A New International Economic Order
Lyndon LaRouche
A New International Economic Order
For over four decades, physical economist Lyndon LaRouche has provided the intellectual and political leadership in the fight for a new international economic order for the planet, for the purpose of ending the historic imperial control of monetarism and unleashing mankind's creative powers as a species.
The profound impact of LaRouche's intellectual leadership is clearly reflected in the current actions being taken by the BRICS nations and others to create a new global financial architecture and strategic alliance among nations, with the recent establishment of the New Development Bank (NDB) and related developments.
A partial timeline of LaRouche's role in leading the fight for a new international economic order is chronicled below:
Lyndon LaRouche has provided the intellectual leadership for over four decades in the fight for a new international economic order.
- 1975:
LaRouche Calls For Establishment of International Development Bank (IDB)
At a series of press conferences in April of 1975 in Bonn, Germany and in Milan, Italy, LaRouche presents his plan for “the immediate establishment of an International Development Bank as an agreement among the three principal world sectors—the industrialized capitalist sector, the so-called developing sector, and socialist countries.” He specifies that the immediate concentration of the investment thus made possible should be industrial development and expanded food production worldwide.
Policy document published by Lyndon H. LaRouche in 1975 detailing his proposal for creating an International Development Bank.
LaRouche predicts that the present, or then-existing, international monetary system of the I.M.F., would inevitably go bankrupt, and should be replaced by a different credit-creating institution, namely, an International Development Bank (I.D.B.), to facilitate long-term, low-interest credit for capital investment and capital-goods transfer from the industrialized sector to the so-called developing sector, in order to overcome the underdevelopment of Africa, Latin America, and large parts of Asia.
LaRouche issues a policy document for international circulation titled "IDB: How The International Development Bank Will Work" [PDF] in which he declared that two immediate, interconnected actions were imperative:
(1) The declaration of a commitment to sweeping financial reorganization of the world monetary system, involving an orderly process of debt moratoria and the establishment of an institution such as the proposed International Development Bank (IDB)
(2) Immediate commitment to enact, within each national sector of the capitalist world, these measures of emergency financial-reorganization legislation required to facilitate immediate economic recovery in conjunction with IDB efforts.
LaRouche Issues Call for an International Development BankText of LaRouche's Press Conference in Bonn, Germany · April 1975 [PDF]
We propose the immediate establishment of an International Development Bank as a three-way agreement among the three principal world sectors, the industrialized capitalist sector, the so-called development sector, and socialist countries. The Bank would discount letters of credit and bills of exchange authorized by treaty agreement among nations and self-constituted groups of nations, and would thus act as a rediscount bank for those other letters of credit and bills of exchange generated in the course of supplying needs of final commodities producers producing for bookings issued under relevant international development bank treaty agreements.
LaRouche issued a call for the establishment of an International Development Bank at a press conference in West Germany in April 1975.
For example, several key developing sector nations have demanded that the industrialized sector negotiate interlocking agreements concerning three items: energy, raw materials. and food. Our essential criticism of this agenda is that it included only three principal items, instead of the necessary four. The fourth item should be “development.” Our remarks concerning this example are not conjectural, provided that suitable initiative proposals are generated by significant forces of the industrialized sector, key forces within the so-called “Third World” will be prepared to immediately begin working negotiations along the lines of such a four-point form of general treaty agreement with the industrialized sector.
On the basis of our own organization’s studies, and our discussions of these studies with governments and leading political forces within the “Third World,” we have determined to the point of certainty that the activities of an International Development Bank in connection with present wishes and consumption capabilities of the developing sector, would be sufficient to generate a higher rate of industrial expansion in the advanced sector than has been seen during the most prosperous intervals of the past quarter century.
The feasibility of this proposed program demands understanding of certain often neglected ABC’s of Political Economy. Without understanding those principles, we should all be hopelessly caught in the worst disaster of human history.
