum on Scottish independence, with or without UK government approval.

 

The SNP tell us that independence from England and the control of our own purse strings will cure much of our problems. The nationalists argue that the problems facing workers in Scotland are due to"Westminster rule". If only there was an ‘free’ Scotland, they say, separated from the rest of Britain, then there would be more employment, higher wages, better job security, improved state benefits, a healthier health service and all the other politicians promises. What they do not seem to realise is that the problems they are going to try 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 other than socialism.

 

In what way is the Scottish culture different from that of an English, an American, or a Russian wage slave? The idea that the Duke of Buccleuch is oppressed because he is a Scot is laughable. The world’s working class all suffer from the same problems such as poverty and insecurity. Independence from England will not cure the poverty and insecurity of the Scottish workers, because they will still be the wages labour and capital relationship. Scottish sovereignty would be a purely constitutional 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.

 Nor is there any truly independent country in the world because international capitalism has made sure of this. Foreign financial institutions and global corporations instruct governments on how to spend money  and how it must not be spent , in order to keep the international capitalist class satisfied. 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. It would still be subject to the same economic pressures as the existing London-based government to promote profits and restrict wages and welfare benefits. 

Independence for Scotland, therefore, is a myth put about by the Scottish National Party, which further confuses the Scottish section of the working class and blinds them from the real struggle - the class struggle.  The SNP’s claim to be a party for the workers is exposed as a fraud by its fawning attitude towards business.

Some critics of the Socialist Party accuse its 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. Members of the Socialist Party are just as much opposed to British nationalism as they are to Scottish. If workers in Scotland were ever to put the passion they show for the football clubs they support into something like socialism, then it would be the end of the ruling class. It benefits them to see the workers placing meaning and identity in things that are irrelevant and tribal 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.

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 free and equal members - citizens of the world, 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 genuine world community without frontiers where all states as they currently exist will be destroyed. In a socialist society communities, villages, towns and cities will have the opportunity to thrive – and people will no doubt feel an attachment to places and neighbourhoods that is real and tangible – but the nation-states will be consigned to the history books where they belong. 

The Socialist Party - Anti-Nationalist

 

Nicola Sturgeon "must fire the starting gun" in a bid to secure another independence referendum, former first minister who now leads the Alba party, Alex Salmond has said. Salmond told BBC Scotland that if Sturgeon and the Scottish government were serious about winning a referendum next year, they must start campaigning for it now. The Socialist Party has never ceased its campaigning against any form of nationalism.

 

In order to change the future, remember the past. In the struggle to win the minds of the working class the Socialist Party has to contend not, on the whole, with rational critiques of our socialist position but with deeply held and unquestioned values. A few of these, for example, might be religion, "human nature", "a fair day's wage for a fair day's work" or the association of socialism with the former Soviet Union. One of the strongest of these sacred beliefs, and one of the biggest obstacles to the establishment of socialism, is nationalism ― the loyalty felt by many members of the working class to "their country", the political unit in which they happen to reside.

The Socialist Party holds that the only real divisions which exist in the world are horizontal ones, between different social and economic groups. In advanced capitalist countries this consists in a division between the capitalist class, which owns and controls the means of production, and the working class, which owns none of them and which has to sell its mental and physical labour-power to the capitalist class in order to live. Feelings of loyalty to a nation-State are purely subjective, having no basis in reality; the working class in Scotland has more in common with the workers in other countries than it has with the Scottish capitalist class.

There, is however, an alternative view of the world. This is the belief that the important divisions are not horizontal, between different classes, but vertical, between various nations. A "nation" consists, according to this view, of a hierarchy of men and women who, although having differing incomes, social status and power, all have a common interest in working in harmony for the benefit of the whole unit and, if necessary, in fighting against other nations to defend this interest. This completely mistaken outlook is the one held by most members of the working class and nearly all political parties. Most historians reject Marx's declaration that "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle", preferring instead to see history as a succession of struggles of nations against foreign domination, of subjects against tyrannical kings and of nations and races against each other.

Broadly speaking, nationalist ideologies and movements represent the interests of the capitalist class. Nationalism as such did not exist in pre-capitalist society and its growth and development represents the parallel development of the capitalist class. Nationalism as we know it today first made its appearance during the French Revolution. In the early stages of the revolution cosmopolitan ideas were prevalent ― it was believed that the rest of Europe would be inspired by France's example and would likewise overthrow the old order. When this failed to happen strong feelings of nationalism developed; France was seen as a chosen nation, picked out to be the standard-bearer of revolution throughout Europe.

