The Highland Clearances: A Marxist Analysis

The highland clearances was a huge event in Scottish history, fundamentally changing class relations forever, and breaking the last remaining ties to the feudal system. However, this was not being carried out by a revolutionary class; rather it was the old landowning class becoming absorbed into the new British bourgeoisie. It resulted in the end of the clanship society, as well as migration, both nationally and internationally.

What were the Highland Clearances?

The highland clearances were a series of mass evictions from the highlands carried out from 1760 – 1860. They were carried out by the landowning class, who were trying to make their land more profitable through moving people to make way for large-scale sheep farming and through forcing their tenants to give up subsistence farming and instead become part-time crofters and part-time fishermen or kelpers. The clearances themselves occurred in three main stages.

The first stage happened from around 1760 to 1815, where the landowning class forced their tenants to move off the land their families had lived on for generations and to move to the coast. They were moved into crofting communities, where they were given a small piece of land, which would not be enough to survive on. This forced the crofters to take up fishing and kelping. The landlords did this in search of profit – clearing people freed up more land for sheep, which was a very profitable business at the time. The crofting system was arranged so that the crofters would have to fish or collect kelp, a kind of seaweed which at the time was very valuable because it couldn’t be imported (due to the Napoleonic War). While this new system resulted in large profits for the landlords, it was very exploitative for the crofters, and many left instead of struggling to make a living on the crofts. However, this was not at all in the interests of the landowning class, who passed the Passenger’s Vessels’ Act in 1803, which raised the price of a ticket to Canada from £3 to over £10, an amount that no ordinary crofter would be able to afford, in an attempt to stop so many people leaving.

However, this all changed in 1815, with the end of the Napoleonic War. Not only did the price of kelp plummet but the whole Scottish economy went into recession. The only industry that remained profitable was the sheep market. The crofters suffered greatly, they were living on very little land, built to only sustain half an income. Yet due to the collapse of kelp, this was their only income. We see a bigger population than ever in the highlands, due to the Passenger Vessels’ Act and improvements in medicine, however they are living on less land than ever, as the land they used to live on was now inhabited by sheep. This resulted in a very low standard of living and an over-reliance on the potato.

Then, in 1846, blight comes to Scotland, resulting in the Highland Potato Famine. In 1846, crops failed in around ¾ of crofting villages, which was catastrophic, as people were dependant on the potato, as kelp and other industries barley contributed to the crofter’s income. Church records show that around 200,000 people were at risk of starving. However, widespread starvation was largely averted, due to an aid effort, providing the crofter’s with food and tickets to Canada and America. Blight continued to affect the potatoes up to 1857, however after 1850 aid had largely stopped as the crofters were victimised and their own ‘laziness’ blamed for the famine. As this aid dried up, people were left with no way to make a living, resulting in mass migration abroad and to the lowlands.

What were the causes?

The fundamental cause of the highland clearances was the change in class relations, as Britain moved from a feudal to a capitalist society.

Previously people in the highlands lived in a clanship society. Most people were subsistence farmers who lived in clans; where a chief would protected them from raids and in return they would have to fight when the chief called up the clan. This relationship was not as exploitive as feudalism was in other countries, yet it was still a feudal relationship. However, this clanship system had been in decline since the 1600s, due to commercialisation. The highlands started to be integrated into the monetary economy with cattle being driven down to sell in Edinburgh. This increased throughout the 17th century, as the highlands became a place where commodities such as fish, deer, salt and wool were harvested to supply to the rest of the UK.

The driver of this commercialisation was the integration of the clan chiefs into the British bourgeoisie. This really began in 1609 when the Statutes of Iona were passed, making it law that the first born son of every clan chief had to be educated in a Protestant, English speaking school in Edinburgh. This fundamentally broke the relationship of chief and clansmen, as the chiefs moved off their land and down to Edinburgh, where they became integrated into the British bourgeoisie. By the 1700s the chiefs were all living in Edinburgh and London, no longer on their lands fulfilling their traditional roles and duties. There was also a change in how they viewed themselves, no longer as chiefs, with a duty to protect their clansmen, but as commercial landlords. With this integration into the new British establishment, they absorbed the idea of ‘improvement’, of making your land more profitable. This importance placed on profit resulted in the chiefs relocating the people so they would have land to farm sheep on, and also led them to use their money to buy capital and invest in industry. Ultimately, they were leaving their roles as traditional feudal chiefs and becoming capitalists.

There was also a change in how the highlands were viewed by the British establishment. In the early 1600s, the highlands was viewed as a sort of colony at home, an area that should be used to extract resources for the rest of the UK, but that could be left in its own clanship system. However, this changed with the Jacobite risings, especially that of 1745 where a large proportion of the Jacobite army was made up of highlanders. Showing that they were opposed to this new elite, highlighted that the highlanders could be a threat to the new ruling class. This resulted in large scale repression in 1746 with traditional clothing, music and the Gaelic language being banned. The idea was that this traditional society was dangerous and could not be left as it was, but needed to be integrated into a British nationality, and into capitalist society.

What were the consequences?

There was resistance by the crofters, in what is known as the Crofter’s War, which took place in the 1870s and the 1880s. This mostly took the form of riots and battles with landlords and the police, in response to rent racking, where the chiefs-turned landlords would raise the rent year on year, beyond what the crofter’s could afford. Inspired by the Land League in Ireland, their demands were the three Fs – fair rent, fixity of tenure and freedom of sale. Crucially they were not calling for a return to subsistence living and re-instatement of the clan relations; rather they were trying to limit their exploitation in the new commercial society. Their demands were largely met in the Crofter’s Holding Act of 1886.

As has been previously mentioned, the main consequence of the Highland Clearances was the end of feudal relations. The chief-clansman relation based on war and protection had changed to a commercial relationship between landlords and tenants. Land becomes something that was owned, bought and sold. The clanship system was also destroyed, and with it much of highland culture. Many aspects of culture and language were repressed, as they excluded the new anglicised elites and rejected a British identity which was dangerous, both militarily to the bourgeoisie and to the formation of a British national market.

Another consequence was mass emigration, especially to Canada and the USA. In Cape Breton alone 30,000 highland Scots arrived between 1775 and 1850. Many highlanders were given land grants in the USA after fighting in the 7 years’ war and the American Revolutionary war, and brought their families over to live with them. There was also significant migration to the lowlands. Seasonal migration continued and increased, but more importantly there was permanent migration; even by 1835 there were 20,000 highlanders living in Glasgow. This, combined with Irish immigration provided the concentrated labour in the cities that was needed for the creation of capitalist society.

