PRESS RELEASE
LaRouche: John Maynard Keynes
a Fascist and a Colonialist
March 14, 2008 (EIRNS)—This release was issued yesterday by the Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee (LPAC).
Lyndon LaRouche, speaking at an internationally webcast event in Washington March 12, was asked: “Felix Rohatyn openly refers to himself as a follower of John Maynard Keynes. He recently tried to reverse his previous public hostility to FDR, by saying that he supported the New Deal. However, there are obviously issues at hand here. One can not have it both ways. But there are many ill-informed or, in some cases, lying authorities, who would insist that FDR and his Bretton Woods system were essentially Keynesian. Could you please address this?''
LaRouche: That's because people don't know their history. And there are some people in Europe who, of course, came into adult life after World War II, who don't know their history on this thing, even people I respect as economists, otherwise. What happened is Roosevelt convened the Bretton Woods session under his authority in 1944. In the course of the proceedings, John Maynard Keynes and leading British economists, who had also endorsed fascism in 1938, in a book he wrote, part of the first edition of his General Theory. And so, Keynes made a proposal. Now, Roosevelt had not intended what Keynes meant. Roosevelt himself had not supported Keynes. Roosevelt was explicit during the war that, "When the war is over, Winston"—speaking to Churchill—"the British Empire is going to end."
Now, Keynes's system is based upon the British Empire, in terms of system. Keynes was a fascist. That's his background, as he said in the German edition, which is the first edition of his General Theory, published in 1938 in Berlin. He said he preferred to have his book published in Germany, at that time, because it would have a better reception and be more applicable in Nazi Germany, than it would be in a democratic country. And he was right.
Well, what happened is this. When Roosevelt died, Truman came in and Truman was a pig. Now the crucial issue was this: Roosevelt's policy was, "Winston, when this war ends, we're not going to have a British Empire. We're going to free these people, and we're going to help them develop and have their own independent governments." And Roosevelt had some very specific proposals he made, as at Morocco, on this particular question. But all through the war is that.
Now, I come out of this tradition, by various channels of the pro-Roosevelt period, who like General Donovan, the head of OSS, and others, were devoted to this intention of a post-war period, as Roosevelt defined it. And when Roosevelt was dying while in office, shortly after his Fourth Inauguration, Donovan went into the office to meet with the President, and came out gray-faced, saying to a friend of mine, who was with him at the time, "It's over. It's over." Which meant that Roosevelt's program for the post-war period, which had been the central driving force of all the real patriots of the United States, who understood this at that time, was ended, and the British were taking over.
What happened is that Truman adopted the British policy of not encouraging liberation of the colonies, but of reestablishing colonialism. And that's exactly what Truman did. Now, under these conditions, the intention of the formation of the United Nations and the intention of the Bretton Woods System, was subverted, because the intention had been to free colonial nations, by large-scale infrastructure projects and other things of development of these nations, and to protect them while they emerged from colonial status into sovereign nation-state status. Once that was done, remember the policy was, at the end of the war, Roosevelt's intention was to convert the greatest economic machine ever developed for war, and convert that into a large-scale infrastructure and development program for the included purpose of freeing colonized nations and peoples, for independent nation-state status. Under these conditions, therefore, the purpose of the Bretton Woods System was subverted under Truman. No longer was it freedom, but if you recall from the period, at least from studying the period, since most of you are younger, you'll remember that all the pro-colonial wars which the United States supported, as in Indo-China, as in Indonesia, and elsewhere, as in Africa, where they ran a dirty policy which is still running today--U.S. policy toward Africa stinks! It's murderous, deliberately so! Under Nixon, it got worse. It's colonialist. So therefore, Roosevelt's purpose for the Bretton Woods System was not carried out.
Under these conditions, where the British were taking more and more of a controlling role over the Anglo-American policy in the post-war period, the policies tended to go in the direction of Keynes's speech in 1944. So Roosevelt's intention was not Keynesian. But the British intention and Truman's intention, was. And that's what we've inherited.
Have we done anything, really done anything, to eliminate colonialism, except to find neo-colonialism? What's our policy toward Africa? What's our alignment, when we come up against the British on the question of Africa? What's the policy of the United States, respecting British policy toward Zimbabwe, for example? Or other nations? What is the policy of the United States with respect to what happened at the Lisbon Conference on the question of Africa? The United States is the enemy of black Africa. The United States is the enemy of anti-colonialism, because we believe in the free-trade, free market system, free to steal and free to trade in people. Free to trade in governments. So what's the standard for government? We don't approve of you because the British don't like you. We don't approve of your government because it doesn't support our policies. This is our problem.
So that's what's really involved with the Keynes issue. Keynes' policy was based on a feature of central banking, which he explained generally in all his works on this. It's no mystery. He's a central banker, in a central banking system which is opposite in purpose and effect to what the Federal Reserve System was conceived to be, even, and certainly what the U.S. Constitution conceived to be as an economic policy. So that's the issue.
