Lyndon LaRouche Addresses
Denmark-Sweden Seminar
November 30, 2023

Rasmussen: So, we'll see if we can get anybody to ask questions here.

LaRouche: I don't have any influence with them.

Rasmussen: You weren't speaking about Hamlet, this time, Lyn. I expected to hear the modern Hamlet.

LaRouche: Well, you've seen Hamlet. You see him all over the place. Everybody in power in Europe, is trying to be Hamlet! It's a bad performance, too--that makes it worse! [laughter] I don't think Hamlet's to blame. You said that: Denmark was to blame.

Question: Hi, I want to ask whether we can survive. What are the answers? What are the answers, that we can survive somehow?

LaRouche: Well, I'm trying to do that, exactly. It's time for humanity to grow up. And it's to stop thinking about which popular opinion is right, and to recognize that all popular opinion is wrong, because it is popular opinion.

So, rather than quarrelling about what popular opinion should be, why not say, "It shouldn't be"? Hmm? "To be or not to be." And, it shouldn't be! Reason has to prevail. And reason means, in a sense, a Platonic standard of reason, as I've done a great deal to define this. That's why I've emphasized among the youth, the importance of using Gauss's 1799 exposure of the intrinsically fraudulent character of the argument of d'Alembert, Euler, and Lagrange, which many people, who study science today believe in, the damned fools. That, one has to free oneself of this popular opinion, this cult of popular opinion, and instead, understand that reason, the ability to know the truth in the Socratic way, must be the standard of leadership in political behavior.

We must, also, as I've emphasized in addressing this question of youth and leadership; we have to recognize that one of the great problems, of the presently incumbent generation in power, is that they have created for their children a no-future society. They insist on gratitude, that what they've give their children is no future. But, they cling desperately to their pleasure, in what they are, and insist that society admire what they are: "You must learn from us! You must earn your laurels! You can't question us, yet! You have to learn from us, first!"

"Learn to do what? To destroy society? You already perfected that. We don't need to learn that any more. We have to replace what you represent. We have to have a society, in which we, and our children, can live. Not the doom, which inheres in what you bequeathed to us."

And therefore, what's lacking, the moral deficiency of the presently hegemonic generation, in power in most parts of the world, especially in Europe and the Americas, is, they have no concern for the effects of what they do, on coming generations of the world as a whole--not even their own nations.

So, therefore, what we have is a moral breakdown. And what we have to do, is recognize, first of all: That that is a moral breakdown; that that is the problem; and that some people, like the Christians having to face Nero and so forth, sometimes have to stand up for truth, and not try to accommodate popular opinion, as tends to be the case today. And, then you have a question--everybody faces the question: If we adapt to popular opinion, on the presumption that you must influence popular opinion, to succeed, then we shall all fail. It's only if we stand up to know, that our problem is, essentially, the moral and intellectual rottenness of popular opinion, that must be replaced, then we have a chance of surviving.

Question: Hi Lyn, this is Feride. We had some fun here, with the student meetings. We began this around seven, eight weeks ago, and this is very exciting. So, I wanted to say something about the question of leadership, because I think it's sometimes difficult, you know. I want the young people to take leadership. What does it mean?

LaRouche: It means, essentially, developing one's mind. And, what I try to do, is set the model for it. That's why I do these long, two-hour, four-hour, discussions with groups of youth. And I particularly like--I mean, a hundred in a meeting is sometimes necessary, but it's not the best mechanism for pedagogical work. Actually, about 20, 25 is your optimal level for pedagogical work, in terms of discussion among youth; leadership discussion, scientific discussion. Because, it's not so small, that one or two personalities dominate the entire discussion, and it's not so large, that very few have a chance to intervene actively, into the discussion. So, the usual thing, a class size in a secondary school or a university, should be between 15 and 25, generally; except for general lectures. But most of the class work should be in that 15-25 participant range.

Because, in that, you have this intense kind of Platonic-Socratic dialogue, which is necessary, to bring forth a round of intellectual development among the participants. As a matter of fact, the model to be studied, is to take the set of Plato's Socratic dialogues as a whole, and adding in The Laws, which is another kind of--it's not a dialogue, but it has many of the qualities of dialogue--and take these as an example of pedagogical model. That is, what should happen, in a good classroom, a Classical-humanist classroom, which has not less than, say, 15 pupils, and not more than, say, 25: What kind of experience should that be?

Now, look at the participants in any Platonic dialogue, among the characters in the dialogue. See how it looks. And by studying all of Plato's dialogues from this standpoint, you get a sense of how the discussion, how the pedagogy has to go, to make it work. When people try to teach at people--"learn after me"--that really does not change people. It's only when people go through their own cognitive experience.

Now, you'll find, in the youth work, we're having in the United States--and I pulled much of the youth work away from the older members, away from their control. Because they were killing it! They couldn't help but kill it. You see it in Germany: The predominant tendency among the leadership in Germany, is to kill the youth work. And it's a result of precisely that pathological phenomenon that I referred to in my remarks today: You have a generation, which represents the incumbency of power, by that generation, which causes people in that generation, for reasons that they themselves don't understand, to try to impose what they think are their values, and their prejudgments, upon young people. And they're wrong! And therefore, if you let them get their hands on the youth movement, they will destroy it! Because, everyone says, "The youth must do as we tell them."