The highland clearances changed Scotland forever. The clanship system of society broke down and was replaced by capitalism. The old clan chiefs themselves became part of the bourgeoisie as they merged into the British elite and became commercial landlords. A huge number of people were displaced, some of who emigrated abroad, while others moved to the lowlands where they became the industrial proletariat.

£10 Now!: Reforms, Transitional Demands and Socialism

“It is necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between present demand and the socialist program of the revolution. This bridge should include a system of transitional demands, stemming from todays conditions and from todays consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat.”

Trotsky, The Transitional Programme, 1938

In dozens of town centers throughout Scotland on Saturday mornings “£10 Now” stalls are run by SSP branches collecting signatures, raising money and engaging with passers by, attracted to the demand. The demand is of course referring to an hourly minimum wage based on 2/3rd of the current median male income to be legally enforced for all workers.

As is often said, its not asking for the moon, it’s simply a fair wage. The TUC officially supports it and it is currently the EU decency threshold. By itself it represents a reform to the capitalist system and no one would pretend otherwise, but its a very good reform. If it were implemented it would significantly increase the living standards of millions of workers.

Not only this but if it were gained through campaigns, strikes etc. it could advance class consciousness. The experience of having gained something through organisation on a class basis would vastly increase the morale and confidence in the collective ability of our class. For these reasons socialists support, fight for and often lead such campaigns. What role should socialists play in campaigns for such reforms?

The Transitional Programme

After the Russian Revolution, the Third International (Comintern) was set up with the aim of building mass revolutionary communist parties in every country with the ultimate aim of overthrowing capitalism internationally and implementing a world socialist order. To start with this was by most accounts extremely successful. Mass revolutionary Marxist parties were created amidst the post war revolutionary mood in countries such as Germany, Czechoslovakia, France and smaller promising parties in many other countries including Britain. Unfortunately with the Stalinist degeneration of the USSR came the same ideological degeneration of the communist parties. This obliged Trotsky to set up the Fourth International in 1938. Against all odds the Fourth International’s task with its tiny national groups was to build a new revolutionary Marxist international.

In 1938, Trotsky wrote the Transitional Programme of the Fourth International. This relatively short document of less than fifty pages was written to give general advice for the small national sections of the international. It said

“The strategic task of the next period  prerevolutionary period of agitation, propaganda and organization  consists in overcoming the contradiction between the maturity of the objective revolutionary conditions and the immaturity of the proletariat and its vanguard (the confusion and disappointment of the older generation, the inexperience of the younger generation .”

A revolutionary mood had stormed the world after the First World War, leading to events such as the revolutions in Germany, Spain, Italy, the General Strike in Britain, uprisings in colonial countries, the Chinese revolution etc., all of which failed due to failures of the leadership. The working classes were now going through a period of demoralisation, conservatism and in many countries fascist reaction. These defeats, especially in Germany, paved the way for the bourgeoisie to launch another, even more horrific world war.

The task of this period of reaction was to build the forces of Marxism, i.e. to build organisations in every country amongst the thin layer of class conscious workers and youth, so that when the next revolutionary wave came there would be a solid revolutionary party that could lead the working classes to power.

The problem is that when events draw people into politics they usually dont draw them to the automatic conclusion of “we need a socialist revolution”. Often they will be drawn to economic reforms such as the £10/hour minimum wage, sometimes to struggles against work place closures such as in INEOS in Grangemouth, or even through movements for national independence like the YES campaign. There are unlimited ways and forms in which political radicalisation and class consciousness can express itself and socialists cannot choose what they will be. We have to take what the objective conditions throw at us and intervene in events appropriately.

In the Transitional Programme, Trotsky obviously did not talk of the YES campaign or a £10/hour minimum wage but picked a handful of examples of struggles, concerns and demands of workers (as well as small urban business owners and peasants) and wrote about how to take on these issues alongside the workers whilst linking them with the need for a socialist revolution. I would seriously advise all socialists to read this text as it contains simple but extremely valuable lessons many of which can be applied to today including the £10 Now campaign.

What about Inflation?

Of course the attraction of launching a minimum wage campaign, as opposed to simply calling for a socialist revolution, is that it is concrete and seems realistic to people. However, this practicality and realism is often illusory. Those putting it forward are often asked: If wages increase surely prices will follow? And surely business owners cant afford it, and so employment will go down? This was dealt with in the Transitional Programme under the idea of a sliding scale of wages:

“Neither monetary inflation nor stabilization can serve as slogans for the proletariat because these are but two ends of the same stick. Against a bounding rise in prices, which with the approach of war will assume an ever more unbridled character, one can fight only under the slogan of a sliding scale of wages. This means that collective agreements should assure an automatic rise in wages in relation to the increase in price of consumer goods.”

The £10 Now campaign should be very clear that the demand is linked to inflation, particularly of the rising prices of necessities such as food, clothes, rent and travel. In reality the capitalist system cannot afford this, as many we meet instinctively realise. Therefore it obliges us to use this slogan as a means to show how even the most reasonable of demands  a living wage  cannot be implemented by this system, and thus the system must be changed.

During the inevitable crises of capitalism such as the current one, workers’ purchasing power is pushed down. This can be done by wage cuts or freezes whilst prices continue to grow. This can also be carried out by austerity cuts to public services which would have been free or cheaper before but now eat into workers’ wages. It can carried out by accelerated inflation or a combination of all the above. There are all sorts of options available to capitalists and their state to cut the purchasing power of the workers for their own benefit. Where possible this should be explained at stalls and in campaign literature. It flows nicely into an explanation as to why for such a demand to be sustained, the economy would need to be planned for the needs of people rather than for profit.

How would it be funded?

Employers condemn such reforms as bad for business and claim not to be able to afford them. How do we respond?

“The abolition of business secrets is the first step toward actual control of industry. Workers no less than capitalists have the right to know the secrets of the factory, of the trust, of the whole branch of industry, of the national economy as a whole. First and foremost, banks, heavy industry and centralized transport should be placed under an observation glass.”

This is as appropriate now as in 1938 and from this we can add workers in service, tourism, call centers, local authorities and any other employment today. We workers create the wealth. Without us you would make no profits, but you won’t let us see what you spend it on? Why?
For businesses that say they cannot afford to pay £10/hour now the SSP would quite rightly say open the books. Let’s see your accounts. What are you spending your turnover on? How much is going to profit? Tell us why you can’t pay us £10/hour. Trotsky discusses the role of this demand:
“The task is one of reorganizing the whole system of production and distribution on a more dignified and workable basis. If the abolition of business secrets be a necessary condition to workers control, then control is the first step along the road to the socialist guidance of economy.”