Politically, nationalism is ambiguous, in that it can take on a "right-wing" or a "left-wing" form. This depends upon the position of the capitalist class in the particular time and place. If political power is held by the aristocracy or nobility, and the middle-class is struggling to assert itself, then nationalism will have "left-wing" connotations. This was the case in Europe until 1848, when nationalism was a romantic, revolutionary force against the traditional ruling class. However, once the bourgeoisie has captured and consolidated its power, then nationalism becomes a conservative and right-wing force.

Although every nationalist movement believes it is unique, there exist basically these two forms of nationalism side by side. In the advanced parts of the world ― the United States, Britain, Western Europe ― nationalism is conservative, whilst in pre-industrial countries engaged in struggles against a foreign ruling class, nationalism is a "left-wing" force.

The World Socialist Movement opposes all nationalist movements recognising that the working class has no country. There are certain other groups the so-called Left ― which, though claiming to have a class outlook, have a wholly opportunist and ambiguous attitude to nationalism, which reflects not so much the interest of the working class as it does Russian or Chinese foreign policy. These groups fully accept the mythology of the existence of "the nation".

 

 

This attitude is a complete denial of Marxism; it is almost incomprehensible that people who describe themselves as socialists should write of the right to re-establish the Scottish nation. The Scottish independence movement is in essence no different from any other nationalist movement. Socialists give the Left nationalists or the SNP  no support whatsoever.

It will be argued that Marx and Engels supported nationalist movements and that therefore the Socialist Party should do so today. Such an assertion is based on a faulty understanding of the Materialist Conception of History. Marx and Engels were living in an era when the bourgeoisie was engaged in a struggle to assert itself against the old feudal regimes. The victory of this class was a historically progressive step at that time in that it brought about the re-organisation of society on a capitalist basis, the essential pre-condition for the establishment of socialism; and it created an urban proletariat, the only class which can bring about socialism. This was why Marx supported the rising capitalist class in their bid to capture political power. However, once capitalism reaches the point where socialism is a practical proposition, there is no need for socialists to advocate the capitalist industrialization of every corner of the globe; they can concentrate fully on the task of establishing socialism. Hence we give no support to any nationalist group, and in place of the opportunism and hypocrisy of the myriad left-wing groups in advocating "national self-determination", socialists echo the rallying cry of Marx and Engels, "Workers of All Countries, Unite!"

Socialism and the State

 The impregnation of the worker’s mind with individualist beliefs and delusions of freedom are obviously a tremendous asset— practically a necessity—to the smooth running and perpetuation of the capitalist order. This was early recognised by the employing class, and, from the dawn of the system, the deliberate fostering and strengthening of such ideas by propaganda were attempted. But after the workers had won the franchise, definite organs for their “instruction” in the “way they should think” were necessary. “Now, if ever,” says Engels, “the people must be kept in order by moral means.” Engels, in his introduction to “Socialism—Utopian and Scientific” goes on to show the use the English bourgeoisie made of religion. Here we will consider three other agents—educational institutions, the media, and the public platform.

 No worker could now escape from acquiring not only the groundwork of bourgeois ideology in his or her most impressionable years but also the special national applications of it through falsified history and the glorification of his “heritage”—the constitutional “charter” of supposed “liberties.” The training of the young was a masterstroke of the ruling class.

When the workers had the power of the vote, the media developed a new purpose and with it new methods and characteristics.

The modern media sets before the worker distorted “news” and a view of affairs deliberately calculated to foster the hold of bourgeois ideology. It does not produce this ideology, but constantly provides fresh details acceptable to it—the “evidence” upon which it feeds and thrives.

"That unique political fact, an enfranchised slave-class, furthermore, meant the unqualified triumph of the type of politician whose business it is to deliberately cajole and mislead the electorate.  The new political show-men were a necessity of the new political situation. They became the latest popular “heroes of society.” To regularly give a semblance of intense sincerity to the most hypocritical arguments is no light task, and men who excelled in it won the gratitude of the ruling class."

 It is significant that in the United States—the land of “liberty” —where the workers have been enfranchised for a longer period than in any other capitalist State, the art of the “spell-binder”—of gushing, emotional, meaningless, wordy rhetoric—has achieved its most exquisite development.

The Modern State. 

Schools and colleges, the media, are used assiduously to foster the “great illusion” of capitalism—that the worker is free, possessing freedom of opportunity with every other person, and liberty of contract. The preservation of this illusion is almost a necessity to, and is certainly one of the greatest safeguards of, the present system—and is recognised as such by the clear-sighted agents of the ruling class. The bourgeoisie is compelled to avoid anything that will tend to destroy this illusion. Even the “right to strike,” apparently menaced from time to time by “compulsory arbitration” schemes, is a necessity to the capitalists as well as to the workers—and the more far-seeing members of the employing class well know it. If ever the capitalists, in the height of fear and folly, endeavour to force the proletariat, as a class, to labour by law, and thus to thrust them into a legally recognised worker’s “status,” then indeed their days of power will be numbered.

