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| '''Lyndon LaRouche''' views ] as the study of man's intervention into ], and therefore as the "mother of the sciences," since in LaRouche's opinion ] is man's study of nature by making interventions into it, rather than man making observations about nature from a "remote location." | |||
| Consequently, LaRouche often combines discussion of ] with a discussion of ], ] and ]. LaRouche has written extensively on subjects as diverse as ], ], ], and ]; this article is a concise summary of his key ideas. | |||
| ''This article deals with the political and economic ideas of the American political activist Lyndon LaRouche. For a biographical article about LaRouche, see '']''.'' | |||
| ==LaRouche |
==LaRouche on Economics== | ||
| LaRouche began as a ], but by the mid-1970s he had abandoned Marxism in favor of the school of thought known as the ], which he regarded as a superior approach. LaRouche describes himself as a "physical economist," meaning that he studies how man improves the means by which societies produce the necessities for survival, particularly through advances in ]. This term, "physical economy," is used in opposition to the school of ]. | |||
| Lyndon LaRouche began his political career as a ], and his political ideas retain certain characteristics of Marxism and ], albeit in a very incoherent form. LaRouche no longer opposes ] as an economic system, and his analysis of political events is no longer phrased in terms of ]. To LaRouche, the main enemy is now the conspiracy of financiers he calls the ], but this conspiracy shares many characteristics with the traditional Marxist caricature of capitalism. He still expounds a basically Leninist view of ]. Although LaRouche is frequently described as a fascist, his politics might better be described as a mutated form of ], combined with his elaborate ] and based on attacking individuals and groups rather than capitalists as a class. | |||
| LaRouche has said that a fundamental question of economics is the problem of diminishing resources, which is the central point of the ] argument: that population growth causes the depletion of resources needed for human survival. LaRouche insists that the Malthusian argument is false, because man, unlike other creatures, can invent new technologies that rely on new resources. Therefore, in LaRouche's opinion, an appropriate policy would be to develop the technology to harness ], for which the fuel would be hydrogen isotopes that are abundant in sea water, and to do it long before reserves of ] are exhausted. | |||
| During and after the period of his break with orthodox ], LaRouche's theory was influenced by what he called his "Theory of Hegemony" which was derived from ]'s view of the role of intellectuals in being a ] helping workers develop their consciousness and realise their leading role in society. He was also influnced by ]'s concept of a ] as an intellectual and cultural elite which directs social thought. LaRouche's theory saw himself and his followers as being able to become such a hegemonic force. He rejected, however, Gramsci's notion of "organic intellectuals" being developed by the working class itself. Rather, the working class would be led by elite intellectuals such as himself. | |||
| It follows from this argument that the only lasting "]" is the creative power of the human mind, which makes it possible to harness elements of nature that were once considered useless, such as oil, and then find new resources before the old ones have been depleted. LaRouche developed a metric to measure the success of an economic policy, which he calls "potential relative population density." This means that if a policy is successful, the number of human beings that can be sustained within a given geographic unit (for example, per hectare) should be increasing at an accelerating rate. | |||
| LaRouche was also influenced by his readings of Luxemburg's ''The Accumulation of Capital'' and ]'s '']'' developing his own "theory of reindustralization," arguing that the west would attempt to industrialize the ], particularly ], and attempt to solve the economic crisis both by developing new markets in the Third World and using its cheap and surplus labor to increase profits and minimise costs. This attempt would be unsuccessful, however, and would lead to catastrophic economic collapse. To oppose this, LaRouche argued for a "reindustrialization" of the United States with himself at the vanguard of the effort allowing him to personally resolve the crisis of capitalism. Though his arguments have since been stripped of their quasi-Marxist language and citations, his core theories have remained essentially the same since the late ]s. | |||