The role of this demand to open the books isn’t just to expose the capitalists for their greed but also for their inefficiency. A fundamental aspect of socialism is that of workers control. A genuinely socialist planned economy would be democratically controlled by the mass of workers. Socialists must have this belief not just that their class is unjustly treated under the capitalist system but that their class could do things better. Not only would a socialist economy be fairer but it would be more efficient. The wealth would not only be distributed fairly but would be controlled democratically. This would mean the setting up of workplace committees and genuine democratic councils for communities where decisions on how communities and workplaces are run could be debated, voted on and implemented.

The demand to open the books must be linked to a campaign for the nationalisation under workers’ control of any company who cannot pay their workers the living wage. The point must consistently be made that there is more than enough wealth to pay workers this. The SSP already campaigns for the end of trident which would relieve £120bn and the collection of avoided tax which would bring £100bn a year. This is correct but even these demands must be linked to socialism. Both war and tax evasion are fundamental aspects of capitalism, this must be explained along with the perspective for a socialist society.

What about the unemployed?

This is also dealt with in the Transitional Programme.

“Against unemployment, structural as well as conjunctural, the time is ripe to advance along with the slogan of public works, the slogan of a sliding scale of working hours. Trade unions and other mass organizations should bind the workers and the unemployed together in the solidarity of mutual responsibility. On this basis all the work on hand would then be divided among all existing workers in accordance with how the extent of the working week is defined. The average wage of every worker remains the same as it was under the old working week. Wages, under a strictly guaranteed minimum, would follow the movement of prices.”

This is even more relevant today than it was at the time. With the level of potential productivity being so high, working hours could be lowered even further. This could be carried out without loss of pay and with this the masses of unemployed people could be brought into the workforce. In other words we want to share out the burden of work across society. This is actually in parts of the SSP programme but not in the £10 Now campaign. If it were a systematic part of the agitational literature and discussion, it would allow for activists to link the minimum wage struggle to unemployment and the shortening of the working day necessary for workers’ control.

What about small businesses?

“By falsely citing the excessive demands of the workers the big bourgeoisie skillfully transforms the question of commodity prices into a wedge to be driven between the workers and farmers and between the workers and the petty bourgeoisie of the cities.”

We can stress that in a system where the main levers of the economy are nationalised under democratic control of the producers and consumers, conditions could be much more favorable to small businesses allowing them to afford reasonable working conditions for their employees. This is also dealt with in the text. The emphasis is on small rural landowners but much of it can be applied also to small urban business owners:

“While the farmer remains an independent petty producer he is in need of cheap credit, of agricultural machines and fertilizer at prices he can afford to pay, favorable conditions of transport, and conscientious organization of the market for his agricultural products. But the banks, the trusts, the merchants rob the farmer from every side. Only the farmers themselves with the help of the workers can curb this robbery. Committees elected by small farmers should make their appearance on the national scene and jointly with the workers committees and committees of bank employees take into their hands control of transport, credit, and mercantile operations affecting agriculture… To the capitalists lamentations about costs of production, of transport and trade, the consumers answer: Show us your books; we demand control over the fixing of prices. The organs of this control should be the committees on prices, made up of delegates from the factories, trade unions, cooperatives, farmers organizations, the little man of the city, housewives, etc. By this means the workers will be able to prove to the farmers that the real reason for high prices is not high wages but the exorbitant profits of the capitalists and the overhead expenses of capitalist anarchy.”

Despite accusations often thrown at us, socialists don’t want to forcibly take small cafes or kebab shops under public control. Many of these small business owners are struggling to get by themselves. However it must be stated that many self proclaimed “small businesses” are the worst exploiters. We show no sympathy to restaurant owners with ten or so underpaid chefs and waiters on casual contracts whilst the owner pockets a six figure salary. Anyone who profits off another person’s labour must pay 2/3rd of the male median income with pension, holidays, sick pay and the right to union membership and participation regardless of how small the business is.

In the context of small business owners it should be emphasised that they would benefit from the profit being taken out of the main levers of the economy and the cheapening of raw materials and manufactured goods. They’d also benefit from nationalised , democratically controlled banks with cheaper credit and cheaper rent.

Instead of the forced nationalization of every tiny business, socialists should be in favour of a voluntary collectivization. We should make the case that all parts of the economy including that of small businesses would be better run collectively and democratically. However we understand that this may take time to achieve. With a growing and successful socialist economy around them, with the main levers under public democratic ownership, small and honest business owners could witness the successes for themselves and in their own time would join the collective.

Our Task

It is not enough just to call for a £10 minimum wage for it to be achieved. As Trotsky says in the pamphlet, it is the relationship of forces which will decide it. By this he means how strong the working class and its allies are as opposed to the ruling class and its allies. What we revolutionary socialists can do to help is to expand our forces, build a solid revolutionary organisation and explain the real obstacle to decent pay  the capitalist system itself.

The £10 Now campaign has proven in action that it can attract many disaffected workers and youth. If the agitation, explanation and solutions in the campaign were altered to give it a ‘transitional’ character and the demand were clearly linked with the need for a socialist planned economy, it could be very affective in raising consciousness of this this layer and bringing them into the SSP and with it the new left alliance, RISE, as bold revolutionary socialists.

The Fragility of Nationalist Ideas

“Active bourgeois public opinion is composed of two parts: first, of inherited views, actions, and prejudices which represent the fossilized experience of the past, a thick layer of irrational banality and useful stupidity; and second, of the intricate machinery and clever management necessary for the mobilization of patriotic feeling and moral indignation, of national enthusiasm, altruist sentiment, and other kinds of lies and deceptions.”

Trotsky, Between Red and White, 1922

Over 90 years later this quote is still very relevant. Unlike in 1922, Britain no longer has its empire and is now a third rate world power. What they retain are their skilled methods of indoctrination accumulated over centuries,  which still have a powerful effect on mass consciousness. Without it, the ruling class could not rule.

In school history we’re taught that the battle of Dunkirk was a Great British victory, whilst events like The Russia Revolution, The German Revolution or even the 1926 general strike are often reduced to a bullet point, if that. Last year, Michael Gove, Tory cabinet MP (of varying posts), talking about the “Great” War, said that “Our understanding of the war has been overlaid by misunderstandings, and misrepresentations which reflect an, at best, ambiguous attitude to this country and, at worst, an unhappy compulsion on the part of some to denigrate virtues such as patriotism, honour and courage”.

This statement reflects Gove’s stupidity. It is a normal function of our bourgeois politicians to try to perpetuate nationalism, chauvinism and all ideologies which work in favour of the ruling class. Gove’s proud jingoism is very stupid, but such stupidity is a useful and inevitable part of bourgeois politics’ game of illusions.