I say, "I don't worry about the youth doing what I tell them. That doesn't get you anywhere, because I'm not going to be here forever." So, I'm not going to sit around on a cloud someplace, issuing manifestos, which will tell the youth movement when to blow their noses. That's not the way the world is going to work! I have to develop among young people, the self-starting capability, of doing a better job, than their parents' generation did. And, there's only one way to do that: And that's to bring out their inner potential, which means, an active, dialogue type of  process--a Socratic dialogue type of process--among themselves.

And, at the same time, to take this kind of process, and approach the population in general, that way. The population is sick, mentally ill. They need help! How do you help them? By yelling at them? That's not exactly likely to succeed. How do you do that? You get their attention. What do you do? You're trying to get them in a Socratic dialogue, focussed on the leading issues of the moment; but also, responding on other things that they drag in. Because these are things that have to be resolved in their mind, if they're going to function effectively.

So, you have to go out to recruit people, with a Platonic dialogue, as a method. And, to recruit from various parts of the population. And, what will happen is, if you do a good job, you will find the youth will tend to respond most actively--not all of them, but enough of them. Those who respond to what you're doing, will then see what is happening, and they will say, "Hey! You've got a movement going here." And then, they will respond.

So, if you want to recruit the people who are in the older generation, or the younger part of the older generation, you have to demonstrate to them, that you're able to organize people from the younger generation, that is, the 18- to 25-year-old generation. You can only do that, succeed in both purposes, by using the method of the Socratic dialogue, in which the development of ideas, not the teaching of doctrine, is the basis of the process.

That's why we have--with what I've done in the U.S.--we've had success. Well, yes, we have problems, but you expect problems. That the problems are no reason to quit. The problems are a reason to continue: Because, what you're doing, is, you're trying to solve precisely those problems, and you have to keep working at it.

So, what I did, is, I pulled the youth movement, out from under the influence of the "old fogeys": Old fogeys is almost anybody older than 30 and under 55--that's an old fogey. I pulled the thing out from under their control, and put the leadership under direction of people who are more sensitive to principled Platonic dialogue, who are less "screwed up" (as they say), by this Baby Boomer ideology. And then, let the young people, themselves, develop in their movement, develop an organic leadership around this process of task-oriented, Platonic-Socratic dialogue. I don't know of any other way to do it. And the way I administer and intervene in this process, the way I've been protecting it for the past three years--protecting it from older people--is just that: Is knowing that, if you could create the right environment, that the young people out there, who know that their parents' generation has destroyed society, who know that they have to introduce a change, they're also intelligent enough to know, that they don't know how to make the change, yet. And, they'd run fast, and learn how to do it. And, they know that colleges won't give it to them; they know that textbooks won't give it to them; they know the Internet won't give it them--that is, the so-called "information society."

So, you offer them the one thing that can give them the quality they need: an organized process of Socratic, focussed upon the crucial issues of this time, as Plato, in his dialogues, focussed on the crucial issues of his time. And let people assimilate that method, that idea. And from that, you produce a generation, which knowing that it has no future, under a continuation of the leading generation's policies, will struggle for survival. They have a very strong motive. But, if you bring in garbage, and you start to give the same old garbage as the schools, and the parental generation's into them, you destroy them and demoralize them.

That's the issue. That's the problem.

Question: Hello.... I don't know if you heard about it: We've been calling up the Danish parliamentarians, over here (God help us!). We've managed to get at least one of the parties to have a debate of this New Bretton Woods call. But, their answer, their reply back to us, was that they thought the ideas were sympathetic, but they fundamentally disagreed with us, on the issue of the environment. And, as you say, the stink of the parties is the stink of popular opinion, because this is exactly one of the main issues that we confront, when we're in the streets.

I mean, when you talk to people, you can typically tell, whether their intentions are good, even despite their opinions, they can have good intentions. But, you often end up in this problem, that you disagree about what the crucial issues actually are. And I've never really managed to find a good way around that problem. I mean, when you have a disagreement about what the crucial issues are, whether it's the fact that you have millions of people dying from underdevelopment, or whether it's the fact that you have the rain forests losing their leaves, or whatever. How do you get around that particular form of lunacy?

LaRouche: Well, that's exactly where you first understand, "Well, this is some lunacy. Now, we come here, not to try to dictate to you, but just to free you from your lunacy. And this ecology stuff, which has been widely induced, is lunacy.

"You will not survive, if you cling to this. You have a choice, because, if you cling to this ecology doctrine, as a start, you will not survive. And, if you don't accept that, after reasonably considering what the evidence is, then you are not capable--you are insane!" By every functional standard of sanity.

A population, or layer of the population, which is incapable of facing a truth, on which its continued existence depends, is like the fabled lemmings: They're determined to go to where they're headed, over the cliff, no matter what anyone says. And, they will screech and shriek in ecstasy, as they fly from the brink of the cliff, down to the sea and rocks below. And, the only thing I know that works, is to actually present that image to people, and say, "Well. You have a right to an opinion? Does the lemming have the right--the legendary lemming--I don't think that lemmings are actually that stupid, but the legendary lemmings do jump off the cliff, and shriek in ecstasy all the way to the sea and rocks below. And, if you want to do that, I suppose you have a right to do that, and I suppose we're not to interfere, right? Hey, buddy: It's nuts!"

