Time for Germany To Assert
Its Sovereignty, or Perish
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche
Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche is the Chancellor candidate of the Civil Rights Movement Solidarity party (BüSo) in Germany. She issued this appeal to voters on July 14, under the title "Back to the D-Mark for a Directed Growth Policy! Activate the Stability and Growth-Law of 1967 Now!" Germany is expected to have national parliamentary elections in September, although the decision has not yet been announced by President Horst Köhler.
The time has now come, when Germany must unilaterally withdraw from the Maastricht Treaty and the European Monetary Union and return to the deutschemark as its national currency, in order to be able to realize a well-defined growth policy. The Stability and Growth Law of 1967 must be activated through a state investment program for productive full employment, in order to overcome the total economic disequilibrium, which there has undoubtedly been, in view of an unemployment level that is in reality around 9 million people. In the future, the euro should be used solely as a unit for settling accounts. Such a withdrawal from the treaty is absolutely legitimate under international law. If I am elected or nominated as Germany's Chancellor, these steps would be a part of the package of measures, which I would implement immediately.
No to the New Feudalism!
I would like to tell you the reasons, why I am making these proposals at this moment. Since it has now become clear, what programs the parties represented in the Bundestag and the new "left party" intend to campaign for in the elections, it is evident that Germany does not have a chance with any of these parties, to overcome the existential crisis of our nation. Since everyone, from the CSU/CDU [Christian Social Union/Christian Democratic Union] to the so-called left party, ignores the fact, that we find ourselves in the end-phase of the systemic collapse of the system of the so-called free-market economy, and that globalization is just as bankrupt today as was the G.D.R. [communist East Germany] in 1989, they all also have no solution for this crisis. What all of these parties propose, whether they present themselves now as "left" or "right," are only variants of a policy, which leads back ultimately to the level of development which had existed under feudalism, before the establishment of modern sovereign nation-states in the 15th Century.
The program advanced by [Christian Democrats] Angela Merkel and Edmund Stoiber, which lets only half of the cat out of the bag, is as incompetent as it is brutal: it leads directly to sinking real income of the employee, as well as the unemployed and the pensioner, through an increase in the value-added tax, a shift of costs to private households, and with it, a greater self-financing of social expenses. "On the back of the little people," "the poor will become yet poorer," "cutting of real income by 5-20%" are accurate descriptions. This anti-social policy is absolutely not a solution for the global systemic crisis. Otherwise this CDU program is exactly the same as the so-called "Scandinavian model," i.e., an "internal devaluation," a politically determined reduction in real income through shifting of taxes, as was already proposed a year ago for Germany by the arch-neo-conservative Prof. Lars Calmfors of the International Economics Institute of Stockholm University.
The foreign policy priorities of Mrs. Merkel, who has indeed not yet noticed that Watergate-clouds have risen over Washington, preclude all positive solutions: She would emphasize the relationship to the neo-conservatives of the Cheney-Bush Administration and devalue the connection to France, Russia, and China. And what is it supposed to mean, when Mrs. Merkel makes the remarkable statement, on the 60th anniversary of the CDU: "For we have no legal claim to democracy and the social market economy for all eternity." After the "C" in the name of her party, does Mrs. Merkel now also want to place in question the "D"? She should urgently read the Basic Constitutional Law, where it says clearly in Paragraph 20, that the Federal Republic of Germany is a social state, and that the citizen has the right to resistance, if anyone attempts to alter this status. Of natural law and the common good, Angie has apparently never heard anything. Human beings do indeed have a right to the common good for all eternity! And if we have no legal claim to democracy, as she asserts, would a little dictatorship then also be okay, Mrs. Merkel? Is that what she means by "to govern through"? The program of the FDP [Free Democratic Party] is even more neo-liberal, therefore even more an expression of the system which is running aground. A CDU/CSU/FDP coaliton would be a guarantee, in this world situation, of hopelessness and the end for Germany.
