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12 Days Until Oct. 1 The Planet Needs a New Financial Architecture

Here is a transcript of Lyndon LaRouche's videotaped remarks on global financial/economic crisis, Sept. 17, 2008. The video can be viewed at www.larouchepac.com.

In 12 days from now, on Oct. 1, we're going to have an international webcast, as usual, but we're not quite sure that it's going to occur, because the U.S. economy may have entirely disintegrated, by that time. And, in a sense, I'm being witty, but not entirely, because that's actually a possibility, the way the government has been behaving recently, in dealing with these bailout situations.

We're now in a hyperinflationary process, caused largely by the measures taken under this government. Of course, as you know, back on the 25th of July of last year, I warned that this was about to break out, and I expected it to break out by the first of August. It broke out by the 28th of July instead of the 1st of August. So I'm wrong sometimes, hmm?

But, the system since that time has gone into a hyperinflationary mode, and it's accelerating. The measures which I proposed then, were, first of all, the Homeowners and Bank Protection Act. If that had been adopted, and it had a lot of support, in the cities, and counties, and states of the United States, it was never voted up because of the Pelosi problem in the Congress, and similar kinds of things prevented it from happening. A bunch of pieces of stupid legislation that were reckless were adopted instead in the meantime.

We're now in an aggravated mess. The recent series of bailouts, which never should have occurred—these entities should have been put into bankruptcy reorganization, in a normal way. Many of the assets that are listed, as the lost assets from these things, were dubious assets. Some of this may have been criminal, and should have been investigated for potential criminal action against those involved; we have a lot of bankruptcies, which there's a suspicion of criminality involved, recently, coming out of this kind of speculation, which has been going on recently.

But the essential thing is to save the United States. That involves, as I said last year, it involves, first of all, the Homeowners and Bank Protection Act. We must not shut down any essential bank, which is an essential institution of credit, within the chartered banking system, whether Federal or state. Even if these things are bankrupt, their doors must be kept open, there are assets involved, there are communities involved, they must continue to function.

I also proposed that we have a minimum of 4% basic interest rates—that was not done. We're now operating at 2%. Some idiots are trying to reduce it to 1 1/2%, which is a hyperinflationary nonsense.

We also proposed, and I proposed in particular, that we approach Russia, China, and India, as prospective partners of the United States, in initiating a new international monetary-financial system, based on the precedent of Franklin Roosevelt's Bretton Woods system. This would mean that we would, instead of relying on the present financial systems, which are hopelessly bankrupt, we would again create a credit system, which is only possible under the U.S. Constitution, because we are not a monetary economy; we are a credit system. That is, this country can not print money, except by authorization of the Congress, and by the Executive Branch, with the authorization of the Congress. We are a credit system. We are not a monetary system. We have an approximation of that under the Federal Reserve system. But essentially, our constitutional authority is that of a credit system. No other country in the world has this kind of system, that we have by our Constitution. We're completely different from Europe, the parliamentary systems and so forth.

Therefore, we represent, for Russia, for China, and India, which are directly, or indirectly, major trading partners of the United States, whether directly or indirectly. We represent something unique for the world, in reorganizing a new monetary-financial architecture for the whole planet. We together, if these four powers agree, and other countries would then join them, we can create, as if on a dime, a new international credit system, and begin to rebuild the world which is shattered now.

So, that is what we're going to discuss on the first of October, approximately 12 days from now. Am I clear? DISCUSSION

Q: You're discussing the Four Powers and implementing this right now. With the prospective Presidential candidates, it doesn't seem too likely that either of them would be willing to adopt that kind of proposal, but in the U.S. there are more institutions than just the Presidency. But how, how do you see us...?

LaRouche: A thing like this happens only under one kind of condition: They're scared to death. And what is happening now is going to terrify nations, and it's going to terrify the people of the United States. They're going to be screaming for a solution, knowing that the present institutions and the present policies won't work. And frankly, the two candidacies now are both failures. As it stands now, there's little likelihood that Obama would win the election. He's lost his trust fund, so to speak, that he was relying upon. There are problems with McCain. I don't know if he can shoot caribou from the air or not. But anyway, there are problems there. Neither of them has addressed, so far, or even threatened to address, any of the real issues on which the continued existence of the United States depends.