I think that's the only way you can deal with it.

Question: Hello Lyndon? This is Simon, and I've got a question for you.

LaRouche: Yes.

Question: Actually, first I wanted to remind you about Plato, saying in a dialogue, that the worst destiny you can have, is having a leader who's less capable than yourself; and that, that you have to enforce the people who are more capable yourself to become leaders. And that's what I think we should do with you!

So, you've been devoted to the Roosevelt solution, or program. And, my question is--because after he was in office, things were corrupted again. My question is, what measures do we need to make, to ensure that this wouldn't happen again? Is there anything we can do?

LaRouche: Well, that's what I keep worrying about. There's not much understanding of Roosevelt among Europeans, in general--and even Americans--because you get these things: "But, what was Roosevelt's position on this?" "What was Roosevelt's position on this?" And so forth. That's all nonsense. History is not a sequence of votes on positions. History is a process, in which certain characteristic development is morally positive, and the lack of that development is morally negative.

Now, Roosevelt inherited a destruction of the United States, which occurred under the Presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt, a very, very distant cousin--distant morally, intellectually, as well as biologically; Woodrow Wilson, who was the co-founder of the revival of the Ku Klux Klan in the United States; Calvin Coolidge, who was a complete wretch. And, so you have, from 1901, with the successful assassination of President McKinley, who was a human President, as opposed to Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, or Coolidge. You had in 1929, a collapse of the international monetary system, in what something between a cyclical and systemic collapse--it had the qualities of both: It was cyclical in form, but it was systemic in the sense, that what had happened leading into World War I and its aftermath, essentially Versailles, had introduced a systemic feature of doom, into the international monetary-financial economic system.

So, Roosevelt came to power, in 1932-33, in the election of 1932, on the basis of a Hoover, who had refused, like many of today's politicians, to face--. Hoover knew what the reality was. But Hoover refused to face, and tried to adapt to prevailing opinion of his party and institutions. It wasn't because he was stupid; it was because he was morally weak, and didn't have the ability to step over his predecessors.

Roosevelt did.

Now, Roosevelt was a man, who had deeply embedded in him, the legacy of the American Revolution, which is distinctly American, and it's not European. The ideas were European. But there's nothing in the American Revolution, which was a copy or reflection of European political government institutions, which many Europeans don't understand that. They don't understand, that the European model--put aside the Hapsburg model, which is obviously garbage; the Spanish and Austrian Hapsburgs: Forget them. But, look at the model which came to the fore in Europe, over successive periods, the Anglo-Dutch liberal model, which emerged successfully, triumphantly, in the aftermath of the Treaty of Westphalia.

This was inherently a failure, from the beginning, for reasons which I gave in my presentation, just shortly before, here. The United States was founded on a rejection of the Anglo-Dutch liberal model. Now, the idea of the American Revolution came from Leibniz, or came through Leibniz, and reflected the 15th-Century Renaissance. It did reflect the influence of Mazarin, the influence in forming the Treaty of Westphalia, in 1648; these things were reflect. But the governmental model of Europe, the disintegration of the Hapsburg system, over the century or so, emerged as triumphant as the Anglo-Dutch liberal model--which Denmark and Sweden know very well. That's what you've been subjected to--see how your grandparents' and great-grandparents' lives, and so forth--ever since Baring [ph?].

So, we were distinct. And we were distinct in the sense, that we did not believe, did not accept the idea of a financier-oligarchical rule. And, we were opposed to setting up what we would call today, the equivalent of an independent central banking system. We believed that the government had to have the authority, the power, and responsibility, to shape financial, monetary, and economic policy, to conform to the requirements of the principle of the general welfare. And, we believed that we had to promote the creative impulses of the individual, the cognitive impulses of the individual, to that end. We had to provide the basic economic infrastructure; we had to promote the individual and his freedom, to make the innovations, which would make the system work. That was our system.

So, Europeans do not know that system. Some don't as a matter of information, as a matter of education. But, in terms of the parties, in terms of the policies, they don't know it. And therefore, they're very confused about this kind of thing. And therefore, their judgment on Roosevelt is often mistaken, because their conception of history is completely absurd. It's contrary to actual reality: Because they try to impose an arbitrary model, of opinions, and do's and don't's, and of specific issues, on history, rather than understanding history as a process of development.

Roosevelt did understand it as a process of development. And he unleashed a series of revolutionary changes, to save the U.S. economy, under the guidance of principles which would restore it, to its original intention, original Constitutional intention: the principle of the general welfare. All of the fights, that Roosevelt had, in the United States, against his internal opponents, and his fights with Churchill up to the last moment of his life, were based on that single issue: the general welfare. His opponents inside the United States, which are the so-called "free traders"--or we used to call them the "free traitors"; not "traders," "traitors"--always expressed that.