| LaRouche uses the term "]" to describe the decision-making process. He favors extensive government intervention, both in terms of regulating sectors of the economy that are essential to the well-being of the nation, and in terms of providing credits for investment in ] projects and science projects such as ] that are too large and long-term for any private firm to pursue. LaRouche points to policies such as ]'s ] and ]'s ] as examples of successful economic policy. LaRouche also supports the selective use of government's power both to tax and to issue credits (see ]) as a means of encouraging productive investment, while discouraging ]. | |||
| Wohlforth writes: | |||
| :<small>This scheme, which shaped LaRouche writings and agitation in the late '60s and early '70s, was presented in an increasingly frenetic manner, bolstered by predictions of economic doom. LaRouche was a crisis-monger of the highest order. LaRouche and his followers became increasingly convinced that the fate of the world rested with their group and their great leader. The problem lay with the stupidity of the nation's leaders and the boorishness of the masses. If only LaRouche were in power, all the world's troubles - perhaps even the rats problem in ] - would be resolved swiftly.</small> | |||
| LaRouche believes that if governments do not play a strong role in directing national economies, the gap will be filled by various sorts of ] and ]s. It is for this reason that LaRouche opposes ] and ] while supporting ]. | |||
| According to research conducted by ], LaRouche developed an intense interest in ] in the 1970s, and began to adopt some of its slogans and practices, while maintaining (as he still does) an outward stance of ]. | |||
| ==LaRouche |
==LaRouche on Epistemology== | ||
| LaRouche's views on politics come out of his ideas about ], the study of the genesis of knowledge and ideas. | |||
| In 1972 LaRouche's second wife, Carol Larrabee (also known as Carol Schnitzer), left him for Christopher White, a younger man who was a member of the LaRouche movement in Britain. Following the personal crisis of his marital breakdown, his writings became obsessively anti-feminist, even to the point of ], and obsessed with sex. In an article, "The Sexual Impotency of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party", LaRouche wrote: | |||
| In 1978, LaRouche authored an article entitled ''The Secrets Known Only to the Inner Elites'', in which he described the history of European civilization as a battle between two conflicting images of man, one proposed by ] and the other proposed by ] (this analysis is similar to the one published a century earlier by the German poet/philosopher ].) LaRouche favors the Platonists and opposes the Aristoteleans. As LaRouche describes it, Plato and his followers saw the universe as an ongoing process of creation, in which man plays a central role through his powers of ]. Aristotle and his followers, on the other hand, saw the universe as static and fixed, with humans being just another species of animal. | |||
| :<small>The classical case is the sexually athletic Macho who regards himself as a successful performer in bed, the Macho who has much to say and think respecting his capacities for various modes of penetration and frequency and cubic centimeters of ejaculations. The ugly secret of the matter is that he is almost totally sexually impotent.</small> | |||
| LaRouche sees all of human history as the ongoing conflict between these outlooks. He extends this analysis to controversies in science, the arts, and politics (see below). | |||
| In ] and ], on the heels of Operation Mop-Up, the LaRouche organization took a further turn towards misogyny and psychological mistreatment of its members. LaRouche issued an article called "" which instituted a regime of "ego-stripping" sessions and social coercion in which individuals would be subjected to incessant group criticism. | |||
| Among those thinkers that LaRouche considers followers of Plato, are ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], and ]. In the opposing Aristotelean camp he puts ], ], ], ], ], ], ], and ], along with the ], ], and the ] (these are partial lists). | |||
| In her resignation statement from the executive of the NCLC, Christine Berle wrote: | |||
| ==Republicans vs. Oligarchs== | |||
| :<small>The psychological climate that had been engendered by Operation Mop-Up set the stage for a tendency which has since crippled the organization. Since the political content of any disagreement with the policies of the leadership during Mop-Up could be dismissed not on its own terms, but as a pathology . A situation was created in which members were intimidated by peer-group pressure from voicing their own doubts; and indeed the terror of taking such an independent position compelled them to actually begin to consider these doubts within themselves as the consequence of a neurosis. Hence, the transformation of an organization composed of creative individuals capable of collectively synthesizing new concepts by means of a dialectic into an organization of rank-and-file automatons.</small> | |||
