A Parliament for Scotland? An Assembly for Wales? Unable to agree among
themselves and afraid to go ahead without popular support--last time they put this to a
referendum their proposals were thrown out--our rulers have decided to ask us our
opinion on the matter.
We should be flattered, but don’t be fooled. These proposals are part of a smokescreen
to disguise the fact that the Labour Party cannot deliver, and no longer wants to
deliver, social reforms aimed at shifting wealth and power from the privileged few to
working people.
Labour has always accepted the profit system. They used to believe they could
humanise it by social reform legislation. Not any longer. Bitter experience has taught
them that where reforms and profits come into conflict, it is reforms that have to give
way. The last Labour government under Callaghan ended up applying this and Blair
had promised to do the same even before he became Prime Minister.
The Labour Party fully accepts now that priority has to be given to profits and no
longer promises more spending on social reforms. But, to distinguish itself from the
Tories, Labour still wants to retain a reforming image. But how? By finding reforms
which don’t come into conflict with profits. Constitutional reforms fill the bill
perfectly. They don’t interfere with profit-making. They don’t cost more money. And
they give rise to an illusion of change.
It is in this light that the Labour government’s proposals for a Scottish Parliament and
a Welsh Assembly should be seen, along with their proposals for turning the House of
Lords into a huge non-elected quango and for elected mayors and other such
gimmicks. But it’s all completely irrelevant as far as ordinary people are concerned.
Constitutional reform is of no benefit or relevance to us. It leaves our lives and the
problems the profit system causes completely unchanged. Exploitation through the
wages system continues. Unemployment continues. A crumbling health service, a
chaotic transport system, a polluted environment, failing schools, rising crime and
drug addiction and the general breakdown of society all continue. As far as solving
these problems is concerned, constitutional reform is just a useless irrelevancy.
Deficient Democrats
Naturally, Labour wraps its irrelevant, constitutional reforms up in democratic
rhetoric. Elected assemblies in Edinburgh and Cardiff, we are told, would be an
extension of democracy, bringing power nearer to the people, so how can Socialists
not be in favour of this?
Yes, Socialists are in favour of democracy, and socialism will be a fully democratic
society, but full democracy is not possible under capitalism. Supporters of capitalism
who talk about “democracy” always mean only political democracy since economic
democracy--where people would democratically run the places where they work--is
out of the question under capitalism, based as it is on these workplaces being owned
and controlled by and for the benefit of a privileged minority.
You can have the most democratic constitution imaginable but this won’t make any
difference to the fact that profits have to come before meeting needs under capitalism.
The people’s will to have their needs met properly is frustrated all the time by the
operation of the economic laws of the capitalist system which no political structure,
however democratic, can control.
It is not imperfections in the political decision-making process that’s the problem but
the profit system and its economic laws. And the answer is not democratic reform of
capitalism’s political structure but the replacement of capitalism by socialism.
As a society based on common instead of class ownership of the means of production,
socialism will fulfil the first condition for a genuine democracy. Because it will be a
classless society without a privileged wealthy class everyone can have a genuinely
equal say in the way things are run. Some will not be more equal than others, as they
are under capitalism, because they own more wealth. Socialism will be a society
where the laws of profit no longer operate since common ownership and democratic
control will allow people to produce to meet their needs instead of for the profit of a
few as today.
The argument about elected Scottish and Welsh assemblies bringing power nearer to
the people might have something in it if, even within the limited context of mere
political democracy, the proposed assemblies were going to have some real powers.
But they are not.
All their money is to come from the central government, and the only “power” they
will have will be to rearrange slightly how the limited amount of funds they will be
given is to be spent. In other words, they will have no more power than existing
borough and county councils.
They will be part of the administrative arm of central government and their members
will be no more than elected civil servants spending central government money. All
that would happen would be the introduction of another layer of elected bureaucrats.
Another trough for the professional politicians to get their snouts into perhaps, but of
no significance to ordinary people.
