Stalin defined the nation in his essay Marxism and the National Question. For Stalin, an ethnic Georgian who would later go on to be appointed People’s Commissar for Nationalities in the early Soviet Union, a nation was “a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.”
From this definition we recognise that the island of Britain is multinational, and can generally be considered to be made up of four nations: Scotland, England, Wales, and (often forgotten, except to its own people) Cornwall. Scotland, England, and Wales are currently unequal partners over the territory of Britain, each with their own bourgeois parliamentary bodies with certain devolved powers. Cornwall, with its own language, culture, and a larger population than Iceland, is no less a nation than the other three, but currently has no parliamentary system whatsoever. The struggle of the nations of Britain for equal democratic rights is different from the struggle of Britain’s colonies for national liberation from the United Kingdom. This includes the north of Ireland, which is only part of the U.K. as a product of imperialism and empire.
It is the responsibility of communists in the imperialist countries to lend their support to national liberation struggles in the colonies, recognising as Marx and Engels did that: “A people that oppresses other peoples cannot itself be free.” In 1916, Lenin went further by elaborating on the right of nations to self-determination, stating that: “Socialists must not only demand the unconditional and immediate liberation of the colonies without compensation—and this demand in its political expression signifies nothing else but the recognition of the right to self-determination—but they must render determined support to the more revolutionary elements in the bourgeois democratic movements for national liberation in these countries and assist their uprising—and if need be, their revolutionary war—against the imperialist powers that oppress them.”
However, the National Question is meaningless for the working class if it does not also seek to confront and resolve the issues which are plaguing working-class people at home: primarily, that of their exploitation by a ruling capitalist class. Irish revolutionary James Connolly summed this up as follows: “If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs.”
For the National Question to have bearing and meaning, it must therefore be presented along lines of power, along lines of class struggle, along lines which present workers with the choice: to confront the power of capital that forces our class to conform to the demands of the wealthy and powerful in order to live, or to promote the interests of another capitalist class who wish to instil their own rule under the banner of “independence” and “sovereignty”. National liberation struggles led by the working class are therefore essentially different from those led by the bourgeoisie, and have historically led almost immediately to socialist revolutions and much higher levels of democracy.
In Britain, the struggle for the working classes of Scotland, England, Wales, and Cornwall to achieve worker’s rule over the capitalists while strengthening unity among themselves is against the interests of the British ruling class. Following this, Britain’s communists advance a program of progressive federalism. In practical terms, this means arguing for the greatest possible democratic advance under capitalism through regional assemblies and the abolition of all relics of feudalism, such as the monarchy and the House of Lords, while still preserving working-class unity across Britain against our common enemy: the united British bourgeoisie. Maximising our revolutionary potential across this island necessarily means uniting the 15% of workers who live in Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall with the 85% of workers who live in England, especially since, if backed into a corner, the ruling class will inevitably attempt to restore capitalism using any territorial foothold it can find.
Unlike in the colonies where national liberation struggles against imperialism have the potential to unite the broadest possible mass of the people of different classes in revolution, nationalist struggles in Britain are neither anti-imperialist nor unifying, and have tended to split the worker’s movement. In the words of Stalin: “Whether the proletariat rallies to the banner of bourgeois nationalism depends on the degree of development of class antagonisms, on the class consciousness and degree of organization of the proletariat. The class-conscious proletariat has its own tried banner, and has no need to rally to the banner of the bourgeoisie.”
Supporting the right of nations to self-determination does not mean supporting every separatist struggle which rears its head, and progressive federalism provides the best framework for exposing bourgeois nationalism without abandoning the just struggle for democracy and a free development of national languages and cultures, uniting the working people of our different nations on class terms against the capitalist state in the period preceding a socialist revolution.