| According to LaRouche, the political expression of Platonism is the ] current, while the rival Aristotelean camp is ]. The republicans seek a form of society which cherishes the creative mental powers of the individual, and seeks to cultivate those powers as the key to economic and cultural progress. The oligarchs seek to suppress the mental powers of the individual, because they prefer a fixed, feudal form of society and consider change to be disruptive and dangerous. ] made a similar analysis, comparing the ancient city-states of Athens and Sparta in his essay, ''The Legislation of Solon and Lycurgus.'' LaRouche also warns that the oligarchical tendency opposes the idea of a universal human identity based on creativity, and tries to pit human beings against one another by categorizing them into various ethnicities -- this leads to ], ] and ]. | |||
| :<small>...Marcus' pseudo-psychoanalytical sessions, begun in Aug. 1975 with the NEC and all people in leading positions of responsibility, provid(ing) the final link in a process that culminated in Marcus' total hegemony over the organization.</small> | |||
| In LaRouche's opinion, the conflict between these two camps is the essence of politics, and all of the contemporary notions about "left vs. right" and "liberal vs. conservative" are a ]. | |||
| :<small>According to Marcus, the purpose of the sessions was to create a new kind of leadership based on the capacity to withstand psychological terror; but in reality the content of the sessions themselves was pure psychological terror. What the leaders were asked to withstand was described by Marcus as the stripping away of the persona before the entire group; but in actuality what was stripped away was their very identities.</small> | |||
| LaRouche believes that the ] and the adoption of the ] mark a watershed in history, as the most successful attempt to put the republican theory of politics into practice. LaRouche also places great importance on the ], believing that it is the mission of the ] to oppose ] and ]s whereever they may raise their heads. He refers often to the anecdotes recounted in Elliot Roosevelt's book, ''As I Saw It'', where he describes how ] informed ], in various meetings, that when the war was over, the U.S. would act to prevent the re-colonization of the ] nations by the ] and other similar enterprises. LaRouche sees the development of the Third World, and an end to the ] regime of the ], as the uncompleted mission of the U.S. | |||
| Further, she wrote: | |||
| :<small>It is scarcely surprising that the participants of the sessions should have been prey, to all, sorts of deep-seated feelings of self-hatred and worthlessness. Or that Marcus could have been able to manipulate those feelings to the point that any allegation, and particularly one that diagnosed a neurosis, would have to be believed. Moreover, Marcus was extremely skillful at turning the group on an individual who had been selected on the basis of rumors that he had failed to perform politically during the week, so that, from a congress of leaders, the group was transformed into sniveling informers vying with each other for Marcus' approval.</small> | |||
| Similarly, following his resignation from the NCLC, ] who is a ] by training wrote in his open letter to the NCLC: "With each passing day it becomes more and more transparently obvious that the National Caucus of Labor Committees' minimal understanding of psychosis and psychotic behavior derives not from its "electrifying" theoretical breakthroughs but rather from its capacity to produce psychosis and to opportunistically manipulate it in the name of socialist politics." | |||
| (Newman has been accused of similar psychological abuse and of copying LaRouche's methods in his own group, the ].) | |||
| LaRouche's theories of sexual dyanamics and female domination of men resulted in a breakdown of relations between the sexes and the break up of dozens of relationships as women were attacked for being "sadistic bitches" and "witches," and for "mother-dominating" men. | |||
| Berle commented: | |||
| :<small>Women were hit particularly viciously with this form of reductionism even to the point of tracing their sexuality to the proximity of the anus and the vagina with only the thin strip of the perineum distinguishing between the two. Marcus claimed that this anatomical peculiarity was the origin of women's feelings of degradation, since it gave rise to their confusion of the sexual act with the act of excretion.</small> | |||
| ==LaRouche's conspiracy theories== | |||
| During this period, LaRouche steered the NCLC further away from the Marxist left, while retaining some of the slogans and attitudes of the left. The Marxist concept of the ] was converted by LaRouche into a ], in which world capitalism was controlled by a secret cabal including the ], the ], ], the ] and other standard villains of the extreme right, many though not all of them Jewish. | |||