So therefore, if something happens, it's not going to happen because of a Presidential candidate, not any of these candidates. It's going to happen because the country is scared, and because people in Europe and elsewhere are scared, and see that there is no hope for them, unless a reform is made. Under those conditions, whichever dummy were elected in the United States, he would have to follow, carry out this kind of policy if it were adopted. That's reality, and we're now come to the area of reality.

Q: You mentioned in the very beginning, that we basically, within the next 12 days, you could see the complete disintegration of the entire economic system. Now, what does that mean? Because that means that we have a very short window of time in which to organize. How must we act now with the population?

LaRouche: Well, the issue is: The bailout, the AIG bailout, added to the previous bailouts, which I think, in many cases, are actually unconstitutional, and possibly involve potential criminality. But the question of investigation, to see if there is potential criminality under our Constitution, is there.

But apart from these considerations, these bailouts are insane. They are intrinsically hyperinflationary. What should have been done, is, these entities should have been put into bankruptcy reorganization, not liquidated, not bailed out. And so, we're at that point, where the whole system can be blown out by these kinds of measures, that brought us to this point. This AIG thing was one blow too many. I don't think the system can withstand it for long. One or two more such cases, and the entire system can blow out. We could find a situation, therefore, in which there would be no election because there would be a complete financial breakdown of the system, conditions under which you couldn't conduct an election. You'd have to postpone it for reasons of rain, like a baseball game.

So, we're in that kind of situation.

What's happening now, is, behind the scenes, not everybody in this country in power is stupid. We have actually people in some positions who are reasonably intelligent. They may be reluctant, but they're intelligent. They are capable of recognizing what I've just described. They see the facts correspond to it. People in the Congress, people in other institutions. And in this case, if they come out and say this, together, the changes will be made. Because everybody's ready to accept the fact that the President is an idiot, and nearly everybody in his administration is an idiot, and that what the two leading Presidential candidates are saying is totally incompetent and silly.

Under those conditions, the people who are threatened by this kind of situation, will tend to get, suddenly, very reasonable, and very demanding about it. And it has to happen now, not next January—now. If the United States is going to be saved, it's not going to happen in January. It has to happen now.

So, we are about at the limit, on Oct. 1. We're about at the limit for the United States: Either can we do something by approximately that time, or I'm not sure we can say we're going to have a United States. It will just go away, all by itself. It's that bad.

Q: Could this sort of bankruptcy reorganization happen with the current Democratic Party and Republican Party leadership right now?

LaRouche: If they're sufficiently terrified, yes. And I think they're about to become sufficiently terrified. I think in the next dozen days, we'll probably get some stroke of that kind of terror, screaming terror: "Save us! Save our butt! Save our butt!" Americans don't say, "Save my soul" anymore; they say, "Save my butt!"

Q: This situation that we're in right now, where there are many recognizing, that there is no hope for this system, and are starting to freak out, is there also an understanding, then from those relevant people, that it is the dollar system that they have to save, and there's no longer this delusion that you can go, and divert towards other forms of currencies as a primary form of currencies.

LaRouche: Well, the point is, that I can know from Russia, from China, and from India, and from other countries than our own country, that there is no competence to design the kind of system which is necessary for this situation. Therefore, this is not a matter of trying to get a consensus among contending opinions. This is a time that someone--me--knows what to do, and maybe some people out there are intelligent enough to recognize that I'm right, and they would act upon my suggestion.

As far as I can tell, unless what I'm proposing is accepted, there's no hope for the system. So they're either going to take my suggestions, or they're going to fail. And there might not be a United States, by the time the smoke clears.

Q: Okay, one more question: I was also wondering if you could explain, or go through how this credit system could work along with Russia, China, and India. How would the New Bretton Woods system function?

LaRouche: What essentially we would do, is we would say, we're going to do it. That's number one. Now, you're going to then discuss, what that means: And we're going to say, we're going to take a point of reference for a recent relative value, of the national currencies of the United States, of Russia, and China, and India. We're going to say, "Let's fix a fixed-exchange-rate system, based on negotiating among what we agree is a fair estimate." We're going to, in that process, bring in countries like Japan, Korea; Giulio Tremonti, I think in Italy, will be happy to join the discussion--he's talking in that direction; probably somebody in France will be happy to join that direction. And we will get enough nations agree to this process, to say that approximately this level of pricing--we're not going to try to come up with the best price; we're going to come up with a price that is acceptable, hmm? and can be gotten through with the least controversy.

