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Scotland Can Show the World that Small is Beautiful

And challenge the preeminent power of corporations to defy governments elected by the people.

by David Morris


Scots rally for independence. (By Martainn MacDhomhnaill under a Creative Commons license)

Since 1945 the number of nations has soared from about 60 to more than 180.  The first wave of new sovereign states came with the decolonization movement of the 1960s and 1970s; the second in the early 1990s with the break-up of the Soviet Union.  If Scotland votes for independence it may ignite a third wave.  Dozens of would-be nations are waiting in the wings:  Wales, Catalonia (Spain), Flanders (Belgium), Brittany (France), the list is long.

In 1957 in his classic book The Breakdown of Nations economist and political scientist Leopold Kohr persuasively and rigorously argued that small nations are the natural order because throughout history they have served as the engines for enlightenment, innovation, mutual aid and the arts.  The large nation state, he argued, is not a product of improved efficiency but of superior force.

It is the great powers which lack the real basis of existence and are without autochthonous, self-sustaining sources of strength. It is they that are the artificial structures, holding together a medley of more or less unwilling little tribes. There is no Great British nation in Great Britain. What we find are the English, Scots, Irish, Cornish, Welsh, and the islanders of Man. In Italy, we find the Lombards, Tyroleans, Venetians, Sicilians, or Romans. In Germany we find Bavarians, Saxons, Hessians, Rhinelanders, or Brandenburgers. And in France, we find Normans, Catalans, Alsatians, Basques, or Burgundians. These little nations came into existence by themselves, while the great powers had to be created by force and a series of bloodily unifying wars. Not a single component part joined them voluntarily. They all had to be forced into them, and could be retained by them only by means of their division into counties, Gaue, or departments….

With a population of 5.2 million, a sovereign Scotland would rank just below the median size of the world’s nations.  It could rest assured that nations of its size can thrive.  Think Finland, Costa Rica, Ireland, Norway.  Small nations are easier to administer, more nimble in policy and their governments are more accountable to and reflective of their communities. Indeed, it is the divergence between the values of the Scottish culture and those of the Conservative government in London that has been a major impetus for independence. That divergence is reflected in the fact that today only one Tory holds a seat from Scotland in the British Parliament. 

Prime Minister Cameron’s Conservatives advocate welfare cuts, austerity and privatization.  They enthusiastically embrace what the Scots would call the mean values of the Conservatives heroine Maggie Thatcher, who summed up her thinking with the famous phrase, “There is no such thing as society.”  

The Scots most definitely believe there is a thing called society. The Scottish National Party, which controls the Scottish regional government and supports independence, wants to get rid of nuclear weapons, raise the minimum wage in line with inflation and begin a sweeping extension of child care. It is also more favorable toward immigration and the European Union than the British government.

“There is more of a communitarian viewpoint in Scotland that sees the value of coming together to provide public services, to acknowledge the strength of community in Scotland,” Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s deputy first minister told the New York Times.

The Limits of Small

But if Scotland does become sovereign it will quickly discover that that sovereignty has been severely restricted by new global rules promoted by increasingly dominant global corporations. Nations may be getting smaller, but corporations are getting larger. Of the 100 largest economies in the world, more than half are global corporations. The Top 200 corporations’ combined sales represent over one quarter of the world’s GDP.

The brute strength of corporations is usually sufficient to cow small countries. To control larger nations, corporations have convinced/bribed/bludgeoned governments to put in place rules that severely circumscribe their authority to express the will of their people. Today corporations can with impunity buy a post office box in the Bahamas and pay no taxes in the United States, or Scotland.  Trade agreements grant extraordinary new rights and privileges to foreign corporations and investors that formally give corporate rights precedence over the right of governments to govern their own affairs. If there is a dispute, foreign corporations can skirt domestic courts and directly challenge any policy or action of a sovereign government in often secret proceedings presided over not by judges, but by arbitrators, often corporate lawyers themselves.  Dozens of corporate challenges are currently wending their way through these “courts”.

  • US tobacco giant Philip Morris is suing Uruguay and Australia over their anti-smoking laws. 
  • US company Lone Pine Resources Inc. is demanding $250 million in compensation from Canada because of lost potential profits from Quebec’s moratorium on “fracking”. 
  • The Swedish energy giant Vatterfall has sued Germany for its decision to phase out nuclear power, demanding billions in compensation. 

In 2010, in an unusual display of concern, 37 academics from developed and developing countries, including eminent writers in the field of investment law, issued a joint public statement decrying the way trade agreements hamper ‘the ability of governments to act for their people’.  They maintain, “States have a fundamental right to regulate on behalf of the public welfare and this right must not be subordinated to the interests of investors where the right to regulate is exercised in good faith and for a legitimate purpose.” No one listened.