For the same reason, we may regard the enfranchisement of the workers, once established, as a necessity for the continued existence of the system. The ideology of the proletariat, flowing, as we have seen, from the relations of production, makes it inevitable. Engels says :

“The highest form of the State, the democratic republic, know officially nothing of property distinctions. It is that form of the State which, under modern conditions of society, becomes more and more an unavoidable necessity. The last decisive struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie can only be fought out under this State form” (“Origin of the Family,” )

But we must not, of course, overlook the fact that the capitalist system and its State forms are still in process of development, and that there exists today in concrete reality a number of capitalist societies, each with a different history and each showing minor traits peculiar to itself. In Europe, nearly every State contains vestigial institutions leftover from Feudalism which affect its activities to a greater or less degree. More important, however, is the fact that capitalist production has by no means completely eliminated petty industry, and, in particular, wherever the peasantry is numerically very strong, as in Spain, France, and Italy, democratic forms can at least be temporarily suspended without immediate injury to the ruling class. Were the majority of the Italian population, for instance, proletarians, it is certain that the Fascist reaction would have been much more hazardous, if not impossible.

The necessity of the Parliamentary State, with an enfranchised working class, where capitalism is highly developed and the industrial proletariat strong, was vividly demonstrated after the collapse of the German Empire in 1918, when, amid an unprecedented political crisis, when larger masses of workers were agitated and organised for revolt than probably at any other time in capitalist history, the bourgeoisie was compelled to set up the most democratic republican constitution in the world, with male and female suffrage over the age of twenty, proportional representation, and the referendum.

The State, however, of no matter what period or what form—monarchic, oligarchic, or parliamentary—remains, in essence, the same. It has one function, and one essential function alone—the preservation of the property of the exploiting class, and, accordingly, the suppression of the exploited. Throughout the history of capitalism, the State has served as the instrument of the bourgeoisie. The slaughter of the Communards of Paris, the bloody suppression of strikes all over the world are evidence that it has served right well its historic function.

The capitalist class dominate society today because they control the public forces of coercion. But, unlike the ruling classes of other ages, this control does not arise from the fact that they themselves are the essential part of those forces. The bourgeoisie is not, and never have been, a military class. They, unlike their predecessors at the helm of State, are not only economically, but politically and militarily, entirely dependent upon the working masses. The workers make up almost in entirety the armed forces, and the workers, through the political machinery and through their bourgeois ideas, place these forces in the hands of their oppressors. The capitalists rule the immense majority of society because that immense majority sanctions their rule. The slave and the serf knew they were enslaved and exploited; the wage worker does not. The economic relations of modern production serve to disguise the fact of exploitation, and, furthermore, tend to generate that widespread individualism and the illusion of freedom that facilitates the inculcation of ideas and opinions favourable to bourgeois rule.

As Engels says :

“The possessing class rule directly through universal suffrage. For so long as the oppressed class, in this case the proletariat, is not ripe for its economic emancipation, just so long will its majority regard the existing order of society as the only one possible” (“Origin of the Family,”)

And when will the proletariat be “ripe for its emancipation”— except just when they realise that they require emancipating and understand the facts of their exploitation? Not when they begin to know that there is something rotten in the state of capitalism—for they know that now—but when they realise the cause of that rottenness. Then, when they grasp the truth that the evils of capitalism are inherent and inevitable, not accidental and curable, will they set about its destruction and the inauguration of a socialist society in which the producers will control production and the distribution of its product. This transformation of attitude towards the system will involve, necessarily, the shattering of the illusion of “freedom,” and the replacement of economic individualism by a realisation of the possibilities of social ownership.

The essential process that must precede the proletarian revolution is the preparation and education of the workers for their revolutionary task. By “education” we mean, primarily, the education flowing from observation and reasoning—the instruction of experience. Today, socialists as a body are largely students who have acquired their mental outlook on society to a great extent by books and lectures—second-hand, so to speak. So long as the simple elements of socialist thought generally necessitate this kind of preparation, the World Socialist Movement is in its early, almost embryonic, stage. Not until the basic proposition of socialist theory takes root in the minds of masses of men because they are the inescapable inferences from the facts of social life, provide the obvious solution for the pressing, immediate problems of the social situation, and are so self-evident that no counter-propaganda can efface them—not until then can we consider that the movement has reached maturity.

