Lyndon LaRouche (1922-2019)

A Successful, Creative Human Economy Is Incompatible with an Oligarchy

We present here excerpts from two of Mr. LaRouche’s speeches, which were presented at the Schiller Institute’s February 4, 2023 Conference, “The Age of Reason or the Annihilation of Humanity.” Mr. LaRouche was an internationally renowned economist, and statesman. He was a World War II veteran, founder of EIR magazine and co-founder of the Schiller Institute.

The first excerpts were shown on Panel 1 and are from a speech titled “The U.S.A.-China Strategic Partnership,” delivered at an EIR seminar in Washington, D.C., Oct. 22, 1997. The full text is available here.

What I shall do today, is present the evolution of the policy, which is presented to us by the coming visit of the President of China [Jiang Zemin]: the history of it, as I was personally involved in developing that policy over a long period of time, partly as a personal effort, and later, as an effort which began to make some impact on the shaping of the policies of the world during the course of the 1980s….

Now, how did this happen?

The key event, which is relevant to my role in this, occurred, beginning December 1981, and through a period through 1984. In December 1981, I had run as a candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination, in 1980, against Jimmy Carter. And, thus, because of the position I had there, in that respect, as a former Presidential candidate (pre-candidate), and because of other things I’d done, it was decided by some people in the U.S. government, that it would be wise to have me, as a private citizen, respond to a Soviet probe, which had requested that an additional back-channel discussion be set up between the Reagan Administration and the Soviet government.

So, I agreed to undertake this exploratory discussion, but made one recommendation, which was conditional, in the sense that I said, “If I’m going to be useful, in this kind of discussion, there are certain things I should discuss, which are of concern to me, which will become the basis for this kind of exploration.”

I had been concerned, for some time, with two things.

From my time in military service, in the China-Burma-India theater, during World War II, I’d been concerned with establishing economic justice for the world, after seeing Asia. And, that had been my personal commitment: that we must change affairs, so that the so-called underdeveloped, or former colonial regions of the world, could participate in justice.

And, so, I’d been involved, heavily, with Third World questions, and had gotten myself into a great deal of trouble, in certain circles, because I had been an advocate of the Third World. At one time, the FBI was going to have the Communist Party of the United States assassinate me—there’s a government document on that subject—back in 1973, as a result of this kind of thing.

But, in this, the second thing I was concerned about, was that the agreements on détente, which had been reached, specifically reached, during the course and aftermath of the 1962 Missile Crisis, were themselves, a danger, a risk, to civilization: that the system of détente, that is, of nuclear mutual deterrence, had become the potential trigger for an accidental war; and that, therefore, we had to concern ourselves with this problem of ballistic-missile defense.

So, this policy, which I had devised, which was part of my 1980 Presidential campaign, a key (shall we say) plank, in that campaign, was that: the United States should propose, to the Soviet Union, and other powers, that we agree on developing an efficient ballistic-missile defense, to be common to all powers; so that no longer would we face the threat of thermonuclear extinction, with no defense against thermonuclear warhead missiles. And, that this collaboration, among the United States, the Soviet Union, and other powers, should be technological collaboration, extended to all nations, to the purpose of using these technologies, which were then called (in diplomatic language) “new physical principles,” to the benefit of all mankind, with special emphasis on what was called, then, the developing sector.

This was the policy, which I used as a pivot of my exploratory discussions with the Soviet government, during a period from February of 1982 through February of 1983. I had indications from the Andropov government, that this would not be acceptable to Andropov; but, they were interested in the economics.

The President of the United States, in various ways, adopted this idea, as a good idea—President Reagan—through his people in the National Security Council, with whom I was working. And, on March 23, 1983, as you recall, the President of the United States, in a concluding segment of his televised broadcast, announced what he called the “Strategic Defense Initiative,” whose content was to propose to the Soviet Union, exactly what I had outlined to the Soviet government in my back-channel talks.

That action, by the President, changed world history.

It didn’t change it the way I wanted it changed, because, very soon, the mice—including the Heritage Foundation mice—got at the operation, and turned the SDI around, and changed its purpose….

But, that concept, of using these most advanced technologies, which still exist, potentially, and using these as the shared technologies, shared among various nations, technologies based on expansion of the world’s machine-tool-design capability in terms of these new technologies, should be used for transforming the world, into the kind of world, which, among others, President Franklin Roosevelt intended to put into effect at the end of the world war, had he lived to do so.

The following excerpts were shown on Panel 2 and are from Mr. LaRouche’s keynote, “A Moment of Epic Decision,” to the Labor Day conference of the International Caucus of Labor Committees and Schiller Institute, in Washington, D.C., Sept. 4, 2004. The full text is available here.

We are bankrupt! The same thing is true in Europe. There is not a nation in Europe—not a single one, on the European continent—which is not bankrupt!...

On top of that, the entire world monetary-financial system is bankrupt: That is, the collapse of wealth, physical wealth, collapse of production in real terms, has been accelerating downward. You see it around you! You see it wherever you go. But, the spiral of monetary and financial aggregate zooms upwards, skyrockets. We’re in the greatest inflation in modern history! And the amount of debt outstanding is such that this can never be repaid. We’ve reached a boundary condition, a limit: This system is now going to collapse! It may collapse tomorrow morning (not because of what I say today); it may collapse in a week; it may collapse in two months; it may wait till the end of the year—I doubt it will make it that far. Its legs are giving out.

We will then be hit with the awareness of something far worse than the Depression of 1929. We will be hit by murderous conditions, far beyond those that our people suffered increasingly over the period of 1929, into the time of the inauguration of President Roosevelt.

This is the harsh reality now: Anyone who tells you there’s a prospect of recovery, is a liar or a fool!...

Think about what the difference is between man and an animal: No animal could discover and apply a universal physical principle. Only the human mind can do that. All the so-called “physical principles” of that nature, the principles of Classical artistic composition, are of the same nature as science. No animal is capable of Classical artistic composition. (Though some human beings try to be animals when they do it, the results are not very satisfying.)

So therefore, because we are immortal, as we shall emphasize in various points here, in these proceedings these three days, when we develop an idea, or when we receive the ability to re-create that idea of principle within ourselves, we are expressing an immortal relationship between those who lived before us, and ourselves. When we talk about the discoveries of Archimedes, when we relive the act of those discoveries, we re-create the living Archimedes in our own mind, and Archimedes lives, as an efficient part of society, today.

This is true of all great discoveries. The progress of man from the few million individuals which a higher ape species could attain, to 6 billion or more today, is entirely the result of immortality: the ability of a human individual to receive, generate, and transmit discoveries of universal principle, from one generation and person to the next. That other people live within us. Those of us who know anything about life, know of the other people who live within us, who are now dead, but they live within us because something of themselves which has a creative impact, lives within us. It strengthens us, if we use it. It gives us the power to improve society. That is how society has progressed. That is why you must be optimistic about the native goodness of the human individual.

There are no inhuman individuals who are born bad. Every human individual has the creative power, which defines each human person, as in the image of the Creator. We are the only creature who can discover the principles of creation, of the Creator, can adopt them, can use them, and can increase man’s power over the universe, by using those creative principles which the Creator has provided, but only we, as human beings, can access.

And when we participate in the Creator in that way, by devoting our lives to that side of our life which is truly human, we become consciously, really, and powerfully human. This is the power which is shown by Jeanne d’Arc, in making possible the establishment of the first modern nation-state in human existence. This was the same quality of creative passion which Martin Luther King showed, especially on the eve of his death, on the night before he was murdered.