Why are Labour and SNP ignoring Scotland's class divisions?

The continuing debate over the respective merits and demerits of devolution and independence as well as the struggle for parliamentary political power have seen a dominant discourse of nationalism and national identity. Thus, the SNP accuses the Westminster Tories of ‘failing Scotland’ while Scottish Labour says the SNP is also ‘failing Scotland’. The SNP responds to Scottish Labour by saying that Scottish Labour is ‘doing down Scotland’, and so on and so on. All this will intensify now that the general election has been called.

In this prevailing political pastime, Scotland is treated as one indivisible unit. The sleight of hand involved here is that society in Scotland, and the people that make it up, are treated as one and the same.

All this speaks to the predominant political tendency of the two main left-of-centre parties - and what used to be a sizeable liberal party - ignoring the existence of considerable class divisions in society in Scotland. Even during Richard Leonard’s short reign as Scottish Labour leader, we only got so far as "for the many, not the few’" reflecting the Corbyn-era catchphrase. Nation over class, thus, comprehensively continued.

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So, while poverty, deprivation, inequality and wealth are recognised to still stalk society in Scotland, they are never tied by these political parties to the divisions of class and class structure of contemporary capitalist Scotland.

At best, we get what some might describe as faux outrage about the rates of life expectancy being vastly unequal in different - but not very far apart - areas of our main cities. For example, Govan is contrasted with Pollokshields in Glasgow, Muirhouse with Morningside and Murrayfield in Edinburgh, and Middlefield with Milltimber in Aberdeen.

More common is that the so-called "schemes" are contrasted with the concentrated wealth found in Edinburgh, typified by Fettes school, Charlotte Street Partners, the New Town townhouses, and merchant bank Noble Grossart. Sometimes, the Duke of Buccleuch, as one of the largest private landowners in Scotland, also gets a look in.

From here, schooling, titles, residential addresses, accents and sartorial elegance (or inelegance) are taken to represent the diffuse dynamics of class. They are at best just some of the expressions of the symptoms and manifestations of class and class differences. At worst, they end up being taken as what class means and this mystifies what class and class differences are actually about in terms of material interests, power and ideology. Even money and income are but just symptoms of class and class differences. This is because they all stem from the relationship that people have with the means of production, distribution and exchange. Land and factories with plant and machinery are the main components of the means of production. Meantime, transport, shops, banks, and IT systems are the main components of the means of distribution and exchange. Of course, capital as in finance run through the means or forces of production, distribution and exchange.

Thus, some - just a tiny minority in society - own, control and, thus, benefit from these means. Those that do not, do not. The former are commonly called the ruling-class, the latter the working-class.

In between them are found the lieutenants of the ruling-class, the middle-class managers and professionals like lawyers and accountants, now called the professional-managerial class. They are handsomely rewarded for their role. There is also what is called the rentier class – those property owners that live of the proceeds of the property which they own by renting it out.

You do not have to subscribe to Karl Marx’s view of the world to recognise the importance of why ownership and control lead to benefit, all turning, creating social classes.

Defiantly un-Marxist, fellow German political sociologist, Max Weber, also believed that the result of people’s relationship with the market - where supply connected with demand, both being facilitated for by the relationship to the means - was an important determinant of social class.

John Swinney and Anas Sarwar lead left of centre parties in Scotland (Image: PA)

Power stems from ownership and control of material interests and is used, even in parliamentary democracies, to defend and advance that ownership and control of those interests. Ideology is used as a form of soft power when hard power - of the likes of threatening redundancies and divestment - is not needed. This is something the left in Scotland must not only try much harder to get across to people but also be much smarter in the way it does this. Class must be seen as a living, everyday phenomenon which shines a searching light on the way that society works in Scotland.

The starting point must be to actually use the terms, class, working-class, ruling-class and so on as the explanatory variables. Ruling elites and the establishment, much less rich and poor, will not suffice. Then next must come demonstrating that patterns of possession of capital are the key to understanding the whys and wherefores of the transnational ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange. For example, Anders Holch Povlsen is the largest individual private landowner in Scotland as well as Britain, and the largest shareholder in British fashion retailer, ASOS. Far more important than this is recognising that the capital to allow him to be so comes from his ownership of the international retail clothing chain, Bestseller, which was founded by his parents.

Some like Tommy Sheridan of the Scottish Socialist Party were able to convincingly and widely convey this at the time of the return of the Scottish Parliament. But unfortunately, it’s been an awfully long time since any other party has sought to do so.

Professor Gregor Gall is a research associate at the University of Glasgow and editor of ‘A New Scotland: Building an Equal, Fair and Sustainable Society’ (Pluto Press, 2022).