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Hayeks father, August, was a physician and a professor of botany at the University of Vienna. His mother, Felicitas, was the daughter of Franz von Juraschek, a professor and later a prominent civil servant. Because his mothers family was relatively wealthy, Hayek and his two younger brothers had a comfortable childhood in Vienna, which was then capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

During World War I Hayek served in a field artillery battery on the Italian front, and after the war he enrolled at the University of Vienna. Hayek was attracted to both law and psychology in his early university years, but he settled on law for his first degree in 1921. Among his classmates were a number of people who would become prominent economists, including Fritz Machlup, Gottfried von Haberler, and Oskar Morgenstern. In 1923, his last year at the university, Hayek studied under the Austrian economist Friedrich von Wieser and was awarded a second doctorate in political economy. He also began working at a temporary government office, where he met Ludwig von Mises, a monetary theorist and author of a book-length critique of socialism. (Von Misess book was originally published as Die Gemeinwirtschaft: Untersuchungen ber den Sozialismus in 1922 and translated as Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis in 1936.)

Von Mises quickly became Hayeks mentor. After a trip to the United States in 192324, Hayek returned to Vienna, married, and with von Misess assistance became the director of the newly founded Austrian Institute for Business Cycle Research. Hayek also became a regular attendee at von Misess biweekly seminar, passed his Habilitation (an oral examination that is a necessary step toward becoming a university teacher), and published his first book, Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle, in 1929.

In early 1931 Hayek was invited to England by Lionel Robbins to present four lectures on monetary economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). The lectures would ultimately lead to his appointment the following year as the Tooke Professor of Economic Science and Statistics at LSE, where Hayek remained until 1950, having become a naturalized British subject in 1938. Immediately upon arriving in England, Hayek became embroiled in a debate with University of Cambridge economist John Maynard Keynes over their respective theories about the role and effect of money within a developed economy. Hayek wrote a lengthy critical review of Keyness 1930 book, A Treatise on Money, to which Keynes forcefully replied, in the course of which he attacked Hayeks own recent book, Prices and Production (1931). Both economists were criticized by other economists, and this caused each to rethink his framework. Keynes finished first, publishing in 1936 what would become perhaps the most famous economics book of the century, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Hayeks own book, The Pure Theory of Capital, did not appear until 1941, and both World War II and the books opaqueness caused it to be much less noticed than Keyness work.

In the mid-1930s Hayek also participated in a debate among economists on the merits of socialism. Those discussions would help shape his later ideas on economics and knowledge, eventually presented in his 1936 presidential address to the London Economic Club. During the war years LSE evacuated to Cambridge. There Hayek worked on his Abuse of Reason project, a wide-ranging critique of an assortment of doctrines that he lumped together under the label of scientism, which he defined as the slavish imitation of the method and language of Science by social scientists who had appropriated the methods of the natural sciences in areas where they did not apply. Although the project as originally envisioned was never completed, it became the basis for a number of essays and also led to the 1944 publication of Hayeks most famous book, The Road to Serfdom, which became an immediate best-seller. In the same year Hayek was elected as a fellow of the British Academy.

At the end of World War II, Hayek began work on a theoretical psychology book based on an essay he had written during his student days in Vienna. In 1947 he organized a meeting of 39 scholars from 10 countries at Mont Plerin, on Lake Geneva in the Swiss Alps. This was the beginning of the Mont Plerin Society, an organization dedicated to articulating the principles that would lead to the establishment and preservation of free societies. Von Mises, Robbins, and Machlup were among the original attendees, as were Milton Friedman, Frank Knight, George Stigler, Aaron Director, Michael Polanyi, and the Austrian philosopher Karl Popper. Hayek had been instrumental in bringing Popper from New Zealand to LSE at wars end, and he had also secured a publisher for Poppers book The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945). Popper and Hayek would remain lifelong friends.

In 1950 Hayek left LSE for a position on the newly formed Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. In 1952 his book on psychology, The Sensory Order, was published, as was a collection of his essays from the Abuse of Reason project under the title The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason. Hayek would spend 12 years at Chicago. While there he wrote articles on a number of themes, among them political philosophy, the history of ideas, and social science methodology. Aspects of his wide-ranging research were woven into his 1960 book on political philosophy, The Constitution of Liberty.

F.A. Hayek, 1950.