Then, we're going to say, we're going to operate on the basis of the U.S. Constitution, and that's key: We are not a monetary system. What we're going to do, is essentially cancel the power of monetary systems, such as the British system. We will no longer have money operating by central banking systems, outside the power of government. All money will be accountable to government, and we will operate on the basis of a credit system, as the U.S. Constitution provides for a credit system. We will then set a system of issuing, of uttering credit. We will put the whole system into bankruptcy reorganization, take all of the old values and say, "They're inherently bankrupt, the world is being operated in bankruptcy"--hmm? We are then going to create credit for things which should be created credit for. It will be largely long-term infrastructure investments, large-scale projects--like the rail projects of the United States. We're going to bring back the rail system, power systems, we're going to fix our rivers, so they function again, and as they never functioned yet before, because they never did north of St. Louis, they never got part of the system.

We're going to do these kinds of projects. And these projects will be the drivers for the use of technology, to developing new industries. We're going to talk in terms of 25 to 50-year perspective on utterance of credit over that term. We're going to get enough projects of this type going, to use up the productive powers of labor, otherwise idle labor. We're going to take people out of a lot of white-collar jobs. We may ban white collars, just as a matter of sanitation, huh? But we're going to do that sort of thing, and get people back into factories, back into engineering, back into basic economic infrastructure, back into agriculture: Produce some wealth, physical wealth again! Raise the standard of living.

Recognize, that in the United States, since the fiscal year '67-'68, there has been a net decline in the economy of the United States, consistently from that time to the present. There's been an increase in so-called dollar value, but that increase is purely inflationary. There has been no increase in physical value, of product of the United States, since 1967-68. And that is the year, in which we had a decline in basic economic infrastructure. Hmm? And this is the infrastructure needed for production, not just infrastructure for people look at, or gaze at.

So, we're going to have to go to that kind of system. We will take, for example: We will create the entire Eurasian system, in terms of rail and magnetic levitation. We will open up the development of raw materials development. We'll make an international rail system, where you can go by rail or maglev, all through Eurasia, all through Africa, and through the Americas. We'll open up the Bering Straits. You'll have a rail connection: You can go from France, into Alaska, down through the Americas to Tierra del Fuego. You can go from Europe into Africa, by rail, all throughout Africa, the main routes in Africa. We will have powers stations, especially nuclear power stations being developed throughout the world, hmm? We're going to change the character of the planet! And it'll be a mission for the next 50 years--it'll actually be 100 years, but we'll take the first 50 years as the first slice of this thing.

And on the basis of creating a credit system, a debt system which is supported competently, we'll be able to do this. We'll increase, first, infrastructure: We'll use the development of infrastructure projects to create industries, new industries, to expand agriculture, to develop raw materials. Then out of that, we'll get a secondary layer of industries. We'll restore our educational system, because people will have something to learn then. Under the present system, you go to university, not to learn, but to become brainwashed. And it's not a good brainwashing, there's a lot of dirt that goes with that.

So that's what we have to do. That's our direction. Use the idea of credit, which is inherent in the U.S. Federal Constitution, a work of genius in the U.S. Constitution: use that method of credit, building up a tremendous debt, but accountable debt, to change the world through productivity; to mobilize people to produce what they're qualified to produce, in terms of infrastructure and industry; and to use that to develop people, to develop new skills beyond that, to open up new industries, new types of industries, fundamental scientific progress. Change the character of the planet, a planet of nation-states, but cooperating nation-states, connected by interconnected power systems, interconnected mass transit systems. And that's the way to go. And agree to do that, and have the guts to carry it out.

Q: The only opposition to this, isn't simply that people have never heard of these policies before, but there's actually witting operatives trying to stop this sort of bankruptcy reorganization and development: People like George Soros, Felix Rohatyn, prominent members operating behind the scenes in this country and abroad. So, as this thing breaks down, hour by hour, how do we make sure that this commitment to a credit system, and development, and changing the character of the planet, is clear to the people whom it needs to be clear to, and that these operatives are put to sleep, once and for all.