| In the 1960s and 1970s, LaRouche was particularly focussed on the supposed danger posed by liberal Republicans such as ] believing that he was attempting to rescue international capitalism through aid schemes and, domestically, through antipoverty programs as a means of coopting the working class and Black underclass. | |||
| LaRouche developed some novel variations on the standard conspiracy theories of the day. The heart of the conspiracy, according to LaRouche, was the financial elite of the ]. LaRouche has always been violently anti-British - a trait shared by many American isolationists - and has included ], among others, in his list of conspirators. | |||
| In the 1980s LaRouche's political rhetoric and accusations grew more detached from generally accepted reality. Hitler had been a British agent. ] was a Nazi. ] were "a product shaped according to British ] Division specifications." Both Communism and Fascism were facets of the great overarching conspiracy of the "]," an oligarchical network of financiers and manipulators who rule the world. Only LaRouche and his "humanist elite" fully understand this vast conspiracy, and possess the willpower and knowledge to withstand it. LaRouche's personal egotism is a significant force driving his politics. In ] he wrote: "My principal accomplishment is that of being, by a large margin of advantage, the leading economist of the twentieth century to date." Some of LaRouche's conspiracy theories appear to border on self-parody, "Who is pushing the world toward war?" he asked in "An Open Letter to President ]" (], ]). "It is the forces behind the ], the ], and the heritage of ] and the evil ]." | |||
| LaRouche claims that there is also a conspiracy by the "Establishment" and the press it allegedly controls to deny him coverage and prevent his views becoming known. He cites as evidence for this a ], ] opinion piece in the '']'', entitled "NCLC: A Domestic Political Menace," and written by ], a senior editor. Rosenfeld wrote: "We of the press should be chary of offering them print or air time. There is no reason to be too delicate about it: every day we decide whose voices to relay. A duplicitous violence-prone group with fascistic proclivities should not be presented to the public unless there is reason to present it in those terms." In fact LaRouche has continued to receive considerable press coverage, more in fact than the real importance of his organization might seem to warrant, although most of this coverage has been hostile. | |||
| ==LaRouche's economics== | |||
| Although he has no academic qualifications, LaRouche has written extensively on economic subjects. Since he is not taken seriously by mainstream economists, there is no academic literature analysing his economic ideas. He claims that his economic ideas are descended from the "]," a slogan originally associated with ] (] under ] and the main critic of the policies of ] ]), and later with ]. LaRouche also says that his ideas are based on the the economic policies of ] and Lincoln's advisor ], as well as those of ]. | |||
| In practice this amounts to advocating centralised, though not socialist, state control of the economy, with heavy state investment in industry and science. Economists would classify these ideas as ], some of his opponents call them reminiscent of Mussolini's ]. | |||
| LaRouche's theory is that the principal subject of economics is the ability of the cognitive powers of the individual human mind to make new "discoveries of universal principles." These discoveries, LaRouche says, lead to revolutions in technology, which re-define man's relationship to nature in a "non-linear way." Such revolutions, he says, are contingent on the "viability of the culture," on its capacity to absorb and transmit new ideas: LaRouche asserts that the most historically successful variety of culture is what he terms the classical culture of ] during the time of ], or the culture of ] in the centuries following the ]. | |||
| LaRouche claims to draw upon the ideas of mathematicians ] and ] to describe the "non-linear" effects of the technological revolutions he describes, and he uses the term "potential relative population density" to describe a measure of the success of a given economy or society. According to LaRouche's followers, a Russian scientist, ], proposed that the unit for measuring this parameter be called the "La" (for "LaRouche"). | |||
| In practical rather than theoretical terms, LaRouche's economic policies are not particularly radical or original. He opposes deregulation, ], ] and ]. He advocates government-issued credits for infrastructure projects, and claims to be an admirer of the ] economic policies of ]. He calls for greater federal investment in science and technology, particularly the ] and ] (with a special emphasis on ].) Most of these are staples of both the traditional left and the modern ] movement. | |||