The basic fact on which all political economy depends is the characteristic feature of economy. That is, that a proper use of means of production and means of personal consumption generates levels of output in excess of the prime costs incurred. The second basic fact, essential to this solution, is that all general development, including industrial development depends upon creating a basis for growth in an abundant supply of adequate nutrition at relatively low social cost. To the extent that these two principles are observed in practice, and advancing technology emphasized to that end, it is feasible to generate very large amounts of long-term credit without inflationary effects.
We emphasize that a combined concentration on both industrial development and expanded food production are the absolute imperatives for this period. To the extent that long-term development credit to the developing sector places priority emphasis on rapidly increasing the amount and social productivity of world food production, any amount of credit can be issued over a 10- to 15-year term ultimately payable in expanded food, in increased masses of productive labor, and in the social productivity of human labor generally.
The immediate problem the new bank will face is this. In addition to the immediate potential for substantially increaing agricultural output and productivity generally, there are three regions of the developing sector which represent massive opportunities for increases in agricultural output. One of these, the Rio de la Plata region of South America, offers short-term major benefits for development as an agro-industrial region. The other two, the Sahel, and the India-Bangladesh-Pakistan region, represent potentially major world food-producing regions, but will require 10 to 15 years of massive engineering efforts and development to approach their enormous surplus potentials. Therefore, our problem is to provide a level of development equivalent to approximately a quarter trillion current transferable rubles annually, concentrated on low-interest loans and grants with a typical maturity in the order of 10 to 15 years required for loans.
The apparent difficulty of conducting such programs is only apparent and not actual. To the extent that the industrialized sectors can generate large surpluses in excess of immediate reinvestment requirements within that sector, that portion of surplus can be issued as credits and grants without adverse economic effects. The only real problem involved is that of raising the gross level of industrial outputs to the scale the indicated undertaking requires. . . .
Excerpt from 'How the International Development Bank Will Work'For full document, see How the International Development Bank Will Work
THE IDB AS SUCH
No competent professional financier should find it difficult to understand the merits and workings of all the principal short-term features of the International Development Bank. It is merely necessary to appropriately identify those points. It is the longer-term perspective and policies of the Bank which go beyond the financial specialist's education and experience. On that aspect, we are obliged to clarify the essential scientific points...
LaRouche's program for the establishment and function of the International Development Bank (IDB)
Formally, the IDB comes into existence in a manner analogous to the effective financial reorganization of any major bank being rescued from illiquidity collapse. A new bank is created to continue the essential operations of the old, while major categories of unpayable carried-forward indebtedness are placed in a moratorium "deep freeze" and negotiations for future liquidation of that debt conducted separately from day-to-day operations of the new institution.
There are two general approached to such a financial reorganization. In one approach, which we are rejected for the problem before us, the administrators strip the operations of the illiquid bank down to a hardcore of essentially sound categories and ranges of activities — an austerity policy of financial 'debridement.' In the second approach, which we are applying to the IDB policy, the object is to vastly expand the operations of the reorganized bank beyond the scope of the bankrupt predecessor, by focusing the activities upon development polices essentially free of the policy errors which led to the collapse of the former entity. The second approach is analogous to the case of the bankrupt manufacturing firm which is successfully reorganized for expanded operations by introducing a superior set of products to its existing productive capacities.
Our core policy is this. The worldwide material preconditions from agricultural, mining and manufacturing are essentially sound. It is only the debt-ridden financial superstructure which prevents those potentialities from being realized in the form of rapidly expanded levels of output at progressively reduced net social cost of production per unit of output. In short, we reject the "Zero Growth" and "Limits to Growth" chimeras as dangerously disorienting fantasies concocted by charlatans and widely puffed by ignorant public relations agencies.
To this end, we have already identified — in consultation with some of the world's leading professionals and relevant governmental agencies — several major specific development projects which can readily (over a five to ten year period of development) yield a massive increase in the output and social-productivity of world agriculture, and thereupon premise the infrastructural basis for massive industrial development. We have similarly determined the feasibility of controlled thermonuclear reaction technology within the horizon of such development programs, such that no long-term "energy crisis" could exist except through massive incompetence by leading agencies.
