11.07.1996

Repeating errors

Around the left

As a matter of principle, communists support the right of nations to self-determination. At the same time, though, we unreservedly oppose nationalist ideologies and never fail to raise the banner of internationalism, recognising that nation-states represent an anachronistic brake on humanity’s progress. This is our elementary communist duty - which Marx, VI Lenin, Trotsky, etc fully recognised.

However, for whatever reasons, some organisations find this ‘twin-track’ approach problematic, either retreating into an abstract ‘anti-nationalist’ internationalism (which tails national chauvinism) or end up with a ‘left’ nationalist position. We must always combat both deviations.

The whole issue of Scottish devolution (or not) has highlighted this problem, with Workers Power providing a classic case study. The latest issue proclaims, “Yes to a referendum! No to a Scottish Assembly!”, arguing that:

“We are absolutely in favour of the Scottish people having the right to choose whether to have their own assembly ... But in such a referendum socialists must argue for a ‘No’ vote. We are completely opposed to this toothless concession to nationalism” (July/August).

In this they are repeating the error of its parent organisation, the SWP, which campaigned for a ‘no’ vote in the 1979 referendum. According to Workers Power, that was a “correctly argued” position.

In reality, a ‘no’-vote line objectively sees WP endorsing the status quo, alongside the Tories and the most reactionary sections of British society - just as a ‘Yes’-vote would see you climbing into bed with the likes of the SNP.

Classically, WP provides a ‘leftist’ excuse for its ‘rightist’ stance, stating:

“We do not aim for the proliferation of democratic talking shops within the state itself ... The real struggles of the Scottish workers must be directed to end the root cause of their exploitation.” Which means the struggle for a “socialist Britain as part of the struggle for a Socialist United States of Europe.”

Socialist Worker has a blunter, but more principled position: “Workers have no interest in defending the existing British state. People in Scotland clearly want to have a separate parliament and they should have the right to have it” (July 6). Ideally, it should have gone on to call for a boycott - an active boycott that is, not a passive one - of any bourgeois-orchestrated referendum.

A far cry from Living Marxism, which worries about Europe devolving “power further and further away from the electorate into the hands of officials and judges” (July/August). Talk about “defending the existing British state”.

Don Preston