| LaRouche maintains that supranational financial institutions such as the ], which he sees as controlled by the London financiers and therefore agents of the "Synarchy," are committed to a policy of looting the living standards of the world's populations through ] and ], while contracting the actual productive base of these economies -- a policy that he claims is a revival of the economic approach of the ] central banker ], who held office both before and during the ] government of ]. | |||
| Despite LaRouche's rhetorical skill in presenting them as revolutionary, LaRouche's economic ideas are hardly original: they are similar to the policies of ] under ] and the corporatism of ] under ] and ] under ]. What makes LaRouche's ideas distinctive is his belief that capitalism is not, as Marxists argue, the principal enemy of progress. Instead he has developed the elaborate conspiracy theory described above, in which he claims that a secret elite called the Synarchy really rules the world. This ] conspiracy, he says, predates and transcends both capitalism and socialism. | |||
| ==LaRouche and the Jews== | |||
| LaRouche has been regularly accused of ] and ]. Jewish organisations such as the ] and the ] of ] have devoted much time and energy to documenting LaRouche's various writings and speeches on these subjects. LaRouche for his part has denied these accusations. | |||
| The truth about LaRouche's attitude to the Jews is not easy to determine. Indeed it is likely that there is no single truth, since many of LaRouche's statements on this as on other subjects have been obscure and contradictory. From the early 1970s LaRouche regularly used the word "]" as a term of abuse. The use of "Zionist" as a code word for "Jew" is a common practice among anti-Semitic groups (see for example and ). In the 1970s also, according to ], LaRouche developed connections with the ] and the ], a leading extreme right group, both well-known for anti-Semitism. | |||
| In NCLC publications during the 1970s, some Jewish individuals were accused of running the ], controlling ], and the ]. LaRouche also claimed that the "Zionist lobby" significantly influenced the U.S. government. Any American professing "Zionist loyalties" was, he said, a "national security risk." | |||
| In ''The Case of ]'' (]), LaRouche (under the pen name L. Marcus) said that "Jewish culture... is merely the residue left to the Jewish home after everything saleable has been marketed to the Goyim." In an editorial in ''New Solidarity'' in ] he wrote: "America must be cleansed for its righteous war by the immediate elimination of the Nazi Jewish Lobby and other British agents from the councils of government, industry, and labor." | |||
| LaRouche has been regularly accused of ], widely seen as a hallmark of anti-Semitism. In ] LaRouche wrote (in "New Pamphlet to Document Cult Origins of Zionism," ''New Solidarity'', ], ]) that "only" 1.5 million Jews died during ], and that their deaths were not the result of a deliberate campaign of extermination by the Nazis. | |||
| :<small>It is argued that the culmination of the persecution of the Jews in the Nazi holocaust proves that Zionism is so essential to "Jewish survival" that any anti-Zionist is therefore not only an anti-Semite, but that any sort of criminal action is excusable against anti-Zionists in memory of the mythical "six million Jewish victims" of the Nazi "holocaust."</small> | |||
| :<small>This is worse than sophistry. It is a lie. True, about a million and a half Jews did die as a result of the Nazi policy of labor-intensive "appropriate technology" for the employment of "inferior races," a small fraction of the tens of million of others - especially Slavs - who were murdered in the same way Jewish refugee Felix Rohaytin proposes today. Even on a relative scale, what the Nazis did to Jewish victims was mild compared with the virtual extermination of ] and the butchery of Communists.</small> | |||
| These statements are sufficient to convict LaRouche beyond any reasonable doubt of Holocaust denial. Not only does he place "holocaust" in inverted commas and refer to the "the mythical six million Jewish victims", his assertion that Jews died only as a result of forced labour can only be read as a denial that the ] existed, a denial of the fact that the Nazis directly and deliberately killed millions of Jews, both in these camps and by means of the '']''. | |||
| Whether LaRouche can fairly be accused of anti-Semitism is a more complex question. Neither Dennis King nor LaRouche's other critics have cited any statements in LaRouche's writings of hostility towards or condemnation of the Jews as a race or of the Jewish religion, or any assertions that the Jews ''as a people'' are guilty of any of the crimes that classical anti-Semitism ascribes to them. LaRouche should therefore be acquitted of being an anti-Semite of the traditional or classical type. | |||
