In this, Smith notes that there is something in human nature
that makes us care about others, feeling what they feel not in our senses, but
in our imaginations. This "empathy" is, apparently what David Cameron
lacks and what Salmond has.
Yeh, right, that's what they all say! Here's Cameron speaking
in 2010: “There’s something else you need to know about me which is that I
believe the test of a good and strong society is how we look after the most
vulnerable, the most frail and the poorest. That’s true in good times, but it’s
even more true in difficult times.”
But as we all know, when financial crisis push comes to
shove, the needs of capital win out every time. That’s why we are enduring
austerity-plus from the ConDem coalition. The only sense of us all being it
together is the fact that most Europeans are suffering the same pain.
A recent leaked Scottish government paper showed growing
concerns in Edinburgh
about oil revenues and public spending projections. Under such pressures would
empathy trump the interests of global capitalism, whether in an independent Scotland or
not? No way.
Empathy is not some national quality shared by all Scots
regardless of their class or politics. If it were, some of the most miserable
conditions in any advanced capitalist state would not have been created and
tolerated for so long!
The House of Lords economic committee this week called on
both the Westminster
and Scottish governments to publish detailed studies of what would happen to
the Scottish economy in light of a “Yes” vote. In that way voters could
consider the implications fully.
But neither Westminster
nor Holyrood will do this, for two reasons. First, they are both of them
incapable of producing a document that is not riddled with propaganda for their
side of the independence argument. And second, neither of them have the least
idea of what is going to happen to the economy in the short, medium or long
term - not in Scotland or
anywhere else in the UK .
They are aboard a floundering ship which they claim to be
piloting but that is actually controlled by a phantom crew nobody dares name.
These are not supernatural forces, but the invisible forces of corporate debt,
junk bond investments and financial instruments whose real value, or lack of
it, nobody can pinpoint.
The wreck is imminent in a fresh banking crisis on the
horizon. What price empathy when that happens?
We no longer live in a welfare state, but in a market state
where the private sector delivers public services for profit. This is just as
true in Scotland
with its "arms length bodies" with big budgets, big fat salaries for
councillor/directors and big fat pay offs for executives.
A Scottish government operating the existing capitalist
state form would neither change nor challenge this status quo. We live in a
state where benefits can be cut, removed or changed - not because people's
needs have changed but because capitalism's crisis has deepened, and this would
remain the same in an independent capitalist Scotland.
Of course we must defend all benefits and public spending
but we must not stop there.
The independence referendum gives us a chance to debate and
decide on a very different kind of society. People’s Assemblies could come
together in every part of Scotland
to draft a revolutionary new constitution.
That would aim to transfers power from the ruling elite to
the people alongside measures to achieve economic democracy through new forms
of common ownership of the corporations and banks. That is the real essence of
self-determination for the 21st century.
A campaign for a “Yes” vote that is not based on fighting
for that kind of transformation, is simply leaving the ship in the hands of the
wreckers whilst painting a big Scottish flag on the side.
Penny Cole
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