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WE ARE, AS A MOVEMENT, AT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD

Here are Lyndon LaRouche's opening remarks to a LaRouche Youth Movement cadre school in Berlin on Dec. 3.

Okay, I'll begin: There's something I think should be the difference between a monetarist system and a credit system, that is, between the principles which underlay the U.S. design of the Bretton Woods system which was a credit system, as opposed to what we've had since 1971-72, which is a monetarist system. The difference is, that a monetary system is a relic, especially of Venice, in which a concert, like a slime-mold, of private financial interests gangs up together, and declares itself to be the world monetary authority, and sets rules by which governments and others must borrow money, on terms and conditions dictated by this slime-mold, this monetary institution—which essentially is the present IMF system.

Under a credit system, of the type which Roosevelt used as a guide for designing the Bretton Woods system, that it is the credit of the national government, its pledges and its control over the issuance of money, which provides money in the form of credit, to designated borrowers, who borrow in a way which is consistent with national interests and agreements with other states. Now, this is essentially what was done with the Bretton Woods system, when the United States was the only part of the world which had the capacity to generate credit, this large credit. It was the credit of the United States, not money issued by the United States as such, but credit given through the IMF and by the United States directly, which was the basis for the postwar recovery of the first 20 years of the postwar period.

Now, the conflicting system was the British system, what's called British system, or the Anglo-Dutch Liberal system. And what has happened over the postwar period, is especially beginning with the Harold Wilson government, the first Harold Wilson government of England, following the assassination of Kennedy, that, in this period, the British moved to take back—it wasn't just the British themselves, but the interests they represented—to take back control over the world economy, from the United States. With complicity of people inside the United States, as in Wall Street, who are essentially, spiritually and otherwise, part of the British system, like the House of Morgan, and so forth and so on.

So, what has happened now, is, we now have a system of debt slavery imposed by a global slime-mold, which is now called IMF, because it has taken over the IMF, as opposed to the postwar system of the first 20 years of the postwar system, which is the Roosevelt system, which is based largely on the American credit system, on the American System of political-economy.

Now, this was a process of destruction, in which the assassination of Kennedy, the launching of the Vietnam War, and other things were done, to induce the United States to begin to destroy itself. Now remember, if you go back to Kennedy, Kennedy was not a perfect person, but look at his policy: His policy on the space program and other things were policies which aimed at a continuation of the Franklin Roosevelt policy as U.S. policy, both in terms of domestic affairs, and international affairs. Kennedy was killed for that reason. He was killed by the monetarist interests, to get him out of there.

See the changes that occurred—we went into the Vietnam War, the Indo-China war, which Kennedy was committed to preventing. Under the advice of one former President, Dwight Eisenhower, and the advice of a leading general, Douglas MacArthur. Both advised on this. Kennedy was clear on that, and for that reason, he was killed. The policy changed by plunging into the Indo-China War, which weakened the United States in the way which is comparable to the way the United States has been weakened by Bush and Cheney, by the Iraq War, and related kinds of things. The economy of the United States has been ruined by the commitment to that war, by a foolish President who's merely a puppet of forces behind Cheney.

So, we're now at the point that the world is bankrupt. France is bankrupt, Germany is bankrupt, every part of Continental Europe is bankrupt. Every nation is bankrupt. Every nation's government is presently incompetent in Europe. The Russian government is less incompetent, but it is also incompetent, because it doesn't understand what kind of a world it's living in. It has some perspectives which are interesting ones, and not all bad, but the overall policy is not a workable one. Forget China. China is not a bad country, but China can not take over leadership and solve this problem. India's not a bad country, but it isn't capable—countries with 70% desperately poor, as a typical Asian country, with an Asian tradition, can not cope with this kind of global situation. Except as cooperating partners of somebody who can provide the correct kind of leadership.

The only place on this planet, from which the correct kind of leadership could come, is from the United States. What do we have? I'm in a very interesting position—I'm no longer on the fringes, as some people thought.

I'm at the center of this process. Now, here's what the problems we have are. As you will have observed, since the summer of last year—and I mean 2004—we broke through in Boston; we were able to begin changing the orientation of the Democratic Party from an anti-Franklin Roosevelt policy, to a pro-Franklin Roosevelt policy. This came to a head with the influence of former President Bill Clinton, in August and early September of last year, where I was brought in as a key figure in the constellation people advising and steering the Kerry campaign. That was too late, and Kerry didn't get onto it well enough, soon enough. But nonetheless—. And there was also fraud, massive [voter] fraud of various kinds.