LaRouche:You got several things going for you: First of all, look back to 1927-28, before the 1929 crash. Look at the change in the attitude of the population of the United States, between 1928-29 and 1931-33: You had a change in the population which had lived in fantasy-land to a large degree before then. The fantasy was over. Today, the fantasy is over! Today, with the collapse of all these giant firms, these super-firms, you're going to see thousands and tens of thousands of people coming out of each of these places that are being closed down! The streets are going to be full of white-collar people who no longer can afford to wash their collars.

This is going to destroy the illusion of the system. And people are going to want some kind of employment, and security. They're going to demand it. And they won't put up with anything less.

And we saw that in the early 1930s, with Roosevelt. It'll work the same way. People are down on the ground, groveling in the dirt, their illusions' lost. That is the time to say: "Okay! Get out of the dirt! Stand up! Here's something for you to do. Stop being an idiot, and you'll survive." And that's how it's done.

But you've got to mean it! Because people can smell out a fake in situations like this. You can't promise it, unless you mean it! You can't convince people to do it, unless they think you mean it. And there's a little problem in leadership in certain circles on that basis: Obama would never convince anybody of that! Nor could John McCain. And I certainly don't think this lady from Alaska would convince anybody of anything. She probably would be running caribou who're seeking vengeance on her, or something. You'll see a lot of caribou out there with guns trying to shoot down small planes that they suspect are coming to kill their children!

Q: Under the credit system that you're discussing and/or what you want of reintegrating rail throughout the world, and then going toward higher advances of technologies that we know exist, and that we know we can make breakthroughs to exist into the future. And it's obvious that this is a really optimistic picture, which people have to understand is possible. And I've seen you discuss this from the standpoint of reaching the levels of what came out of Kennedy's space program. And so, I'd like to ask, what type of vision do you have beyond what was accomplished in the space program, that you're thinking that the world can move towards?

LaRouche: Well, we have a bunch of people, down in the Basement--you may have heard about that. And they are actually learning physical science as has not been taught in a long time. What you get in university--Harvard for example, we've taken some clinical cases there, and clinical cases at other universities: What is being taught as a university education is crap. In every department: Drama, literature, physical science, it's all crap, it's all fake. And the reason they get by with it, is because the United States and other nations like Europe, are victims of the 68ers. They hate science. It's the white-collar mentality that hates work! They hate industry, they hate agriculture, they hate people who wear blue shirts, even if they're only dyed that way or something.

So you have an education which is based on fakery. It's based on a cult. It's a Baby-Boomer cult. And it's a result of the people who were the 68ers, like the people who spread marijuana and also gonorrhea among young ladies throughout the nation, from the '68 or '69 generation. And this cult was promoted--people out of that! Create a terrorist cult! And these people became significant figures in the political process.

Whereas people who had some honesty and decency and capability, were not given those jobs of influence. They were given the third or fourth-grade jobs. And so, the political process became polluted with the most degenerate types of the 68er generation are now the top dogs. And many of them, who really were "dirty dogs" back then, are now considered leaders of the Congress and other institutions today.

So therefore, the universities have shown the effect of that. Universities are no longer generally serious. They are cult centers. As a result of that, a result of the anti-scientific drive, which we're fighting against, from the Basement, you no longer have the scientific competence we used to have. Because the very institutions which were presumed to give scientific competence, are fake, now. Like this Harvard case, the case of astronomy in Harvard: Fake! And that's the situation.

So, we have, as a result of this policy, and result of an educational process that matches that, we no longer are really on the frontiers of scientific progress. For the two reasons, the combination of being against scientific progress, where that has now turned into being incompetent, and has turned into a lack of vision of what is out there for us.  All kinds of technologies which can be developed, are on the verge of being developed, and our concern is to get at the way in which competent science is assimilated by a population. And what we've done in the Basement is an example of that, and we're now spreading that. And we should hope, that what we're doing is going to infect a greater number of people who will be attracted to this kind of thing, who will find ways to either go into some universities, or go in there and find that they're willing to cooperate in promoting this; or find other institutions. And we're going to develop a scientific frontier orientation again, which will be competent.