In the State and Revolution, Lenin quotes Engels in addressing the British National Question directly, stating that “Even in regard to Britain, where geographical conditions, a common language and the history of many centuries would seem to have ‘put an end’ to the national question in the various small divisions of the country—even in regard to that country, Engels reckoned with the plain fact that the national question was not yet a thing of the past, and recognized in consequence that the establishment of a federal republic would be a ‘step forward’.”
Both Lenin and Stalin argued that the National Question must be answered differently in different countries, but that the highest possible amount of unity on a democratic centralist basis must be preserved. Communists therefore support the progressive demand to complete the federal devolution of powers to Britain’s nations, but only as a precursor to socialist revolution, at which point other centralised, multinational socialist projects like the Soviet Union should be our model. Under socialism, the greatest possible unity is an absolute necessity to safeguard the revolution and advance the cause of communism across our nations. As this progresses in the higher stage of socialism, national differences, not only within Britain, but between Britain and other nations, will eventually disappear entirely.
Scotland and Wales
Scotland first formed as a nation in the 9th century from the linguistically distinct nationalities of the Picts of the Grampians, the Welsh-speaking Britons of Strathclyde, the English-speaking Saxons of the east and south, and the Gaelic speaking Irish Scots in the west. These distinct peoples first came together to fight the Viking conquest and defend the relative freedoms of the Christian, peasant-based communities from a regression to a slave-based society imposed by the invaders.
With relatively brief periods of subjugation, Scotland existed as an independent nation until 1707 when the Act of Union, building on the previous century’s Union of Crowns, saw Scotland unify with their historical rival, England, to form Great Britain.
During Scotland’s near millennium of independence, it often clashed and was influenced by its English neighbour. This relationship and influence saw a gradual fusion. We began to see a common language, distinctive territory, shared economic life, religion, and monarchy.
Episodes such as the Wars of Independence leading up to the early 14th century, the dual crowns under the Scottish House of Stewart, the Covenanters, the English Revolution, the so-called Glorious Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and the rapid expansion of the British Empire demonstrate the changing social, economic, and political conditions that have shaped the nation historically.
More recently, the fall of the empire, the collapse of the post-war social-democratic Keynesian consensus, giving birth in the destructive period of deindustrialisation to around forty years of unchallenged neoliberal hegemony, has led to a resurgence of the national movement in Scotland, spearheaded by bourgeois nationalist parties like the SNP who propose that national independence is the answer to this latest crisis of capitalism. These parties paint themselves as a progressive alternative to Westminster and present attacks on working-class living standards as a product of British rule, Brexit, or conservatism, rather than capitalism itself. They do this in a desperate attempt to divide workers by their flag, to tie the Scottish working class to the Scottish bourgeoisie, and to prevent any steps towards a socialist revolution across the entire island.
Some socialists argue that Scottish independence is an act of anti-imperialism, inevitably leading them to conceal Scotland’s historic support for empire and neglecting the fact that, despite their rhetoric, the interests of the Scottish, English, and Welsh bourgeoisies are largely aligned on questions of imperialism and would continue to unite in imperialist projects. Others attempt to reconcile their attachments to Scottish independence with socialism by calling on historic revolutionary figures like John Maclean, who in his later years argued that Scottish separatism was a necessary condition to socialist revolution because the Scottish proletariat was “more revolutionary” than the English or Welsh, and a Britain-wide revolution must therefore necessarily start in Scotland. Although Maclean made considerable contributions to the working-class movement in Scotland, his position left him at odds with the international communist movement, leading to hostility with other leading communist revolutionaries like Willie Gallacher, and frustration that Lenin and the Communist International supported the Communist Party of Great Britain over his own party, which soon fell into obscurity.
The question of Scottish independence was also rejected by the Scottish electorate in 2014. Respecting the right of nations to self-determination means respecting this result, not least of all since bourgeois arguments in favour of a second usually hinge on membership to imperialist projects like the European Union. Even if a second referendum did manage to secure a slim majority, Scottish workers would continue to be divided by the nationalist project, without seeing improvements to living standards which can only be secured through escalation and militancy against the capitalist class, and, ultimately, through a socialist revolution.
