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From state capitalism to revolutionary democracy
The RDG was founded in1983 by Socialist Workers Party members, who had been part of the SWP’s Republican Faction. Our ideas about revolutionary democracy were developed in conflict with the economism of the SWP.

A short version of this article appearedas a letter in Weekly Worker 289 May 20 1999 under the title “No guarantee.”

In reply to Sandy McBurney (Weekly Worker 287) I did not write nor attempt to write a report of the Glasgow Marxist Forum. I simply used the meeting as device for critically explaining the three basic positions of Scottish communists which I claimed were unionist, democrat and nationalist. These positions were represented at the meeting by Allan Armstrong, Mary Ward and Sandy himself.

Sandy seems to be upset that I characterised his position as Unionist-communist. I would be quite happy to retract that accusation on the basis of hard evidence to the contrary. But I haven’t seen any such evidence yet. So let me explain again my reasons for identifying Sandy’s position as Unionist, which Sandy says is “outlandish” and “ludicrous”.

The Union of England and Scotland is not a voluntary union. It was not formed democratically. Scotland is not a republic and therefore its people are not the sovereign authority with the right to decide of unity or secession. There is no constitutional mechanism which would enable the Scottish people to hold a referendum to decide. The Scottish people do not have a legal-constitutional right to self determination.

All Unionists argue that the Scottish people already have the right to self determination. All they need to do is vote for it. But this is false. The absence of a legal right to self determination is shown by the convoluted methods that must be used instead. First Scottish people must vote SNP in sufficiently large numbers. They have to align themselves with the anti-working class politics of the SNP. They must hope that the British ruling class will not bribe the SNP or threaten violence. They must then hope that the British ruling class will simply stand aside. This is not the right to self determination, but the keep your fingers crossed and hope for self determination.

The Bolsheviks did not leave self determination as an abstract principle. In their “Theses on the National question” (Lenin CW 19 p244) they spell it out as “the settlement of the question of such secession only on the basis of a universal, direct and equal vote of the population of the given territory by secret ballot”. Later the Bolshevik’s central committee described self determination as “the constitutional guarantee of an absolutely free and democratic method of deciding the question of secession”. (Lenin CW 19 p429).

Self determination means that the unity of Scotland and England is a voluntary union of sovereign peoples. That means a republic with the democratic constitutional means of peaceful separation. There is no “constitutional guarantee” of self determination within the current Unionist constitution.

Scotland is a small nation tied constitutionally to a much larger nation. Without a “constitutional guarantee” there can be no meaningful political equality between two nations of different sizes. So when Sandy asks whether “the lack of a written constitution guaranteeing Scotland’s right to self determination is a form of national oppression” my answer, and that of the Bolsheviks must be yes.

On the question of the republic, I claimed that Sandy is soft. He is a liberal republican not a revolutionary republican. A revolutionary republican is a militant anti-monarchist who is totally intolerant of the monarchy and is prepared to advocate mass action and force to rid society of this vile abomination. The revolutionary republican tradition includes Cromwell, the New Model army, the Levelers, Tom Paine, the left Chartists and James Connolly.

I see no reason yet to change my characterisation of Sandy’s position as a liberal republican. But I would welcome a statement from him to clarify his position. The roots of his liberal republicanism or if you like more tolerant view of the monarchy lies in spontaneity. Sandy thinks the working class is conservative. We could win them to socialism, but we will never persuade them to abolish the monarchy! Instead of taking up the task of a militant republican and winning the masses, the more conservative workers have persuaded Sandy that abolishing the monarchy is not worthwhile.

Finally it is worth noting that Sandy does not ignore bourgeois democracy. He comes up with his own democratic demand, namely annual parliaments. The RDG is in favour of this. It is written into our programme. But this demand begs some obvious questions.

If Sandy is setting up annual parliaments as an alternative to abolishing the monarchy. If this were true then Sandy would stand accused using diversionary tactics to protect the monarchy by diverting attention. A republic with annual parliaments is not the

same as a monarchy with annual parliaments. Is Sandy in favour of either or both of these options.

If Sandy is in favour of a republic with annual parliaments then the question is how many? If Sandy is a centralist he will want only one parliament and will want to abolish the parliaments in Wales and Scotland. Federal republicans do not want to do that at this stage of the class struggle. We want an English annual parliament as well. So does Sandy want an annual parliament for England?

Dave Craig