| But anti-Semitism assumes different guises in different circumstances and at different times: thus the anti-Semitism of ] differed in form from that of ] while being equal in intensity. LaRouche's critics say that he is a "disguised anti-Semite," in that he takes the classical anti-Semitic conspiracy theory and substitutes the word "Zionist" for the word "Jew", and ascribes the classical anti-Semite's caricature of the evil, scheming Jew to particular, named, Jews and groups of Jews, rather than to the Jews as a whole. | |||
| The ] article quoted above would seem to corroborate this accusation. In this article, LaRouche acknowledges that he accepts the classical anti-Semite conspiracy theory, with the caveat that he ascibes it to ''groups of Jews'' rather than to ''all Jews''. | |||
| :<small>The Czarist ]'s "]" include a hard kernel of truth which no mere Swiss court decision could legislate out of existence. The fallacy of the "Protocols of Zion" is that it attributes the alleged conspiracy to Jews generally, to Judaism. A corrected version of the Protocols would stipulate that the evil oaths cited were actually the practices of variously a Paris branch of ] and the evidence the Okhrana turned up in tracing the penetration of the Romanian branch of B'nai B'rith (Zion) into such Russian centres of relevance as ]..."</small> | |||
| (] is a Jewish service organisation. LaRouche's animus towards it is connected to the fact that it is the parent organisation of the ], which has been assiduous in researching and documenting LaRouche's activities since the early 1970s. "The ADL," says LaRouche in the same article, "is literally the ] of the British secret intelligence in the urban centers of the United States.") | |||
| LaRouche's principal target in this article is "Zionism." Zionism is a Jewish political movement supporting the creation and (since 1948) defence of a Jewish state in Palestine. For LaRouche, however, it is an underground conspiracy, existing since the 16th century. "Modern Zionism was not created by Jews, but was a project developed chiefly by ]," LaRouche says. | |||
| Today, LaRouche says, Zionism is controlled by the financiers of London: "Zionism is the state of collective psychosis through which London manipulates most of the international Jewry", and "Zionist cultism is among the most important of the levers through which British criminality and miscalculation is plunging the world towards ." LaRouche attributes to "Zionism" the various crimes which the classic anti-Semite attributes to Jews: conspiracy, manipulation, treason and secret control of international finance, media and government. | |||
| LaRouche denies equating "Zionism" with the Jews. "You cannot be a Zionist and also a Jew," he writes. LaRouche can be acquitted of the charge of anti-Semtitism only if this premise is accepted. But since the great majority of Jews are in fact Zionists, the statement that "You cannot be a Zionist and also a Jew" is ridiculous. When LaRouche accuses "Zionists" of treason and conspiracy, he is therefore seen by Jews, and many others, to be levelling those accusations against most Jews. When he accuses organisations such as B'nai B'rith and the ADL, and many individual Jews, of various crimes, he is seen to be attacking the great majority of Jews who support those organisations and those individuals, ''particularly'' since he attributes to them the classic crimes of the sterotypical Jew of the anti-Semitic imagination. | |||
| In this sense LaRouche can fairly be described as having been an anti-Semite in ], when this article was published. He has never explicitly repudiated the views expressed in this article. In the 1980s, the ] of New York state ruled that calling LaRouche and anti-Semite was "fair comment". | |||
| In recent years, however, LaRouche appears to have modified his views on these subjects - without of course conceding that he has done so. In a ] LaRouche published an article called "A Personal Statement from Lyndon LaRouche on Music, Judaism, and Hitler." In this article he several times refers to "the Jew," a usage typical of anti-Semites and one which he must have known is offensive to Jews. | |||
| Nevertheless, in the course of a discussion of ], LaRouche acknowledges the contribution made by Jews to European civilization. He says: "Germany can never be truly freed from the legacy of Hitler's crimes, until the contributions of German Jews, in particular, are celebrated as an integral part of the honorable history of Germany." The article contains several other statements in similar vein. There is even a word of praise for ], an archetypal Jewish business figure. | |||
| In this article also LaRouche acknowledges that the Holocaust is not mostly mythological or a Zionist swindle. He says: "We can not allow 2,000 years of Jewish survival in Europe to be buried under the faceless stone epitaph which speaks only of a bare 13-odd years of Hitler's Holocaust." He explicity states that "Yes, Hitler killed millions of Jews," a direct repudiation of his ] statement that only 1.5 million died and those not as a result of a deliberate plan of extermination. This article can be seen as a significant (if unacknowledged) retreat by LaRouche from his statements of the 1970s and 1980s. Whether LaRouche can be fairly described as an anti-Semite today is thus an open question. | |||
