Marxism, Nationalism and Scottish History

Abstract

The analysis of nationalism as a general phenomenon, and of particular nationalist movements, has always posed certain problems for Marxists. Marxism's own explanation of the causes of historical change and the trajectory of that change has often led either to nationalism being totally ignored as a force in world history or to nationalist movements being explained away as mere epiphenomena to more central processes. Such explanatory tendencies by historians raise some obvious, though difficult, questions about the treatment of evidence in historical explanation. In particular they point to the need, whilst accepting that an uncritical empiricism is neither possible nor desirable, for historians to make a quite explicit distinction between their analysis of why certain events occurred and the placing of their explanation of the significance of such events within a broader political perspective. These issues are highlighted by Jim Young's recent article, 'Marxism and the Scottish National Question'. In this piece, Young addresses himself directly to the problems associated with the analysis of Scottish history and of nationalist sentiments in that context. He argues that the left in both England and Scotland have failed to provide an adequate explanation of the peculiarities of Scottish development, largely because they have operated within a perspective which was hostile to nationalist claims within Scotland. Of particular importance in inculcating this perceptual blindness of the left towards Scottish nationalism was, Young argues, the hostile attitude of the British Communist Party (BCP). This has led to an inadequate analysis of the 'condition of Scotland question', deriving from 'a particular way of looking at Scottish history and an abstract commitment to the unity of the British working class'.2 In general terms, Young argues that the BCP's adoption of a theory of international proletarian revolution and the essential unity