NOVANEWS
Contributed by the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) as a discussion article
Introduction
The continuing decline of British imperialism, combined with the continuing decline of the working-class movement, has over the past at least three decades pushed the national question in Britain to the fore. It is not the first time in history that such a period of reaction and decline has brought in its train disillusionment and a lack of faith in the common forces of the working class. This lack of faith in a common bright future has caused sections of the British proletariat, particularly in Scotland, to take shelter under a national tent. Even some organisations and individuals, calling themselves ‘socialist’ or ‘communist’ have not been immune from the disease of creeping nationalism.
To the rising tide of nationalism, and the increase in the electoral support for the Scottish National Party (SNP), the Blair government responded by a devolution plan, endorsed in a referendum of 11 September 1997, which devolved some powers to a Scottish Parliament set up under this dispensation. A Welsh Assembly, though with fewer powers than the Scottish Parliament, was also brought into existence.
The SNP is programmatically committed to Scottish independence, a referendum on which is scheduled to be held in 2014, marking the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn, a battle won by the feudal barons of Scotland against those of England.
To the extent that the British ruling class has accepted that Scotland is a nation, and has conceded its right to secede and constitute an independent state, writing on the question of Scottish nationhood might be regarded as an exercise in futility. Although our views will have absolutely no effect on the holding of the referendum on Scottish independence, they may prove to be of some significance in the actual outcome of that referendum if we manage to spread them among the working class in Scotland. If nothing else, writing on the question, albeit belatedly, may bring theoretical clarity to a subject which has become enveloped in so much emotion and obfuscation.
In order that a thing or a phenomenon may be usefully discussed, it is necessary to define it, for without such a definition, without an agreement on the essential characteristics and properties of the phenomenon being discussed, all discussion about it becomes meaningless, with the disputants talking at cross purposes and ending up hurling abuse at each other. This is especially so with regard to the national question, on which people are so little informed and which, therefore, gives rise to such heated, not to say fruitless, debate and release of emotion. To avoid this, we shall start with a definition of what constitutes a nation.
Definition of a nation
The most scientific and world-famous definition of a nation was given by Joseph Stalin. Writing in his 1913 pamphlet, Marxism and the National Question, Stalin defines a nation thus:
“A nation is a historically evolved, stable community of language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a community of culture.” (FLPH, Moscow 1940, p 5) (Stalin’s emphasis)[1]
Thus, a nation is a definite community of people. This community is not racial, nor is it tribal, but a historically constituted community of people; nor is it a casual or ephemeral agglomeration, as for instance the great empires of Cyrus and Alexander, but a stable community of people.
However, not every stable community can constitute a nation, For instance, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, India, etc., are stable communities but no one with any knowledge of the question calls them nations – they are states and political entities. What, then, distinguishes a national community from a political community?
One of its distinguishing features is that a national community is impossible to conceive without a common language, whereas a state does not necessarily have a common language.
So, “community of language is one of the characteristic features of a nation” (ibid p5).
From this one must not conclude “that different nations always and everywhere necessarily speak different languages, or that all those who speak one language necessarily constitute one nation. A common language for every nation, but not necessarily different languages for different nations” (ibid pp5-6). While there is no nation which speaks at the one and the same time several languages, this does not exclude that there may be two or more nations speaking the same language.
Thus, for example, the British, the American and Australians, notwithstanding a common language – English – do not constitute one nation. They do not constitute a single nation because, inhabiting different territories, they do not live together. A nation comes into being through lengthy and systematic intercourse between people living together for generations. In the absence of a common territory, naturally people cannot live together for lengthy periods. “Thus community of territory is one of the characteristic features of a nation” (ibid p 6).
Community of territory is by no means sufficient to create a nation. What is required, in addition, is “an internal economic bond which welds the various parts of a nation into a single whole” (ibid p.6).
To prove his point, Stalin gives the example of his native Georgia before the latter half of the 19th century. At that time, although the Georgians inhabited a common territory and spoke one language, they did not constitute one nation, for, being split up in a number of disconnected principalities, there was no common economic bond to weld them together. For centuries they indulged in internecine warfare, inciting the Persians and Turks against each other. Georgia only appeared on the scene as a nation in the second half of the 19th century, with the abolition of serfdom and the growth of capitalism, with the resultant development of the means of communication and the institution of a division of labour between the different parts of Georgia, which served to completely shatter the economic isolation and self-sufficiency of the principalities, binding them together into a single whole.
The same is true of every other territory which went through the stage of feudalism before going on to develop capitalism. Thus, we may confidently assert that, in spite of the fact that there were people inhabiting a geographical entity known as England in the 12th and 13th centuries, or even 14th and 15th centuries, there was no English nation at that time. Nor could there be one, considering the splendid isolation in which the various disconnected principalities carried on their existence. This, notwithstanding the fact that from time to time a successful King may have managed to bring about their transitory amalgamation, which in time disintegrated owing to the fortunes of war, “the caprices of the princes and the indifference of the peasants” (ibid, p 6).
“Thus community of economic life, economic cohesion, is one of the characteristic features of a nation” (ibid p5).
In addition to the above-mentioned features of a nation, there is yet another which must be taken into account, to wit, the specific spiritual complexion of the people constituting a nation. This spiritual complexion manifests itself in the peculiarities of national culture, resultant upon conditions of existence over generations.
This psychological make-up, commonly referred to as the “national character”, in so far as it reveals itself in a distinctive culture common to the nation, for all its indefinability to the observer, is definable and cannot be ignored.
We hasten to add that “national character” is not something fixed forever, but it changes with the changes in the conditions of life. However, since it exists at every given moment, it leaves its stamp on the physiognomy of the nation.
“Thus community of psychological make-up, which manifests itself in a community of culture, is one of the characteristic features of a nation”.
The above, then, are the characteristic features of a nation, which Stalin summarized in his pithy definition cited at the beginning of this section.
None of the above characteristics is by itself sufficient to define a nation, although it is sufficient for a single of these characteristics to be absent and the nation ceases to be a nation.