Those two primary bases for development warrant a massive increase in levels of industrial output from the presently industrialized sectors. The realization of those combined objectives demands supporting activities in the form of both capital development of productive capacities and increasing the social productivity of the general population through improvements in material consumption, leisure and educational opportunities in households.
Hence, credit issued for the realization of such programs is secure and liquid, since the margin of total production obtained through the mediation of credit will significantly exceed the margin of credit issued to effect such production.
Although the decisive interconnections determining such results are international, the present mediating form of economic cooperation to such international ends is the form of de jure national economy. Moreover, the national economies principally to be considered are apportioned among states with capitalist and states with socialist constitutions. Hence, although the objectives to be realized are global, the mediation of the process of reaching those objectives must be treaties of economic cooperation to such ends among participating groups of states.
To maintain a stable international trade as the means for implementing those treaties, such treaties among states and groups of states must be directly incorporated into a single international credit agency, through which world commodity prices can be rationally pegged to the exchange values of principal commodities in terms of the most stable major currencies.
The proposed International Development Bank is therefore essentially an international treaty organization of the participating national economies (states). It acts as a planning forum for the negotiating of extended treaties of economic cooperation, and functions as a n international rediscount agency in connection with those letters of credit and bills of exchange in international trade authorized by treaty agreements.
ROUTINE BANK OPERATIONS
Each treaty negotiated within the purview of IDB operations directly subsumes corresponding "master letters of credit." For each unit of bookings and deliveries subsumed by such master letters of credit, specific letters of credit are automatically processed through the bank as the ultimate rediscount agency of international trade. Bills of exchange against those letters of credit are similarly routinely reprocessed.
The global effect of this operation is to issue credit to the account of the produced and purchaser national sectors. This IDB international central bank credit provides the means for issuing domestic credit to relevant specific producers and purchasers within the national economies affected.
Hence, provided the level of aggregate international trade is sufficiently high, the rates of production in all participating sectors are raised to levels above those prevailing in the high-points of the pre-depression period.
Provided credit is restricted to commodities of the classes directly relevant to development and at non-inflationary prices, the aggregate operations of the bank are in balance except for one major category of long-term credit balances held by the advanced sector against the development of the developing sectors. Provided that this long-term credit does not exceed the aggregate exportable social surplus product of the industrialized sector, the enlargement of such balances has no adverse effect on the industrialized sector. Rather, from traditional baking viewpoints, this mass of credit has the form of 10-to-15-year investments in the developing sector, under the conditions in which initial repayment is postponed to a forward date of maturity 10 or 15 years hence...
For full document, see How the International Development Bank Will Work
- 1976:
Non-Aligned Movement Summit Calls for New International Economic Order
Within months, eighty-five nations, representing 2 billion people, meet in Colombo, Sri Lanka for the Fifth Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement and issue a unanimous declaration [PDF] calling for a new international economic order on August 19, 1976, identical in many regards to LaRouche's proposals spelled out in his policy document from the preceding year.
The Fifth Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement nations in Sri Lanka declares the creation of a new international economic order and calls for a debt moratorium.
The declaration endorses both the establishment of a new international monetary and financial system to replace the International Monetary Fund and provide capital for Third World development through the creation of a Bank of the Developing Countries, as well as a debt moratorium for the least developed countries whose outstanding debts at the time made economic development for those nations impossible. The heads of state of the Non-Aligned nations declare that this summit represented: "...a new step for the establishment of the new world economic order, and in particular, the essential element of such a new order, a new monetary and financial system."
Leaders of 85 nations representing 2 billion people meet in Colombo, Sri Lanka for the 5th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement.