But, what happened was, now, the party was demoralized on Nov. 2, by the reported election result. But on Nov. 9, we had this international conference, which was presented out of Washington; which we got the Democratic Party to get up off the floor of despair and to begin to mobilize to fight, on my perspective for taking the issue of defending Social Security, to turn George Bush and his administration into a lame-duck administration from the beginning. Now, that worked. As the result of the success of that, beginning from the day of George's inauguration, the success of that, we changed history. Because we were able to get the Democratic Party leadership mobilized around the defense of Social Security, to adopt a perspective, in the main, of a Franklin Roosevelt perspective—that is, a renewal of the Roosevelt perspective, Roosevelt policies. That has happened. Since May 23 of this year, we've had an active emergence of a bipartisan grouping of most of the Democratic Party leadership, that is, the elected leadership and its supporters; and also a growing number of Republicans, who do not like the Cheney option, and are dismayed about that, who are much more reasonable. That is, they are much more traditional, would be another way of putting it.

So now, we had, first of all, a series of events in Congress. Remember, 98 out of 100 votes against Cheney on the question of torture. That means something. You had 403 votes in support of Murtha, against the war policy of the administration, in the House of Representatives. You have the leadership, the Republican leadership, or the Cheneyac leadership of the House of Representatives is on the way to prison! Led by the threat of imprisonment of DeLay and a whole passel of the Abramoff crowd, which are in the area of facing imprisonment, and they have one of their former associates who has turned as state's witness against all of his old friends, including Abramoff, DeLay, and Co. So, they're not in good shape, under these conditions.

The problem is this: That on certain areas of issues, we have a very good response from the leaders of the Democratic Party, and others, in the Senate, and from the many of the committees in the House. And the House of Representatives, while it's not fully functioning yet, it's on the way to the point that it can function. When we eliminate the blunt instrument, and we may be able to get it to function fully. The problem is, that on certain issues, we're doing very well—matter of fact, we're on the way to victory, by all counts.

But! The problem is, the immediate onrush of international financial collapse. Now, there's where we're having the jam up: Because, there's a resistance—remember, look from the beginning of the year, February-March, when I warned against the collapse of GM on the way, in the auto industry. Immediately, they were excited by the problem, that prospect, especially in the Senate and some of the committees in the House of Representatives. But! When it came to actually carrying out the actions that I proposed—they froze. And they have tended to freeze ever since. Now, you have Hillary Clinton, a Senator, with her staff, and they're working actively on this question. Others are also working actively on it. But the will to go ahead with the necessary measures that I know are necessary, is not yet in place.

Now, I've written this proposal on dealing with the auto crisis, to response to Bill Ford's statements, as the occasion for putting it out. I also have circulated, which many of you probably have seen, a list of the things that must be done, which some people may not be prepared to do right now, but which they're going to have to be prepared to do damned soon—if the world economy is not to go to Hell. Because we're on the verge of the greatest financial collapse in history. What you see in the fascist threat in France, around these riots, around Sarkozy, is very real! But this is typical of this kind of situation in history: It's typical of the threat of fascism in France, already in the 1920s! But the French could never get fascism going in France, despite their legacy of Napoleon, until the German Wehrmacht brought them fascism, imported from Germany! In other words, the French Synarchists really were the inventors of fascism. They invented fascism in Italy; they brought fascism into Germany, and other places. But they couldn't get it at home! They couldn't produce it at home—I guess there was a breakdown in the production line, hmm? So, they had to have the Wehrmacht invade France in order to give them the fascist regimes of Laval and so forth, hmm?

But, we're in that kind of situation, of economic crisis, where institutions of monetarist power, are unwilling to allow the reforms. And the people who should be resisting the monetarist power, who are in positions of power, are not. And therefore, you come to a point of decision, where the monetarists can not prevail with the present system, and the alternative to the monetarists lacks the guts and ability to fight. Under those conditions you get something like fascism. And that's what we're on the edge of in Europe, today. Not, the United States. We're not at that point. But, throughout Europe, across all Europe, the smell of an onrush of fascism is on the way, because the situation is impossible! Either somebody eliminates the threat, which means challenging the power of the Maastricht system—but, if the Maastricht system continues, you're going to have fascism, all over Europe.

So, that's where we are. But, the issue now becomes, what is the alternative to fascism? And the alternative to fascism is the alternative to monetarism. And the alternative to monetarism is a credit system, like that of the United States and like the Bretton Woods system.

That's our situation right now.