There is evidence that capitalism has yet a considerable future before it; a future of intensive exploitation of the yet untouched areas of the earth; a future of economic centralisation crushing out the last effective remnants of individualism; a future of imperialism and war, of industrial and political anarchy without parallel; a future in which the workers will be hammered and battered into recognition of social realities.

But alongside the education of experience and practice will go also the education in theoretical principles and tactics born of the conception of history we owe so greatly to Marx. The first form will provide the necessary groundwork of class-consciousness; the second, the essential guidance to a policy avoiding the pitfalls and errors that beset a revolutionary class groping its way amid endless problems along the path towards emancipation.

When the “knell of capitalist private property sounds” and the workers are massed in their might to overwhelm the puny masqueraders—fossil guardians of order and civilisation—they will move with a resolute intention that nothing can frustrate, win the powers of society from the paralysed hands of the parasites of property, and, with confidence born of knowledge, forged in struggle, build upon the basis of humanity’s conquests over nature the Co-operative Commonwealth.

 

Blue-prints aren't drawn up in indelible ink

 It is not particularly scientific to lay down an exact blueprint of how future socialist society will be organised but we are not concerned to design a blueprint for socialism - to say that this or that is how the future must be. No individual, or any minority of socialists, can abrogate to itself the decisions about how to live. These must be determined democratically by the people who make the socialist revolution. We can also imagine that the detailed structures of socialism in the different parts of the world won’t have to be exactly the same and will become clearer the nearer we approach it. Drawing up a detailed blueprint for socialism is also premature since the exact forms will depend upon the technical conditions and preferences of those who set up and live in socialism.

When a majority of people understand what socialism means, the suggestions for socialist administration will solidify into an appropriate plan. It will be based upon the conditions existing at that time, not today. Socialism is not a blueprint as to all aspects of the alternative society to capitalism, only a definition of what its basis has inevitably to be. What we can do, however, is to offer a glimpse into society as it could become once it is freed from the stranglehold of the money-men. We can describe certain basic principles and guidelines, and give an indication in a very broad and tentative outline of the way we think society might be conducted. But the exact administrative structure and precise mode of behaviour of people in a socialist society will be determined by the specific material conditions of that society. What these specific material conditions will be, and how people will react to them, cannot be known to us at the present time.

Marx and Engels had relatively little to say about the future, partly because they held the drawing up of blueprints for an ideal society to be the very essence of utopianism, utopian as in idealistic, in the sense of an ideal society projected into the future and unconnected with existing social trends. Before the coming of industrial capitalism, the yearning for an egalitarian society could only be a yearning, without any concrete analysis of social reality. By refusing to write recipes for future cook-shops, by failing to talk about the future society except in very general terms for fear of being dubbed “idealist”, they, in fact, signalled that the building of socialism, as distinct from the opposition to capitalism, was not high on their agenda. Yet for socialists the building of the new society, by spelling out what common ownership, democratic control, production solely for use, and free access mean as a practical alternative that people can support now, must now be part of our agenda.

It is not easy to convince someone of the necessity and feasibility of a fundamentally new society by simply elaborating the description of the future. No matter how appealing that future society might appear, compared to present-day reality, it will probably still seem to be a figment of the imagination. Nevertheless, what Marx and Engels did say was usually positive and in line with their generally optimistic view of human nature and the capacity of workers to build a better, more equal and more truly human society than that of capitalism. In particular, Marx wrote of the variety of useful and pleasurable work that would be available to people, in this well-known passage:

"In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic"

On another page, he summed up the same thought as follows:
"In a communist society there are no painters but only people who engage in painting among other activities" 

 

(Nor should we forget his son-in-law Paul Lafargue penned a pamphlet with the title "The Right to be Lazy")

Communism, as envisioned by Marx, was to be "a society in which the full and free development of every individual forms the ruling principle", a society "in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all".

What Marx and Engels envisaged for the future society, from its very beginning, was a kind of participatory democracy organised without any political leaders or administrators at all, which requires some effort of imagination and historical understanding for the present-day readers to grasp

"Communism puts an end to the division of life into public and private spheres, and to the difference between civil society and the state; it does away with the need for political institutions, political authority, and governments, private property and its source in the division of labour. It destroys the class system and exploitation; it heals the split in man's nature and the crippled, one-sided development of the individual...social harmony is to be sought not by a legislative reform that will reconcile the egoism of each individual with the collective interest, but by removing the causes of antagonism. The individual will absorb society into himself thanks to de-alienation, he will recognize humanity as his own internalised nature. Voluntary solidarity, not compulsion or the legal regulation of interests, will ensure the smooth harmony of human relations…the powers of the individual can only flourish when he regards them as social forces, valuable and effective within a human community and not in isolation. Communism alone makes possible the proper use of human abilities" so wrote Lezlek Kolakowski, a Marxist commentator, ‘Main Currents of Marxism’.

