27.02.1997
Militant Marxism or militant nationalism
Jack Conrad discusses how Scottish Militant Labour wants to weaken, not overthrow the UK state
Phil Stott asks, in a key programmatic article, “What does the future hold in store for Scotland?” (‘Falling apart’ in Scottish Socialist Voice February 7 1997). Our Scottish Militant Labour comrades request “opinions”. On behalf of the Communist Party’s Provisional Central Committee I am glad to give a Marxist answer.
Comrade Stott begins by detailing the popular backing in Scotland for constitutional change. Though his figures are somewhat confused, no one can doubt that since “1987 support for independence has risen steadily”. However comrade Stott mechanically extrapolates along that psephological line to the point of an “inevitable” breakup of Britain.
The only thing uncertain in comrade Stott’s mind is the exact route. On the one hand Blair could ditch his commitment to a Scottish parliament. The referendum might be deliberately “botched” and thereby fail to deliver a double ‘yes’ vote.
On the other hand a Scottish parliament “could become a major focus of resistance against a rightwing Labour government in Westminster”. The very “weakness” of Labour’s Scottish parliament means conflicts over funding “could trigger off a constitutional crisis”. Michael Forsyth’s ‘New Labour, new danger’ warning that devolution will “lead to independence” is therefore considered well founded. The president of the Adam Smith Institute, Madsen Pirie, is also used as an unlikely source to bolster comrade Stott’s independence scenario.
Even in the unlikely event of a Tory victory “the pro-independence current running through Scotland could turn into a flood tide.” So whatever happens after the general election, he says, “a big surge towards independence appears inevitable”.
SML is very excited about the prospect of independence. The post-general election political terrain will leave the forces of “pro- market nationalism” and “democratic socialism” facing each other, reckons comrade Stott. Against an SNP parliament “completely under the thumb of Brussels” SML advocates “a parliament with wide ranging powers over the economy”. So wide indeed that SML seems to equate it with “a socialist Scotland”. SML’s “socialist Scottish parliament” would be a “first step towards” a wider socialist federation of Britain - and “eventually of Europe”.
SML’s “socialist Scotland” would mean a £6 an hour minimum wage, a 35-hour week, the building of 100,000 new homes, the restoration of benefits to 16 and l7-year olds and the “rebuilding of our disintegrating public services” - ie, minimal reforms we should be fighting for now under the existing state and under the existing capitalist system. SML’s “socialist Scotland” would also mean “a huge redistribution of wealth” from rich to poor, from big business to the working class - again something we should be fighting for now.
Despite the distance separating SML’s “socialist Scottish parliament” and Blair’s sop, “we will”, announces Stott, “support any step towards greater autonomy for Scotland - including this very limited reform”. Likewise, though it wants a “genuine democratic referendum” which has “all the options on the ballot paper”, SML will “campaign” for a “double yes” vote, if “Labour’s narrow rigged referendum goes ahead”.
SML hopes to get MPs elected to Labour’s toothless insult. We too have no problem - given the right conditions - in working in the enemy camp (see J Conrad In the enemy camp London 1993). However, means determine ends and ends determine means. It should never be forgotten that the reason Scotland has been promised devolution and a referendum is not Blair’s commitment to democracy. The mass movement around water, devolution, health and above all the poll tax has made the country a virtual Tory-free zone and forced Labour to give concessions.
Unfortunately SML has reverted to choosing the lesser evil. In so doing the comrades have effectively surrendered the Scottish Socialist Alliance’s key demand for a parliament with full powers. In the privacy of the ballot booth SML comrades will no doubt critically write their two crosses in support of Blair’s “rigged referendum”. But such passive means are guaranteed to produce nothing but a sop.
Only in the event of Labour failing to deliver either a general election victory or devolution would SML advocate non-constitutional methods. Withdrawal of Scottish MPs from Westminster, setting up an illegal Scottish parliament, demonstrations, mass civil disobedience and industrial disruption “should be used to force whatever government is in power to recognise the right of Scotland to its own parliament”.
Quite clearly SML has made a nationalist turn. Having loosened its links with its comrades in England and Wales under the guise of ‘financial autonomy’, SML now has no more than a federal alliance with the Socialist Party (aka Militant Labour). The fault for this lamentable state of affairs lies primarily with SP general secretary Peter Taaffe.