Nation: a historical phenomenon
Nations have not always existed, nor will they exist forever. On the contrary a nation is a historical phenomenon and, as such, it is subject to the law of change, has it history, its beginning and end. More precisely, a nation is not merely a historical category but a historical category belonging to a definite epoch, the epoch of rising capitalism.
The process of the destruction of feudalism and the development of capitalism was simultaneously a process of amalgamation of people into nations. This, for instance, is how the British, French, Germans and some others constituted themselves into nations at the time of the triumphant advance of capitalism and its victory over feudalism. The formation of nations in these instances at the same time signified their conversion into independent national states – British, French, etc.
What took place in Western Europe earlier (roughly between 1789 and 1871 – earlier still in Britain) took place in Eastern Europe and Asia, where capitalism was late in developing, a century later, i.e., from the turn of the 20th century. In the East, however, multi-national states were formed, comprising several nationalities as, for instance, in Russia. In the East, owing to the continued existence of feudalism, hand in hand with the feeble development of capitalism, nationalities which had been forced into the background had not yet managed to consolidate themselves as economically integral nations. Here the role of welder of nationalities into a state was assumed by the politically most advanced group – the Great-Russians in Russia, the Magyars in Hungary, and so forth.
At long last capitalism also began to develop in the Eastern states, resulting in the economic consolidation of nations. “Capitalism, erupting into the tranquil life of the ousted nationalities” (p.12), aroused them and stirred them into action, but, although stirred to independent life, the ousted nations were in no position to constitute themselves into independent national states owing to the powerful opposition of the ruling strata of the dominant nations, which had much earlier assumed the control of the state. They were, so to speak, too late!
The same process is taking place under our very eyes in Africa today, where various politically strong peoples and tribes have taken upon themselves the task of amalgamating various peoples and welding them into nations. Not all the tribes are destined to emerge from this process as fully-fledged nations. Some, nay the majority, the weaker ones, are bound to be assimilated by others, the stronger ones. That is in the very nature of the development of capitalism and the process of nation formation. And no one but the most sentimental reactionaries will moan at the obliteration of certain tribes as distinct entities. And in this process of nation-formation, historically the bourgeoisie everywhere plays the leading role. Nor could it be otherwise, for, as Stalin says: “The chief problem for the young bourgeoisie is the problem of the market. Its aim is to sell its goods and emerge victorious. … Hence its desire to secure its ‘own’, its ‘home’ market. The market is the first school in which the bourgeoisie learns its nationalism” (ibid p 13).
In his article, The Right of Nations to Self-Determination, Lenin makes the same point in the following terms:
“Throughout the world, the period of the final victory of capitalism over feudalism has been linked with the national movements. For the complete victory of commodity production, the bourgeoisie must capture the home market, must have politically united territories with a population speaking a single language and all obstacles to the development of this language and to its consolidation in literature must be removed, such is the economic basis of national movements. Language is the most important means of human intercourse. Unity of language and its unimpeded development are the most important conditions for genuinely free and extensive commercial intercourse on a scale commensurate with modern capitalism, for a free and broad grouping of the population in all its various classes and, lastly, for the establishment of a close connection between the market and each and every proprietor, big or little, and between seller and buyer” (Collected Works (CW) Vol 20, p394, Feb-May 1914).
Lenin was in complete agreement with Stalin and highly, even effusively, appreciative of the latter’s theoretical contribution on the all too important national question. Towards the end of 1913, in his The National Programme of the RSDLP, he stated that there was “no need to dwell” on the question of “why and how the national question” had at the time been brought to the fore as the “fundamentals of a national programme” of the Bolsheviks “have recently been dealt with in Marxist theoretical literature (the most prominent place being taken by Stalin’s article*)” (*‘Marxism and the National Question, written at the end of 1912 and the beginning of 1913 in Vienna and published in the magazine, Prosvesheheniye (Enlightenment), nos. 3, 4, 5 for 1913 under the title ‘The National Question and Social-Democracy’).
Already in February of that year, in his letter to Maxim Gorky, Lenin wrote exuberantly “We have a wonderful Georgian here who has sat down to write a big article for Prosvesheheniye after collecting all the Austrian and other material”.
Soon after, on finding that Stalin’s article was proposed to be published with the sub-heading that it was for discussion only, Lenin expressed his outrage thus: “Of course, we are absolutely against this. It is a very good article. The question is a burning issue, and we shall not yield one jot of principle to the Bundist scum”.
Again, when in March 1913 Stalin was arrested, Lenin sent this message to the editors ofSotsial Demokrat: “Arrests among us are very heavy. Koba [Stalin] has been taken. …He managed to write a long article … on the national question. Good! We must fight for the truth against separatists and opportunists of the Bund and among the Liquidators”.
In the light of the above Marxist-Leninist theory of modern nations, how and in what historical circumstances do they arise, let us now delve into the question of Scottish nationhood.
Scottish nationhood
Scottish nationalism – of the right and left variety – starts from the assumption that Scotland was a nation from medieval times, if not earlier. Some even go to the ludicrous extent of tracing the origin of Scotland to the time of the ancient Picts, or the arrival of Scots from Ireland, or MacAlpine kings in the 9th century. The more intelligent, among the nationalists, while not going to these extremes, assert that Scotland achieved nationhood in high medieval times. In support of this assertion, they refer to Scotland’s alleged war of independence against the ‘English’, the grandiloquent Declaration of Arbroath (1320), William Wallace’s victory at Stirling Bridge (1297), the battle of Bannockburn (1314), and the ‘holy trinity of the Kirk, the education system and the law. Even the Jacobite rebellions of 1715 and 1745 are pressed into service in this narrative, not for what they really represented, namely a dynastic fight between the deposed Stewarts and the recently ensconced Hanoverians, but as expressions of Scotland’s national resistance against encroaching English colonialism.
