Dealing with the National Question & Class

In view of a weakness to unite the forces amongst the socialist left in Scotland it will be obvious that the old imperialists in the British are being allowed to divide and rule minorities. And just as capitalism relies on the absence of a vanguard within the working class the imperialists will play on any ongoing division.

Fundamental to Republican Socialists is National Liberation and the need to recognise that capitalism does not offer a road towards this goal. Constitutional and parliamentary politics can only be spheres of influence in any direction to emancipation and freedom of the working class. In short whatever can be gained from either constitutional or parliamentary politics then liberation of the Scottish working class is not on that agenda. Therefore the means to liberation by parliamentary ways does not exist and neither offers a route a to Socialist Freedom for the working class. Yet the opportunists in the fundamentalist and right-wing nationalist camp believe that Scottish liberation can be achieved if enough of them provide a wee bit of scotch kitsch. This is not so, liberation and socialism are both only won through working class struggle for freedom and there should be no need for any illusions about that fact.

The requirement for the class consciousness proletarians is to lead in class struggle to ensure that the bourgeois nationalists do not hijack the National Question for themselves. The National Question and Class issue cannot be separated when we talk of winning Scottish Liberation and dispensing with the old society and achieving a Scottish Socialist Republic.

SSFG