In order to avoid a sharp fight with his comrades in Scotland over nationalism and a possible schism he gambled on conciliation. Moreover Taaffe foolishly went into print, tying the level of “national consciousness” to the “relationship between the Scottish organisation and the British organisation” (P Taaffe, ‘Democratic centralism’ Members Bulletin No16, p6). This was a big mistake. While he could claim that things have “not reached” the stage “where the overwhelming majority are for independence”, what was pregnantly called “a kind of halfway house” for Scotland could be justified. However, all it remained for Tommy Sheridan, Phil Stott, Alan McCombes et al to do was to quote a string of opinion polls and the divorce was all but complete. SML has thereby won for itself the nationalist demand for independence. No longer is there any need to even pay lip service to the Leninist principle of ‘one state, one party’.
Being programmatically “right centrist”, ML has historically behaved in a chameleon-like fashion (J Conrad Which road? London 1991, p231). In the Labour Party they became Labourite. Out of the Labour Party too the comrades take on the coloration of their surroundings. We have already seen Panther UK and the Campaign Against Domestic Violence succumb to separatism. In Scotland the same opportunist adaptation to the “constantly changing political landscape” means the separatism of nationalism (A McCombes, ‘Future electoral strategy in Scotland’ Members Bulletin No12, p20).
Nationalism and Marxism are antithetical. Nationalism considers nations and national cultures positively. The national differences between people are viewed as essentially healthy and something to be sustained into the distant future. Left nationalists give this ‘principle’ a socialist gloss of course. The road to socialism is seen through the prism of the nation.
In the early 1890s Joseph Pilsudski was the leading spirit in the formation of the Polish Socialist Party. The PSP had a national programme for the restoration of Poland out of the German, Austro-Hungarian and above all the Russian empire, which had between them partitioned it. Rosa Luxemburg and Julian Marchlewski split with the PSP in 1893 over this. Their Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania wanted to join in one party with Lenin, Martov, Plekhanov, Trotsky and others in Russia committed to the overthrow of the tsarist state. Pilsudski wanted the independence of Poland and the independence of the PSP from the Russian “imperialist” revolutionaries (JK Pilsudski Memories of a revolutionary London 1931, p22). Not surprisingly Lenin did not regard the PSP as a “genuine” socialist party (VI Lenin CW Vol 6, Moscow 1977, p458). Though they do not acknowledge it, today Pilsudski has many would-be imitators amongst left nationalists in Scotland. SML might well yet discover him as the father of its latest turn.
Marxism considers nations and national distinctions negatively. We want to create conditions whereby nations, nationality, nationalism and the state all wither away. Marxists militantly oppose every form of nationalist ideology, whether this be represented by an established state or those forces seeking to constitute a new state through a breakaway.
SML does not defend the Marxist point of view. It positively promotes a Scottish national socialism (which comes via a bourgeois parliament and introduces nothing more than minimal social democratic reforms, leaving by its own admission wage labour and hence the capital-labour relationship intact). SML socialism is national, statist and bureaucratic: ie, it is objectively anti-working class and thus anti-socialism.
Instead of working class unity against the existing United Kingdom state, SML now seeks a breakaway Scotland: presumably leaving it to the workers in England and Wales to overthrow the UK state. SML therefore has a programme to weaken, not overthrow it. And to achieve that paltry aim it separates itself from Taaffe’s SP and more importantly must in due course call for an end to the historic unity of the working class in Britain. The TUC and its affiliates are unlikely to survive intact the creation of an independent Scotland. Hence, as capital becomes increasingly global, SML would irresponsibly divide the forces of the working class.
It is essential not to conflate all nationalisms as equally reactionary. The nationalism of an established capitalist state is inherently conservative. Fascism, the most degenerate form of bourgeois nationalism, is counterrevolutionary and thoroughly anti-democratic. But petty bourgeois nationalism may contain a revolutionary democratic content. We unconditionally support that content. At the same time it is vital not to abandon or water down criticism of petty bourgeois nationalism or advocacy of an independent working class approach to the national question.
The relative decline of British imperialism has laid the basis for a new Scottish nationalism (not the revival of a mythical nationhood going back to Kenneth macAlpin or Macbeth). From the mid-19th century onwards being Scottish was to share in the “lucrative” booty of the British empire (L Colley Britons London 1992, p373). Now it means cuts, insecurity and a denial of rights. As the ruling class frantically and destructively turns inwards in its drive to increase the rate of exploitation and thus restore some level of world economic competitiveness, the old identification in Scotland with the state has been replaced by an alienation from it.