John Foster, a leading light of the Communist Party of Britain (CPB) and a well-reputed academic, supplied theoretical embellishment for this historically inaccurate and absurd narrative. While Marxism-Leninism, as outlined at the beginning of this article, quite correctly associates the rise of nations with the development of capitalism, the ‘Marxist’ historian Foster asserts, in the face of contrary historical evidence, that the Scottish ‘nation’ was almost completely a “feudal creation” (see J Foster, ‘Capitalism and the Scottish Nation’, in G Brown (editor) The red paper on Scotland, Edinburgh 1975, p.142).
The “founding elements” of Scottish law, language and literature, he says, all “stem from the last three centuries of the middle ages” (ibid).
And elsewhere: “Most comrades … agree that by the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries at least four … groupings had fused themselves into a nation that identified itself as Scottish; long before any moves towards modernisation and at a time when Scots society was anything but civil” (J Foster, ‘Nationality, Social Change and Class: Transformations of National Identity in Scotland’, D McCrone, S Kendrick and P Straw (eds), The making of Scotland, culture and social change, Edinburgh University Press/British Sociological Association, Edinburgh, 1989, p.35).
Some of the protagonists of this theory go further, asserting that Scotland was not only a nation prior to the Union of Scotland and England in 1707, but incorporated into England as an oppressed nation – a status which allegedly it has maintained ever since. Not surprisingly, then, in this view Britain and Britishness are disdainfully dismissed as no more than an elitist unity and a fragile imperial construct, behind which lurk real ‘nations’ of England, Wales and Scotland, thirsting to be freed from its suffocating embrace. The ‘leftist’ version of this trend of thought expresses itself in the form of Scottish socialism or a Scottish workers’ republic. The Trotskyite Tommy Sheridan of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) went so far as to protest in print against 300 years of Scottish ‘national’ oppression and advocate the cause of Scottish independence.
The falsity of the above nationalist myth was exposed very well indeed by Neil Davidson, in his book The Origins of Scottish Nationalism (Pluto Press, 2000). Notwithstanding some of its serious shortcomings, which need not delay us here, this book has done more than any other to our knowledge to debunk the nationalist myth and to subject it to well-deserved ridicule and scorn.
There is, however, one question we would like to get out of the way before dealing with the substance of Davidson’s analysis which shows up the nationalist myth for what it is – nothing but hackneyed twaddle. This question concerns the definition of a nation.
The very first chapter of his book, the “purpose” of which, he says “… is to produce a conceptual framework within which Scottish experience can be discussed”, Davidson fails miserably, revealing himself to be a very poor theoretician. In his attempt to define a nation, he ties himself in knots. Definitions of nationhood, he opines, “rely either on objective or subjective criteria”, adding for good measure that there is “… no agreed Marxist position and little help to be gained from Marx or Engels themselves”, for a precise definition of the concept is not to be found in “their writings on the national question” (Davidson, p.8).
Davidson is far too erudite not to know that, in Marxist literature, the precise definition of a nation given by Stalin (cited above) has been accepted as the only scientifically correct definition and as such held sway for a whole century in the international working-class movement. He also knows fully well that Stalin’s definition met with Lenin’s enthusiastic approval. Far from being pleased when encountering a precise definition which could serve him in achieving his declared purpose of producing “a conceptual framework” for studying the Scottish experience, Davidson is much irked by this fact. While admitting that the “most famous definition” of what characterises a nation was “given by Stalin in an article of 1913 called ‘Marxism and the National Question’”, he bemoans the fact that this definition “unfortunately has exerted an influence over the left far in excess of its theoretical merits, which are slight”.
Davidson makes not the slightest attempt to prove the correctness of his assertion that the theoretical merits of Stalin’s definition are merely slight, considering that his definition served as a guide to the Bolshevik programme on the national question, both prior to and following the Great Socialist October Revolution; considering also that the Bolshevik policy on the national question was one of the crucial factors in the victory of the Bolsheviks. He dismisses Stalin’s definition as “merely an extensive checklist of criteria”, under which, he says, “many nations which are currently recognised as such would be denied the title …” (p8).
In substantiation of this assertion, he has the misfortune to choose the example of Switzerland which fails “the Stalinist criteria on at least two counts: those of language … and religion”, adding that, nevertheless Swiss territory did not change from 1515 to 1803, during which time “the vast majority spoke dialects of German”; only at the “latter date” did Switzerland incorporate Italian speakers, and not until 1815 “did it acquire territories with significant French speaking populations. The Swiss state was formed in 1815 only and right up to 1848 “it was enforcing religions within the cantons”. In 1891, the Swiss state decided “… that the 600th anniversary of the founding of the original confederation of Schwyz, Obwalden and Nidwalden in 1291 constituted the origin of the Swiss nation”. Being very pleased with himself, Davidson triumphantly declares: “It should be clear even from this brief account that the Swiss nation exists in the absence of [Davidson’s emphasis] of the elements which are supposed to constitute nationhood, not because of them” (pp8-9).
On the contrary, it is clear that such a Swiss nation, as imagined by Davidson, exists only in Davidson’s head and not in reality. No Swiss nation has ever existed in the past, nor does it exist today. It could not have existed in feudal, pre-capitalist, Switzerland, for the rise of nations is inextricably linked with the development of capitalism; nations are formed through the intermingling of sundry tribes, ethnic groups and nationalities, brought about in the wake of capitalist development. There were at that time diverse groups occupying Swiss territory, which itself underwent changes, but no Swiss nation, for there was no “common economic life” (Stalin) which might, other conditions being present, have given rise to the formation of a Swiss nation. This being the case, no decision of the Swiss state could have served to constitute a Swiss nation in 1291 anymore than the decision of the British state in 1891 could have constituted an English or British nation in 1291. If decisions of the state could replace all historical development, all discussion on the subject would be pointless; for it would be ever so easy to conjure into existence all manner of entities which have no historical foundation.
There has not existed a single Swiss nation since 1815 either, for Switzerland is a multinational state, with four languages, which enjoy equal status. Apart from the economic cohesion consequent upon the development of capitalism what secures this state the loyalty of its citizens and inculcates in them a sense of being Swiss in relation to the non-Swiss, is the degree of democracy that has permeated the Swiss state since 1848. In the words of Lenin: “… there is only one solution to the national problem (insofar as it can, in general, be solved in the capitalist world, the world of profit, squabbling and exploitation), and that solution is consistent democracy.