Now, Roosevelt's power was based partly upon the support he got. But, also, was conditional, because the population in general was still rotten. Generations of the population in the 20th-Century, prior to his Presidency, had been corrupted, turned rotten, by what had happened inside the United States. And therefore, the reason Roosevelt's power, in part, lay in the fact that he was saving the nation, from a catastrophe, which was the experience of the people. That the opposition to him was there: in the people, in popular opinion, as well as in certain financier circles.

Now, Roosevelt was indispensable, in getting the United States out of the Depression, and getting it through the war. But, after June 1944, when the Anglo-American breakthrough, in Normandy, indicated the final defeat of Nazi Germany was now inevitable; at that point, in the Summer of 1944, Roosevelt's enemies moved to install a pig as the Vice Presidential nominee, in the hope that Roosevelt would die soon, and their pig would become President. That pig was Harry Truman. And, that is the essential pivot in the history of the United States after Roosevelt.

So therefore, to understand Roosevelt, you have to understand him as representing a certain body of principle, not a set of issues, but a principle: The principle was to restore the American System, and to free the world from the grip, of the imperial maritime power of Anglo-Dutch liberalism. So, if you look at the thing as a process, in those terms, and realize that Roosevelt did not have a population which was intellectually developed to the point, that it heeded commitment to its own best interest; but that the American population was a fickle population, which loved Roosevelt when he saved them from poverty and defeat; and when he saved the world from Hitler: They loved him for that. But the minute Hitler was doomed, they said, "Get rid of this guy!" And, that's what happened.

And, it took a generation, to get that legacy of Roosevelt out of the system, and the American people. Until Kennedy's assassination, the missile crisis, and the launching of the Indochina War, the American people were still enough committed to the Roosevelt legacy, they would not tolerate fascism. But, with the missile crisis, with the assassination of Kennedy, with the launching of the war, the American people became pigs, opportunist pigs. And, their children were educated to be pigs. And the rock-drug-sex youth counterculture, as it was reflected, for example, by environmentalism, is a reflection of the moral degeneracy, which spread around the world, over the past 35 years.  And, that's the way to understand Roosevelt.

So, what am I doing? Today, I know this, what I just said to you. Okay. Am I going to fail, as Roosevelt, in one sense, failed? That's my concern, that I shall not fail. I can not pre-determine what the result will be. But I can pre-determine what I will do about shaping the result. And therefore, you will see, in all my writings, I do something that Roosevelt never did: Roosevelt expressed ideas, but he was not a man of ideas. He was a man who acted on ideas, who had ideas, who developed his understanding to use them, with good executive power, with leadership capability. But, he was not a creator of ideas. He was not a scientific discoverer, as I am.

So, I know everything Roosevelt knew, in terms of how to govern and how to lead. But, I, also, am a creative personality, a scientific discoverer. And recognize, that you must have, as Plato emphasized, with the idea of the philosopher-king, that a world in crisis needs the leadership of a philosopher-king, not merely a good President, under the present circumstances. And my job is provide to that necessary quality of leadership, of a philosopher-king.

Question: I was interested in how you think art and religion--I don't know--a part of your vision for the future?

LaRouche: Well, I'm very simple on religion, you know. I don't believe in all these complicated interpretations and doctrinal assumptions. I have great fun. I say only what I know, and I'm very clear on this, I think. And I find no inconsistency whatsoever, between what I know, and what I do politically.

So, the Mosaic doctrine, the nature of man and I Genesis: that's fine. The Gospels of John and Paul: I know them to be true. And I know what Christ is, as they portray him, and I know that. And for me, that's enough.

The question is, what's my obligation, as a result of that knowledge? That's also clear enough to me. I could be clearer, but in principle, it's clear enough to me. I can only, shall we say, perfect it a bit more.

Question: [follow-up] The question about art? I don't know, what your view is on art.

LaRouche: Same thing. I am probably one of the most important discoverers of the principle of art in modern history. And, the most crucial of my achievements, relative to what I discovered from the work of others, was largely accomplished on that basis, during the late 1940s and early 1950s, in which I recognized that the principles of Classical artistic composition, have two qualities: First of all, if they are true principles, like Bach's principle of well-tempered composition--if they are true principles, then they are universal principles with the same efficiency of universality as other universal physical principles. They have universal value. Secondly, that these, as such, such as the Classical sculpture developed from Greece; the Classical artistic composition, as typified by the work of Bach, and his successors through Brahms; Classical drama, as exemplified in part by the work of--Francois Rabelais, actually, or Cervantes, in a lesser degree, but the similar principle; or Shakespeare's compositions; or the work of Lessing; the work of, similarly, of Moses Mendelssohn, and the work of Schiller.

As Schiller said, in his Jena lectures on history, that art is not merely a beautiful exercise. But art is a way of generalizing, for the human mind, the principles which underlie human history. And thus, a people which really participates in a successful form of Classical artistic composition, as an audience, with a great performance of drama or music, that people is experience, through art, a strengthening of the power of insight into actual history, and are able to understand their own times (as well as other times), from that standpoint.

You see, there are two things about economic progress: One is, that the physical side of economic progress depends upon discover of certain universal principles, which increases man's potential power in and over  nature--the power to exist. But, the effectiveness of these principles, depends upon forms of social cooperation, which are consistent with the principles themselves. And those Classical artistic compositions' principles are the exemplification of the methods of political thinking of a people, which are necessary for a good society.