And so, by getting this orientation of "can-do" orientation, which we used to have, which is what you can revive easily. Then you will build upon that, to get to new frontiers of scientific capability. And you've got to get a generation that starts thinking about their grandchildren. You've got to get a generation of young adults who think about their grandchildren's generation, while they're still young adults; and see the future of what their life means in the outcome of it as expressed in their grandchildren's generation. We lost that. People don't have children any more, they have pets. And they say, "I don't like this pet any more."

Q: We know that during the first Depression, they still had some manufacturing industry and workers around, whereas today, we've lost a large part of that. And as part of the educational problem in the United States, we've elected leaders who are incompetent. So the question I have is, is there layers of competence in the institutions, such that we could actually carry out these kinds of projects. 'Cause as it stands right now, I don't see that the Congress would be trustworthy on this question.

LaRouche: A lot of this is located in the military right now. You have certain medical potential, certain medical science potential, which is bottled up because of the present policies on medicine. But there is competence. But it's a small quantity; it's a cadre core of capability.

That's why I say, you have to start with major projects, engineering projects. You take your major engineering projects and you use that to get your driver going. As you get your driver going, then you spread it.

One looks at the history of what was done under Roosevelt from 1932 on. And look at that process, what Hopkins did, for example, under Hopkins and you find exactly how this worked. It's going to be the same thing again. It's not instant gratification: It means a change from going down to a change to going up. And going up means you're going to have to go up, step, by step, by step. Do the things immediately that can be done immediately with an orientation to get to the next thing: And think two generations ahead. And you need people who can think two generations ahead.

And I hope that what we're doing in the Basement is going to set the precedent for exactly that. Because I see what our people are doing in the Basement: They're way ahead, of what's coming out of the universities in scientific capability. So we have a little monopoly on that, on the idea of how to do that. And, we're going to use it.

Q: Oh that note, well, we have this science-driver program in the Basement, and we don't want the youth, the youth generation to make the same mistake the Boomer generation did. So, on the issue of recruiting youth and how to organize on university campuses, which is where the youth are, how do you think we should be doing that? Because there's been a lot of question on that, on campus organizing?

LaRouche: I think the Harvard Yard is a step in that direction. What we did in the Harvard Yard, is, we actually, for the first time, in the experience of anyone in university level, today, for the first time, we presented the actual basis for the founding of modern European science.

Now the concert of modern European science was developed by a number of people, including Filippo Brunelleschi, for example. But he was a limited figure. More generally, it was Cusa. Cusa is the center of the creation of modern science. So, what happened then, is that what was done by Brunelleschi, in a lesser degree, what was done by Leonardo da Vinci, what was done by Cusa of course, as the founder of this whole concept, the fundamental things.

We have this thing by Michael Kirsch, who did this piece which I told people to study, carefully. He went through exactly this sequence, how this is structured. And was a project of the last work done on the Gauss work: Look at it. The plan is there, the essence of the plan is there.

So that approach, going into the academic area is sufficient to give us a new cadre which actually understands science.

Now, there's some things that I raise from a scientific standpoint, which very few people understand. We've got some people in our work, who do understand this now: That science is not mathematical formulas.  A mathematical formula, at best, is a shadow, of a scientific concept. No mathematical formula presents you a scientific concept, the notion of principle. It doesn't do it. What you have is people who are mis-educated, not because they're women, but because--. They're miseducated into thinking that science is mathematics, mathematical formulas. It's not! No scientific concept can be expressed as a mathematical formula. A mathematical formula is a footprint, where a science has walked. And you have to capture the thing that was walking, not the footprint.

So people get out there and say, "Oh, science, footprint! Oh Science, we worship you!" What is that, a footprint? So that's where the problem arises. The actual experience of making a discovery of principle, as a concept, is science. It's the same concept that arises in Classical art. Concept. Absolutely the same. Classical art--in physical science, you're looking at man looking at nature; in Classical art, you're looking at man looking at man. But the principle is the same, just that distinction.

But science is only a collection of footprints as it's taught today.