“The proof – Switzerland in Western Europe, a country with an old culture, and Finland in Eastern Europe, a country with a young culture” (‘Critical Remarks on the National Question’, CW Vol 20, p202)[2].
It is clear from the above remarks of Lenin, that he is firmly, and correctly, of the view that the Swiss state was a multinational state, which had been able to solve the national question, to the extent it is capable of a solution under the conditions of capitalism, through the application of consistent democracy. Had the Swiss state been a nation state, there would self-evidently be no national problem within its borders.
As if not to leave anyone in doubt, a mere two months earlier, in his article ‘Critical Remarks on the National Question’, arguing against the opportunists on the national question Lenin specifically says this: “to be sure, Switzerland is an exception in that she is not a single-nation state” (Collected Works, Volume 20)
Probably having a sneaking feeling that he was wrong, and in order to cover his theoretical nakedness, Davidson enlists the services of a witness, just as naked theoretically as Davidson himself. In note 6 of chapter one of his book he drools thus:
“It is perhaps appropriate that Leon Trotsky, the man who did most to uphold the classical Marxist tradition against Stalin, also offered an alternative to his checklist procedure using precisely the example of Switzerland:
“… ‘the Swiss people, through their historical connection, feel themselves to be a nation [our emphasis] despite languages and religions. An abstract criterion is not decisive in this question, far more decisive is the historical consciousness of a group, their feelings, their impulses. But that too is not determined accidently, but rather by the situation and all attendant circumstances [whatever they may be! – Lalkar]’” (p214)
If by citing the above purely subjective nonsense, all in the name of fighting against Stalin’s “checklist procedure” and his purely “objective” criteria for determining nationhood, Davidson may have wanted to bring credit to Trotsky, all he has succeeded in doing is to reveal Trotsky’s total theoretical bankruptcy and his substitution of concrete, solid, historical processes and phenomena by historical consciousness, feelings and impulses of a group. Since the Swiss, goes the argument, have feelings, etc., they must be a nation. By this procedure, a lot of non-nation entities, Jews, for example, can claim to be nations, whose claims must be accepted, if for no other reason than they entertain such consciousness, feelings and impulses. From such a slippery and opportunist stance one quickly rolls down the hill and finds oneself in the swamp of Zionism and the worst kind of bourgeois nationalism.
Besides, before quoting Trotsky so uncritically, Davidson ought to have paid heed to the following words of Lenin in regard to Trotsky: “Trotsky has never yet held a firm opinion on any important question of Marxism. He always contrives to worm his way into the cracks of any given differences of opinion, and desert one side for the other. At the moment he is in the company of the Bundists and the Liquidators. And these gentlemen do not stand on ceremony where the party is concerned”.
These words were written precisely as a time when Trotsky was speculating “on fermenting differences between the Polish and Russian opponents of Liquidationism and to deceive the Russian workers on the question of the programme [especially section 9 dealing with the right of nations to self determination]” (ibid.)
Trotsky had written in the journal Borba that the “… Polish Marxists consider the ‘right to national self-determination’ is entirely devoid of political content and should be deleted from the programme”.
The blatant falsity of Trotsky’s assertion prompted Lenin to respond thus: “the obliging Trotsky is more dangerous than an enemy. Trotsky could produce no proof, except ‘private conversations’ (i.e. simply gossip, on which Trotsky always subsists), for classifying ‘Polish Marxists’ in general as supporters of every article by Rosa Luxemburg. Trotsky presented the ‘Polish Marxists’ as people devoid of honour and conscious, incapable of respecting even their own convictions and the programme of their Party. How obliging Trotsky is!”
Having dismissed Stalin’s definition as purely “objective”, Davidson falls into the morass of pure subjectivism and wriggles like an eel as he labours over “granting national status” to such groups as Zionists, South African white supremacists and Ulster loyalists (p10). He goes as far as to approvingly reproduce the following purely subjective definition of a nation given by the Zionist philosopher, Ahad Ha’am:
“If I feel the spirit of Jewish nationality in my heart so that it stamps all my inward life with its seal, then the spirit of Jewish nationality exists in me; and its existence is not at an end even if all my Jewish contemporaries should cease to feel it in their hearts”.
The meaning of this solipsist absurdity, if it has any meaning, can only be that the worthy Mr Ha’am will constitute a Jewish nation on his own and will be applauded all the way to some lunatic asylum by Davidson.
Having waded through incredible confusion, Davidson says that he would use the word nation “to describe a human community that has acquired national consciousness”.
“Contrary to what is written by Stalin and other objectivist theorists of the nation”, asserts Davidson, “there is no underlying reality of nationhood…” Contrasting a class with a nation, and in an attempt to be profoundly original, Davidson says that while there can be class ‘in itself’, i.e. the working class exists as a matter of fact whether or not its members are conscious of their position as workers, there “can never be a ‘nation in itself’”. Let Davidson expound his original profundity:
“Class consciousness arises through a process of recognising real common interests, a recognition which is only possible as a result of social classes having material reality prior to consciousness. National consciousness arises through a process of constructing imaginary common interests, a construction which can result in the establishment of a territorial nation state, but only at that point will the nation have a material reality outside of consciousness. The resulting difference in aspirations may be summed up schematically by saying that a member of a social class may achieve class consciousness (bring their consciousness in line with reality) and a group with national consciousness may achieve statehood (bring reality in line with their consciousness)” (p13) (Davidson’s emphasis).
Such idealist twaddle, according to which nations are the product, not of a long historical process connected with the development of capitalism, but of conjuring up “imaginary common interests”, is worthy of a Bishop Berkeley and not of someone claiming to be a Marxist. This nonsense stands reality on its head, for it asserts that it is not the material reality of the existence of a nation which produces national consciousness but, on the contrary, it is the national consciousness which brings forth the material reality of nationhood. Obviously poor Marx laboured in vain for his profound materialist teaching that it is the social being that determines social consciousness, not the social consciousness that determines social being, has had little effect on some of those who profess to follow his teaching.