So, that, in the sense, that I look at Christianity--as I indicated in the question of Moses: Well, I know that the Mosaic doctrine of man, is true. It's a scientific truth. So, that thing from I Genesis 1, is not a question of "received doctrine," of "revealed religion" to me. It's truth, and I know it personally, to be true, scientifically. The same thing, in terms of the Gospels of John and Paul, respective Christ: I know that person to be true, as a scientific fact, not as a point of revealed religion or doctrine.

The same thing with art. I just art the same way. I know that Franz Liszt is a fraud! That all the Romantics of the 19th Century were frauds, as opposed to the Classical composers. Those who call Heine a Romantic, are committing an obvious fraud. That, the Romantics of the 19th Century, tried to imitate, to caricature, to parody Classical composition. For example: Liszt, in his famous piano sonata, where he attempted to do a "commentary," so to speak, on Mozart's K. 475--it's a failure! Absolute failure! Whereas Chopin's attempt, with his famous piano sonata, to deal with the same subject, was a success, [inaud], the first one was an excellent success. But, Liszt was a complete failure. Liszt was trying to parody Classical composers; there's no content to him. As Clara Schumann said of her husband's work: "My husband never wrote passage-work." The difference between Romanticism and Classicism. In Classicism, the principle of rigorous standard of truthfulness is there. And, that's the point.

People get confused on art, because they say, "But, isn't that art?" "Isn't that art?" If does not have rigorous standard of truthfulness, it is not Classical artistic composition.

Thus, on those terms? Yes, as the Bach St. John Passion and St. Matthew Passion, for example, exemplify: There is no separation between Classical artistic composition and performance, and a Classical religious conception.

Question: My name is Magnus, and I study Russian at the University of Stockholm. Some of the education--it's purely propaganda, and some is not. But, I was wondering: I now take lectures in this course, "all you want to know about economy." And, I have found pure, simple things--how to measure the state of an individual's economy, and how the society really is. For instance, the pensions, in the future, they will get worse; and for instance, what people buy, what kind of food people buy. Can we tell some more about this pure, simple things? How to really measure how it's the economy? And I have also told people, that these two things, about the pensions and about the what people buy--what kind of food, yeah?--and, I have seen a big relief in people's faces, because they suspect something's wrong.

For instance, you really say these two simple things, and they realize that all what the leading economists say, and all the politicians, it's just a lie. So, can you tell us some more about how to measure one individual's economy?

LaRouche: I've approached this from many aspects, and many fora, at different occasions in the past, and I've recognized that people will look at you, when you tell them something; and, they may grasp some of the things you say--what I say, for example--but, then they miss it; they miss the essential point. They come up to the edge, and they slip away.

The problem is this, and that's why I--with the youth movement--emphasize so many years ago, and they asked me: "What do we do, for our education?" And so, I said, "We should start with Gauss's 1799 statement of the fundamental theorem of algebra." Now, the reason for that, which should be obvious from things that I've written, particularly recently on this question of the "Historical Individual" and "The Next Generations," which are now in publication: Is that, the basic problem, in modern civilization, is the problem of Aristotelianism, and its derivatives, such as its copies, such as empiricism, Cartesianism, and so forth. That, just as Gauss attack d'Alembert, Euler, and Lagrange, for committing fraud on the issue of the complex domain, that this goes to the very heart, of the essential cultural incompetence prevailing in modern European civilization.

What was already demonstrated by Archytas and Plato, and their followers, in Classical Greek work, is that the doubling of a line, the doubling of a square, or the doubling of a cube, are not operations, which can be explained arithmetically, or by simple geometry. And the minute, somebody says, "No, no, no! I can show you how to double a line," you recognize immediately, that they don't understand the problem. And, when you see  them failing, again and again, as Plato deals with this in the Meno and Theaetetus dialogues, for example--you see this repeated. And, you see that the [crass?] school of modern mathematics is derived, largely, from the authority of Lagrange's affirmation, of this mechanical system of mathematics, as opposed to physics.

You recognize, the key problem is cultural, in that sense. People do not understand what an idea is. This is the problem of Immanuel Kant. This is the problem of the empiricists, the positivists, the existentialists, the Cartesians, and so forth. They all introduce purely arbitrary axioms, or axiomatic assumptions, which are pure arbitrary, ivory-tower fantasies, and try to explain the important things by use of these fantasies, as axioms of a system. For example, doubling a line: Look at Gauss's demonstration of the fallacy of this thin--the doubling of a line. Or, you can see the entirety of Gauss's Disquisitiones, as his doctoral dissertation, in which his number theoretical questions are laid out. And you see that numbers are not simply counting numbers. That the number system has characteristics, which include the complex domain, as in the case of biquadratic residues, as Gauss's second paper on that shows.

That there are concepts here, which lie beyond, the accepted standards of teaching, of modern textbooks in universities. And, when I explain to people, how my understanding of economy works, I will get blank faces, at the time their mind comes up against these kinds of assumptions in the existing curriculum. So, to me, it was totally clear what the problem was! All my life's work has been based on understanding the fallacy of that kind of thinking.