The problem for the ruling class is that the establishment, not least its mass media outlets, does not quite have the clout it used to as the following quote from the Financial Times shows,
“The public seems to think there is something rotten in the establishment. In 2010, a Policy Exchange poll found that 81% of Britons agreed with the statement: ‘Politicians don’t understand the real world at all’. The British Social Attitude Survey reported that only 18% trusted governments to put the nation’s needs above a party’s, down from 38% in 1986. Banks fare worse.

In 1983, 90% thought they were ‘well run’, compared with 19% today, perhaps the most dramatic attitudinal shift in the report’s 30-year history. Britain’s views of its institutions wax and wane—ask Her Majesty. But the successive scandals hitting banking, parliament and the media have the feel of an almost operatic collapse of faith in those who exert power in the country… There is a profound ignorance among the powerful as to the depth of anti-elite sentiment, in Britain and beyond.”

This also extends to the traditional workers’ parties. The Labour Party have played a treacherous role, summed up by their slogans borrowed from the Tories such as “One Nation Britain”, and mugs saying “Controls on immigration, I’m voting labour”, slogans that for the record also found very little resonance in England. In the recent election, leadership candidate Liz Kendal vowed to back “white working class youth” in a disgusting attempt to appeal to UKIP voters. The reality is that such people do not represent any part of the working class, including the “white working class youth”, but only represent themselves and their big business masters. The Blairite pro free-marketeers were quite rightly seen for what they were with Corbyn’s overwhelming victory.

The previous Labour leader, Ed Milliband, was according to polls more unpopular than David Cameron before the General Election in Scotland! The Scottish conservatives, unlike their counterparts in the rest of the UK, are generally seen to be harmless idiots who have very little influence. Their chauvinistic role in the NO campaign was nothing unexpected. However the Labour Party had influence in Scotland and formerly was looked to and trusted by the working class, a trust which it betrayed, debatably the final kick being the British Nationalist “Better Together Campaign” which they led.

When the capitalist system is in deep crisis, a crisis felt most acutely by the working class and the most poor and vulnerable part of society, it can only be a matter of time before such people en mass start to question things. Massive political shifts like we’ve seen in Scotland with the referendum, and now throughout the UK with Corbyn, become common. The stunning successes of the SNP represent not just a rejection of austerity politics but also a rejection of the rotten British as a whole. Whilst socialists in Scotland have a duty to expose and fight against Scottish nationalism, we nevertheless unashamedly welcome the mass rejection of the politics and ideology of our most reactionary establishment.

However, we are living in turbulent times. Less than half a year after the Labour Party was rejected en mass we saw the election of Jeremy Corbyn. Days later saw his seemingly small but significant gesture in declining to sing the national anthem during Battle of Britain commemoration. For this he was met with a predictable barrage of vile slander.

Whilst inciting disgust amongst the British establishment and its Daily Mail reading reserves, he also, deliberately or not, incited a small spark of delight in the brains amongst millions of people throughout the British Isles.

A poll on The Mirror’s website currently shows that 81% of over a thousand readers support Corbyn’s refusal to sing the national anthem. The Metro, a paper owned by “The Daily Mail and General Trust”, asked its million plus daily readers to send in their views of the queen after her reign became the longest. Two thirds of the responding letters expressed negative views. Such facts in and of themselves do not tell the full picture, but when coupled with recent signs of anti-establishment and anti-jingoistic feeling including the impressively big “Refugees Welcome” demonstrations they suggest rapidly declining support in the ideology of British nationalism not just in Scotland but in England and Wales also.

Alex Salmond made an uncharacteristic error in criticising Corbyn for not singing the National Anthem. The SNP’s  recent peak of success came on the back of the mass YES campaign, a campaign fuelled by an indignation to Westminster’s austerity and British jingoism. In criticising Corbyn he aligned himself and the SNP with the British establishment, so hated by the SNP’s base of support.

Last week a TNS poll showed the SNP 35 points ahead of labour. It’s clear that it would take much more than a Corbyn victory to spark any kind of significant return to the Labour Party in Scotland. However that is not to say that his victory has had no effect.  According to The Guardian a third of SNP voters would vote labour in a General Election under Corbyn. This is a very contradictory, complex and dynamic situation. However it is fair to assume that although many sympathise with Corbyn and the movement behind him, they have thrown their eggs into the SNP’s basket and will not abandon it within a matter of months.

The SNP is a very contradictory party. It undoubtedly has a left wing layer of support who see beyond narrow nationalist lines and want to be part of a serious challenge to poverty, inequality and British imperialism. It is no surprise that the Corbyn victory was greeted by a significant layer of the left leaning SNP supporters. To the left of the SNP in the SSP/ RISE/RIC it has been very warmly welcomed with some even registering to vote for him.

On the other side of the coin the party also contains a very strong current of Scottish nationalism. On the right of the SNP, Corbyn is seen simply as a unionist and criticised vehemently for his stance on independence. This amongst other things has exposed the contradictions of the YES campaign. Corbyn’s approach to the national question in Scotland is clumsy and self-destructive. The left of the YES campaign are obviously aware of this and on this point are critical of Corbyn, but at the same time are able to look past it enough to be welcoming to Corbyn’s leadership overall, and are hence antagonised by the attitude of the old school SNP “nats” who see nothing but a unionist enemy in Corbyn.

This is classical in movements for national self-determination. Unity can only be temporary and eventually, in one form or another, a split along class lines will occur. Differences that can be glossed over or at least discussed friendlily during a peak of mass political activity become unbearable in a movement’s ebb and the cracks begin to show. But mainly this is the music of the future. Despite the weakening unity of the YES movement and despite the powerful developments in the Labour Party, desire for independence amongst the population has not gone down but in fact reached 54% last month.

As German revolutionary Karl Liebknecht said, “The main enemy of every people is in their own country”. In Scotland we have two main enemies, that of British imperialist ruling class and its close cousins, the Scottish capitalists and landlords. Socialists in the YES camp must patiently explain to those awakening to political life that to really defeat British imperialism and its rotten establishment it is not enough to turn to Scottish nationalism. The British ruling elite cannot be overthrown without the working classes throughout the British Isles, especially England.

​Even when it is awkward, even when we’re laughed at or shouted at or worse, socialists have a duty to be very clear that the fight is not simply for independence but for a Scottish Workers Republic as part of an international socialist federation. Marxists take a long view of history. The class struggle is back on the agenda everywhere, and our programme of socialist revolution will grow into a mass one.

Strajk! – stories of Polish workers: resistance, strikes and revolution

Ross Walker, IMT Edinburgh

We publish here the introduction to a new pamphlet, produced by supporters of the International Marxist Tendency in Scotland, which looks at the inspiring history of the class struggle in Poland. With a large number of Polish workers in Britain, it is important for the labour movement to reach out to these workers and organise them in a united fight against capitalism.