Having haughtily, and foolishly, dismissed Stalin’s definition as a purely objectivist checklist, he goes on to use exactly the same criteria which characterise Stalin’s definition of a nation, to devastating effect in annihilating the right and left nationalist assertions as to the existence of a Scottish nation prior to the 1707 Union with England. As an adherent of Trotskyism and loyal member of the Socialist Workers’ Party, an incurably counter-revolutionary Trotskyist organisation, Davidson had willy-nilly to perform this conjuring trick of dismissing in words Stalin’s highly precise and scientific definition, while making use of it on the sly in practice to demolish the absurd claims of bourgeois and ‘left’ Scottish nationalism. Be that as it may, Davidson has amassed a tremendous amount of empirical evidence to reveal the hollowness of nationalist claims and shown them to be the myths that they are.
The thrust of Davidson’s thesis is that there could not have been, and there was not, a Scottish nation before the 1707 Act of Union. It is entirely mistaken, he maintains correctly, to attribute to medieval formations, or to entities earlier still, the notions of modern nations. Although doubtless most states, almost invariably, surround themselves with a mythical narrative, with roots going back to ancient history, all the same it is entirely misplaced to project present-day nations backwards into times long past.
Nation
Part of the problem, says Davidson, lies in the long usage connected with the word ‘nation’, whose meanings have changed beyond recognition over nearly two millennia. In the Vulgate Bible, first produced in the third century, the original Greek ethnos was rendered as the Latinnatio. In the first English versions of the Bible (14th century), natio was translated as nacioun,becoming in turn nation in the authorised version of 1611. For the authors and translators of the Bible, the word ‘nation’, far from conveying what we understand by the use of this word today, had ethnic and racial connotations, designating ‘gens’ or ‘populus’ with a presumed common biological descent.
Davidson says that “…if the feudal idea of a nation was essentially defined racially, then the feudal idea of race was itself defined linguistically”, adding that it “…was on this basis of common language that the student fraternity in medieval universities was usually, if not exclusively, divided into ‘nations’ from the thirteenth century onwards” (p25). A similar situation prevailed in the knightly orders, with the Hospitallers in the Levant being grouped into tongues depending on their place of origin in Western Europe.
Thus it is clear that the word ‘nation’, as used in medieval and earlier times, far from being a source of clarity on the subject, has caused much confusion and provided fertile ground for the propagation of nationalist myths.
Declaration of Arbroath
In this context, we cannot avoid referring to the famous Declaration of Arbroath, which has been variously interpreted by some historians as expressing “all the fierce nationalism of the fourteenth century”[3]; the clearest “….statement of Scottish nationalism and patriotism in the fourteenth century” and the finest “… statement of a claim to national independence… produced in this period anywhere in western Europe.”[4]
Far from it. As Davidson rightly observes, “The sonorous wording of the Declaration is in fact a clear statement of, among other things, the fact that the feudal ruling class still considered themselves to be a nation in a racial rather than the modern sense” (p.48). This Declaration took the form of a letter from the leading Scottish nobles “and other barons and freeholders and the whole community of the realm of Scotland” to Pope John XXII, asking the latter to intercede with Edward II in the interests of peace between Scotland and England, which had been intermittently at war since 1296. Probably the contents of the Declaration had been settled at an assembly of nobles at Newbattle Abbey in Midlothian in March 1320, and a final text was prepared and sent by Bernard of Linton, the Chancellor of Scotland and Abbot of Arbroath, dated 6 April.
The preamble to the Declaration is characteristically medieval: it traces the wanderings of the “Scots nation” from “Greater Scythia” to Scotland, celebrates its triumphs over Britons and Picts, and survival from attacks by “Norwegians, Danes and English” (p.49). As Davidson remarks, those who assert that these statements serve to “prove the existence of a primordial Scottish nation must logically also accept the existence of primordial ‘British’ and ‘Pictish’ nations” (ibid.).
Apart from anything else, the names of Roger Mowbray and Ingram Unafraville, among the signatories, are evocative of a descent from Anglo-Normal settlers invited to settle in Scotland during the reign of David (1124-1153), who themselves descended “…from earlier Viking invaders of what is now France from what is now Norway – a place somewhat removed from Scythia” (p.49).
A key passage in the Declaration runs thus: “Yet if he [Robert the Bruce] shall give up what he has begun, seeking to make us or our kingdom subject to the king of England or to the English, we would strive at once to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter of his own rights and ours, and we would make some other man who was able to defend us our king; for, as long as hundred of us remain alive, we will never on any conditions be subjected to the lordship of the English. For we fight not [for] glory, nor riches, nor honours, but for freedom alone, which no good man gives up without his life” (quoted in Davidson, p.49).
The above passage has been represented by some as the prototype for modern nationalism. Some have even gone so far as to assert that this doubtlessly brilliant example of medieval bombast represents “the first national or governmental articulation, in all of Europe, of the principle of the contractual theory of monarchy which lies at the heart of modern constitutionalism.”[5]
In truth, this passage suggests the function of the noble estate “as the defender of the kingdom against the claims of the individual monarch in a way that was entirely typical of absolutist Europe” (p.50). It is no more than a statement, albeit exceptionally eloquent, of medieval regnal solidarity. Its message was two-fold. First, it was directed at Edward II, informing him that it was pointless for him to attempt to depose Robert with a more subservient king, since the remainder of the Scottish aristocracy would not cease its resistance. Second, it was addressed to Robert, making it clear that they would not brook his jeopardising their interests – which lay in their god-given right to unhindered exploitation of the mass of the peasantry – through making concessions to Edward. In this sense, the message can rightly be seen as a Scottish version of the Magna Carta, imposed by the barons of England on King John at Runnymede in 1215.
To attribute to the Declaration of Arbroath modern connotations of nationhood is as false as to impart similar meanings to the Magna Carta. Both these documents should be seen for what they really were – an expression of regnal solidarity by the barons of the respective kingdoms and their determination to hang on to their privileges, against the monarch. As Davidson correctly points out, to read into the Declaration the notions of a modern nation, not merely obscures its motives but “establishes a false identity” and “confers legitimacy on a key element in nationalist ideology, namely the primordial continuity of ‘the nation’ throughout history”.