But, nonetheless, most people have it. They say, "Well, I learned this in school. I learned this in university." "I got my degrees in this," and so forth. "Whaddya mean? You telling me my university didn't know what they were doing? Telling me I was a victim of false education?!" "Yep!" And, they just look at me (sometimes angrily), and that's the way it goes.

But, that's why I emphasize this, because what Gauss does, is to restate, essentially, what was argued by the Platonic mathematicians, from Archytas and Plato, through Eratosthenes and Archimedes, in the Classical Greek, pre-Roman civilization, pre-Roman culture; anti-Aristotelian culture. And, most of the corruption of modern society comes either from the acceptance of Aristotle, or the empiricists.

So, that's where the problem lies. The key thing here, is to understand what an idea is. Then, you have a second problem, which comes out of the root. As I pointed out--or discovered, in a sense, in 1952-53: It is impossible, having discovered how the economy works, and having proven, in a sense, how it works in terms of action, the question is, how do you represent an economy as a whole. At that point, I took a second reading, more seriously, at Riemann's 1854 habilitation dissertation, in which I understood what he meant, by a generalized, anti-Euclidean--not non-Euclidean, but anti-Euclidean--physical geometry. And, I recognized immediately, that that is the only way you can describe the way in which a physical economy works. You can say things about physical economy, which are true, as I had done before; you can make discoveries about this, which are true, as before. But, you can not say, what is a physical economy, in the large, as an historical process, without using Riemann's work, and what goes into it. Which means also, starting from things like Gauss's fundamental theorem of algebra on the complex domain.

So, that's where I put the emphasis, and that's where the difficulty lies.

The other way I put it is this: I've used Vernadsky, and my other work did not come out of Vernadsky; but, I found it very useful, despite the fact there are certain differences of my view and those of Vernadsky (but, they're not really significant, with respect to Vernadsky's competence). Vernadsky lays out what is actually a Riemannian phase-space system, of three phase-spaces: abiotic systems, as defined experimentally; living systems, as distinct from abiotic systems, also defined as a principle of life experimentally; thirdly, the Noosphere, as the transformation of the Biosphere, introduced externally by a phase-space of cognition: that is, human intervention to transform the physical effects, performed upon the Biosphere.

Therefore, what we're doing, as man, can be situated in a Riemannian recapitulation of Vernadsky's conception of the Noosphere: That we, as man, by making individual discoveries of principle--like those made by Archytas, for example, on the question of the doubling of the cube--that, by these kinds of discoveries of universal principles, by the human mind, we change the universe, by giving ourselves the power to intervene in the universe, by newly discovered universal laws.

The purpose of economy is actually based on that. So therefore, that which is essential in the nourishment and the development of the individual, and the population, and the nation, to maintain that process of growth, through technological and scientific progress, that is where growth generates. Growth is not an expression, can not be measured in terms of energy, even though growth is reflected by increases of the energy flux-density of processes. But, that's only a descriptive view of the microcosm. In fact, growth comes only from an increase of power: power which means the same thing it meant to Plato, in discussing the doubling of the line, the square, and the cube, or power as expressed by his discussion and that of others, of the five Platonic solids; power as described by Leibniz, in his definition as Kraft; and economy.

So, the point is, yes, you can find  many examples of the type you refer to in this kind of problem, which illustrate, in a fairly simple way things which are useful, as opposed to those which are not. But, to generalize that, one has to have this conception I've used, of a Riemannian type of manifold of economy, which is approximated simply by looking at the work of Vernadsky on the Noosphere, from the standpoint of Riemann's actual conception, which--again, Riemann's conception is one which is derived, most immediately, from the work of Gauss, as typified by this one 1799 attack on by Gauss, on Legendre [sic], Euler, and d'Alembert.

Question: Hi, I'm Janos. I want to rewind to a less abstract part of this discussion, about people being delivered, what you would say, a more sensible way of looking at life, in order to expand this organization. And, I propose the thesis, that if people are somehow presented with a new way of thinking, they are so addicted to the insensitive, that they're currently thinking, that they'll start to suffer from withdrawal, and not really absorb what you're trying to tell them. I want you to comment on that dilemma.

LaRouche: Ah! There's not really a dilemma! It's only a dilemma, if you're talking to decadent people, not to young people.

See the way this youth movement works, is, there are very few people in society, who are developed sufficiently that they are rational. Most people, in society, up to the present, are irrational. They don't like to hear that, but that's the truth. I know it. I'm an old man, I've been around the world, a few times, and I know that people generally, including people in powerful positions, especially academic positions, are generally, highly irrational. They cling to arbitrary assumptions, and will climb the walls, screeching like banshees, if you attack one of their purely foolish, arbitrary assumptions, on which their reputation had been based, eh?

What happens, then, is: You come along to a great crisis, like now. It is apparent to every young person, especially in Europe and in the Americas, that the present system is a catastrophic failure. It is emotionally clear, to these young people, or at least a great number of them, that their parents are immoral! Because, their parents, who complacently say, "This is the system you have to learn within"--that their parents, themselves, have created a system, in which they can not live!

