Now, at the beginning of this New Year, the world is poised to speak and to hear of the Zepp-LaRouche Ten Principles. The Schiller Institute “Ten Principles” text, now circulating for more than a year, was always intended to catalyze a response from individuals and institutions, creating a contemporary dialogue of civilizations and cultures completely inconceivable to the dullards of diplomacy of the trans-Atlantic nations. Now, with the statements of conscience from Jewish citizens in Israel, including Knesset members endorsing the filing by Nelson Mandela’s South Africa of the inquiry into whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza at the International Court of Justice; now, with tens of thousands of farmers taking to the streets of Germany to fight for the good of their nation; now, with new alliances being forged between nations like China, the world’s most rapidly advancing scientific power, and Bolivia, which wants to propel its people to equality with all others on the planet—now, the dialogue regarding the Ten Principles can really begin.
The potential for true, durable, and positive change, as seen in the economic and political actions of the BRICS-Plus nations, and in this week’s national ferment in the streets of Germany, is manifest throughout the world. There is also, of course, change of a negative, violent nature, in the expansion of unnecessary warfare worldwide. More notably, however, there is a change from a system that is dying, to one that is being born, but is not yet here, and the wars and financial wars are often reactions to that. There are two paths before the world that can be taken to achieve systemic, long-term, planetary change: There is the path of those who believe in Power, and there is the path of those who believe in Force. The results of taking the path of force, is what we have seen in Gaza, in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, what was earlier seen in World Wars One and Two, and now, looming before us, in Three. What of the other path? What is the nature of a type of power, which is different than that of force? There is a power in forgiveness, in mercy, in reconciliation—but is it greater than that of force, and if so, under what conditions?
Pope Francis, one of the few trans-Atlantic leaders to whom President Vladimir Putin sent Christmas/New Year’s greetings, proposed, in New Year remarks he addressed to the diplomatic corps of the Vatican, to “jump start” a mobilization by the Catholic Church, around “the Jubilee Year, 2025” now, in January 2024. “This year the Church is preparing for the Holy Year that will begin next Christmas…. Today, perhaps more than ever, we need a Holy Year.” Those familiar with the concept of the Jubilee, know that, in that tradition, all slaves were to be freed, all debts were to be cancelled, and people were to seek forgiveness and reconciliation with enemies. The Jubilee concept is deeply rooted in Judaism, perhaps even more so than in Christianity, with its seven-year cycle, called the sabbatical; every seventh year, the same practices—freeing slaves, debt forgiveness—apply. At the end of seven such cycles, or 49 years, the 50th year is called the “Jubilee Year.”
But independent of the Judaic or Christian confessions, we can find such an idea at the bedrock of Western Civilization itself, in the great 7th century B.C. poem of Solon of Athens, the Athenian Constitution, excerpted here:
This my soul commands me teach the Athenians:
A bad constitution brings civic turmoil,
But a good one shows well-ordering and coherence,
As it puts shackles ‘round about wrong-doing
It smoothes out the rough; it checks greed, tempers hubris,
And withers the fruits of reckless impulse.
It takes crooked judgments and makes them straight,
Softens arrogant deeds, halts seditious acts,
And ends the bile of grievous strife. And so under it,
Everything for mankind becomes whole and wise.
Friedrich Schiller, in his historical study “The Legislation of Lycurgus and Solon” writes:
“The condition of the Athenian people at that time was lamentable in the extreme. One class of people possessed everything, the other, on the other hand, nothing at all; the rich mercilessly repressed and exploited the poor.… For the sums they borrowed, they had to pay immense interest, and if they did not pay on time, they were first forced to sell even their lands to their creditors. When they had nothing more to give, and yet had to live, they were forced to sell their own children as slaves, and finally, when this recourse, too, was exhausted, they took credit, secured on their own persons, and had to accept being sold by their creditors as slaves.…
“Solon’s father had been a very rich man, but had reduced his wealth through charity, and the young Solon had to become a merchant in his younger years. His spirit was enriched by the travels, which this kind of life made necessary, and by intercourse with foreign peoples, and his genius developed in acquaintance with the wisemen of foreign countries. …
“The first act, with which he began his work, was the famous edict, called the seisachtheia, or the release, whereby all debts were annulled, and it was forbidden at the same time, that in the future anyone be permitted to borrow on his own person.”