So, anyway, the key thing we have to do in this process, is crack that. We have to create the legacy of Cusa, the legacy of true genius, of true scientific and related genius. And build a cadre of people who share that quality of genius, as opposed to "learned" so-called. Learn to do this, learn to do that, like teaching a dog tricks, and say he's a scientist.

Q: Well, this is a question that I've had for a while, I've been thinking about for a while, but what actually qualifies someone, or makes someone qualified to be able to lead? To be an actual leader in society, especially today?

LaRouche: First of all, you have to be eccentric. If you're not eccentric, you're not going to be a leader. You may considered a leader, but you're not one, you're a misleader, which is not a feminist concept. And that's the issue: It's the experience of the act of insight of discovery. For example, anyone who believes that there is a tragic personality in Classical drama, is not qualified for science, or for Classical drama. Because the tragedy in society, is the tragedy of the population, not of an individual. And if you look carefully at all Classical Greek tragedy, or Shakespeare's tragedy, or Schiller's, there is no such thing as the idea of the tragic personality. This is a Romantic conception: "If the right person had been there, everything would have been just right." Crap! Often the right person was there, but the society wouldn't let them function. This is the lesson of tragedy. It is the people who are stupid. It is the culture which is stupid! It is the culture which is corrupt!

And the business of creativity is changing the culture--the individual who knows, who is able to change the culture, not to change the behavior of leadership of society, except by changing the culture. And that's lost. The idea of creativity is lost! People talk about creativity, they don't know what it is, they've never done it. But they decide to call certain things "creativity."

For example, if you follow the New York Times style book in editing, you can't think. Why? Because, by sticking to those conventions, which now are made abhorrent--"Oh! You made a solecism. You violated the New York Times style book, you made a solecism." You're conditioned to believe that that's bad, and you will correct somebody who does something competent, because they're considered a solecism, by New York Times standards. What the New York Times does, is eliminate the idea of creativity. If you go by that kind of style, you are not allowed to use irony in the way that corresponds to creativity. All creativity involves concepts which lie outside formal logic. And it's those concepts which are scientific principles. It's those concepts which represent creativity. It's those concepts which carry man forward.

Q: On a similar track, in one of your last papers, you talked about conceptualizing the economy as a whole, and it seemed like the abstractest of abstract concepts, and then right afterwards, you discuss how you have a worker who sees his actions as contributing to the betterment of humanity as a whole. So I was hoping you could explain that?

LaRouche: Let's take the question of universal gravitation as discovered by Kepler, that's particularly in the question of the Harmonies. Now, what's the definition of a principle, there? The definition of a principle is something that's so large, that you can't see it, intellectually so large, that you can't see it, because it encompasses everything, and therefore it is not an object. What you recognize as an object is something that stands out against a background. You don't see what encloses the background.

But then, with the mind, you can see the background as an object. But you can't see it with the senses. Let's take Kepler's discover of gravitation: it involves what? You have two senses are involved in Kepler's discovery of universal gravitation. One is sight, the visual image of the universe. The universe treated as a visual object. Then you have a completely different conception, which is determining: harmonics--hearing, not sight. And neither sight nor hearing will show you how the planetary system is organized. It's the harmonics, which defines the relationship of the contradictions between the two systems--_that_ enables you to understand gravitation.

Now, from the standpoint of Einstein, especially in the last years of his life, when he emphasized that the modern science is founded by the work of Kepler, nothing else, and that Kepler defined a universe which is not in straight lines, it's not a Cartesian universe, it's a universe which is self-bounded by universal physical principles, as typified by Kepler's development of the concept of gravitation, as in the Harmonies, where vision, nor hearing, defines the universe as space. But the contradiction between vision and hearing, in these phenomena, defines space.

That is the same thing that comes up in Cusa's work, which is where Kepler got onto this sort of thing. So the mind, it's not with vision, it's not with sense-perception, that you understand reality. It's going beyond sense-perception to realize that what sense-perception does is gives you shadows of reality, which are cast on the senses. This is not the reality you're experience, this is the shadow of that reality. The function of the creative powers of the human mind is to adduce the presence of the reality from the paradox of the shadows.