So, the way you'd get ideas, generally, in human experience, as Plato exemplifies this, is through paradoxes of that type: experimental paradoxes. You find something doesn't work! Take the case of Pasteur and his followers, on the question of the proof of the existence of a principle of life. Now, Pasteur implicitly did insist upon the independent existence of a principle of life. He said one famous lecture: that the future would say, that we would see non-biotic behavior from the standpoint of a higher set of living principles, rather than trying to discover living principles from study of abiotic processes. In that degree, we know that Pasteur actually had a conception  of life, as a separate principle, as we see this expressed by Vernadsky later in his definition of the Biosphere, (which, again, I think very few people today, would attempt to contest, unless they were some kind of religious nuts).

But, also, you see the same thing in other ways; you see in life generally, in every kind of physical experiment. Take the case of, simply, Fermat: Fermat--or the classic case of Kepler. Kepler demonstrated--the Aristotelians taught, and the empiricists copied them, that you must interpret the facts of sensation, of sense-perception, in such a way as to adduce a regularity of action, which is running the universe. And thus, they insisted, everything must be reduced to circular actions in astrophysics. And thus, you had, in the 16th Century, you had three leading influences: one long dead, Claudius Ptolemy, the Roman forger of a doctrine of astronomy; you had Copernicus, who apparently revived the pre-ancient Greek astronomy of Aristarchus, on the heliocentric model; and Tycho Brahe, who was a collaborator of younger Kepler.

And Kepler showed that all three of these latter, were absurd, by observing one thing: That the orbit of Mars, and other planets, first of all was not circular; and secondly, that the motion of the planet within the orbit, was not uniform--was constantly non-uniform. So therefore, Aristotle's concept of method went out of the window, because of a paradox.

Now, Kepler went further, by showing what was the underlying the principle, which must govern this elliptical, non-uniform motion of the planetary system: Which he called an intention, built into the universe, a universal physical principle. That is, Kepler's definition of a universal physical principle, which is the foundation of all competent, modern mathematical physics. That is, Kepler's definition of a universal physical principle, as in his 1609 New Astronomy, is the foundation of all knowledge, of modern, universal physical principle.

Then, you have, shortly after that, the work of Fermat, who demonstrates, by simple refraction/reflection contrast, that the universe has to be governed, not by a principle of shortest distance in action, but, again, by quickest time. Now, in both cases, clearly by Fermat: Fermat introduced the issue of physical principles, as opposed to a Euclidean/Cartesian geometry into the definition of mathematical physics. This was continued by Fermat, [inaud] by Huyghens, who continued the error of Galileo (Galileo is a fraud, but he was somewhat influential in that time), in his first attempt to define time, in respect to the clock business, isochronic behavior--isochronism.

But then, later, Leibniz, in collaboration with Jean Bernouilli, demonstrated that the cycloid, which had been the virtual argument of Huyghens was wrong: That the pathway of least action, or quickest time, in the universe, is the catenary form, not the cycloid form.  And the catenary's a very interesting form: Because this involves a fundamental paradox, and Leibniz showed that the natural logarithms--he was the first to define natural logarithms, defined them in terms of this catenoid definition of least action, which is something that Euler tried to fake with his construction of the natural logarithms, and so forth. And also, but this was a principle of universal least action, which became known as the geodesic principle of curvature, in the work of Gauss, such as in his (I think it's 1925-26) Copenhagen lectures, the prize lectures. And is the generalized basis for physical economy--or, physical science, in general, physical geometry in Riemann's system of geometry.

So, in all these cases, the discovery is made, by recognizing a paradox, in what sense-perception indicates to be consistency; and it's in the inconsistencies, demonstrated by the paradoxes of perception, that the human mind is capable of adducing the footprint of a principle--not the principle, but the footprint of a principle--and to follow those footprints to find out the creature that made it, called "a universal physical principle."

So, that's the difference here. And also, therefore in life, as faced by the youth today. The youth of today are looking at a system, which is disintegrating. They're looking at what their parents are babbling, their parents generation is babbling, and they're saying, "Our parents generation is babbling! They tell us they gave us everything, but they gave us a society with no future." Therefore: These youth, who perceive that, are the ones who recognize the truth, and their parents don't.

Therefore, it's not a question of how do you convince the parents? You don't have to worry about that: The youth will convince the parents.

So therefore, instead of wasting your time, arguing with silly parents, you say, "The youth will teach you." And you teach the youth. And, you have to help the youth, not to "learn" a doctrine, but you have to inspire them, to make the discovery for themselves. Then, the youth, as has been always the case, in every revolutionary period in history (at least, known history), will educate the adult generation, their parents, to save society.

That's the way success comes about. [applause]

Rasmussen: Thank you, Lyn. Do you have time for more questions?

LaRouche: Have you got a good one?

Rasmussen: Just a small thing: So, the cycloid is not the catenary?

LaRouche: What?

Rasmussen: A catenary is not a cycloid; is that what you just said?

LaRouche: Yeah!

Rasmussen: Hmm.

LaRouche: It never was. That's the famous proof of the principle of least action by Leibniz.

Rasmussen: Do you know how many classes, where I was wrong, that I've taught?