In 1962 Hayek left Chicago for the University of Freiburg im Breisgau in West Germany. He remained there until his retirement in 1968, when he accepted an honorary professorship at the University of Salzburg in Austria. In 1974 Hayek was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics, which, ironically, he shared with Gunnar Myrdal, whose political and economic views were often opposed to his.

Hayek returned to Freiburg permanently in 1977 and finished work on what would become the three-part Law, Legislation and Liberty (197379), a critique of efforts to redistribute incomes in the name of social justice. Later in the 1970s Hayeks monograph The Denationalization of Money was published by the Institute of Economic Affairs in London, one of the many classical liberal think tanks that Hayek, directly or indirectly, had a hand in establishing.

NASA engineers asked Sally Ride if she needed 100 tampons for her first trip into space, which lasted six days.

In the early 1980s Hayek began writing what would be his final book, a critique of socialism. Because his health was deteriorating, another scholar, philosopher William W. Bartley III, helped edit the ultimate volume, The Fatal Conceit, which was published in 1988. Hayek died four years later, having lived long enough to see the reunification of Germany.

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The prerequisite to building left power within the Labour Party is building a fighting socialist movement outside of it. Protecting the internal power the left currently possesses is important. However, without giving due focus to expanding and nurturing the activist base upon which any serious attempt to take control of the party would rely, the left will not only forfeit what we have today, but future opportunities too.

That is why I am standing for the Momentum National Coordinating Group (NCG) on the Your Momentum slate. Any coherent plan for the organised left in the Labour party must recognise that internally we are in retreat. Externally, however, the scale of our crises necessitates not just change but organisation. Polling shows popular support for strike action, thousands joined RMT picket lines last week and swathes of young people continue to be politicised by the climate emergency. This is the terrain which Starmers leadership has forfeited, and thus the terrain which socialists in the Labour Party are obligated to occupy, and given our present material conditions its ripe for organising.

The Labour Party, of course, remains the only vehicle we have to gain state power and we have no choice but to work with what we have. The way we convince activists working in non-party political environments, like the climate movement, to join our cause and give their time for the advancement of socialism within the party is not by neglecting the broader movement, but by rolling our sleeves up and doing the work alongside them.

Reduced to its very fundamentals, Momentums purpose must be to build an active, engaged base of socialist Labour Party members who can select principled candidates and pound the streets to get them elected. These prospective members need a reason to join our cause. If Momentum members can fight, and lead, the struggle for socialist change in communities across this country, we provide them with that reason.

This is how we grow our influence within the Party again. To win internally, the left must grow its ranks once more. With an insurgent leadership campaign like that of 2015 an unlikely but not impossible prospect, we must find an alternative. If grassroots left powerexists anywhere in this country just now, it is in our trade unions.

Look no further than Mick Lynch and the RMTs innate ability to clearly communicate class politics, winning the public over even when faced with the hostilest of media. Their narrative is clear. Its about us, and them. Those who create the wealth, and those who profit fromthat wealth creation. Over the last week, Marxs theory of surplus labour has been communicated countless times on TV screens and its garnered popular support.

The next task though is to mobilise that popular support to join the picket line. This can only be achieved at a grassroots level through community organising and, with close to 20,000 members and active local groups, Momentum is well placed to do this. Supporting thedevelopment of the UKs emergent class struggle trade unionism in the ways that we can is crucial to combatting the multiple crises facing workers in our country, to building a movement that can change the political weather, and to strengthening the position of the left within the Labour Party. Momentums current NCG has begun the work of creating a trade unionists network to help with this task. If elected this will be a priority for Your Momentum.

The fight within the Labour Party is a fruitless one if it is not accompanied by concrete socialist organisation and attempts to advance the class struggle in our communities. Internal Labour elections must be fought, and fought determinedly, because the power we have within the Labour Party currently is a foundation upon which we can build. But, we can only build if the energy of the class struggle is propelled inside the Labour Party and that means Momentum must build those links. It is not a question of one or the other and Your Momentum gets that.

Momentum is too important to fail. As the largest organisation of socialists in the UK, it should play a leading role in advancing the cause of the working class in our age of crisis. Your Momentum has a plan to build left power but ultimately, only with patient and steady work in the manner outlined above can we turn the tide in UK politics.