Cosmopolitan feudal elite
The kings and the nobility of both kingdoms – England and Scotland – were feudal lords, who did not even understand, let alone entertain, modern-day ideas of nationhood, nor could they. They were possessed of a culture drawn from the Norman French, who married across the whole of the north-western part of Europe and were, in this sense, cosmopolitan to their fingertips. To them the very concept of wars of national liberation would have been entirely alien. Their domains of exploitation, their rivalries and their commonalities invariably coincided. Norman French was the first language of the Anjou and Plantagenet kings of England, not English. They were also paramount lords in Scotland, Wales and Ireland. They held large tracts in France and derived most of their wealth, surplus produce and their military-political power, from their French, not their English, domains. In this regard, Henry II can be best viewed as Henri of Angevin.
Long before the 1066 Norman conquest of England, invading Angles had settled along the east coast up to the north and over the Lothian plain, which was for long part of the English kingdom of Northumbria. The battle of Carham (1018) added the Lothians to Scotland. It did more than fix the present border between England and Scotland: it determined that Scotland would not be a purely Celtic country and that it’s most fertile and economically promising part would have a language akin to the one spoken in the north of England and open to feudal influences from the south.
After 1066 a feudal baronage grew up closely connected with England and holding large estates in both kingdoms. For example, Robert Bruce, the Earl of Carrick and a vassal of Edward I, held 90,000 acres of land in Yorkshire, while his rival, John Balliol, held large tracts of land in Normandy and England as well as Scotland. The kings of England – the Plantagenet and Anjou – held large areas of France – Gascony, Aquitaine and Poitou, inter alia – and regularly laid claims on the French throne. Members of the nobility from the kingdom of Scotland, for example John Comyn, fought on the side of Edward I in the latter’s conquest of Wales, while the armies of Edward I and II, deployed in the wars in Scotland, which were firmly rooted in feudal, not national rights, were recruited from their feudal realms in France, Wales and Ireland.
Undoubtedly Edward I laid claims to the kingdom of Scotland and sought to include it into his own kingdom. Edward got his chance with the death in 1286 of Alexander III of Scotland. By the Treaty of Brigham it was arranged that Edward’s son and heir should marry Margaret of Norway, the heiress to the Scottish throne, thus bringing the two kingdoms together in a personal union, with each side preserving its rights and privileges. However, the arrangement collapsed with the death of the Maid of Norway at sea, triggering a crisis of succession in Scotland, and Edward I moving fast to achieve his object by other means. With 13 rival claims to the throne of Scotland, the barons turned to Edward to settle the dispute. He marched his army to the border, proclaimed himself lord paramount of Scotland, and decided that John Balliol had a better claim than Robert Bruce. John Balliol was accordingly crowned king and duly paid homage to Edward in 1292.
Contradictions within the feudal elite in Scotland, and harsh demands made by Edward on his vassals, drove John Balliol into revolt, but his forces were roundly defeated at Caddonlee. Balliol was captured and humiliatingly stripped of his feudal trappings during a ceremony at Montrose Castle in July 1296, with his tabard, hood and knightly girdle physically removed. Following several shifts of alliances, the feudal elite in Scotland turned the tables on Edward I and then Edward II – at Stirling Bridge (1297) and then at Bannockburn (1314), after winning which battle the nobility of Scotland attempted to expand its influence into Wales and Ireland. Thereafter, the so-called war of independence turned into a mutually ruinous war between the Bruce and Balliol families.
In substance, the conflict between the ruling elites of England and Scotland was not much different from the Wars of the Roses in England, that is, an internecine struggle between competing feudal inter ests whose belief systems were based on the then-prevailing notions of fief and vassalage, not on the present-day notions of nationhood. The Norman lords in Scotland were engaged in a desperate struggle to defend and safeguard their traditional monopoly to exploit their peasant serfs against the centralising power of Edward I. Be it said in passing that, at the time under discussion, both England and Scotland were mere geographical entities, with the kings of the former waging wars in Scotland. Neither entity constituted a nation.
Broadening the discussion out from the Declaration to the time in which it was drafted, participation by the peasantry and urban plebeians in the wars at Stirling Bridge and Bannockburn, says Davidson, is frequently cited, particularly by those on the left, as evidence in the middle ages of national consciousness. He answers such assertions, first, by pointing out that in fact “mass participation” had no appreciable effect on the outcome of the battle of Bannockburn (1312), although it did at the earlier battle of Stirling Bridge (1297). Second, he says, it is not at all clear why such participation in itself proves the existence of national consciousness, since popular mobilisations in support of powerful elites “can be traced as far back as the Greek city states”. There is evidence, says Davidson, that the “community of the realm”, referred to in the Declaration, viewed itself – just like other similar groups across Europe – as a “regnal group based on racial identity”, with little to indicate how those excluded from this community regarded themselves. He goes on to quote with approval George Kerevan’s following observation:
“The notion that illiterate peasants, who lived and died their short brutal lives within a few hundred yards of their village, had a conception of nationalism beyond a gut xenophobia for everyone beyond the village is stretching the imagination” (p.51).[6]
Doubtless there were commonalities in the medieval and earlier periods, none of which were sufficient to constitute the inhabitants of various geographical entities into nations. Take the ancient Greeks, for example, who spoke the same language, shared a common territory, and a common culture, as against the non-Greeks, but who were far from being economically united. They waged endless wars against each other. Their mode of existence, characterised by scattered and self-sufficient agriculture, combined with petty manufacture, tribal identity, and the exceptionally poor development of the means of communication, ensured that the Greeks lived in several competing polities. Notwithstanding myths, propagated in equal measure by Greeks and non-Greeks, the ancient Greeks did not constitute a nation, nor could they, for the objective requirements for the existence of a Greek nation were plainly absent. And what is true of the ancient Greeks is equally true of medieval Europe.