When you treat sense-certainty as sense-certainty as knowledge, you're ignorant. When you treat sense-certainty as fallacious, and say, how do I discover reality from something that was fallacious? Well, you have to find a contradiction among the senses, or sense-experiences. We do the same thing with instruments. How do we know anything about the microscopic, or subatomic range, or nuclear range. How do we know anything about that domain? What senses do we have, to know anything about that range? Can we find an instrument? Well, it's only an instrument, just like our senses. We never saw, or never experienced, a nuclear particle. We couldn't! What do we do? We develop instruments, and we develop contradictory instruments, and we discover a behavior which accounts for the paradoxes, or the apparent paradoxes, of using different instrumentalities. From that, we infer what the reality is.Then, once we make the discovery, we test it. We say, we discovered a principle, which lies in the contradiction between two or more senses, or artificial senses such as instrumentation. Now we test it: Can we control the process by what we think we've discovered? And that's the experimental proof.

You never see reality. You never hear reality. You hear something which is the shadow of the footprint of passing reality. Now you have to adduce, from the shadow of reality, you have to adduce: What is the reality?

When you live in a society, particularly this society today, which is a Cartesian society, which is based on sense-certainty, people believe that the senses give them a certainty knowledge of something. They don't know anything, from their senses, not anything of principle. You live in a society, which is based on the Anglo-Dutch Liberal society conception of man. The Sarpian conception, what's called empiricism. If you're empiricist, you're an idiot! What most people call "scientists" are empiricists, they're idiots. And they make discoveries, almost by accident, despite themselves. Because they get an act of insight. Some of them get an act of insight, and actually make some discoveries. But methodologically, they don't understand how they make discoveries. They know they made one. They know they proved they made one. But they don't understand how this worked. They just know it did work, and therefore they become "specialists." They're not capable of thinking universally, but they can think about this, they can think this, or they can think about this.

And that's what I try to get people to understand. And go through the experience of understanding this. This is science. And what's taught as science, is not science. What's taught as science is a special kind of object-worship, fetishism. People can't find anyone to play with, play with themselves.

Q: Hey, Lyn. In a statement a few weeks ago, I think it was called "Pelosi Democrats Buckle," you mentioned the fact that, in the current situation, the Democratic Party is going to be cleaned out of the House of Representatives, because of the disgust from the population of the fact that they haven't addressed the crisis, and they were put there to do so.

But you also made reference to a base in the population that could represent a potential leadership within the Democratic Party. Now, my question was, what's the role of the LaRouche PAC in solving this political crisis that we have in government?

LaRouche: It's the constant problem we have in the PAC and among the youth. It's why I sort of clamped down on this so-called "study time". "reading time."Because it's a form of masturbation which does not involve actually challenging oneself. And when you have a real group study, as the type they do in the Basement, you have people challenging themselves and others, so they're not masturbating. And they had some very nice arguments going on in the Basement in the process of people working on them. They weren't killing each other in rage, but they were actually making discoveries--it was a process! And look at how much time it took, to work through the concepts of Kepler, first of all, on the Harmonies. This is the first time it had been done. This had never been done before. And our young people did, from scratch, in a sense. It was an example.

We used that as the basis for going through the second phase, which was Gauss. You know how long that took? You can imagine the discussions that took... the things we were involved in, the questions we were involved in, in getting through that? Now, they're going into the Riemann. This is serious stuff.

And you think about that, and we're talking about now--just with these three projects--we're talking about six to seven years, of our young people. And how long is a university undergraduate program in science? Four years. How long is a graduate program, and undergraduate--Master's degree? Seven or eight years. How long is a doctoral degree?

So we're having people going through the equivalent of study, of the span of a doctoral degree. We're doing it under this kind of interaction which often doesn't happen in universities any more, today. It used to happen in some degree before, but within specialized limits.

So we are actually creating a new standard, a new conception of education. But the problem we have, always, is to prevent the backsliding, into "my reading time" nonsense. Which is also sometimes, "my sleeping time" conception--or whatever else they do in between nothing and sleeping or whatever. That's the process. It's the process of development. And it requires some geezer like me to come along and do a limited number of things, because if I do too much it's bad, and then I'm substituting for them. And I'm teaching them, rather than provoking them. It's better to provoke people than teach them. Then they have the experience of knowledge, then they're not borrowing what somebody told them. When I provoke things a little bit, then it works.