Coll McCail is a candidate for the Momentum NCG elections standing on the Your Momentum slate for Scotland

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Momentum should play a leading role in advancing the cause of the working class in our age of crisis | Coll McCail - Bright Green

After a week of determined action by tens of thousands of rail workers, the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers Union (RMT) huddled back into talks Monday with Network Rail and the train operating companies.

Yesterday, RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch confirmed that all cuts remain on the table, including mandatory 7-day working, new grading structures, salaries and roles, lower pay and longer hours contracts, and massive attacks on the railways pension scheme. He issued a statement explaining that the employers have taken an extremely hard line, we believe at the behest of the government in order to push through their agenda of 2 billion of cuts and what they call Workforce Reform.

Yet RMT officials are continuing their fruitless negotiations with Network Rail and the train operating companies, complaining that government ministers should be in the room.

The Johnson governments brutal agenda for workplace reform at all costs is crystal clear, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson declaring Sunday that there will be no return to business as usual and that mass closures of ticketing offices will proceed. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps denounces strikers for upholding steam age working practices, insisting the Thatcherite agenda for Great British Railways will be imposed.

The RMT has already signalled its willingness to reach an accommodation with the government. Its sole demands are for a below-inflation 7 percent pay deal and a commitment to no compulsory redundancies. But more than 2,900 railway jobs have already been destroyed in recent months via a union-endorsed Voluntary Severance Scheme.

It is necessary to draw a balance sheet of last weeks national strikes and the political lessons for the working class.

Last weeks three-day strike by rail workers won massive public sympathy as the start of a fightback among millions of workers hit by the same cost-of-living crisis and who want to defeat the class war offensive of the Johnson government and the employers.

Strike ballots are underway this week of 40,000 BT telecoms workers, 115,000 postal workers and thousands of train drivers. British Airways ground staff will strike this summer, joining rail workers, refuse workers, bus drivers and barristers. Nurses, junior doctors, teachers and civil servants are calling for strikes. If brought together, these disputes would encompass three million workers and lay the basis for a general strike to bring down the Johnson government.

Workers are entering battle as part of an international resurgence of class struggle. General strikes have taken place in Belgium, Italy and Greece. Mass strikes have erupted in Turkey and Spain, while pilots and other airline workers have struck across Europe. On every continent, the working class is launching collective action against soaring inflation and the impact of a pandemic that continues to claim lives. Governments are pouring billions into military budgets as they prepare direct military aggression against Russia and China that threatens to trigger World War III.

In his speech yesterday to military leaders, British Army General Sir Patrick Sanders declared that NATOs war in Ukraine was Britains 1937 moment and that all-out war against Russia must be prepared. The war effort would mean working now with industry partners to make the Army more lethal and more effective, with better equipment in the hands of our soldiers at best speed. We cant be lighting the factory furnaces across the nation on the eve of war; this effort must start now.

War against Russia and China demands class war at home. The Johnson governments determination to smash the rail strike is preparation for an all-out assault on the working class. Amid a raging economic crisis, the ruling class is determined not only to make workers pay for the war in Ukraine but the impact of a continuing pandemic, with workers left to foot the bill for multi-billion bailouts of the corporations and the super-rich.

It has tabled legislation that will create a scab agency workforce to break strikes. Anti-strike laws for essential industries are being drafted that will outlaw industrial action unless minimum service levels are met, effectively ending the right to strike in transport and other essential services. Similar legislation was used this week in Spain to ban strikes by Ryanair pilots, with the company boasting not a single service was halted.

State repression will not end there. An insight into discussions in ruling circles was provided by Liberal Democrat MP Munira Wilson who demanded on television Sunday that Johnson should be working with the army and others to put contingency plans in place if the strikes are going to continue, insisting exceptional times call for exceptional measures.

During the 1926 General Strike, Stanley Baldwins government mobilised the entire British military against insurgent strikers. Guard battalions backed by cavalry and armoured trucks occupied docks. Troops occupied bus and transport depots. Battleships were deployed by the Royal Navy to Liverpool, Portsmouth, Hull, Cardiff and other cities, anchored within firing range of barricades. A 50,000-strong Civil Constabulary Reserve force drawn from army reservists and former soldiers was run by the War Office, alongside a reserve police force of 200,000, supporting an army of scabs prepared long in advance.

During the miners strikes that rocked the Heath government in 1972 and 1974, sections of the military backed by the Royal Family laid plans for a military coup, with the army placed on high alert. In 1977, more than 10,000 Army, Navy and RAF personnel were drafted to break the national firemens strike.