The defeats of the feudalists of England at Stirling Bridge and Bannockburn, far from furnishing proof of a people’s war on the Scottish side, are an eloquent testimony of feudal arrogance and incompetence on the part of the armies of Edward I (Stirling Bridge) and Edward II (Bannockburn). For example, at Bannockburn, if Edward II’s armies had made use of the English and Welsh longbowmen, a tactic which soon became accepted practice and which proved its worth against a far more powerful French feudalism, they would have decimated any stationary force. Instead, fighting on extremely dangerous terrain, they unleashed a frontal cavalry charge against Bruce’s massed pikemen, suffering a humiliating defeat.
As for Stirling Bridge, the assertion that William Wallace led a people’s revolt in a ‘war of national liberation’ against the ‘English’ does not stand up to scrutiny. Although the imposition by Edward I, following his 1296 victory, of a puppet parliament and his plans for a more intense feudalism aroused widespread resentment and opposition, including on the part of small landowners, no natural leadership, willing an able to take up the fight, emerged, as many aristocrats were incarcerated in England waiting to be ransomed, others were unable to join the fight owing to injuries suffered in 1296, and still some others were temporarily overawed.
It was this vacuum that made for the emergence of Andrew de Moray in the north and William Wallace in the south. But it must not be forgotten that behind these commanders of “the community of the realm” stood the great noblemen – Robert Wishart, Bishop of Glasgow, and James the Stewart, who was Wallace’s lord. Following Moray’s death as a result of injuries suffered at Stirling Bridge, Wallace came to be Guardian in Scotland, in the name of the “illustrious king” in exile, John Balliol, not the people. Even if, for the sake of argument, he had become Guardian in the name of the people, it would not be sufficient ground for asserting the existence of a Scottish nation at that time owing to the absence of a number of characteristics of nationhood.
Stirling Bridge was to be the only victory won by Wallace. In July 1298 his forces were comprehensively destroyed at the Battle of Falkirk by the army of Edward I – this time deploying longbowmen – and his position as Guardian was severely undermined. With their resistance much weakened, the aristocracy opted for a peace deal, forcing Wallace to resort to tactics of guerrilla warfare and launching raids into northern English Counties. He was captured near Glasgow in August 1305, carried to London, tried for treason, found guilty and executed. Long after, he was to furnish the theme for stirring poetry, novels and songs, his name used by working-class and democratic forces in just the same way as the destruction of the mythical Anglo-Saxon liberty under the Norman yoke was used by Levellers and Diggers and many others. But we must not allow myths, however well-intentioned, to pass for history. We must not see nations where none exist; and consequently, we must not perceive national liberation struggles where nothing of the sort exists.
The ‘Holy Trinity’
Most historians who hold the view that the Kingdom of Scotland was a nation before the Union with England in 1707 also assert that “it was maintained afterwards through the various institutions preserved in the Treaty, the so-called ‘holy trinity’ of Scottish nationhood” (p.51). This ‘holy trinity’ is a reference to the Kirk, the education system and the law. As there was no Scottish nation before 1707, no institutions could have preserved that which did not exist. To assert otherwise is merely to assume precisely that which must be proved.
Besides, the supporters of the ‘holy trinity’ never explain precisely how, and in what way, this trinity managed to perform the role of ‘preserving’ national identity. If these institutions really played “the role ascribed to them, then they must have acquired their social significance before 1707”. However, “… the examples which are often cited as demonstrating their importance are from a later period, particularly in the case of education”, the latter only gaining prominence in Scotland following the Education (Scotland) Act 1872 (p.53).
Davidson is correctly of the view that no Scot, on being asked to define his national identity, has ever responded with a sermon on the beauties of the sheriff system, the merits of Scottish education, and the marvels of Kirk homilies. He adds that the only groups who identified themselves with, and felt any loyalty to, these institutions “were the cadres who ran the professions, but these men were the most Unionist of all in their politics” (p.54).
Scotland’s status in the light of Marxist theory
Having disposed of the baseless assertions of the existence of a Scottish nation before 1707, we now pass on to the most important question, namely, Scotland’s status – both before and after 1707 – in the light of the Marxist-Leninist theory concerning the formation of modern nations and the indispensable significance of such characteristics as language, territory, economic life and psychological make-up and culture, in the process of nation formation.
Economy
Prior to 1707, Davidson says, “Scotland had one of the lowest levels of capitalist developmentin western Europe” (p.55).[7]. Sir James Stewart, writing in 1767, stated that Scotland could even then be compared to fourteenth century Europe. Even if Sir James was exaggerating, his remarks would not have been misleading a hundred years previously, according to Davidson.
All the same, the fact remains that immediately preceding 1707, the Scottish economy was organised on feudal lines, with the main source of ruling class income emanating from the surplus produced by the peasantry, under threat or actual use of force, exercised “through the territorial jurisdictions” by the use of which the feudal magnates could bring their tenants to their own courts. This had two-fold implications. First, the loyalty of the feudal lords to the Scottish Crown took second place to their own local, particular interests. It is hardly surprising that one of the important concessions conceded by the English parliament during the treaty negotiations was the inclusion of Article 20 which explicitly retained the heritable jurisdictions which were the bedrock of the power of the Scottish lords over their tenants.
In the absence of peasant revolts, which were not known in Scotland until the mid-17th century, combined with the near-absence of an urban sector, it follows that burghal support for a rural rebellion, had there been one, was missing. As the peasantry was by and large quiescent, the danger from below which might have compelled the Scottish aristocracy to strengthen the monarchy, instead of exploiting its weakness, never surfaced. In the absence of the need for an absolutist monarchy to suppress the direct producers, absolutism remained weak, with the result that “the individual lords retained a local weight unparalleled elsewhere in western Europe” (p.58). Between 1455 and 1662, the Stuarts attempted on no fewer than seven occasions to outlaw the jurisdictions that were the basis of the nobility’s power, but they failed – a failure which speaks eloquently of the balance of power between the Crown and the nobility.
