“2024 and 2074: A New Paradigm for the Next Fifty Years”
An extraordinary international dialogue with youth under the above title was organized on Jan. 20 by the Schiller Institute. The three-hour discussion was held with a live audience in New York City together with online participants, many of them in groups, from around the world. At least 20 countries, representing all continents, were represented, from China to Afghanistan to Chile.
The event began with a presentation by Helga Zepp-LaRouche on the crises the world is facing today, as well as the approach needed to resolve them. She ended with an overview of the philosophical conceptions of the Schiller Institute, which are based on the ideas of her late husband, Lyndon LaRouche, which she went on to develop. We provide a short teaser below:
LaRouche, she explained, developed “a method of thinking”, which is based on physical economy, and involves identifying the axioms and assumptions of the relevant policies. That is what allowed him to forecast, with absolute accuracy, “every turn of the present financial system for the worse”, since at least 1971. He warned that the United States economy would end up in the miserable condition it is in today, “because they did the out-sourcing of their production to cheap labor markets; they shifted from an orientation of the common good to a shareholder value society; they changed having full-chain production in your own country to the just-in-time mode; they went more and more to the idea that money makes money, which ended up in the derivatives trade, which now amounts to $2 quadrillion in outstanding derivatives contracts right now, which are unpayable, and that is why we are now in danger of a total collapse of the financial system.
“That method of thinking is very much associated with understanding what it is that allows society to move forward; what is the source of wealth? Namely, it is entirely the creative powers of the individual, who is able, again and again, to come up with new ideas, identifying qualitative breakthroughs in science, in great art; identifying principles which give us new insight into how the physical universe works. When we apply these principles to the production process, it leads to an increase of the productivity of the people, of the industrial capacity, leading to an increase in physical wealth, again, and again, and again.
“So, it is not the possession of raw materials. It is not the control of the terms of trade – as the free market economists claim: It is entirely the ability of the human mind to use its creative powers to make discoveries of physical principles, qualitatively new principles. Then to apply them in the production process, and in this way, increase the power of man over nature and over the universe. And that is the right which has been denied to the developing countries until the recent struggle where the Global South is insisting on the innate right to apply this principle to their own economies.”
“This is basically associated with the image of man. The ecologists try to convince people that man is a parasite, that man is a burden to nature. Some even go so far as to say that women should not have children anymore, because every newborn child is a burden on nature… Others say that man is only the steward of nature, not different than the other species; that even plants have an equal right to human beings. I think this is a fundamentally wrong conception…”
The presentation by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, in English, will soon be available here.
