This transcript appears in the September 22, 2023 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
1978
We’re Going To Export Hundreds of Cities!
[Print version of this transcript]
The following is the edited transcript of video excerpts from Mr. LaRouche’s address on June 26, 1978, in his campaign for the Democratic Party nomination for the Presidency of the United States, shown during Panel 1 of the Schiller Institute’s Sept. 9, 2023, conference, “Let Us Join Hands with the Global Majority!” The entire conference is available here.
He proposed ending the injustice of centuries of colonialism by a revolution—a massive program in technology transfer to what was then called, in the 1970s, the Third World. This, LaRouche said, was the fastest way to also economically straighten out the problems of the United States, Europe, and the trans-Atlantic world.
You know what we’re going to do? We’re going to build nuplexes! How do you build a nuplex? You’re going to go out and dig a big crater! You lay a big footing, unless you’ve got bedrock. You don’t care what the terrain is like. It makes no difference. Wherever you are, blast it out, build a crater. Build a crater covering an area the size of a city, a city of a half-million people, or 100,000 people. But build a crater for an industrial city of a new type, from six, seven, or eight stories below the surface. Built it up. Build it up to the surface.
On this thing, stick two nuclear plants of one-half to two gigawatts each, to get a balanced load. String industries around this, like charm bracelets—using this energy to cut distribution costs. Put a chemical industry in there, that sort of thing, desalination, and so forth, using the waste heat and the electrical power. Build housing for the families, modern housing, housing that will last 100 years, for the families of the people who are going to be brought in to do the construction, which will be done and completed within a period of 4-6 years.
Build the onsite cultural programs: Schools, universities, technical schools; everything that a city requires. And when the project is completed, at the end of six years, these people occupy the factories, because they have been educated. And gradually the Europeans and others who have been phased in will be phased out, except for a few key technicians.
The city, then, is built. It’s modular. You can change it. You can develop it with no big cost. Its transportation systems are built in, and modular for the next 100 years, for any technological improvements which will be significant in the next 100 years. The city functions, now, in 4-6 years. We’re going to build hundreds of these in the next 25 years. Hundreds of them! Hundreds of new cities throughout the world, especially in the developing sector.
These cities will be linked together. They will form a network of high-technology culture, planted in the middle of the rest of the population. And from these cities and through these cities and their universities and technical schools and technical services to the surrounding areas, we’ll lift one generation of the human race up from barbarism and oppression into modern life.
And, in the next 25 years following that, we’ll complete the job. And, within 50 years from now, the human race will be transformed, as we city-builders intend to do it. We’re going to mobilize every industry that exists that’s viable, and everyone that can be created, to do it. We’re not going to export a few $10 or $20 billion worth of additional exports. We’re going to export hundreds of cities.