Second, it made for the absence of economic cohesion, that is, an economy connecting all regions within the Kingdom of Scotland. In the memorable words of Thomas Johnston: “Scotland was not a nation: it was a loose aggregation of small but practically self-supporting communities, and scanty supplies and high prices at Aberdeen may quite well have been coincident with plenty and comparatively low prices in Dundee and Glasgow”.[8]
To use the words of Stalin, “…an internal economic bond which welds the various party of a nation into a single whole”, was characterised by its absence in pre 1707 Scotland.
Local heritable jurisdictions, by which the lords ran their baronies and regalities (which were specifically retained in the Treaty of the Union), this feudal particularism was one of the greatest obstacles to the development of capitalism, the formation of a single market connecting all the regions of the Kingdom, and hence to the formation of a Scottish nation.
Language
Lack of a common language was another factor which stood in the way of the formation of a Scottish nation. Instead of being united by a common language, the inhabitants of Scotland were divided by language. In addition to the remaining survivals of Scandinavian in the Orkney and Shetland Islands, the Kingdom was split between the Gaelic-speaking Highlanders and the “…vast majority of Scots” who, “even in 1688, spoke what was originally the dialect of English spoken in Northumbria and brought from there to the Lothians and beyond by trade and conquest from the tenth century onwards, long before the border was established” (p.56). It was the latter (‘Scots’ or ‘Lallans’) that eventually supplanted Gaelic. Scottish literary works of the Renaissance were written in Lallans – a language which was also used at the Royal Court in Edinburgh. Lallans was just one among many dialects, and it is conceivable that it might have become the Scottish language if the autonomy of the Kingdom had been maintained. Since that did not happen, Lallans (the dialect spoken in the Lothians and the south-east) simply reverted to being “one among many Scottish dialects, and these in turn became merely several Scottish dialects of English” (p.57).
It is notable, however, that the poets who wrote in Lallans did not regard it as distinct from English. In The Goldyn Targe, an early 16th century work, William Dunbar “acclaims Chaucer simultaneously as the finest of British authors and as one of the Makars – the contemporary Scottish poets first given this name by Dunbar” (p.57). Most significantly in this regard, though, is his assumption that they share the same language.
Be that as it may, in the words of Kenneth White: “Nobody in contemporary Scotland speaks consistent Lallans – that is part of our historical linguistic situation. What we speak is English with local accents and intonations, and sprinkled with elements of Lallans, and indeed of Gaelic, which have come down to us”.[9] White adds: “I can see in this no cause for lamentation, and certainly no justification for trying to write systematically in Lallans, as some literati have done and are still doing” (ibid.).
The process which hindered the emergence of Scots as a distinct language was under way before the 1603 Union of the Crowns and the departure of James VI and his court to London. Most probably, the use in Scotland of the English vernacular Bible following the Reformation, and of the authorised version after 1611, played a more significant role in frustrating the emergence of Scots as a separate language than the Union itself. Thus English became “the language of solemnity and abstract thought, of theological and philosophical disputation.”[10]
It is worth nothing that the ‘holy trinity’ is so often invoked by the supporters of Scottish nationalism as the basis for the supposed national continuity precisely because language could not play that role. In the apt words of A D Smith, “Among the Scots, language long ago ceased to play a differentiating and unifying role, once Lallans had become the language of the lowlands”.[11]
In the course of this historical process, in Scotland as well as in England, English supersededLatin as the language of theology and philosophy and Norman French as the language of administration. While the majority of the people in both Kingdoms spoke English, they would have equally perceived the emergent ‘Standard English’ as distinct from the everyday English they used at home or in their localities. Certainly, language “did not hold the lowland Scots and the English apart, nor did it define them as protonations” (p.57).
The Highland/Lowland divide
The Highland/Lowland divide was not merely a function of geography, but also of culture; in the final analysis, it was a reflection of the prevailing social relations marked by the absence of economic cohesion, of an economic bond which could have welded the various parts of Scotland into a single whole.
The Lowlands regarded the Gaelic-speaking Highlanders as culturally inferior and closer to ‘Barbaric’ Ulster, while the Highlanders themselves were riven by internal divisions and rivalries, who thought of themselves as Scots “… only in the sense of being notionally subject to the Scottish crown” (p72). The word ‘Sassenach’, normally an abusive Scottish term for the English, and derived from the Gaelic word ‘Sasunnach’ for Saxon, was originally applied by the Highlanders to all non-Gaelic speakers, be they Lowlanders or English who were, in the eyes of the Highlanders, indistinguishable and both equally aliens.
The Gaelic-speaking Highlanders were regarded by the Lowlanders, among others, as ‘wild’, ‘untamed’, ‘rude’, ‘savage’, ‘murderous’, ‘thieving’, ‘treacherous’ and plundering hordes; ‘robbers’ given to rapine and lacking in civility; and wretches lacking in honour, friendship and obedience. To add further insult, their very language – Gaelic – was considered to be a factor contributing to their supposed degradation. As late as 1736, an anonymous ‘Highland gentleman’, who had doubtless imbibed the Lowland attitudes towards his fellow Highlanders, wrote thus:
“Our poor people are from cradles trained up in Barbarity and Ignorance. Their very language is an everlasting Bar against all Instruction, but the barbarous Customs and Fashions they have from their Forefathers, of which they are most tenacious, and having no other languages, they are confirmed to their miserable Homes”.[12]
“Given the status the Makars are given as representing the early modern Scottish nation”, says Davidson, “poems by William Dunbar from the early decades of the sixteenth century like ‘The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie’ contain a level of abuse towards the Highlanders which suggests they were not part of it” (p.65)
The semi-official history of the 1688 revolution, published in 1690, fares no better, characterising the Highlanders in these far from flattering terms:
“The Highlanders of Scotland are a sort of wretches that have no other consideration of honour, friendship, obedience, or government, than as, by any alteration of affairs or revolution in the government, they can improve to themselves any opportunity of Robbing and plundering their bordering Neighbours”[13]
From the fourteenth century onwards, says Davidson, “the behaviour, language and, in a minority of cases, religion of the Highlanders, led them to being described as ‘Irish’”, particularly, “all the negative c