If our rulers want to reform the machinery of capitalist government in this way, that’s
up to them. But spare us the pretence that it’s some great extension of democracy.
Nasty Nationalists
Also urging a “yes” vote are the Nationalists of the SNP and Plaid Cymru. They see
the sham parliament with token powers that is on offer as a step towards their goal of
an independent parliament with full powers to impose taxes and make laws.
This argument for voting “yes” cuts no ice with Socialists either. We are not
nationalists--in fact we are implacably opposed to nationalism in whatever form it
rears its ugly head--and we see the establishment of an independent Scotland or Wales
as yet another irrelevant, constitutional reform. One of the last things the world needs
at the moment is more states, with their own armed forces and divisive nationalist
ideologies.
Nationalism is based on the illusion that all people who live in a particular
geographical area have a common interest, against people in other areas. Hence the
supposed need for a separate state and a separate government to defend this separate
interest.
This flies in the face of the facts. All over the world, in all geographical areas, the
population is divided into two basic classes, those who own the productive resources
and those who don’t and have to work for those who do, and whose interests are
antagonistic.
The non-owning class have a common interest, not with the owning class who live in
the same area, but with people like themselves wherever they live. The interests of
workers who live in Scotland and Wales are not opposed to the interests of those who
live in England--or France or Germany or Russia or Japan or anywhere else in the
world.
Nationalists like the SNP and Plaid Cymru who preach the opposite are spreading a
divisive poison amongst people who Socialists say should unite to establish a
frontierless world community, based on the world’s resources becoming the common
heritage of all humanity, as the only framework within which the social problems
which workers wherever they live face today.
This is why Socialists and Nationalists are implacably opposed to each other. We are
working in opposite directions. Us to unite workers. Them to divide them. So, insofar
as the proposed assemblies in Scotland and Wales are a sop to nationalism--as to a
certain extent they are--that would be more a reason for voting “no” than for voting
“yes”.
Useless Unionists
So, what about voting “no”? It’s tempting. After all, Socialists don’t want
constitutional reform (we want socialism) and a “no” vote would be a repudiation of
the divisive doctrines of the narrow-minded Scots and Welsh Nats. But in the end the
point at issue--a mere constitutional reform which will leave profit-making,
exploitation, unemployment and all the other social problems quite untouched--is so
irrelevant that it is not worth taking sides.
In addition, those leading the campaign for a “no” vote--various businesspeople and
the Tory rump--are conservatives in both senses of the term. They want to leave things
as they are. They don’t want to change anything. We don’t see any point in diverting
our energies to changing the constitution but we certainly want things to change. We
want people to change the economic and social basis of society and establish
socialism in place of capitalism. So we’ve nothing in common with them.
They fear that the proposed change will be the first step on a slippery slope leading to
the break-up of the United Kingdom. Maybe, though this is not the opinion of Labour
and the Liberals who are also Unionists.
The leading “no” campaigners, too, are nationalists. Not of course Scottish or Welsh
Nationalists, but British Nationalists, since that is what the Unionists are, spreading
the poison that it is all the people in the British Isles who have a common interest
against people everywhere else. But Socialists are just as much opposed to British
Nationalism as we are to Scottish or Welsh or any other nationalism.
Just because we are not prepared to back the efforts of Scottish and Welsh
Nationalists to break away from the United Kingdom--and vigorously oppose their
efforts to split the trade union movement--does not mean that we are Unionists. We
don’t support the Union. We just put up with it while we get on with our work of
convincing people to reject world capitalism in favour of world socialism.
Vote for Socialism
So we shan’t be voting “yes” or “no”. We shall, however, be voting. We’ll be going to
the polling station and, since they are not giving us this option on the voting paper,
we’ll be writing the word “SOCIALISM” or “SOSIALAETH” across it.
If you want socialism, we urge you to do the same, as a way of registering your
support for world socialism and your rejection both of separatist Welsh and Scottish
nationalism and of unionist British nationalism.
(September 1997)