During last weeks strikes, the need for unified action was raised on pickets, including calls for a general strike. The main obstacles to realising this are not the hated Tories and their anti-strike legislation, but the Trades Union Congress and Labour Party. The trade union leaders are sitting on a powder keg. Their attacks on greedy employers and threats of future strikes are pitched at placating workers own mounting anger. But in practice, they are suppressing and delaying action, holding strike ballots at staggered intervals while they seek a modus vivendi with the government.

On the eve of the rail strikes the TUC coordinated a letter from the UKs 14 largest unions including Unite, the GMB, Unison and the CWU, begging the government to get round the table with unions and employers. TUC President Frances OGrady urged on Monday that Shapps needs to stop inflaming tensions and negotiate with unions for a fair resolutionone which the Tories have no intention of offering.

Amid what the ruling class has dubbed a summer of discontent, not a single major strike has taken place this week. Rail strikes have been shelved, including on the London Underground where strike mandates are being sat on, even as Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan proceeds with a slash-and-burn agenda against the entire transport system.

The rail strikes have exposed the vicious right-wing character of the Labour Party, epitomised by its leader Sir Keir Starmers threat that any MP visiting picket lines would be disciplinedan edict not even Tony Blair would have dared issue.

Labours Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy spoke for them all. Asked whether he would back strike action by Heathrow ground crew demanding restoration of a 10 percent pay cut imposed during the pandemic, Lammy replied No, no, no! He opposed the strikes, because Im serious about the business of being in Government.

Widespread support for rail workers has produced a wave of popular support for the RMT, considered a militant trade union, and for General Secretary Mick Lynch. His demolition of right-wing media personalities, including Piers Morgan, Kay Burley and Richard Madeley, and of Tory politicians, has been applauded.

But Lynchs political appeal, like that of the TUC, is pitched to the Tory government and employers. Their argument is that Johnsons efforts to replicate Thatchers frontal assault on the National Union of Mineworkers during the 1984-85 strike is socially explosive and unnecessary. Lynchs appeal is that any changes to structures, working practices, or conditions have to be agreed with our union, not imposed. Like its TUC counterparts, the RMT wants to retain its corporatist partnership with the rail bosses and the government.

The union has given the Johnson government more than a year to prepare its offensive against rail workers, participating in the Rail Industry Recovery Group initiated by Shapps along with the rail bosses since May 2021. They signed its Enabling Framework Agreement for massive cost savings centred on redundancies and the gutting of terms and conditions, safety and pensions.

At the RMTs rally on Saturday, Lynch declared his support for Sir Keir Starmer, Thats what weve got. He must win. Weve got to push him and persuade him to get into a position where hes in the front rank with you, all of you. He is trying to channel social discontent behind a pro-war party no less hostile to the working class than the Tories. Rupert Murdochs Times joined the acclaim for Lynch for this reason, ascribing his popularity to his picking reasonableness over revolution.

The working class must intervene independently to assert its control over the dispute.

This means forming rank-and-file committees in every depot and workplace, opposing all attempts to restrict industrial action and expanding the strike to encompass all rail and transport workers and every section of the working class.

Conditions are emerging for a general strike to bring down the Johnson government and bring an end to pay cuts and deepening social inequality. But this means a political fight against the sabotage of the TUC and Labour who are de facto partners with the Tories.

A general strike in Britain will rapidly win the active support of workers across Europe and around the world. The answer of the working class to war, social inequality and the mounting attacks on democratic rights must be the fight for world socialism.

Rail Workers: Tell us what you think. What are conditions like at your work place? All submissions will be kept anonymous.

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Lessons of the British rail strikes - WSWS

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Americans suffering from rising prices and the highest inflation in 40 years need to demand the results Presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump gave them. They need to reject the policy failures of Presidents Jimmy Carter and Joe Biden.

The difference in economic outcomes is not theory or an ideological or political position. The difference in everyday pocketbook results is purely historic fact.

Big Government Socialists (as I outline in my new book, "Defeating Big Government Socialism") have to be reality deniers. As Theodores White warned back in 1972, liberal ideology has become a liberal theology. Ideologies can evolve. Theologies must be obeyed.