To order copies of this excellent new pamphlet, please contact: masy1917@gmail.com

The history of Poland is an inspirational one, steeped with strikes, uprisings and revolutions. It is necessary to study the history of class struggle, not just out of interest, but in order to learn from the past: what went right; what went wrong; what to carry on doing; and what mistakes not to repeat. The history of the Polish working classes is a history rich with lessons.

Polish people make up the third largest foreign-born population in the UK. The 2011 census estimated around 579,000 Polish born citizens in the UK, but more recent unofficial surveys have estimated nearer a million. Where I live in Edinburgh, Poles make up the highest foreign born population, at around 13,000. With 2.9 million foreign-born workers in the UK, any successful revolutionary movement must involve them, and the Poles are no exception. In fact, as this pamphlet shows, the traditions of the Polish working classes can be a vital addition to future movements; but first of all these workers must be reached out to.

Socialism and Religion

The first excerpt is from a text by Polish revolutionary, Rosa Luxemburg. Luxemburg is mostly known for her work in Germany, her heroic opposition to the First World War and her leading role in the German Revolution, which brought the war to an end; but she also played a big role in the movement in her country of origin.

Luxemburg had a remarkable understanding of the religious question. In her text “Socialism and The Churches” she said:
“Social-Democracy in no way fights against religious beliefs. On the contrary, it demands complete freedom of conscience for every individual and the widest possible toleration for every faith and every opinion. But, from the moment when the priests use the pulpit as a means of political struggle against the working classes, the workers must fight against the enemies of their rights and their liberation.”

A 2015 poll by the Polish Centre for Public Opinion Research found that 56% of Poles claimed they have never doubted their belief in God, so the demand for the complete freedom of religious belief for all is still extremely important in Poland. This must be carried out whilst also exposing the hypocrisy and reactionary nature of the structures of the church and the need for a materialist, as opposed to idealist, analysis when it comes to social, political and economic events. For this reason we would recommend the whole text which although 110 years old is still relevant today.

However, Luxemburg did make an error when it came to understanding the need to support the right of nations to determine their own future. The Polish workers were not just oppressed by their own ruling class, but also nationally oppressed by Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and of course the brutal Russian Czarist regime; for this reason the fight for national freedom was very important for Polish peasants and workers, something which was reflected on the political scene with parties such as the left nationalist PPS (Polska Partija Socialistyczna).

The PPS drew many genuine class fighters to its ranks, but had a strong Polish nationalist ideology which strove to split Polish and Russian workers, something which Luxemburg correctly stood against. When the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party adopted a policy supporting the right of nations like Poland to determine their own future, Luxemburg thought this was a capitulation towards Polish nationalism. However this was not the case. It was necessary to show that the Marxists, socialists and the workers movement in general, and particularly in an oppressor country like Russia, had no interest in oppressing Polish national culture and identity. Luxemburg underestimated the reactionary consequences that a forced political unity could cause and its potential to sharpen national divisions even further.

Luxemburg was a devout internationalist, an absolute necessity for revolutionaries, particularly in times of extreme chauvinism such as in the early years of the First World War. As her counterpart, Karl Liebknecht said, “The main enemy of every people is in their own country”. The main enemy of the Polish workers was and still is the Polish ruling class. Luxemburg consistently exposed the bankruptcy of the Polish bourgeois nationalists and the Polish capitalists who had no interest in the workers or small peasants, but were only interested in increasing their own share of the wealth created by the working masses.

World War Two and the Holocaust

The second article is from “The Militant”, the US newspaper of the Trotskyist Fourth International. It was written in 1944 on the Ghetto Uprising of 1943. It tells a story which could be described as a glimpse of light amidst a time of extreme darkness.

“In Lodz, the biggest Polish industrial center, 130,000 Jewish workers went on a general strike, halting temporarily the Nazi extermination drive there. Armed rebellions have flared up through all the labor camps.”

This sentence shows the tremendous power of the working classes even during times of the most extreme barbaric oppression. The following excerpt from S. Mendelsohn’s “The Battle of The Warsaw Ghetto” shows an appeal from the Polish Labor movement on the second day of the revolt.

“Workers and the working intelligentsia are the heart and soul among the masses of fighting Jews who arose gun in hand against Nazi atrocities. Almost all underground publications, as well as the reports of the government representative, speak of the Jewish Fighter Organization which began and led the struggle… both the appeal of the Polish Labor Movement and some newspapers indicate that the organization consisted chiefly of workers, most of them young.”

Understandably, the tragedy of the Holocaust can be difficult to bring political content and analysis to. However, the rise of fascism and the subsequent genocides were political phenomena inextricably linked to the crisis of capitalism and imperialism. The biggest and most serious attempt to halt this slaughter was the Ghetto Uprising, which was a working class led uprising from start to finish, a fact which should be proudly remembered and understood.

The third article, also from the US Militant, tells the story of the great Warsaw Uprising in 1944, which almost defeated the Nazis without the help of the Red Army. Whilst Marxists defend the Russian Revolution and the magnificent gains it made, we also ardently criticize the bureaucratic state of the USSR which, amidst the poverty, isolation and embargoes suffered by the country, degenerated into a monstrous corrupt bureaucratic caste, with interests very separate from the workers and peasants that originally carried out the revolution. The Stalinist betrayal of the Warsaw Uprising is an all too perfect example of this. The text contains quotes from Moscow at the time encouraging the insurrection, and then days later condemning it as a crime. The advance of the Red Army up to Warsaw was halted and arms for the partisans were denied, while thousands of Poles were left to be massacred.

The Moscow press and the Stalinist apologists at the time called the uprising premature and doomed to failure, but during the insurrection itself they actually reported the evacuation of Nazis from Warsaw and some sources even pointed towards workers councils being established in Warsaw factories. The Americans and British seeking a chance to gain influence over the Polish gave it “token aid”, but feeble amounts, weeks after the insurrection had started. In reality neither the Allied governments nor the USSR had the interest of the Polish masses at heart. A successful uprising in Poland would have been a tremendous example to workers and oppressed peoples all over. Whether living in the capitalist world or in the USSR, it would have shown people the power they held in their hands, and during the post-war worldwide revolutionary wave it could have marked the end of both capitalism and Stalinism. The capitalists and the Soviet bureaucrats were equally fearful.

Solidarnosc and Stalinism

The fourth article tells the phenomenal story of The Solidarnosc movement in 1980. The original strike of Shipyard Workers started with the victimisation of three workers in Gdansk and spread throughout Poland to involve hundreds of thousands of striking workers across all industries. Even layers of rural peasants and workers refused deals with the PLR government and sent free food to the strikers.

