Following is the text of a comment I made in response to an article by Alf Baird published on Your for Scotland.
While the plunder of Scotland’s resources and economic crippling of our nation is iniquitous, I tend not to concern myself too much with the so-called ‘economic argument’ for independence. I consider that case both unanswerable and irrelevant. I utterly reject the notion – all but ubiquitous among Unionists – that Scotland is incapable of managing its economic affairs at least as well as the ‘administering power’ which, by it’s own account, has rendered Scotland an economic basket case, incapable of being a normal nation.
My expectation is that independent Scotland will endure precisely the same economic travails as at present. We will have our ups and we will have our downs. When we are up, the politicians will claim credit for their competence in managing the economy. When we are down, the politicians will disown responsibility claiming the ills are the consequences of forces beyond their control.
It’s not that I don’t care about Scotland’s prosperity. It’s just that I am extremely dubious about the very idea of economic control. And I am absolutely certain that to whatever extent control may be theoretically possible, I personally will have none of it. Economies are not machines. They are organisms. Organisms are notoriously resistant to being controlled.
The United Nations took due account of both the vagaries of economic management and the realities of imperialist economic exploitation when authoring the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. Paragraph 3 of General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV) states –
Inadequacy of political, economic, social or educational preparedness should never serve as a pretext for delaying independence. (emphasis added)
General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV)
Which is why the ‘economic case’ is irrelevant. There cannot be an ‘economic case’ against the restoration of Scotland’s independence. Therefore, there is no need of an ‘economic case’ for independence. It’s not me saying so. It’s the UN.
Scotland’s status as a normal independent nation or as an effective colony of England-as-Britain is entirely a constitutional issue and not an economic issue. You cannot answer a constitutional question with a calculator.
So, if it’s not about the economy, what is it about? I can think of no better way to offer my answer to this question than by referring to a speech I gave in Dundee in March 2014.
The only ones who have the legitimate authority to decide what powers the Scottish Parliament has are the people of Scotland themselves. So long as that power remains in the jealous grasp of the British state, Scotland will be less than a nation and its people will be diminished accordingly. The more so if they actually consent to this condition.
This referendum is not about money or oil or monarchs. And it certainly isn’t about Alex Salmond. It is about you. It is about us. It is about the people of Scotland and what kind of people we are.
This referendum is about the most fundamental constitutional issue of all – sovereignty. The sovereignty that rightfully rests with the people of any nation.
This referendum is about whether we are the kind of people who will carelessly allow that sovereignty to be usurped by the ruling elites of the British state, or whether we are the kind of people who will seize to ourselves the power to shape our own destiny.
The constitutional issue is about the kind of people we are. It is about how we present ourselves to the world. It is about how we see ourselves. I contend that the most malign effect of the Union is not the parasitic crippling of our economy but the centuries-long pernicious undermining of our self-regard and our self-confidence and our sense of worth.
That the Union has been an economic, political, social and cultural blight on Scotland is certainly true. But it is the general diminishing of our nation and people which has done the most egregious harm. The Union has not only imposed damaging policies upon Scotland, it has inflicted serious psychological damage.
Improved prosperity may or may not ensue from the restoration of Scotland’s independence. But the greater benefit by far will be the recovery of a healthy sense of ourselves.
Peter A Bell 
I think that people who feel they are doing OK economically have a better sense of themselves than folks who are impoverished by colonisation and the lack of control that implies. The two are bound together.
And economies CAN certainly be controlled – though not in a precise way – poverty in our country is a political decision not an unavoidable organic economic outcome, as is massively inequitable wealth and income distribution. So if you or I were in charge of the control levers of an independent Scottish economy, would we introduce policies to effect changes in income and wealth disparities ? Damn right we would.
Would people living in a more equal country have a more positive sense of themselves ? Ask the Finns , the Danes, the Norwegians and the Swedes.
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I think it might be more correct to say that economies are manipulated rather than controlled. They are twisted and deformed so as to have a particular outcome without regard to the damage done to the economic organism or to society as a whole. It’s something altogether cruder and more brutal than is suggested by the term ‘control’.
No society, economy or organism is perfect. To be perfect is to atrophy. There is always imbalance that allows for error and hence mutation and evolution. Our economic system takes these ‘natural’ imbalances and amplifies them. The capitalist economy is powered by imbalance, inequity and injustice. This creates tension and the energy to drive the economy as the economic organism is always trying to return to a viable state. Tension absent control equals stress. Stress causes malfunction. We have a sick society.
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You are right Peter, the determinants of independence are many and varied of which colonialism is but one: https://bpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/wp.towson.edu/dist/b/55/files/2022/05/The-Socio-Political-Determinants-of-Scottish-Independence.pdf
However, we might reflect that economic plunder of a territory is the main aim of colonialism, which some still misinterpret as ‘a Union’. It is then reasonable to estimate the economic value of this plunder.
However, as you rightly imply, the price of colonialism is not only financial, but also cultural, constitutional, psychological, socio-economic under-development and more; for ultimately the price is the perishing of ‘a people’ and their nation, should colonialism be allowed to continue.
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I agree that economies cannot be controlled.
But they can be managed. That is the purpose of economic policy – to iron out the peaks & troughs and booms & slumps as best can be done using the macroeconomic tools and instruments at government’s disposal.
And an independent Scotland would be able to do this as effectively or ineffectively as any other nation, large or small, can.
It is only this latter point of the ‘economic case’ that needs to be hammered home to the population.
The overarching argument, however, is not (as you say) based on economics or financial gain/loss.
It is about deciding our own priorities based on our own values as a people and as a nation.
Popular sovereignty applied in order to elect and/or ditch our own government as other nations do is the important ‘control’ that we should be emphasising.
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