FIVE LESSONS FOR JOE BIDEN FROM JIMMY CARTER'S ONE-TERM PRESIDENCY

Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell recently gave us a perfect example of leftwing reality denial when she wrote, "Republicans demagogue about President Bidens supposed war on fossil fuels and socialism. Neither party has a serious plan for dealing with inflation overall or gas prices specifically."

Given the history of the Reagan and Trump administrations, it is hard to believe that a columnist at a major newspaper could be so misinformed about the real world.

Consider the facts of inflation first.

When President Carter was in office, the inflation rate grew out of control. In fact, the inflation rate grew so high U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker had to raise interest rates to high levels. President Carters destructive energy policies combined with a weak foreign policy led to so much inflation the Fed funds rate reached a peak of 20 percent in June 1981 (with the commercial prime rate reaching 21.5 percent). Compare this with the 1.75 percent Fed funds rate and 4.75 percent prime rate today.

WHITE HOUSE WORRIED ABOUT JIMMY CARTER PARALLELS TO BIDEN PRESIDENCY AS APPROVAL RATING REMAINS LOW: REPORT

Of course, the big difference in interest rates is that Chairman Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve are well behind the curve in trying to slow down or stop inflation. Because President Carter let things get so out of control, the unemployment rate grew to over 10 percent in the 1980-1982 recession.

President Reagan backed Chairman Volckers anti-inflation policies but combined them with a tax cut and regulatory reform policy which increased the incentives to create American jobs and mop up the surplus money with new goods and services.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, UNITED STATES - APRIL 1988: President Ronald Reagan (L) with son Michael Reagan in doorway of Marine One, departing for CA. (Photo by Diana Walker/Getty Images) ((Photo by Diana Walker/Getty Images))

In effect, President Reagan had endorsed the supply side economics of Jack Kemp, Art Laffer, Jude Wanniski, and Larry Kudlow. (I was a junior member of this band of revolutionary enthusiasts who believed you could beat inflation by mopping up the money supply with more goods and services.) Kudlow a generation later would carry this doctrine into the Trump White House to profound effect.

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The result of the Reagan supply side policy was a dramatic decline in inflation and unemployment. Consider the facts of the historic record. Under President Carter inflation shot up from 6.3 percent in 1977 to a peak of 12.4 percent in 1980 (then Reagan defeated Carter by the largest electoral college margin against an incumbent President in modern history).

With Reagans leadership, the inflation rate dropped to 10.4 percent in 1981 and then averaged 4.4 percent for the rest of his two terms. Unemployment followed the inflation rate down, and by 1988 was about half of what Reagan had inherited. The economy grew year after year, and Reagan ran for re-election in 1984 on the theme of "Morning in America."

President Trump inherited a healthier economy from President Obama than Reagan got from Carter, but Trump promptly improved on Obamas record. Inflation rates were 1.8 percent in 2017, 2.1 percent in 2018, 2.2. percent in 2019, and 1.7 percent in 2020.

The sound, pro-economic growth, supply side policies were reinforced by an American energy independence drive which dramatically increased American oil and gas production and brought the price of gasoline down to $2.11 a gallon the week of the 2020 election.

President Biden came in and promptly gave up on all the policies which had worked. Big Government Socialism is anti-energy, anti-sound money, anti-small business, anti-investment, and anti-job creation. The Lefts words sound good, but the results of their policies are terrible.

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Given the history of the Reagan and Trump years, Republicans can campaign with confidence this fall that they know how to bring down the cost of gasoline and diesel fuel, how to bring inflation under control, and how to encourage job creators in both big and small businesses to invest, invent, and flourish.

Sorry Rampell, your fantasy version of history is just wrong. Your promise that Republicans will be as dumb and destructive as Democrats is just historically inaccurate. A brief course on the economic and political history of the last 50 years might help you understand why Democrats fail on inflation and fuel prices and Republicans can campaign with confidence this fall.

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Former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich is the host of the "Newts World" podcast and author of the New York Timesbestseller"Trumpand the American Future."More of his commentary can be found at http://www.Gingrich360.com

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Biden is following in the footsteps of Jimmy Carter - Fox News

The Scottish independence movement has waited for years for a serious announcement about a second referendum. The 2014 poll ended in defeat for Yes, but the moral victory was theirs.

The movement grew to become a mass opposition to the decaying status quo of British capitalism; an outlet for the burning class anger felt by millions of workers and young people.