With regard to contents, the new left party [Election Alternative Social Justice, WASG] has likewise no solution for the global systemic crisis. Since Oskar Lafontaine stated explicitly that he does not consider a new financial system necessary, but rather, for example, has openly supported the monetarist proposals of Paul Volcker and of the so-called "Father of the Euro," Robert Mundell, the question is thus, for whose benefit does this party suddenly receive media support, as was received previously only by the Republicans, the Greens before their founding, or the [neo-Nazi] NPD in Saxony during the election [in September 2004]. For all that, the WASG received only 2.2% in North Rhine-Westphalia in the Landestag elections, and the PDS [post-communist Party of Democratic Socialism] received less than 5% in the last Bundestag elections. If such a new formation receives such media support, the question is whether it is not to become only a stirrup holder for a Grand Coalition, which then, according to the intention of global financial interests, would reduce the living standard of the population even further.
This Is My Program
Since Chancellor Schröder has hitherto adhered to the Agenda 2010 and Hartz IV [austerity programs], I must now present the program, with which an exit from the crisis can be created. Besides the already mentioned unilateral withdrawal from the Maastricht Treaty and the return to national monetary sovereignty and the D-mark, the activation of the Stability and Growth Law of 1967, the Bundesbank or the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau must immediately make available, this year, a credit line of minimally DM400 billion, which must then be used exclusively for productive investment and the creation of new jobs. This credit can only be used for investment in infrastructure, basic research, and investment which increases the productivity of the German economy, and in which one would also invest, if the economy were healthy.
Since real capital goods are created in this way, such a state credit generation is not inflationary. On the contrary, it eliminates the high costs of unemployment, which today, according to official statements, stands at 87 billion euros in unemployment payments and uncollected social taxes, and in a current total loss of minimally 230 billion euros, which the unemployed would create in value, if they were productively employed. If the unemployed are employed, they produce real value and the tax purse is replenished, and Agenda 2010 and Hartz IV are unnecessary. The overcoming of unemployment is the most urgent and most important problem, which we must and can solve!
It's obvious that these state investments should not flow only into neglected infrastructure (the German Institute for Urban Affairs speaks of 650 billion euros in urgently required investments in the municipal area alone, in addition to investments at the Federal level; therefore, in total, around 1,000 billion in required investments). Beyond that, it is important, to integrate these investments in an all-Eurasian transportation network, as they become necessary with the expansion of the Eurasian Land-Bridge. Finally, what is needed is a "New Deal" for Germany and Eurasia, in the tradition of the policy with which Franklin D. Roosevelt led America in the 1930s out of the Depression, which in principle was the same policy with which we rebuilt the Federal Republic of Germany after 1945 and created the German economic miracle.
If you elect me as Federal Chancellor, I will likewise initiate an international monetary conference in the traditon of Bretton Woods. In the American Senate and Congress there is already support, instigated by my husband, Lyndon LaRouche, for such a New Bretton Woods system, in the Democratic Party and among moderate Republicans. The Italian Parliament has passed a resolution, which is binding upon the government, calling for a New Bretton Woods system, and in many nations there is considerable support for it.
I, therefore, ask you to support the campaign for my candidacy for Chancellor. The BüSo is the only party which has an economic concept of how we can emerge from the crisis. We are the only party whose policy does not in the end lead to a new feudalism, but rather we stand for a new Renaissance. Just as the Italian Renaissance overcame the feudalistic Middle Ages, in that it revived the Greek Classics and above all Plato, and therefrom produced a cultural flowering, which has influenced Europe for 600 years, so we can create a Renaissance today, which overcomes the Dark Age in which we find ourselves culturally today.
We must cause the ideas of Plato, Nicolaus of Cusa, Leibniz, Lessing, Mendelssohn, Schiller, von Humboldt, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Gauss, Riemann, and Cantor—to name only some of the Classical authors in science and art—to come alive once again, and we can very quickly become once again the Nation of Poets and Thinkers. Help me to become the Federal Chancellor, and every child and every student will receive access to a universal education.
Don't you also think, that our nation needs something really completely different from the usual political minestrone? Then support me!