The best interests of Scotland, the workers’ Scotland, is therefore not whether we are ruled by capitalists in Brussels, London, or Edinburgh, but whether we will have the true and democratic freedoms that only socialism can provide: A planet that isn’t beyond saving, housing, education, jobs, food, humanity—as a fundamental right for each and every one of us.
As for Wales, due to its interaction with British imperialism, the Welsh labour movement has been gripped by a higher stratum of the workers whose focus on reformism and economism keeps the Welsh working class imprisoned by capitalism. In recent years, the Welsh Labour Party has presided over a neoliberal Wales that has failed to challenge the uneven development that has plagued the nation.
Looking for an alternative to Welsh Labour, some of the Welsh working class have been tempted into a nationalist struggle alongside the Welsh middle classes. In 1925, the foundation of the National Party of Wales was dominated by such petty-bourgeois elements and possessed a heavily reactionary politics. This later became Plaid Cymru, one of the main voices for an independent Wales. Today, Plaid Cymru promotes a small-market capitalism, with policies that focus on promoting the interests of small business in Wales. Not only is this an impossible proposition at the current stage of capitalist development, it certainly does not serve the interests of the Welsh working class. The interests of the Welsh petty bourgeoisie are to replace the English ruling class with a Welsh one—a purely cosmetic change which would not advance the cause of the Welsh workers and only delays the development of their class consciousness.
In the 1970s, the Welsh Trade Union Council was established with the help of Britain’s communists. This led to campaigning for devolution and eventually the Senedd. Devolution expanded democratic rights to the people of Wales and can be viewed as a compromise between the British bourgeoisie, the Welsh petit-bourgeoisie, and the upper stratum of the workers in Wales, but Westminster still reserves some major powers from Wales, such as police and justice.
Patriotism
Addressing the National Question in an imperialist country also inevitably raises cultural questions of national identity and pride, which may at first appear contradictory. For example, many workers feel a strong attachment to their national flag, while at the same time hating the government which flies it. One worker may sing the national anthem and celebrate national holidays out of love for their family, home, and community, while another may boycott these rituals out of an opposition to their country’s colonial history.
Different classes therefore wrestle over ideas about patriotism and the national interest to promote their own individual politics. For example, while conservative capitalists assure us that love of one’s country means support for the monarchy, a working-class communist may promote a truer form of patriotism by opposing the parasitic classes living off the labour of their countrymen. Capitalists may pretend to support national sovereignty, for example, in arguing for exit from the European Union, while at the same time promoting a foreign policy which subordinates Britain to a larger imperialist power: the United States. But this only gives communists an opportunity to demand a truer sovereignty by demanding exit from NATO and for US military bases to be driven off of British soil.
By revealing the contradictions inherent to capitalist and chauvinistic patriotism and nationalism, communists can expose these reactionary forces as the national traitors that they are, and instead show that only socialism can truly meet the interests of the workers and allow our country to reach its highest potential.
Further Reading:
Labour in Irish History, J. Connolly
The Re-Conquest of Ireland, J. Connolly
Conditions of the Working Class in England, F. Engels
Nations and Working-Class Unity, J. Foster
The Right of Nations to Self-Determination, V. I. Lenin
A People’s History of England, A. L. Morton
Marxism and the National Question, J. Stalin
Discussion Questions:
- Lenin argued that we must support the most revolutionary elements in the bourgeois democratic movements for national liberation against imperialism. Who would this mean supporting today?
- How should we approach different movements for national independence, e.g., in Scotland compared to Ireland?
- Why do workers fly the flag of their country? Should they be criticised for this?
- What is the difference between a nation and a state? Can we support one without the other?
How do we avoid both national chauvinism (belief that our nation is superior to others) and national nihilism (belief that our nation is inferior to others or a lost cause)?
