Thursday, September 18, 2014

Referendum - Neither Yes nor No

Our case against Scottish separatism is not an argument in favour of the other nationalism, British unionism. Workers should not have any illusions in a capitalist state of whatever nationality, and instead to fight for their own class interests. Scotland leaving the UK is not going to seriously dent the power of the UK. Workers in an independent Scotland will still get fucked over by their bosses and a Scottish state, in the same way workers are in the rest of the UK. It will be business as usual. The Yes vision of a sovereign Scotland is one that it is not independent and most definitely not socialist. We will still be living under the rules of capitalism so not much will change for the working class. The same old shit. Both Yes and No camps ultimately represent class interests other than our own, no matter how much left nationalists might argue otherwise. Socialists should not feel compelled to take a side just because its a issue many of the Scottish working class feel strongly about. It would just be doing it for the sake of it and would go against an important principle of internationalism, which we have for a reason.

If rule from Holyrood is better for workers in Scotland than rule from Westminister, why is that? If having the seat of political power within the same 'nation'/geographic proximity meant the government was 'more representative', then presumably we'd have seen riots in Penzance, Dover and Carlisle rather than a stone's throw from Westminister in Tottenham, Hackney or Deptford...The obvious answer to that is that states don't represent 'the nation' but the ruling class, and 'nations' don't exploit one another, classes do. Scottish workers do not require national independence but they do urgently need an independent working class movement to counteract the poison of nationalism.

What we want to do is use class unity as a powerful weapon for victory. Today, we got division among workers, instead of solidarity. Instead of workers everywhere uniting more closely in the fight against capitalism, workers have been weakened.

The only legitimate socialist position to the referendum is that of indifference. It disnae matter and we dinnae care because it winnae make a damn little bit difference to our lives. But, nevertheless, take this opportunity to say so by spoiling the referendum voting paper by writing ‘World Socialism’ across it.


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