Perhaps if it gains political sovereignty and attends to its internal affairs, Scotland could debate the global rules that prevent governments from expressing the will of their citizens.  As historian Arthur Herman has noted in his book How the Scots Invented the World: The True Story of How Western Europe’s Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It, Scotland has once before had an outsized impact on the world.  In the 18th century Scotland’s appreciation for democracy and its strong emphasis on universal literacy made Edinburgh and Glasgow epicenters of intellectual thought. All of us are aware of one of Scotland’s most famous sons, Adam Smith.  But very few of us are aware that before he wrote The Wealth of Nations he wrote the 1759 best seller, A Theory of Moral Sentiments.  Building on the ideas of Francis Hutcheson, one of the founders of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith argued that sympathy and empathy could be the twin foundations of a just economy.    

From the first lines of the book Smith is clear about where his theory will take him,

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.

Later Smith adds:

This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments. …We frequently see the respectful attentions of the world more strongly directed towards the rich and the great, than towards the wise and the virtuous. We see frequently the vices and follies of the powerful much less despised than the poverty and weakness of the innocent.

As authors Fred Kiel and Doug Lennick explain, Adam Smith believed “we are all born with a ‘moral sense’ – that is, he believed humans are innately equipped with consciences. Because of this assumption, he thought that the ‘invisible hand’ of economic self-interest would be governed by the people’s moral sense. Economic self-interest, yes, but in the context of what’s good for all.”

Perhaps Scotland’s independence can usher in a new Scottish Enlightenment, one that again makes morality and sympathy a foundation for designing national and global economies.  Is it too much to ask a tiny nation to again re-invent the modern world?

7 Comments

  1. “Is it too much to ask a tiny nation to again re-invent the modern world?”
    Sadly yes, but hopefully this can kick-start people into thinking more about their personal liberty and independence. I don’t think this is the end of this issue, by any means….

  2. I think the Economist Leopold Kohr” has a really good point, it makes perfect sense that nations should be smaller. If that were to be the case there would definitely be a lot more “Edge” surrounding the borders of these nations which would in-tern create more diversity. The proof is in the history for example take a look at a map of Australia before the Europeans settled, the Native Indigenous people had a sound understanding of this concept and the same can be said for Great Britain.
    After all “Diversity = Stability”……right?

  3. Great point about increased edge, I hadn’t thought of that aspect. I used to live in Nancy in France which is very much French, with sone German influence. Strasbourg is not too far away on the German border, and the increased German influence there is very clear. Although the primary language is French, many people also speak German, and there is a local dialect which is still alive. Lots of historical to-ing and fro-ing behind this, but basically that’s because of the edge effect

  4. “There is no Great British nation in Great Britain. What we find are the English, Scots, Irish, Cornish, Welsh, and the islanders of Man…the great powers had to be created by force and a series of bloodily unifying wars. Not a single component part joined them voluntarily. They all had to be forced into them,” I stopped reading at this point. Scotland and England formed the Union of Great Britain in 1707 voluntarily not through force as stated by Kohr above. Actually at Scotland’s behest. Scotland had lost fully one third of its wealth due to its creation of the Darien Scheme also known as the Darien Disaster in the 1690’s. After voluntarily forming union with England together these countries became much, much greater than the sum of their parts. In the words of the historian Simon Sharma “it was one of the most astonishing transformations in European history”. If Kohr can’t get extremely simple and well known historical facts right in his own field of expertise why listen to him on anything else. Its really not asking much from an academic or for that matter anyone else.

    1. Baguamarsbar – you have totally simplified the reality… A serious minority were in favour of the union. In fact, so many were against it, that after the 1707 Union, parliament had to implement martial law due to threat of widespread civil unrest:

      The Treaty of Union was clearly unpopular among the wider Scottish people. Civil unrest and public disorder took place in several Scottish towns and the threat of widespread civil unrest resulted in the imposition of martial law by the Parliament. George Lockhart of Carnwath, a Jacobite and the only member of the Scottish negotiating team who was not pro-incorporation, noted that `The whole nation appears against the Union’. Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, an ardent pro-unionist and Union negotiator, observed that the treaty was `contrary to the inclinations of at least three-fourths of the Kingdom’. — https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/politics97/devolution/scotland/briefing/1707.shtml

      Just because a few wealthy Scots made some disastrous financial decisions that would have been ameliorated by a union with England, in no way should their actions be taken as representative of the majority ‘common’ folk of Scotland.

      It’s the same today. The financial interests of a few are overriding the interests, and wishes, of the many. Centralised decision-making processes caused the Darien disaster. Indeed, it was due to the physical and financially predatory nature of England’s relationship with Scotland that the Scots embarked on the scheme in the first place – to try to regain the independence from England that it had before centuries of forced subjugation.

      I know, as my own family fought the English bitterly, to maintain independence – finally resulting in the highland clearances, which saw many of my ancestors either being killed or sent off to other countries on ships: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Clearances

      And thus ended the era of the small-scale agricultural systems Scotland had relied on, and which it needs to return to if it is to have any low-carbon self-resilience into the future.

      Whichever way you look at this, you cannot describe it as a ‘voluntary’ union….

  5. The only thing the referendum farce showed is the futility of the vote. One gang ‘won’ another gang ‘didn’t and a third gang simply ignored it all… therein is the clue to how to effect genuine change and keep it moving.
    Governments only work to maintain the status quo at best at worst they work to grab more and more. Surely the time has come to let government wither on the vine and create something better, smaller, flexible and local to replace it.

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