From: http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/adam-ramsay/40-reasons-to-support-scottish-independence-reasons-13
"Confusing solidarity and centralisation was the greatest mistake of the left in the 20th century.
Distant bureaucracies alienate and are less able to empower people. We are often told that the resulting refusal to engage is apathy. This is to imply that human beings don't care about their families, their neighbours, their communities.
There is no discernable difference between this mis-diagnosed apathy and sociopathy. It's nonsense. Huge swaiths of the population aren't sociopaths. They are alienated. They don't believe they can change things through the available democratic process.
The first step of any progressive political program must be to change this."
Of course, the really scary part, is that most on the left still seem to think that their failure is they haven't centralized and concentrated power in the hands of distant elites ENOUGH.
