The Lead

LaRouche: The Physical Economy of Peace

by Dennis Speed (EIRNS) — Dec. 19, 2023

In ancient times there were “the cities of the plain”—Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim and Zoar. Today, there are Washington, London, Kiev, Brussels and Jerusalem. The first four of the “cities of the plain” listed above, were famously destroyed by fire and brimstone, because of their hubris, their “sin and error.” The fifth, Zoar, was spared because Lot, the only man of truth to be found, took refuge there.

While, at the present moment, there seems to be little sign of intelligent life emanating from the four current “cities of the plain,” Jerusalem, now still the residence of the three monotheisms, and still recognized by the world—despite the United States—as an international city, in which East Jerusalem is to be the capital of a State of Palestine, may once again, because of its historical role as an international crossroads, provide the stage to dramatize the urgent need for a new security and development architecture.

Presently, though many important attempts toward peace have been made, the only document that has been produced that intends to engage the world in the “Westphalian"-like discussion that must occur to secure a true peace, has been the Schiller Institute’s Ten Principles for a New International Security and Development Architecture. This has now been supplemented with the Oasis Plan, which, however, is not a “program,” but a method of thinking. That plan, and similar plans drawn up by Lyndon LaRouche, cannot be actually understood, and thereby implemented without a working relationship with the Ten Principles. There must be, in these next three “holiday” weeks, small group meetings (including via Zoom) that combine action for a ceasefire with the mass proliferation of the Plan for the day, and year, and decade after the bloodshed.

A global strategic assessment provided by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, author of the Ten Principles and the founder of the Schiller institute, appears in today’s briefing, to which the previous and subsequent remarks are intended to be supplementary. The following proposes how to think in such a way as to escape the fate of the cities of the plain.

An article appeared on the site UnHerd, titled, “Did Israel Kill Too Many Civilians To Win the War?” contained this passage: “The proportion of civilian deaths already vastly outpaces America’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the comparable air-led Coalition campaigns to root out ISIS from Raqqa and Mosul. Around 25,000 Palestinians have been killed so far, including around 5,000 Hamas fighters, according to Israel: roughly one-sixth of the group’s total numbers. Indeed, the proportion of civilian deaths is higher than the average for even the bloodiest 20th-century conflicts.”

Population war has been the policy of the Anglo-American elite for decades, from Vietnam to Gaza. Recall the words and policy uttered in the 1980s, by the State Department’s Office of Population Affairs operative Thomas Ferguson “which yet survive, stamped upon these lifeless things"—the bodies of the Palestinians, Ukrainians, Sudanese, Libyans, Syrians, Congolese, Iraqis, and Afghanistan citizens that died in useless, failed population wars: “There is a single theme behind all our work—we must reduce population levels. Either governments do it our way, through nice clean methods, or they will get the kinds of mess that we have in El Salvador, or in Iran or in Beirut. Population is a political problem. Once population is out of control, it requires authoritarian government, even fascism, to reduce it.” The disavowed, and denied but very real practice of what Norman Finkelstein identified as “mowing the lawn”—the deliberate killing of Palestinian children and mothers—is being carried out, not merely by the IDF, but also by those modern-day “cities of the plain.”

It is not the military or “geo-strategic” policy, or disposition of military forces deployed by the Anglosphere that has caused the Anglo-American establishment to lose the mantle of heaven, to become more and more morally (and financially) bankrupt, more and more isolated from the rest of the world. It is their Satanic view of what they call “law.” Their predatory view of human beings determines their view of law. Their view of law is what determines their view of economics, wealth, value, profit and loss. Human beings in general, and more human beings in particular, are for them a loss, a waste, a negative, a dirty carbon footprint. There is an opposite, non-exploitative view of humanity, and therefore economics, championed by Lyndon LaRouche:

“The assumption that the universe is governed by fixed, merely abstract principles of lawfulness is a clinical expression of the kind of metaphysical happy phenomenalism arising from reductionism. The actuality of economic processes is expressed in the form of specific institutions and persons. Broad economic analysis permits one to determine the necessary potential order of reality; distinction between what is merely potential and which potentialities are actual influences is resolved, and uniquely so, by the determination of which potentialities are expressed or imminently to be expressed by concrete human beings organized in more or less clearly defined organized forms.”

The distinction of Abraham Lincoln, in the nation’s dark night of the soul called the War of Southern Secession, was his ability to lead America through four years of a purgative conflict, “where every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword.” Lincoln’s fluency in the language and meaning of William Shakespeare’s tragedies allowed Lincoln to forge a pathway to victory, free of tragedy, which brought into being the United States both as a fully and finally-unified Constitutional Republic, and as the most successful and productive economy in world history. Russia, China, Japan, Germany all sought to emulate Lincoln’s American System.”

This was also FDR’s “New Deal” standpoint, and the secret of his success. Later, there was a rejection by the United States, and the trans-Atlantic “Anglosphere” more generally, of the FDR-revived economic outlook of Abraham Lincoln and Lincoln’s implementation of the American System of physical economy. The policy proposals of the late American economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche, with the exception of President Ronald Reagan’s March 23, 1983 adoption of LaRouche beam weapon defense policy, were not only rejected but also denounced, and LaRouche was persecuted and thrown into prison to destroy their effectiveness. In contrast, the nations of China and Russia, along with others, in dialogues with LaRouche, and studied and adapted portions of LaRouche’s ideas of physical economy.

Over the course of the three decades since LaRouche’s release from a United States prison on January 27, 1994, the correctness of LaRouche’s ideas of physical economy—ideas which were also the substance of the Presidential policies of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Administration’s “Glass-Steagall Act” and “New Deal” measures more broadly, as well as the John F. Kennedy Administration’s “Apollo Project”—have become clearer with each passing year. The United States, now paying $100 billion per month in interest payments on its debt; now spending almost three times what it allocates for advanced thermonuclear fusion research on a single F-35 plane; disinvesting in its cities, and particularly hospitals and sanitation, thus preparing the conditions for the greatest possible spread of the next erupting pandemic, needs the leadership that Lyndon LaRouche, and The LaRouche Organization can and must provide at this conjuncture. We invite you, in these momentous days, to join us in providing that leadership.