LaRouche: The cycloid was an approximation in the process of--see, the cycloid came--. The genius of Huyghens (not Galileo, who's a faker; he's a fraud and a fake, all the way through), but when Huyghens is confronted with the evidence of Fermat's work on quickest time, simply argued, when he was trying this navigational clock, is: How can you build a clock, which  will eliminate the errors of the pendulum, hmm? And therefore, he came to an isochronic curvature, which corresponded with the derivative of the cycloid, and has a very obvious relationship to circular action, in terms of the complements of circular action, because the cycloid is a complement of a sine function, hmm?

So then, he discovered (it was actually he, that discovered it), the [null?] and the double [inaud] spiral problems, one of the things that led to this discovery: that it could not be that. Then, you had the 1690s' discussion among Leibniz, Jean Bernouilli, and others, of the issue of quickest time. And, even there, Bernouilli would try to generalize this principle, from the standpoint of the cycloid, as the isochronic pattern.

Then Leibniz and Bernouilli continued the discussion, on the issue of the catenary. And it was Leibniz's definition of the principle of universal least action, was based on this discussion of the catenary, which we've done fairly well on. Bruce [Director] has done a good job in pulling together the system of geometries, which define that.

And then, you look at Gauss's proof against Euler and Lagrange, on the question of the fundamental theorem of algebra, the complex domain. Then you see exactly, that from the standpoint of curvature--forget the so-called formal mathematics; look at the curvature. What are the curvatures, which combine to define the catenary function?

Now, locate this function within the complex domain. Now, go ahead to Leibniz: Applying Gauss's evolution of the idea, into a general theory of curved surfaces, and use the principle of least action, as the notion of a geodesic principle, which applies to an n to n+1 order Riemannian manifold.

And then it's clear: That the principle of least action, as defined by Leibniz, in this discussion of the catenary, the same place where he discovers and proves the significance of natural logarithms--by that proof, which Euler did not have--and, as a matter of fact, Euler rejected it. Euler wrote his attack on Leibniz, based on rejecting Leibniz's discovery of the principle of least action, and, in particular, Leibniz's concept of natural logarithms.

But Leibniz was right. And this shows most clearly, when you come to the question of "What do you mean by a ‘geodesic,' in the transformation of curvature of a system, from a Riemannian order n, to a Riemannian order n+1?" Then it becomes indispensable.

And, this is absolutely indispensable in economics. You can have no understanding, whatsoever of physical economy, except from this standpoint. [background laughter]

Rasmussen: I have some work to do.

LaRouche: Well, good! Have fun: It's great fun. And Bruce has done a lot of this, and Jonathan [Tennenbaum] has done a lot. But, it's great fun. And it's exciting. I mean, this is the beauty of scientific work--even abstract scientific work, in these kinds of problems, which belong in the same class, as Platonic dialogues. They're exciting, and they... [tape break]

Question: Actually, there's one thing I've always wondered about, historically, when it comes to Roosevelt, because you've described the difference in political thinking, or fundamental political organization between Europe and the United States, as it was originally conceived. But, it seems to me, that the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, is a fundamental breach with the American System. And I've always wondered--I mean, it's clear that Roosevelt ignored the Federal Reserve, but why didn't he abolish it? I never understood that.

LaRouche: Well, you've never [tried to?]. Yes, it was--the Federal Reserve Act was a treasonous act. It was unconstitutional. It's a violation of the explicit terminology of the Constitution itself. It's in contradiction to everything understood.

Now, actually, it's more interesting to look at what the powers were involved. Who created the Federal Reserve System? The U.S. Federal Reserve System, was launched by King Edward VII of England, who, through his banker in London, the grandfather of the wife of Lord Louis Mountbatten--to show how dismal things became. And this banker, in London, had an agent in New York. This agent in New York, was the fellow who cooked up the design for the Federal Reserve System.

This banker, was the fellow who also took a fellow called E.H. Harriman, who was a real-estate speculator in his stable, and he used Harriman as the nominee, to cover for King Edward VII's financial investment in a controlling interest in the Union Pacific Railroad. Because the King of England did not want to be publicly identified, as the owner of these shares, so he used a nominee: E.H. Harriman, who was the father of Averell Harriman, and so forth and so on.

But, what you had: Harriman was a powerful influence in the Democratic Party. And Harriman was the same Harriman, who acted to put Hitler into power in Germany in 1933; who, together with the former head of the Bank of England, funded Hitler's being put into power.

So you have fascists, in the Democratic as well as the Republican Party, in the United States.

That all of Roosevelt's problems were faced with this reality, of this Anglo-American, or Anglo-American-Canadian, power bloc centered in the New York financial district, which covered both parties. And, to do things, he had to, sometimes, circumvent these changes, rather than make changes.

Many people in the United States make an issue of the Federal Reserve System, in and of itself. I say, "You may be well-meaning, but you're fools." Because, if you want to change the system, you have to discover the power to make the change that your proposing. And, that's where the problem lies. The problem is, people say today, "Well, Roosevelt didn't overthrow it." So what? Roosevelt did not have the power to overturn it. Now, maybe I can get the power to over turn it! And, that's history as a process, rather than history as a collection of issues.

Rasmussen: Anybody else? I know they're sitting here. They look awake--they're very, very awake.

LaRouche: Okay, fine. Well, entertain them! I'll see you.

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