When people go through that kind of experience, you have to force that kind of experience, and force a sense of discipline, catch things when things are going wrong. Otherwise, don't do too much steering. Throw them into the water, say, "Okay, now swim." And if they're going to drown, you save them, otherwise, tell them to keep swimming.

Q: This is just a question that just came to mind, when you just brought up the idea of... We are, as a youth movement, through all these Basement projects, we are studying the equivalent of a doctoral degree.

LaRouche: Yeah.

Q: Now, I was thinking, there's something respectable about institutions, and the idea, of studying in the sense, where we're trying to define a new standard for education, a new doctoral degree. And this whole reading stuff we did, like "reading day" that the Youth Movement does, that's Liberal. "I'm just going to read. I'm just going to read, and do work on my own," and it's all up in the air, as opposed to having it be institutionalized, a social process like in a classroom.

LaRouche: Without the element of conflict between reality and assumed reality, of the conflict between two different assumed realities, there is no development. Everything is based on dialogue, the idea of dialogue is controversy, or a certain kind of controversy. So therefore, being engaged in conflicting interpretations of reality, forces the question of "what is reality?" And "reading time" sometimes amounts to essentially an intellectual substitute for masturbation. You got tired of masturbating so you found a new way of doing it... by reading, alone. Seems like that to me.

So it's this social process. Because the essence of knowledge is social. The essence of knowledge is how do you communicate ideas, how do you develop ideas? You develop ideas by having to communicate them. Therefore, the conflict of facing ideas, is essential to developing ideas. That's why dialogues, in the Platonic dialogues are so exemplary. It's like Mendelssohn on the same thing, the same kind of question of dialogue. It's being forced to face reality--it's a cruel, hard world out there! You're up against stupidity, you're up against all kinds of idiocies.

Are you able to cope with society, with its idiocies? Do you have a sense of identity, a sense of yourself, can you cope with that, when you're surrounded by stupid, crazy people? And not lose your own identity, how do you do that? You do that in a social process, by developing in a social process, where you develop the powers of insight, and of self-critical insight, the essential thing. In "reading time" there is no self-critical insight. That's where the failure comes in, demoralizes people.

You need something to fight against, you need something to push against, otherwise, you don't know how to push.

Q: Hey, Lyn: In a certain sense, it seems sort of paradoxical though, because real knowledge is gained through the individual human mind, but you have the interaction of human minds with each other in society functioning, but it just--

LaRouche: Take this little kid, you know, a baby--looks up at its parents, tell him what to do. The baby says, "Who are these jerks?" That's where it starts: The question of authority.

Q: Well, okay, so how did you--because you said, what you're trying to with the Basement group, is you're provoking them, you're provoking them. How did you do, in the '60s when you were teaching these classes, on economics, what were you doing then? How did this classroom setting function?

LaRouche: Oh, I was rough! I was cheerfully insulting everybody. Because they had a lot of stupid ideas, what am I going to do, tell them these are good ideas? They were perfectly stupid stuff! And those who recognized I was right, said, "Okay, you're being honest, aren't you; you're telling us we're full of shit--that's good. We're getting honest treatment for a change!" Because they knew they were fakers. They knew the whole thing was a fake. And the whole thing, like the whole sex thing, was a fake, too. Remember, at that time, in the '70s, what I ran into was a jungle of sex. That's a characteristic of the Baby-Boomer, they're sexual nuts! You know, door knobs weren't safe with them loose!

So that's what you had to contend with. You could smell--you're talking about this subject, that subject, and you know that there's a couple of people out there having a sexual fantasy, in the audience; that's what they were doing, that's what they reacted to. It's obvious, you could smell it!

So, it was getting back to the subject of reality, what is reality, that was the problem. And so, I had to be very shocking. My classroom method was very shocking. I was brutal, but I laughed about it and told them to laugh too. They laughed, too, you know--what're they going to do, growl? They'd look like fools if they'd growl, they had to laugh too.

Q: That's the way to organize, right? Shock the population.

LaRouche: Exactly, exactly!

Q: Then something happens!