Given the perceived absence of a viable socialist alternative, petty bourgeois nationalism comes to the fore. In the form of the SNP it promises to secure for Scotland a better position in the world economic pecking order through the formation of a new, independent Scottish state within the European Union.
The masses in Scotland certainly view themselves as nationally disadvantaged within the United Kingdom. It is not only opinion polls that tell us that. Every election, every grievance, every strike is coloured by the national question. And no income statistics showing Scotland on a par with East Anglia and only just behind the South East will convince them otherwise. Such philistine arguments - advanced by the SWP - will not make the Scots forget their nationality nor the undemocratic denial of their right to self-determination within the United Kingdom.
The CPGB considers itself obliged to criticise those such as the SWP, SLP and RCP who downplay or dismiss the national question in Scotland by appealing for the “unity of Scottish, English and Welsh workers” around routine trade union demands and “true socialism” (C Bambery Scotland: the socialist answer London 1997, p16). Such elements are in effect English chauvinists. Their socialist rhetoric is merely the opposite side of the status-quo unionism peddled by John Major’s Tories.
Wherever a national question exists, Marxists approach it from the principles of democracy and internationalism. We seek at all times to build the maximum unity and ever closer relations between nationalities, especially the working class. The working class has no interest in any delay in solving the national question, and has everything to gain from an immediate settlement of disputes. Communists therefore seek an immediate solution and denounce any and every delay and procrastination as reactionary.
That is why we must ruthlessly expose Blair’s proposed Edinburgh parliament, along with his “rigged referendum”. Blair’s parliament is little more than a glorified county council. It will not be allowed to modify the constitution by one iota. The people of Scotland will not become citizens. They will remain subjects of the crown. What Blair offers is nothing more than a cynical device, a prophylactic designed to strengthen Labourism and preserve the constitutional monarchy. It is a change to prevent change.
Communists will boldly take the lead in fighting for a multi-option referendum and the right of Scotland to elect a parliament with full constitutional powers: ie, a constituent assembly. To that end we ‘will use the general election and every other means of agitation and propaganda. If Labour is elected and Blair refuses to concede Scotland’s right to decide its own future, we will not join with the Tories in a double ‘no’ vote. Communists advocate an active boycott of Blair’s “rigged referendum” around the slogan, ‘Self-determination - nothing less’.
To all intents and purposes the referendum campaign has already begun in the run-up to the general election. Major with his 1,000 years of uninterrupted history nonsense, Stephen Dorrell’s draconian pledge to abolish Labour’s parliament have put the constitution centre stage of British, as well as Scottish politics. It is in the heat and fluidity prior to the referendum that calls for parliamentary walk-outs, an illegal Scottish assembly, councils of action, mass demonstrations, civil disobedience, industrial disruption, etc should first be agitated and planned for - not after.
Communists support the right of nations to self-determination, up to and including forming an independent state. We are for peaceful and democratic secession as opposed to any kind of coercive or violent maintenance of unity. The use of force to maintain unity, as for example in Northern Ireland, is an admission that the state’s territory has divided into oppressed and oppressor nations. Unlike SML the CPGB unconditionally defends the right of the oppressed to take up arms to win its democratic rights from the oppressor.
Support for the right of self-determination does not mean that communists desire separation. On the contrary, advocacy of separation is for communists something exceptional. For example between Ireland and England/Britain there is a whole history of violence and brutal oppression. We therefore demand the immediate withdrawal of British troops and the unity of Ireland.
Separation only becomes a communist demand if unity is imposed by force. The relationship between England and Scotland has not been primarily characterised by violence - at least since the 1707 Act of Union. It should not be forgotten that l745 - the heroic last stand of Scotland, according to nationalist myth makers - was more a “Scottish civil war” (M Lynch Scotland London 1992, p338). The Jacobite rising had nothing to do with re-establishing Scottish independence. Charles Edward Stuart wanted to re-establish the Stewart dynasty over the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. He rallied a number of catholic clan chiefs in the Highlands, but was opposed by other sections of Scottish society - most notably the presbyterian clergy, lawyers and large southern burghs.