But some statements by Marx and Engels about the socialist future seem to show that they were not entirely immune from a conception of that future still rooted in the capitalist past. A particular worry about scarcity of goods in the early stages led Marx to consider labour-time vouchers or certificates:

"What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; and which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birth-marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society—after the deductions have been made, exactly what he contributes to it. What he has contributed to it is his individual quantum of labour"

Two points here. One is that modern production is social, not individual. It is doubtful whether the value of the "individual quantum of labour" could have been measured in Marx's time except in the crudest terms of time. It is even more doubtful whether such a measure could be made today. The second point is where Marx made it quite clear that, if labour-time vouchers were used in socialism, this would be a temporary measure resulting from the comparatively low level of technology. Today potential abundance resulting from improved technology has made the idea of labour-time vouchers quite outdated. It will no doubt become even more outdated in future. In a particular situation of actual physical shortage perhaps resulting from crop failure we can assume that the shortage can be tackled by some system of direct rationing such as prioritising individuals needs by vulnerability (according to needs), and if there is no call for that criteria, by lottery, or simply by first come - first served.

The socialist goal will be achieved by force of argument, by democratic methods, not by force of arms or authoritarian methods.

"Communism rises above the enmity of classes, for it is a movement that embraces all humanity and not merely the working classes. Of course no communist proposes to avenge himself against any particular individuals who are members of the bourgeoisie…Should the proletariat become more Socialist in character its opposition to the middle classes will be less unbridled and less savage… It may be expected that by the time the rising comes the English working classes will understand basic social problems sufficiently clearly for the more brutal elements of the revolution to be eventually overcome—with the help of the appearance of the Communist Party" (Engels).

This shows a progression of Marxist thought from a capitalist present that is in many ways divisive and brutal, to a socialist movement that is in a transitional stage from divisiveness to a future society that will embrace all of humanity. Engels quite reasonably expected workers to become less brutal as they adopted socialist ideas. The working class puts an end to human exploitation not as a conscious goal on behalf of all humanity, but as the inevitable by-product of ending its own exploitation. It accomplishes the general interest of humanity by acting in its own self-interest. This “movement” of the working class could be said to be implicitly socialist since the struggle was ultimately over who should control the means of production: the minority capitalist class or the working class (i.e. society as a whole).

 At first, the movement of the working class would be, Marx believed, unconscious and unorganised but in time, as the workers gained more experience of the class struggle and the workings of capitalism, it would become more consciously socialist and democratically organised by the workers themselves. The emergence of socialist understanding out of the experience of the workers could thus be said to be “spontaneous” in the sense that it would require no intervention by people outside the working class to bring it about. Socialist propaganda and agitation would indeed be necessary but would come to be carried out by workers themselves whose socialist ideas would have been derived from an interpretation of their class experience of capitalism. The end result would be an independent movement of the socialist-minded and democratically organized working class aimed at winning control of political power in order to abolish capitalism. As Marx and Engels put it in The Communist Manifesto:

 “the proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority”.

This, in fact, was Marx’s conception of “the workers’ party”. He did not see the party of the working class as a self-appointed elite of professional revolutionaries but as the mass democratic movement of the working class with a view to establishing socialism, the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production.

Marx and Engels' own vision of the communist revolution pre-supposed the masses' prior self-education. Perhaps the key distinguishing feature of Marx and Engels' thinking was precisely their conviction that the masses could and would educate themselves, organise themselves, liberate themselves, and rule themselves. The nature of a revolutionary movement was seen by Marx and Engels as crucial for the kind of post-revolutionary society that could be expected to emerge. A mass movement of workers meant that a democratic regime was feasible after the overthrow of bourgeois rule. A small conspiracy of professional revolutionaries implied a dictatorial post-revolutionary regime.

Democratic control is not an optional extra of socialism. It is its very essence. Democracy does not mean that all decisions have to be made at general assemblies of all concerned or by referendum; it is compatible with certain decisions being delegated to committees and councils as long as the members of these bodies are responsible to those who (s)elected them. Certainly, workers' councils or something akin to them, as workplace organisations of the workers, are bound to arise in the course of the socialist revolution. But to claim that they are the only possible form of working-class self-organisation is to go too far, is in fact to make a fetish of a mere organisational form.

 What is important in working-class self-organisation, however, is not the form but the principle. As stated, what is important is not the form of organisation but the democratic - and socialist - consciousness of the working class. This can express itself in a great variety of organisational forms.