This is the idea of power, distinct from the idea of force. The poet, Solon, recited a new form of republic into being. And Solon, to demonstrate the principle of power, rather than “the letter and the rule of the law,” voluntarily exiled himself from holding power for ten years, so that the Athenian people would understand that the Constitution was theirs, not his. That “Promethean” act, and the mind behind it, shows why Solon was called “the Law-giver.” Lyndon LaRouche in his 2000 “In Defense of Strategy,” writes:
“Since the exemplary reforms of Solon of Athens, the principles of strategy associated with the history of globally extended European civilization, have reduced the essential issues of statecraft, including warfare, to an axiomatic difference between the two axiomatically incompatible notions of society. The one, the Classical republican notion, expressing the Classical Greek tradition in science and art, has been the policy of promoting a truthful and just promotion of the general welfare of all persons and their posterity, that by means of mankind’s increased power over nature. The opposing, so-called Romantic view in statecraft and art, that of ancient Babylon, Tyre, the Delphi cult of the Pythian Apollo, and pagan Rome, has been the rule of a relative view, an oligarchy, and its attached retinues of lackey, over a majority of a mankind degraded to the status of virtual human cattle.
“The modern, sovereign nation-state republic, as typified by the 1776 U.S. Declaration of Independence, and the 1789 Preamble of the Federal Constitution, belongs to the first type; the British Empire since the succession of George I, has typified the second.”
The founding documents and principles that formulated the United States, most of which are no longer taught in the American school system, come from the same “law-giver” source as Solon’s Constitution, or the 1644-48 Treaty of Westphalia, or Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s Ten Principles for a New International Strategic and Development Architecture. Such ideas cannot be merely bound to the soil of any one place. The declaration of independence recently heard in the words of the Israeli member of the Knesset, Olef Cassif, who demanded to stand with South Africa in its quest for the truth at the International Court of Justice, shows how to walk the path of power, rather than that of force. “When the government acts against society, the state, and its citizens, especially when it sacrifices them and commits crimes in their name on the altar of maintaining its existence, it is my right and even my duty to warn about this and do everything I can within the law to stop it.” That was Cassif’s own original, spontaneous paraphrasing of that principle in the American Declaration of Independence that insists, “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.…”
With the report published Dec. 29 in The Guardian, recounting how and why 500,000 more Palestinians are likely to die over the next year in Gaza because of the destruction of health care, courageous voices have begun to be heard in the Jewish community, voices which had to speak as witnesses to their persecuted and even exterminated ancestors, and from which history would expect nothing less. The Times of Israel reported that “The casualties in Gaza have eroded the Jewish consensus, as has the rhetoric of some far-right members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition.” Americans for Peace Now said, “For the sake of the security and well-being of civilians in Israel and in Gaza, the Biden administration must push Israel to bring about an immediate cessation of hostilities and pivot from war to peacemaking.”
More of these statements are reported below.
Yes, there is climate change—but not of the type King Charles prattles about. The climate change that has now filled the streets of Germany, with scores of thousands of tractors and trucks, and hundreds of thousands of people, is echoed in many other nations. And that climate is definitely warming up, in an uncomfortable way for some.
It is great ideas, such as the Oasis Plan, and the many other economic proposals of Lyndon LaRouche and his associates, along with our ideas on science and culture, that give us the ability to come to the fore at this time. Those that plunge into, that descend into the maelstrom of change, that organize in the streets of the world, challenging other citizens to have the courage to change their axioms, to “join the Jubilee” and free mankind and nations from unpayable debt and from slavery—wage-slavery or wageless slavery—are the future power.
That is the power that our opposition does not have, and cannot possess. Saltwater fish, placed in a freshwater environment, are in jeopardy. With our solution-driven ideas, and the ability to communicate them to others, we are able to create a fresh ocean of ideas in which the fish of the old order are unable to swim. That is the power of creation, and of productivity, that is greater than any rule of law, or body of force that will ever exist. We can choose to be the law-givers, the perhaps unacknowledged, but nonetheless efficient legislators of the world.
