Introduction

We chose this topic because most people feel like they have less and less agency and resources to solve the problems which impact their communities. Decisions which have a massive impact on our lives are made far away, by people we have no real relationship or shared experience with. We are offered an illusion of choice, in the form of elections or referendums, but the options all feel bad and it's impossible to make an informed choice when the sources of information are corrupt. This topic aims to understand how Scotland came to be a political and cultural entity and how power has and does operate in our society. This topic also explores how people have protected themselves from the state and alternative forms of organisation and decision making. 

In terms of human history, although States have been around since the Romans and Egyptians, Nation States are a new phenomenon. A State is generally defined as a political entity, which has a set territory, defined population of citizens and ability to govern itself. A Nation is defined as a group of people who share a culture, language, history or ethnicity. A Nation State is therefore a political entity, which governs a set territory and defines what that territory is, and who is a citizen of it based on an idea of shared history, language, culture or ethnicity. 

Nation States have clearly defined borders, criteria for who can or can't be a citizen, a national flag, primary language and commonly understood origin story. Nation States generally also have centralized governments, which use ‘democracy’ - a system where some or all of the citizens of the Nation State, elect officials to make decisions on their behalf. What decisions these officials get to make, and their capacity to enforce the decisions they make varies hugely. For many of us, this is the only world we've ever known, and it's hard to imagine beyond it. 

However, as Josephine Quinn states in ‘How the World Made the West’ ‘ democracy is really unusual historically…there are many ways of organising communities that are equal, level, voluntary, more voluntary than many democracies, which are actually more common in human history. Knowing more about those sorts of histories, those sorts of communities, opens up possibilities about where are we going to go from here’. 

The story of both ‘Scotland’ as a unified entity and later the Scottish state is convoluted. In his book  ‘Scotland: A History from Earliest Times’ Alasdair Moffat talks about the slow process of transition from; settled tribal communities, into warring kingdoms of Scandinavians, Picts, Angles and Scots, into a single kingdom of Gaelic speaking Catholic Picts, into the early Scottish state where bishops and lords held as much power as monarch, into the Unions of the Crowns and then states of Scotland and England. Wars for power then ensue, between monarchy and government (which is the aristocracy) and the church; which one, and how much power should it have. From the 1600s onwards  alongside the development of global trade and colonialism, the state in the now United Kingdoms developed many of its modern aspects. Decision making about law, enforcement of the law, through this control of trade, education, publishing, healthcare, poor relief, what buildings can be built etc etc. 

If you take the long view of history in Scotland, like most places, you notice that there has been a consolidation and centralisation of power and that power has increasingly filtered into the everyday minutia of our lives. The rings of Brodgar in Orkney were once a centre for power as were the seas off the West Coast of Scotland. People orientated around stone circles or trade routes which connected Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the North of the Iberian Peninsula (Portugal & Spain). The Lowland, Scots then English speaking fort town of Dùn Èideann (now Edinburgh) only began to be a centre of power in the 1400s, and has always had competition from other regions of Scotland and England. Power has been located in different places and taken many forms through time. It is important that we understand its current form, where it resides, how it impacts our lives and what the alternatives are. 

For a lot of human history it didn't necessarily matter to most people who was the king, lord, MP or local bureaucrat because communities just had to self organise around their basic needs. As the power of kings, lords, MPs and local bureaucrats have increased, people have had to confront the way that people with power have tried to reduce or control communities' ability to self organise. Over time though, a huge amount of power has been surrendered to institutions and people who believe in power of the few over the many, and exploitation of the many for the few. In Scotland power is heavily consolidated into the central belt and a university educated, English speaking, white middle class - meaning many feel excluded from, and unrepresented by the current system of power. The state has become responsible for providing for many of our basic needs, and people within the state have the ability to make decisions about how these needs are met. This means many people feel dependent, degraded and lacking in agency to act in ways which feel appropriate to their communities. 

Globally, people experience power in similar ways, which has led many to question the role of the state in our lives, and explore alternative ways of organising around our needs. In ‘The Dispossessed’ Ursula K. Le Guin said ‘The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself.’ Whilst Lucy Parsons, a Black Anarchist and Feminist organising in America in the early 1900s said ‘It is becoming more and more apparent that in every way we are "governed best where we are governed least.’ Questioning how effective aspects of the state are, in terms of meeting our needs she added ‘We have laws, jails, courts, armies, guns and armories enough to make saints of us all, if they were the true preventives of crime; but we know they do not prevent crime; that wickedness and depravity exist in spite of them, nay, increase as the struggle between classes grows fiercer, wealth greater and more powerful and poverty more gaunt and desperate.’ 

In Scotland, there are long histories of both self-organisation and resistance to being organised by others. From the many forms of care and community we looked at in Section 6 through to the contests against power over that we can see in the stories of William Wallace, the Jacobites, the Covenanters, the Crofters War and many more. Anyone who grew up in either a rural, working class or migrant community in Scotland knows that the state has rarely been a source of care, and has often been a source of suppression, exclusion or violence. Travelling, Gypsy and Roma communities have experienced a particular attack because their historically nomadic self-sufficient lives completely undermines power in a world based on private property, traceability and control through dependance. Despite these histories and current global conversations about power, the Scottish Left seems very wedded to a vision of an Independent Socialist Scottish state. Conversations about how we could meet our needs and make decisions rarely go beyond this narrow possibility of what life could look like. But in order to deal with the many issues we currently face, it is essential we consider all possible visions and strategies for our future, not just one. 

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