Our policy is decided on the basis of the actual historical conditions and the circumstances in each case. Communists in general favour voluntary unity and the largest possible states as providing the best conditions for the coming together and merger of peoples. Under present circumstances there would be nothing remotely progressive about a Scottish army, a customs post at Gretna Green and the splitting of the historically bonded peoples.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a unity of hereditary crowns, not the voluntary union of peoples. The right of self-determination does not exist in the UK constitution and cannot exist under any form of monarchical government in which the people are not sovereign. Given the huge disparity between the populations of England on the one side and Scotland and Wales on the other, the UK is permanently dominated by the English. The people of Scotland and Wales cannot freely determine their own future within the constitution. Hence there exists an inborn democratic deficit.
The CPGB is for the immediate abolition of the constitutional monarchy and the abolition of the acts of union. We communists seek to mobilise and unite the working class of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in a united political struggle for a federal republic and a united Ireland (as Engels and Lenin argued, a federal republic in Britain would represent a democratic step forward from the constitutional monarchy - it is not, I stress, some universal principle). This is both a democratic and transitional aim. The federal republic establishes the voluntary union of the peoples of Great Britain. If this is achieved, as we intend, using proletarian methods, it also means the revolutionary destruction of the constitutional monarchy and thus the realisation of our minimum programme.
Unfortunately a whole spectrum of the left - from the sullen to the enthusiastic - supports Blair, not revolutionary democracy. The SWP, SP, SML, Democratic Left, Communist Party of Scotland, the Moring Star, etc, utterly fail to grasp the necessity for independent working class politics.
Workers, in the lacklustre schema of this semi-Labourite left, are meant to concentrate on trade union and local bread and butter issues. Of course that leaves them doing exactly what they already do spontaneously. However, when it comes to the politics of the UK state, workers are supposedly incapable of pursuing their own solutions. Our modern-day Mensheviks therefore urge workers to pressurise and make demands on the ‘lesser evil’ wing of the establishment. That explains why the semi-Labour left ‘critically’ supports Blair.
Scotland must not be left only for Scots. It is a democratic question which must see the whole working class in Britain united around a correct strategy. Only by mastering the gamut of social contradictions can the workers raise themselves from the economic, trade unionist struggles of a slave class to that of a political and potential ruling class. Significantly, in introducing his ‘perspectives’ for 1997, Taaffe failed to even mention Scotland or the UK constitution (Militant January 10 1997). Workers in England and Wales should presumably ignore such matters and concentrate on trade unionism.
Originating as it does in vulgar evolutionism and economism, the method of the semi-Labourite left, Taaffe included, leads to results that are indistinguishable from mainstream Labourism. Something by way of reform, no matter how pathetic, should always be settled for, because it is rationalised as a step towards an inevitable, preordained future. SML’s decision to give a ‘critical’ double ‘yes’ vote in Blair’s “rigged referendum” is characteristically excused with reference to it being “a step towards greater autonomy” and thus a “step” in the direction of transforming “Scotland into a modern socialist democracy”.
Those who set their sights on little more than nothing in the here and now usually end up with nothing. The politics of piecemeal change are therefore the politics of disappointment. That is why the flip side of strikeism, localism and petty reform is posing left. The semi-Labourite left typically oppose the communist minimum demand for a federal republic with abstract and disconnected calls for socialism - ie, a socialist Britain, or a socialist Scotland. The same ‘leftist’ trick is used over Ireland - SP/SML and the ‘official communists’ being past masters. The semi-Labourite left has no wish nor intention of siding with the IRA against the British Army. Against this minimum democratic demand they pose what is in this context a pro-imperialism version of ‘socialism’.
Absolving themselves of what they dogmatically and wrongly describe as the ‘bourgeois’ task of ending the monarchy and winning a republic in Britain, they say the only real answer is socialism (why not communism?). Naturally this leftist pose is never applied by the likes of these to wage and other economic demands. When it comes to trade union politics the semi-Labourite left is in its element. It does not turn up its nose with haughty reference to the maximum demand for the abolition of the system of wage slavery - which, like the call for communism, is quite correct in terms of propaganda.
So in rejecting the communist minimum programme, the semi-Labourite left finds itself at one and the same time making maximalist gestures and tailing Blair. From nothing, through nothing to nothing.