The strike contained many economic demands including increased wages, family allowances and pensions, but also democratic demands like freedom of press and speech, the release of political prisoners, and of course the right to strike. The mayor of Gdansk ordered the printing of hundreds of thousands of anti-Solidarnosc leaflets, but this was met by the print workers refusing to print them and coming out in full support of the strike.

What was significant was that at no point during this wave of strikes was the demand of returning to capitalism used. Many Polish workers will wince at the word “socialist” and even more so the words “Communist” or “Marxist”; but the truth is the PLR could not be described as any of the three things, as the author, Ted Grant, explains here.

“The corruption, the nepotism and the incapacity of the bureaucracy has become clear for all to see. A workers’ state can never be run on the basis of privilege and without the participation and management of both industry and state by the working class. As a result of the inefficiency of the bureaucracy there was an actual fall of 2% in production last year. So long as living standards were going up the workers would grit their teeth and tolerate the crimes and privileges of the bureaucracy. But now it has clearly landed Poland in political and economic crisis, the workers find this regime unbearable.”

The following paragraph showed quite aptly the situation at the time in Poland:

“In reality, the bureaucracy has been enormously weakened while the working class has been enormously strengthened, not only in numbers, but in its capacity of struggle, by the post-war industrialisation of Poland. Under such circumstances, a victory could easily be gained which would spread to the rest of Eastern Europe and to the Soviet Union; and also have a decisive effect on the capitalist states of the West. That is what the bureaucracy – and the ruling class in the capitalist west – fear, and it is this that the workers have to understand.”

Solidarnosc still exists as an important trade union but is very different to what it was. Like many mass revolutionary movements it degenerated when the masses left the scene, allowing the movement to be hijacked by pro-capitalist, anti-communist forces, and even by the Catholic Church. The article itself explains the beginnings of this degeneration. The movement lacked clarity in ideas and the leaders lacked confidence in its rank-and-file. The west cynically used it to smear the ideas of communism with the crimes and inefficiencies of Stalinism. But at the time, it was an earth trembling event that was felt by workers everywhere.

The fifth article was written by an Italian worker and member of the FGSI (Italian Socialist Youth Federation) interviewing factory workers in Naples.

“Poland has been a victory for all workers – for Italian workers too. No, wait, those aren’t just big words; I’ll explain what I mean. Before the events in Gdansk there were many intellectuals in Italy, who were playing with the idea of anti-strike laws. Now these intellectuals have all disappeared all of a sudden; who at this moment would dare to talk about limiting the right to strike after what the working class has just done in Poland? So it’s a victory for all of us. But watch out – those intellectuals will be back.”
Another worker saw the further problem which the Polish struggles had highlighted; “Our union is no good, our officials elect themselves from amongst themselves; what’s happened to control? All right so we talk about Poland, but let’s have a bit of democracy around here too.”

The final article describes events 35 years after the Solidarnosc movement, in early 2015, when miners in Silesia in Southern Poland struck against privatisation amidst a global capitalist crisis and a particularly big plummet in energy prices. In a country with a so called “pro-capitalist consensus”, 68% of the population backed the strike whilst only 15% took the side of the government. The first strike wave in early January was successful; the militant mood of the strikers pushed the more conservative minded union leaders to threaten a general strike, which made Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz back off and accept the union’s demands.

19 days after the strike, however, it kicked off again when ten miners from a non-striking mine who had organised a solidarity picket with the strikers were sacked. In response, demonstrations were held next to the company’s HQ in the city of Jastrzebie on the 2nd and 9th of February, where tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets were fired at unarmed protesters, injuring twenty people.

The sacking of miners taking solidarity strike action, followed by the use of brutal violence against the strikers, demonstrated just how worried the Polish state is by the potential power of the militant and organised working class. This is why the police were authorised to shoot at unarmed protestors.

Solidarity and Socialism

After this event, activists from the Scottish Socialist Party held a solidarity picket outside the Polish consulate in Edinburgh. Preparing for the picket was a revealing experience. Having leafleted almost all the shops and cafes on South Bridge, North Bridge and Leith Walk where many Polish workers are employed, we almost always encountered a positive response. One Polish barmaid smiled and said “I didn’t realise socialists did good things”; another chef said “Solidarność Towarzysz ” and laughed heartily. A waitress originally from Poznan said “Waw, I’ll put it up, my boss will take it down and tell me off but I don’t care, it’s about time”. I tried to persuade her not to risk her job but she was stubborn that it remained up.

Not all responses were positive. The weekend after the picket we were canvassing for Colin Fox (Edinburgh South SSP Parliamentary candidate). When knocking doors in a high rise block of flats in Moredun we met a Polish woman and told her about the picket. She said “good for you, but I came to Poland to get away from politics, I don’t have time” and slammed the door. This is to be expected. Although we are living in a time of increased radicalisation and politicisation, we cannot expect our message to reach everyone. It takes more than a leaflet or a pamphlet or even a solidarity picket to bring masses of people into political activity. It takes great events. As Trotsky said, the revolution takes place in people’s minds before it takes place on the streets. People can only take so much and they are forced to move and to fight. Strikes, demonstrations, and other sharp clashes of the working classes and the oppressed layers against the ruling classes and the state will bring masses of people into activity.

The workers will move when they are ready, not a second sooner, not a second later. The role of socialists and Marxists is to participate in the everyday class struggles, putting forward a socialist alternative and building a revolutionary organisation for when the masses of workers do finally move.

The brutal contradictions of capitalism that affect the consciousness of all workers and eventually drive masses of people into political activity are even more extreme for foreign-born workers. This paragraph from a TUC (Trade Union Congress) report shows very clearly how anti immigrant sentiments are fuelled by employers and the divisions exploited by them:

“The article reported on the outsourcing of staff, particularly housekeeping staff, in the sector and revealed how this is leading to a two-tier workforce in the sector, with a largely migrant workforce deployed through agencies and a diminishing in-house staff. The in-house staff are invariably on better pay rates and terms and conditions, but these are at risk due to the outsourcing and deployment of agency staff on far worse pay and conditions. This in itself provides a potential source of tension between the two groups of workers – a fact that unscrupulous employers are keen to exploit. The article also revealed a further form of exploitation, the requirement for staff to undertake ‘training’ or ‘inductions days’ without pay when they start their employment. Intimidation and easy dismissal of staff who complain is a feature of employment too and the poor working conditions and high levels of turnover make it difficult for trade unions to organise workers in the sector. The Guardian article reported the specific case of the Kensington Close Hotel, which under new ownership promptly outsourced its permanent housekeeping staff to employment agency Calibre International, while the newly transferred staff had wages protected under TUPE regulations, the 40 or so newly recruited agency maids (Polish, Lithuanian, Romanian and Mongolian workers) were being paid a piece rate of £2.08 per room, but this subsequently fell to £1.40 – £1.60 per room. As a result some workers were earning less than the minimum wage. Others were earning just £20 per day, while trainee maids worked up to three days ‘training’ without pay. This outsourcing had created a two-tier system with migrant workers on worse terms used to undermine existing terms and conditions. Longstanding members of the housekeeping staff at the Kensington Close hotel reported that they had not had a pay rise in almost five years and felt that tactics such as delayed implementation of paying revised national minimum wage rates were designed to ‘encourage’ them to leave so that they could be replaced by migrant agency workers on even worse terms and conditions.”