| ==Is LaRouche a fascist?== | |||
| LaRouche is frequently described by left-wing writers and orators as a ]. Dennis King used this thesis in the title of his book ''Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism.'' However, fascism is an extremely difficult word to define, and has been debased since ] by its frequent use of a term of general abuse by political activists of various kinds. LaRouche himself frequently describes his enemies indiscriminately as fascists or proto-fascists. | |||
| Most definitions of fascism, however, agree on a number of elements: ], ], contempt for ] and the advocacy of some form of ] rule, and economic ]. Organizationally, fascist movements are characterized by the use or advocacy of violence, lack of internal democracy and regimentation in the service of charismatic personal leadership. ] and specifically ] are often characteristics of fascists and fascist parties, but are generally not held to be essentials elements of fascism: Italian fascism under Mussolini, for example, had no theory of race, and there were a number of Jews among its early leaders. | |||
| On most of these tests, LaRouche is not a fascist and his organisations are not fascist parties. LaRouche does not advocate American nationalism or militarism - in fact his criticisms of U.S. foreign policy are similar in many respects to those of the left, except that he blames its deficiencies on Zionist conspirators rather than on capitalist imperialism (marking a similarity between his views and those of right wing American isolationists such as ]). His sole nod to militarism is his advocacy of space weapons. He does not advocate, at least in public, the abolition of democracy or the imposition of authoritarian rule. For the past 20 years he has devoted much of his energy to competing in democratic elections. He certainly advocated and practised violence in the 1970s, but at that time he was still a Trotskyist, and the violence of Operation Mop-Up should be seen as part of a feud between factions of the extreme left, rather than as part of the program of a fascist movement. | |||
| On the other hand LaRouche's political organization is certainly built entirely around his own personality and the promotion of his words and ideas. This, however, is a characteristic of all cults, religious or secular, and not just of fascist groups. Most of the Trotskyists sects from whose milieu the LaRouche organization developed share this characteristic. | |||
| The aspects of LaRouche's politics that most expose him to accusations of fascism are the violently abusive and demagogic nature of his political rhetoric (a characteristic of all fascist leaders from Mussolini and Hitler to ] and ]), and the widely held belief that he is or was in the past an anti-Semite. As noted, anti-Semitism is not necessarily a defining characteristic of fascism, but as a result of the experience of ] it is almost universally associated with it, and indeed it is frequently a tenet of modern fascist groups. | |||
| ==External Link== | ==External Link== | ||
Revision as of 14:56, 2 September 2004
Lyndon LaRouche views economics as the study of man's intervention into nature, and therefore as the "mother of the sciences," since in LaRouche's opinion science is man's study of nature by making interventions into it, rather than man making observations about nature from a "remote location."
Consequently, LaRouche often combines discussion of economics with a discussion of science, philosophy and culture. LaRouche has written extensively on subjects as diverse as historiography, plasma physics, polyphony, and philology; this article is a concise summary of his key ideas.
LaRouche on Economics
LaRouche began as a Marxist, but by the mid-1970s he had abandoned Marxism in favor of the school of thought known as the American System, which he regarded as a superior approach. LaRouche describes himself as a "physical economist," meaning that he studies how man improves the means by which societies produce the necessities for survival, particularly through advances in technology. This term, "physical economy," is used in opposition to the school of monetarism.
LaRouche has said that a fundamental question of economics is the problem of diminishing resources, which is the central point of the Malthusian argument: that population growth causes the depletion of resources needed for human survival. LaRouche insists that the Malthusian argument is false, because man, unlike other creatures, can invent new technologies that rely on new resources. Therefore, in LaRouche's opinion, an appropriate policy would be to develop the technology to harness nuclear fusion, for which the fuel would be hydrogen isotopes that are abundant in sea water, and to do it long before reserves of fossil fuels are exhausted.
