THE crisis of capitalism, which provided the context and to some extent fuelled the vibrant Yes campaign described by Coll McCail in his excellent article on Wednesday, is still with us.

The question which has haunted the Scottish left before and since the referendum is how we can maximise unity in order to challenge the power of capital in Britain and Scotland. 

The referendum took place during what Costas Lapavitsas in his book The State of Capitalism calls the “interregnum” that followed the great financial crash of 2007-08. The crisis, which was created, primarily, though not exclusively, through an excess of speculation by unregulated banks, was “resolved” in the core capitalist countries by state intervention — a bailout — leading to a massive expansion of the public debt.

The incoming Conservative/Lib Dem coalition in 2010 denied the real nature of the problem, pointed their fingers at “unaffordable” public expenditure under the previous Labour government and used it as an excuse to introduce austerity. Sound familiar?

As Lapavitsas also points out, this occurred while financialisation of the economy steadily increased, including the rise of “shadow banking” — organisations that provide services similar to traditional banks but are not covered by tight banking regulations.

In an age of austerity these functioned, among other things, to increase private household debt, especially as social housing became harder to access. Meanwhile multinationals, primarily, but not exclusively from the United States, Europe and Japan extended their reach establishing global production chains in which they had a controlling interest while domestic productive capacity in core capitalist countries declined. 

As John Foster pointed out in Class, Nation and Socialism: the Red Paper on Scotland 2014, what this meant for Scotland was that the once dominant manufacturing sector had shrunk to 11.3 per cent of GDP, while finance had risen to 7.1 per cent partly constrained by the 2008 crash. Were it not for that, it would have overtaken manufacturing in 2009.

In the same publication Richard Leonard noted that 185 of Scotland’s larger manufacturing plants had been closed between 2002 and 2014 and that the top 20 companies in Scotland were wholly owned subsidiaries of foreign multinationals. Unsurprisingly, Scotland was increasingly becoming a low-skill, low-wage economy as it moved to services (though oil and gas were major exceptions) and there was an increase in poverty and inequality, poor health outcomes and poor housing.

It was against this backdrop the referendum took place and while there was a consensus on the left about the nature and the scale of the crisis we faced, there was significant disagreement about how to respond to the referendum as a means of addressing that crisis. 

The disagreements were on the strategy for impeding the externalisation of ownership of the economy and eventually democratising it; the question of agency — what political forces could be mustered to support resistance to the corporate takeover of the British and Scottish economy and the nature and role of the EU in supporting capitalism in Europe including Britain.

In the book Yes: The Radical Case for Independence, the authors argued, like the Red Paper on Scotland 2014, that neoliberalism, which they recognised was central to the case being argued by the SNP, was lethal for a just society. They argued for democratisation of the finance sector and against the externalisation of ownership of the Scottish economy. They did not explain how that would be possible if as noted above, large sections of it were already controlled by the London Stock Exchange and would continue to be owned by the London Stock Exchange after independence. 

Precisely which political and industrial forces would provide the basis for the assault on capitalism — the agency for mobilising class power — were not identified by the authors of the book. The Labour Party as a vehicle for tackling this issue at a British level where capital is organised was, however, written off.

“The election of Ed Miliband perhaps more than the Blair years shows that ‘taking back the Labour’ is a hopeless project.” Yet only a few years later Jeremy Corbyn led that party. Of course, he is no longer leader, but the reasons offered for dismissing Labour did not address its unique history and capacity to bring together the working class organised in trade unions and communities across the regions and nations of Britain, nor was any concrete alternative offered.

Finally, while there were some supporters of Radical Independence who were “Eurosceptic,” the majority supported membership of the EU. This was apparently without regard for the nature and purpose of that organisation as a bastion of European capitalism in general and in particular, its prohibition of state aid, state ownership and its neoliberal restrictions on debt and deficit which restricted public spending on services and state investment in member countries. 

The alternative left perspective spelled out in The Red Paper on Scotland 2014 and subsequent Red Paper publications sought a progressive, federal, constitutional transformation of Britain to allow the British left to address the power of capital where it is organised at British level and to ensure that Britain continued to function as a redistributive mechanism across the nations and regions. This perspective also required the Scottish Parliament to have powers to allow it to address the economic blight described in the opening paragraphs.

The left in Scotland now has a choice. Once again, we are faced with a period of austerity and an economy whose ownership and productive capacity is threatened as never before. The Scottish left is numerically weak and politically marginal. If we are to change that, we must find a way to unite to assert the primacy of class politics, while respecting our differences on constitutional change. 

Vince Mills is a member of the Red Paper Collective and joint secretary of Radical Options for Scotland and Europe (ROSE).