Since Poland’s 2004 entrance into the EU and the mass immigration to the UK, there have been efforts on the part of some trade unionists to organise this new layer of the working class. When Polish church-based community group Polski Bristol raised the problem that Polish people were having to pay taxes not just in the UK but also back in Poland, the South West TUC launched a campaign which pressured the governments of Poland and Britain to sign a treaty ensuring that this will no longer happen. In 2008, the TUC and Polish union organisations Solidarnosc and OPZZ signed a protocol to help Polish workers in the UK. A Polish language website was launched including guidance on worker’s rights. The following excerpt from a LibCom article shows a successful strike of Polish cleaners in Northampton in 2007.

“The mainly Polish workers employed by cleaning company Glenn Management to clean offices on the Moulton Park industrial estate, Northampton, had not been paid properly for around four months. However after only one day’s strike action they were paid the money that they were owed. One employee told Libcom: ‘We had been trying to get hold of our manager again and again but he was not interested in talking to us. Within half an hour of going on strike, however, he suddenly became very interested in what we had to say. First of all he told us that what we were doing was a disgrace and would endanger our jobs. When it became clear we would not be intimidated he tried to pay only those of us who spoke good English. When we made it clear that this wasn’t good enough we were all paid in full.’”

Capitalism and racism: divide and rule

As welcome and inspiring as this is, there is still a long way to go. The trade unions have barely touched the surface in terms of recruitment of Polish or any other immigrant workers in the UK. The TUC needs to take the lead in a campaign to unionise every worker – public, private, permanent, agency, indigenous or immigrant – and fight for recognition in every workplace. If this population could be recruited and brought into trade union activity it would be a crucial step forward for the labour movement.

In order to do this the trade unions need to be honest about the causes of such exploitation. Legislation against such employment abuses would be welcome, but would not solve the problem. The TUC needs to explain that this is an inherent symptom of capitalism; that none of this is needed; that there could be enough jobs for migrant and indigenous workers and they could be well paid. Trillions of pounds are hoarded or squandered in the name of profit. The labour movement must show that it is ready to fight for a system where the working people own and democratically control this wealth and can run the economy in their interest.

Whether it is legally through the already existing trade unions or through spontaneous illegal action (like Solidarnsoc 1980), workers will eventually organise. If the existing trade unions let them down they will eventually form new structures, which the 3 Cosas strike of Latin American cleaners at the University of London showed. Whether through the existing labour movement or through wildcat actions, the role of Marxists is to participate alongside workers in their struggle, whilst explaining the need for the revolutionary socialist transformation of society and building an organisation which can give movements clear ideas in the future.

Tensions are further fuelled with the use of reactionary, racist and slanderous media. The looming possible referendum on the EU gives the establishment and the right wing every opportunity to broadcast their reactionary bile at the expense of the nerves of the hard working EU migrants. Since 2007 there has been a reported 42 racially motivated attacks on Polish people throughout the UK, and this figure would increase considerably if those unreported were included. The British establishment may pay lip service against such hatred, but in reality they benefit from the exploitation and divisions. As has been shown with Black and Asian immigrant workers, the British ruling class is very willing to exploit their cheap labour whilst perpetuating racist and divisive ideologies.

Workers of all countries: unite!

As Liebknecht said, our many enemy is in our own country. The enemy of British workers is the British ruling class; the establishment. The ideas of British nationalism and chauvinism are completely opposed to the interests of British workers. So of course is the ideology of Scottish nationalism, which socialists in Scotland must fight to expose the bankruptcy of. Our only ideology is a proletarian ideology of internationalist class solidarity. An injury to one is an injury to all.

As the late twentieth century Trotskyist, Ted Grant, said “Not a wheel turns, not a lightbulb shines without the kind permission of the working classes”. We create the wealth. We run the world. The only problem is we don’t yet collectively realise it. We are living in a time of revolutionary upheavals worldwide. This will affect the UK and Poland and we have full confidence in the revolutionary potential of the Polish working classes, whether in Poland or here.

We encourage readers to read, question and if you agree, join us in fighting for a world devoid of oppression, devoid of totalitarianism, devoid of racism and false national divisions. Fight for a system where those who create the wealth, own and control it. This is no easy task, but as Rosa Luxemburg also said: “Socialism or barbarism” — there is no other option. We believe that socialism is possible, but not without your help.

Democracy, Self Determination and Capitalism

“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to misrepresent and repress them” Karl Marx (emphasised in Lenin’s State and Revolution), The Civil War in France, 1871

The general election exposed the limits of parliamentary democracy. In England and Wales many commented that it was impossible to tell the main parties apart. All promised to be loyal servants of capital and to further attack the living conditions of the poor. The Labour Party made mild challenges, for example in promising  get rid of non doms, a promise which proved to be popular and boost its ratings. This was predicatably followed by a barrage of smears and criticisms from the tories and capitalist press which the labour party succumbed to with reassurances of their “economic responsibility”.

The SNP used anti austerity and anti westminster slogans and were slandered by the British establishment who resorted to tabloid mysogynistic attacks on Sturgeon and attempts at scaring English voters into thinking they’ be governed by “tartan tyrants” but this was not enough to stop the powerful SNP wave. In fact for layers of the population, completely alienated and disgusted by the British establishemnt this would have only added to their indignation.

Media Slanders

The green party were the biggest anti austerity party in England. A 38 degrees petition against the BBC Green Party blackout has reached more than 87,000 listing examples such as its constant reference to being “others” in statistical data and their treatment during the Euro elections where the news summaries mentioned the liberal democrats without mentioning the Green Party despite the fact that The Green Party were more successful. “Journalism from Mars” carried out a study which showed that UKIP had around five times more coverage from the BBC and ten times more coverage on other news websites than the Green Party. This is despite The Green Party having more members.

The truth is the more of a threat you are to the agenda of the ruling class and its establishment, the more susceptible you are to smears and slander and eventually even lies and frame ups. Every slip up or weakness will be magnified and every success will be under publicised or ignored.