This marked the beginning of a series of back-to-back traumatic shocks and political earthquakes for the ruling class in Britain, resulting from the dead-end of the capitalist system.

But the question has not gone away since, sustaining the SNPs supremacy in Scottish politics and its leadership over the independence movement.

The support for independence is not just a passing mood, but a reflection of a deeper malaise within society; and of a deeper crisis for British capitalism and the Union.

For many, whether or not there will be another independence referendum is a question of when, not if. But there is also the key question of how?.

This is what Nicola Sturgeon finally sought to address with her two announcements this month.

Since the last referendum, the SNP leaders have attempted to keep the movement in what some of their aides call a holding pattern: trying to maintain support and enthusiasm for independence in a high state, but without making any bold moves towards it.

This was the supposed plan behind the multiple false starts to the IndyRef2 campaign.

The SNP were buoyant after smashing Labour and taking all but three Scottish seats at Westminster in the 2015 general election. A year later, they won the Holyrood elections claiming a mandate for independence.

In the wake of the Brexit referendum in June 2016, when Scotlands Remain vote was trumped by the Leave votes of England and Wales, Sturgeon said there must be a new referendum.

Instead, we got the SNPs national survey to supposedly measure support for independence and prepare for the campaign. A year later, this plan was practically forgotten, and Sturgeon was telling campaigners to wait until Brexit was done and dusted.

When the time came in spring 2019, Sturgeon again called for a second vote in 2021. The SNP leader relaunched the Yes campaign, but in the end this was not much more than a website. This too was quietly abandoned.

The SNP won elections in 2016, 2019, and 2021, each time asserting their mandate for an independence referendum. But nothing the party has done so far has actually made it any more likely.

Polling indicates that support for independence consistently sits at a historic high of around 50%, fluctuating upwards with each new episode in British capitalisms terminal crisis.

Formally, then, the SNP are in a strong position. But they are seemingly unable to achieve what they promise.

Whenever the crisis has reached fever pitch, such as in the wake of the Brexit vote, or at the time of the autumn 2020 COVID lockdown, the SNP leaders have deliberately wasted the opportunity to seize on the discontent and anger in society.

Instead, they have been intent on playing the adults in the room, and have moved even more cautiously. They are constantly getting peoples hopes up and then disappointing them.

This has tested the patience of independence movement supporters. It was the grassroots Yes movement and not the SNP that brought about the sea-change in opinion in 2014. And independence activists have maintained constant campaigning ever since.

In more recent years, however, the mass marches and enthusiasm have somewhat declined: attendance is down; there are noticeably fewer young people; and splits over certain personalities have created deep divisions.

Sturgeon and the SNP tops have always kept this grassroots movement at arms length. Yet they are unable to fully control it.

In place of mass mobilisation, the SNP leaders have consistently based themselves on issuing expertly drafted reports and papers about the viability of Scottish independence all on a thoroughly conservative capitalist basis.

This is thin gruel to the movement, however, who are not just uninspired by such a strategy, but who actively reject it.

The 2018 report by the Sustainable Growth Commission another SNP distraction was a clear case in point: advocating an extreme post-independence deficit-cutting austerity programme; and suggesting that monetary policy should be left in the hands of the Bank of England for decades.

As such, this report was even opposed by much of the SNP rank-and-file. Yet Sturgeon is going to try and feed more of this to us.

Consequently, the SNP leaders 14 June announcement passed by without much interest. Within this speech, however, she hinted at a more serious proposal for a second independence referendum next year. That announcement came yesterday.

Up until this point, the question of an IndyRef2 has been at an impasse. The SNP are clear that they want a new referendum on the same basis as the last one in 2014 with agreement and consent from the UK government, signified by a so-called Section 30 order.

But as is known to everyone, Boris Johnson and every other Tory in Westminster refuse to grant this consent.

The SNP leaders have decisively ruled out doing anything that could be construed as illegal such as just going ahead and holding a referendum anyway, as happened in Catalonia in 2017.

As bourgeois nationalists, they are unwilling to push beyond the boundaries of bourgeois legality, or the vague conventions of the British constitution. They are thus forced to try and contrive some kind of lawful argument or legal justification for holding a referendum without Section 30.

In her latest announcement yesterday, Nicola Sturgeon made it perfectly clear that the Scottish government was not pursuing a so-called wildcat referendum.