Two Generations

Now, what you're dealing with, you're dealing with a population of two significant generations: My generation is dying out, and is not generally in positions of power, very rarely. I'm one of the few survivors of my generation who's active in the game still. But, you have the Baby-Boomer generation, of people who were born usually, between 1946, 1945-46, and 1950-51—that's the core of the Baby-Boomer generation. You have, from the upper 20% of that generation, the Baby-Boomer generation, are the BoBos. You have, from that generation, you have a certain part which are strata in power. These people are now between the middle of the fifties, and their sixties, in terms of age. They're in the last 10 to 15 years of their positions of power in society, as a group. They were the generation which was systematically brainwashed, in the postwar period, especially in the form of brainwashing which prevailed in Western and Central Europe—that is, the non-Communist areas—and in the United States, and the Americas, during this period.

The key symbol of this, of course, was, first of all, the issue was the nuclear war: Hiroshima and what followed. So, these kiddos, before they were even able to speak, or to read or write, were already being conditioned by terrible conditions, by fear, by right-wing terror, such as that we had in the United States under Truman. And Truman was a terrorist! That's the way it worked. Then we got a heavy dose of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which was an attack on Classical culture; it was an attack on the idea of leadership in society; it was a promotion of a wild democracy of the type which was called "Sophism" in ancient Greece. And it is Sophism.

So, you have a generation of Baby-Boomers who specialize, not in reason, but in spin. Like a spider. So, this generation was brainwashed. It had thought that when it faced the crises of the 1960s, after the killing of Kennedy, the entry into the war and so forth, when this generation became adults, young adults, university age, they went—at least the leadership of them—went crazy! The worst insanity in the United States, came from the leading universities, not the more popular universities, that is, the ones with the large populations of poor children, kids. But the ones that went to the prestigious, exclusive universities, and came out of that track, these were the wildest of all people. These were the people who were the most conditioned, and are the typical Baby-Boomers, and those who associate themselves with that stratum of influence and culture, this was the worst!

So, these guys, by the rioting of 1968 and so forth, became the basis for an anti-industrial policy; an anti-nation-state policy; and anti-technological progress. This became the basis for making possible the introduction of the Greenie movement. They made possible the election of the Nixon Administration in the United States, because they attacked ordinary working people and blue-collar people. Therefore, they drove, they drove the people in industry, the workers, the production people, into a rage—against these youth. This enabled Nixon to be elected. Under the Nixon election, we began to get a dose of fascism—and it was fascism. Don't kid yourself. It was a near-miss. This was the destruction of this monetary system. This was the launching of the 1970s introduction of so-called environmentalism, ecologism, as it was called in part.

We had the destruction of the economy of the United States, the destruction of the economy of Europe, as a process unleashed by this.

Now, today, you know, as you see in various countries, the influence of the so-called ecology movement and similar kinds of anti-cultural movements. As well as a general attitude of Sophistry, permeates the leading layers of society in Europe and the United States, today. Except for certain people, who, because they have a sense of power and some background, and some association, are capable of rising above that. But they still have the problem, which they were raised by, which was created—because they're also in this age-group, somewhere from 30-odd to 60-odd. These people do have some sense of power. And they have a sense of power, because they're part of the United States. But they have lost the connection to an understanding of what an agro-industrial, technologically progressive society is. And therefore, because they don't understand that principle, they have difficulties in understand the mechanisms of credit, as they apply to a real economy, as opposed to a monetarist system.

That's our problem. And that's where my role becomes indispensable. And I can tell you: I'm working on this problem. We're discussing it with leading layers in the United States. I'll be producing something very soon, which will be more specific on how we're going to deal with this. But that's where we are:

We are, as a movement, in the center of the world. Partly because of our position in the United States, which is the only position from which the kind of leadership must come, which can save the world from going to Hell. That is, if the United States goes down the tube and fails, every other part of the world is going to Hell! And that, very soon! In terms of the coming decade. If the United States succeeds, the world can succeed. We are at the center of the possibility of the success of the United States. And that's where Europe stands.

Now, we also are going to be under tremendous pressure from the all of the world, who recognize this, and are going to be doing everything possible, to disrupt our influence in Europe. Not because Europe represents an alternative—it does not. There is no capability in Europe—individually, as nations, or collectively—to solve the present world's problems' crucial feature. But Europe will play, and can play, a vital role in making a correct initiative from the United States workable. So, we have to get European civilization back together again, around this conception.

And then, civilization might survive!

That's what I have to say.