It follows from this argument that the only lasting "natural resource" is the creative power of the human mind, which makes it possible to harness elements of nature that were once considered useless, such as oil, and then find new resources before the old ones have been depleted. LaRouche developed a metric to measure the success of an economic policy, which he calls "potential relative population density." This means that if a policy is successful, the number of human beings that can be sustained within a given geographic unit (for example, per hectare) should be increasing at an accelerating rate.
LaRouche uses the term "political economy" to describe the decision-making process. He favors extensive government intervention, both in terms of regulating sectors of the economy that are essential to the well-being of the nation, and in terms of providing credits for investment in infrastructure projects and science projects such as NASA that are too large and long-term for any private firm to pursue. LaRouche points to policies such as Abraham Lincoln's transcontinental railroad and Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Tennessee Valley Authority as examples of successful economic policy. LaRouche also supports the selective use of government's power both to tax and to issue credits (see national bank) as a means of encouraging productive investment, while discouraging speculation.
LaRouche believes that if governments do not play a strong role in directing national economies, the gap will be filled by various sorts of monopolies and cartels. It is for this reason that LaRouche opposes Free Trade and globalism while supporting protectionism.
LaRouche on Epistemology
LaRouche's views on politics come out of his ideas about epistemology, the study of the genesis of knowledge and ideas.
In 1978, LaRouche authored an article entitled The Secrets Known Only to the Inner Elites, in which he described the history of European civilization as a battle between two conflicting images of man, one proposed by Plato and the other proposed by Aristotle (this analysis is similar to the one published a century earlier by the German poet/philosopher Heinrich Heine.) LaRouche favors the Platonists and opposes the Aristoteleans. As LaRouche describes it, Plato and his followers saw the universe as an ongoing process of creation, in which man plays a central role through his powers of cognition. Aristotle and his followers, on the other hand, saw the universe as static and fixed, with humans being just another species of animal.
LaRouche sees all of human history as the ongoing conflict between these outlooks. He extends this analysis to controversies in science, the arts, and politics (see below).
Among those thinkers that LaRouche considers followers of Plato, are Philo of Alexandria, Saint Augustine, Nicholas of Cusa, Johannes Kepler, Pierre Abélard, Rabelais, Gottfried Leibniz, Johann Sebastian Bach, Moses Mendelssohn, William Shakespeare, Miguel Cervantes, Benjamin Franklin, and Friedrich Schiller. In the opposing Aristotelean camp he puts Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Voltaire, Rene Descartes, Charles Darwin, Sir Isaac Newton, Richard Wagner, and Bertrand Russell, along with the positivists, existentialists, and the Frankfurt School (these are partial lists).
Republicans vs. Oligarchs
According to LaRouche, the political expression of Platonism is the republican current, while the rival Aristotelean camp is oligarchical. The republicans seek a form of society which cherishes the creative mental powers of the individual, and seeks to cultivate those powers as the key to economic and cultural progress. The oligarchs seek to suppress the mental powers of the individual, because they prefer a fixed, feudal form of society and consider change to be disruptive and dangerous. Friedrich Schiller made a similar analysis, comparing the ancient city-states of Athens and Sparta in his essay, The Legislation of Solon and Lycurgus. LaRouche also warns that the oligarchical tendency opposes the idea of a universal human identity based on creativity, and tries to pit human beings against one another by categorizing them into various ethnicities -- this leads to particularism, racism and eugenics.
In LaRouche's opinion, the conflict between these two camps is the essence of politics, and all of the contemporary notions about "left vs. right" and "liberal vs. conservative" are a red herring.
LaRouche believes that the American Revolution and the adoption of the U.S. Constitution mark a watershed in history, as the most successful attempt to put the republican theory of politics into practice. LaRouche also places great importance on the Monroe Doctrine, believing that it is the mission of the United States to oppose colonialism and empires whereever they may raise their heads. He refers often to the anecdotes recounted in Elliot Roosevelt's book, As I Saw It, where he describes how Franklin Delano Roosevelt informed Winston Churchill, in various meetings, that when the war was over, the U.S. would act to prevent the re-colonization of the Third World nations by the British Empire and other similar enterprises. LaRouche sees the development of the Third World, and an end to the austerity regime of the International Monetary Fund, as the uncompleted mission of the U.S.