Instead, Holyrood leaders will be seeking an answer to this point of law: whether the Scottish Parliament has the right to call a referendum without Westminsters consent. This has been referred to the UK Supreme Court, where Sturgeon sincerely hopes to get a positive answer.

We have been here before. In 2019, it was the SNP who led the legal challenge to Boris Johnsons prorogation of the UK Parliament, pinning their hopes for democratic checks-and-balances on the whims of a handful of judges. In that case, a light was shone on the dark and foreboding edifice of judicial supremacy.

The legal arguments had an almost Orwellian character, as advocates argued over whether Boris Johnson had lied to the Queen when she rubber-stamped his illegal request to have Parliament dissolved.

The fact that no checks-and-balances actually exist, that the rule of law is a sham, and that the ruling class wields political power as it needs to was revealed to everyone. Nobody in the Tory government faced any consequences for this ex-post-facto abuse of power.

Sturgeon has no choice now but to pass the SNPs independence referendum bill in Holyrood, with the chosen date of 19 October 2023.

The legal question cannot be answered before this, as the Supreme Court already refused to rule on it when petitioned by the independence campaigner Martin Keatings in 2021, dismissing it then as hypothetical.

The Tory government would anyways have launched their own legal challenge upon the bills passing. But Sturgeon has chosen to beat the Tories to it, and refer the matter to the court herself.

Once this bill is passed, Sturgeon has left it entirely in the hands of the judges to decide whether Scotlands democratic right to self-determination will be respected, or whether the Scottish Parliament will have violated the constitution.

We cannot say for certain what these judges will decide. But it seems highly unlikely that the British establishment and its apparatus in the state and the courts would allow a vote to go ahead that would put the Union at risk.

The Scottish government is attempting to keep the legal advice it has received secret not unusual in itself; but with such a high-stakes case, it leaves one wondering what they have to hide.

Sturgeon and the SNP leaders may themselves be uncertain of the outcome, or even expect the bill to be struck down. If so, then it becomes clear that legislating for a vote in 2023 is just another attempt by the SNP to kick the can of independence down the road.

In reality, the proposal for an October 2023 referendum may not be the actual target for Sturgeon and the SNP.

As part of her announcement to the Scottish Parliament, the First Minister stated that if this 2023 referendum request is rejected, then her party will fight the next UK general election due to take place by January 2025, at the latest as a de-facto referendum on independence.

Exactly what this means is open to question. Are they talking about making a so-called UDI (Unilateral Declaration of Independence) that is, forming a provisional independent government and state?

Such an act would require a radical break with the UK constitution; with the rule of law, as decided by British judges: precisely the kind of action that the SNP have spent years distancing themselves from.

This would take the bourgeois SNP leaders completely outside the realm of legal arguments and moral force, and mean a direct confrontation with the armed bodies of men that make up the state.

As the events of the 2017 Catalan referendum showed, such a struggle could only be pursued on a revolutionary basis, involving the mobilisation of the masses.

But Sturgeon and her bourgeois clique at the top of the SNP and Scottish government have made it abundantly clear that they are not at all prepared to go down this path.

Neither were the Catalan bourgeois nationalists, however. Having stoked this fire, and excited the hopes of the masses, the situation developed according to its own logic, outside the control of the bourgeois leaders.

And the same dynamic would no doubt occur if Scotland was set on a collision course with Westminster and the British establishment.

Sturgeon is right to say that the refusal of the Tories and the Supreme Court would only make people more angry, and more convinced of the need for independence.

This has the potential to rouse the working class, which is already beginning to awaken in Scotland and across Britain.

The class struggle is sharpening everywhere. In the process, these class battles are drawing out the reactionary wing of Scottish nationalism with the SNP leaders attacks against striking train drivers and other workers and the need to link the fight for independence to the fight for socialism.

The national question and the class question are not separated off from each other by a wall, but feed into and off each other.

Taken together, this spells doom for the ruling class. Globally, the capitalist system is facing a catastrophic collapse. In Britain, there is a complete crisis of the regime itself. Every pillar of the establishment is being eroded and undermined. The Tories are in turmoil. And the Union is being torn apart by centrifugal forces.

All of these splits and crises are a harbinger of revolutionary explosions across these isles. We must build the forces of Marxism in preparation for these titanic events.

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Scotland: Sturgeon lights the fuse on IndyRef2 - Socialist Appeal