This was clear in the case the parliamentary success of the SSP in the early 2000s. When four MSPs held up bits of paper saying “defend democracy” behind Jack McConnell in defence of the anti G8 protests. They were suspended for thirty days and recieved a total fine of £30,000 when taking into account staff wages. This penalty was bigger than when Leith MP Ron Brown dropped the mace in Westminster and refused to apologise in 1987 or when Bernadette Devlin physically assualted the home secretary in 1973.

The accusation of “disrupting business” was rediculous. The constant mindless and incoherent heckles you hear in Holyrood from our “upstanding representatives” during average question time are more disruptive than this. The reality was that there was a large and very radicalised opposition to the Gleneagles summit which at the very least could have caused disruption and embarressment to the The Scottish Government. Holyrood acting as tentacle of British imperialism could not afford this kind of encouragement from the SSP. The so called sacred parliamentary democracy and the fact that the these MSPs had been legitmately elected was of no importance when their actions went against the interests of the ruling class.

The Referendum

The independence referendum was an eye opener for many. Not only did it bring many working class and beforehand politically alienated people into politcal activity but it also clearly exposed the powerful ability of the mainstream media and political establishment to interfere, lie and slander to benefit a result that they want.

730 hours of BBC and ITV evening news reports collected between the 17th of Septmeber 2012 and the 18th of Septmeber 2013 in a UWS study showed 317 favouring the NO campaign and 211 favouring the YES campaign. Where newspieces were seemingly neutral, the strong tendency was to start and end the clip with pro NO points, with the pro YES points in the middle. The research also reported that often treasury officials speaking on the matter were introduced as independent economic experts.

As marxists we are not shy to pont out the problems Scotland would face with an independence based on capitalism. However nor do we sow any illusions in a capitalist UK and as most workers today would tell you, remaining within the union has not solved any of their problems of which the media were clealry very reluctant to speak about. Its clear that the mainstream media and British establishment were not looking out for the interests of the masses of Scottish people  but instead were desperately trying to defend the withering prestige and power of the British ruling class.

When the BBC found out about the UWS research they sent a 6,000 word letter to the leading research professor John Robertson and his vice principle. When Robertson was invited to the Holyrood Culture and Education committee to present his findings the BBC were also invited later that day and sent four senior staff. When challenged by the commitee, Ken McQuarrie, BBC Scotland director was unable to answer questions on how many complaints they had recieved about coverage of the referendum. They were also forced to admit that to expend so much effort into analysing research was not normal practice of the BBC and that in other cases they would have published the research. When asked why they did not publish it in this case with their own critique instead of sending an email to the researcher and his boss they could give not straight answer.

Project Fear

The closer the referendum got, the less subtle and the more hysterical the bias got. When moves were made by the tory govenment to do away with the means testing in pensions the the express English released a papaer with the headline “Pensions Shock for Millions” whilst the Scottish editon’s headline was “Pensions Safer Under Westminster”. The BBC were caught wrongly accusing Salmond of ignoring questions. The establishment backed NO campaign was often refered to as Project Fear and there is no doubt that it had its affect on many voters. However for a radicalised layer, this cynical and clumsy campaign and bias was not only rediculously obvious but extremely enraging. A week before the referendum over a thousand (two thousand by some estimates) protested outside the BBC headquarters in Glasgow.

The German marxist and devout internationalist Rosa Luxembourg once said on the national question that under capitalism, national self determination would be utopian and under socialism it wouild be reactionary. Speaking on very general terms this is correct particularly when referring to the fact that even when political seperation is acheived economic independence is impossible under such global capitalism. Even achieving political seperation has its difficulties. In oppressed colonial countries where national uprisings are violentally crushed this is obvious but the ruling class need not always use force. Often the power of media is enough to defend bourgoise interests as shown in Scotland.

Luxembourg was a heroic and talented marxist which the movement is indebted to but she made some errors and one being on her underestimation of the reactionary consequences of a forced unity of nations. If Scotland were to stay within the UK whilst its population wants independence, a forced unity will inevatabely strengthen national antagonisms, particularly whilst the UK is governed by a party which the Scottish population overwhelmingly voted against. For this reason, as Marxists, we defend the right of Scotland to determine its own fate.

World Revolution

However the limits and new problems of independence under capitalism must be told. Westminster as the heart of British imperialism is without doubt one of the most reactioinary states in the world but it is just that, a state. The base is capitalism, the private means of production which functions by way of exploitation and alienation. In fact with the need for a new state to compete for global capital it wouild need to further attack workers rights and wages.A seperation from Westminster whilst being a very wecome blow to the prestige of an imperialist establishment would in and of itself not solve anything for the working classes if carried out on a capitlaist basis.

In the event of independence marxists would fight for a Scottish Workers Republic. A democratically planned economy based on the needs ot the many rather than the profits of the few. However in order for such a planned economy to survive internationalism is a must or such a republic wouild be very short lived. In short, we mean that such republic would need to call on the workers of England, the rest of Europe and the world to overthrow their ruling classes and create a world socialist order.

With the parasitic ruling class taken out the equation, unemployment could be erradicated and the working day world wide could be reduced to 30 hours or less. With this people would have time to get involved in the running of their workplaces and communities. A real democracy would be possible.

We have full confidence in this potential but of course we appreciate it will not happen tomorrow. In the mean time marxists fight for every single progressive reform that can be won under capitalism. Whether this be £10/hour minimum wage or to fight against privatisation of the NHS. When fighting the issue of media bias an important demand to fight for is to have full union membership and right to participation of all journalists and media workers. Trade unions such as the NUJ must back any journalist who refuses to back the editorial line. A successful campaign such as this would alleviate some of the problems of media bias and would be a big step forward.

However like all reforms and streps forward, under capitalism can only ever be temporary thats why we must consistnely point out the need for the overthrow of capitalism, in Scotland and internationally and only then can socialists in Scotland have a wee rest.

Marxism and the National Question in Scotland

by Alan Woods

We have entered into a new period on an international scale: a period of deep economic crisis, social and political instability. The masses everywhere are beginning to question things that were previously taken for granted. The whole political scene is a seething cauldron. In such a period sharp and sudden changes are implicit in the situation. The Scottish referendum was just such a sudden change, a political earthquake that upset all the calculations of the politicians. It represented a fundamental turn in the situation. Continue reading Marxism and the National Question in Scotland

Women and the Struggle for Socialism

For Marxists, the root cause of all forms of oppression consists in the division of society into classes. But oppression can take many forms. Alongside class oppression we find the oppression of one nation over another, racial oppression, and the oppression of women. Continue reading Women and the Struggle for Socialism