'The Year To Come' by Lyndon LaRouche Published in New Year's Issue of Dubai's Al-Bayan
A special political supplement for the New Year published by Al-Bayan, the leading newspaper in Dubai, featured the above-cited article by Lyndon LaRouche, with the additional subtitle, "Lyndon LaRouche: The Global Strategic, Economic Crisis Demands a New World Order." In addition, the same issue of Al-Bayan published an article by LaRouche associate Hussein Askary, "On History as Tragedy" (See this week's MIDDLE EAST NEWS DIGEST). The online version of LaRouche's article is accompanied by a photo of LaRouche with anti-globalization riots in the background. The website address for Al-Bayan) is http://www.albayan.co.ae. (The figures LaRouche refers to in the text, can be viewed there.)
Here is the full text in English, of LaRouche's article:
The Year to Come by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. December 17, 2002
The 1945 death of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt was used by his U.S. and other leading opponents, to begin a series of radical changes in global policy-shaping, changes which have now brought the world into the presently terminal phase of a general economic collapse of the world's present monetary-financial system.
At first, during 1945, in the changes in economic policy of the nations of the Americas and Western Europe, there were some radical changes from Roosevelt's intentions; but they were somewhat limited in their scope. The general principles of the Roosevelt-directed Bretton Woods reform were in effect, during the 1946-58 interval, and somewhat later. But, following the period of mounting crises which erupted with the 1961 retirement of President Dwight Eisenhower, history moved in a radically new direction.
1962-64 events including the 1962 missile crisis, the threats to President Charles de Gaulle, the ouster of the U.K.'s Harold Macmillan, the pressured retirement of Germany's Konrad Adenauer, the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and the 1964 launching of the U.S. war in Indo-China, marked a change of direction in history. From 1964 on, the U.S.A. and the United Kingdom under Prime Minister Harold Wilson, led the Americas and Europe into an increasingly decadent, post-1964 form of globally projected economic and social policies.
So, from about late 1964 onwards, the U.S.A. and the U.K. led the world in an accelerating transformation from the economically-protectionist, production-oriented IMF policies of the initial period of postwar European reconstruction, 1946-64, into the economic and cultural decadence of a 1971-2002, increasingly radically monetarist, "consumer society" practice.
Now, more recently, since 1997-98, a series of world monetary and financial crises, and the 2000-01 collapse of the so-called "New Economy" bubble, the world economic system which emerged over the 1964-2002 interval, has reached the terminal phase of its existence. The nations of the world, and their economies, could outlive the presently ongoing collapse of the world's present monetary-financial system, but the monetary-financial system itself is now doomed beyond all vain hopes for its recovery.
The emergence of a broad system of economic cooperation throughout much of Asia, now gathered around the "Strategic Triangle" of Russia, China, and India, presents the opportunity for greatly expanded, long-term economic cooperation between Europe and Asia. Large-scale, more or less continental systems of basic economic infrastructure, define the most essential feature of a generalized economic recovery: provided the present monetary-financial system is scrapped in favor of a return to something like the original Bretton Woods system.
The accompanying three figures illustrate the point. The first is an idealized representation of the relative changes in real (physical), monetary, and financial aggregates over the 1966-99 interval. "Post-industrial" policies in the Americas and Europe are collapsing levels of per-capita output, while monetary expansion is feeding an inflationary growth of nominal financial values. The second figure is also an idealized one; this continues the 1966-99 developments into 2000-02; see that the amount of monetary expansion needed to support financial markets now exceeds the amount of financial values subsided by monetary expansion. The third figure shows the 2000-02 crossover in terms of current statistics for that period. The present monetary-financial system, under the announced policies of U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, is now gripped by the same general types of hyperinflationary policies which collapsed Germany's Reichsmark over the June-November 1923 interval.
This is the meaning of a "systemic," rather than merely "cyclical crisis." In the case of a "cyclical crisis," a recovery could be induced without any truly radical changes in the system. In the case of a "systemic crisis," only a sweeping replacement of the axioms of the system, will permit a recovery to occur. The world has reached the point today, that without precisely those radical changes, back to something like the 1946-58 Bretton Woods monetary system, no recovery of the economies of the Americas and Europe will probably be possible within the lifetime of presently adult generations. Under those conditions, the fate of Asia and Africa can be broadly estimated.
Although the danger of a full-scale U.S. war against Iraq was averted, at least temporarily, about the time of the Nov. 5 U.S. mid-term elections, the forces committed to the more or less perpetual, more or less Asia-wide "Clash of Civilizations" war proposed by Bernard Lewis, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Samuel Huntington have not yet been uprooted. The danger of such a war is not caused by any economic motives as such; it is the kind of continuing danger of warfare which prevails during any period of protracted economic crisis caused by a failed monetary-financial system such as the present system, such as 1928-33. Past history warns the world today: Either a radical reform of the world's present economic system occurs very soon, or potential catastrophes, such as perpetual, genocidal wars, would tend to become actual ones.
In all well-known cases of collapses of political systems, it was never the leaders who caused that collapse. The leading cause of the collapse was, as in ancient Rome, essentially, prevailing popular opinion expressed by the popular spectators in the Roman gladiatorial arena. The function of leaders in such a period of danger is to lead the people to give up the foolish opinions by means of which they are bringing punishment upon themselves. Often the doom of a people is caused simply by the lack of such leaders, as by failed leaders. Sometimes, such leaders are available, but they are rejected. Such is the nature of a crisis of leadership under conditions of a culture's systemic crises.
We see this type of crisis of leadership in the Americas and Europe today. The threat to unleash a new Middle East war by October or November, was averted chiefly by actions centered around the executive functions of governments, such as important sections of the U.S. military and heads of state and governments in Europe. The parliamentary parties were predominantly useless in this crisis situation, as, with the exception of Italy, the ruling political parties of Europe and the Americas have been useless, or worse than useless, in dealing with the systemic causes of the present world monetary-financial crises.
That situation is typical of history. Mass-based political parties tend to reflect prevalent popular opinion, such as the popular opinion induced by today's financier-controlled popular mass entertainment and news media. So, U.S. popular opinion caused the U.S. plunge of 1922-29 into the 1929-33 economic crisis. President Franklin Roosevelt was the needed leader who led the majority of the U.S. people out of the kind of folly which took over Germany through President Paul von Hindenburg 's appointment of Adolf Hitler. Similarly, it was the leadership of France's Cardinal Mazarin which was crucial in organizing that 1648 ecumenical Treaty of Westphalia which brought the religious wars of 1618-48 to an end.
In the short term, good leadership within the framework of the executive agencies of governments can often postpone catastrophes threatened by systemic crises. In the longer term, the needed changes must be brought about by winning the leading layers within the population to adopt the needed changes in their popular opinion.
Leaders of the quality needed to define needed changes in popular opinion, such as the U.S.A.'s Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt, are relatively exceptional figures in history so far, but, in times of systemic crisis no escape from disaster were likely to occur without their appearance.
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