In her keynote address to the summit, Sri Lankan Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike endorses the establishment of a development bank for the Third World: "The developing countries are consistently denied the true value of their output by the vagaries of the international market and the manipulations of international finance. The developed countries have shaped the international financial system to suit their interests. Should we in the developing world sustain such a system? Should we not, instead attempt to develop a system all our own? ... One area of great promise, would be the establishment of a commercial bank — a Bank for the Third World — the bank of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This would not be another non-aligned solidarity fund. It would be a genuine commercial bank and a truly multinational enterprise."
The Colombo Declaration of a New Economic OrderThe New International Economic Order
The Colombo Resolution declared:
The institution of a new international financial order is of the highest political importance... The solution to the economic problems of the developing countries demand the establishment of a universal and equitable new monetary system... Only a complete restructuring of international economic relations, thanks the institution of a new world economic order, will put the developing countries in a position to attain an acceptable level of development.
The Heads of State or Government of Non-Aligned Countries reaffirm that the struggle for political independence and the exercise of their sovereignty cannot be disassociated from the struggle for the attainment of economic emancipation... No lasting peace and security is possible internationally without the establishment of a just and fair society which provides its citizens the economic and social security which is an inalienable right of every citizen of this planet. Such a society should be established in the shortest possible time thus ushering in an era of prosperity and dignity for all mankind.
The achievement of the full economic potential rests on the developing countries and entails the following factors: (a) individual self-reliance in order that developing countries may utilize their economic potential to cooperate among themselves to set up the New International Economic Order; (b) intensification of economic cooperation between developing countries; (c) strengthening of their solidarity and the coordination of the activities of the developing countries in a common front against all attempts of imperialists to sow division and to apply pressure.
The heads of state or government of Non-Aligned Countries are firmly of the view that nothing short of a complete restructuring of the existing international economic relations will provide an enduring solution to the world's economic problems, particularly those of the developing countries. The inadequacy and recurring failure of the prevailing economic order have been demonstrated by the recent series of crises in the developed market economy countries... These crises have also dramatized the fundamentally interdependent character of the constituent elements of the world economy, and provided the necessary impetus for the world community to conceive of the new world economic order based on equity, sovereign equality, interdependence, common interest and cooperation among all States. Faced with this chaotic situation the world has witnessed an unprecedented solidarity among the developing countries and successful assertion of their basic, economic and political rights in the international scene.
The establishment of the new international economic order calls for bold initiatives, demands new, concrete and global solutions, and is contrary to the piecemeal reforms and improvisations intended to resolve the present economic difficulties. The fundamental objective of the New Economic Order is to bring about in the international economic relations an equilibrium based on justice through cooperation and human dignity...
The Non-Aligned Countries once more reaffirm the inalienable right of all countries to exercise full permanent sovereignty over their natural and human resources ad their economic activities including possession, use and disposal of such resources and their right to nationalization...
The Heads of State of the Non-Aligned Countries reaffirm their view that nothing short of a complete restructuring of existing international economic relations will provide an enduring solution to world economic problems. They reaffirm their resolute determination to secure through collective action the establishment and implementation of the New International Economic Order. Such an order must consist, inter alia, of the following essential elements: (A) Fundamental restructuring of the entire apparatus of international trade so as to achieve an indexation, improving the terms of trade pf developing countries and ensuring fair and remunerative prices in real terms to primary export products and an appropriate share of world trade for developing countries through the expansion of processing, diversification and full participation in transport, marketing and distribution of their products... (B) Deep restructuring of world production on the basis of a new international division of labor through improved access to the markets of the developing countries for the manufactured products of developing countries, transfer of technology on favorable terms and conditions, redevelopment of industries from developed countries to developing countries... (C) Radical overhauling of the present international monetary arrangements, which are characterized by the absence of a rational, equitable and universal system, the anarchy of chaotic currency fluctuations, haphazard growth of international liquidity, widespread inflation, lack of responsiveness to the needs of developing countries and the domination of decision making by a few developed countries. The new system should remove the dominant role of international currencies in international reserves, ensure parity in decision-making as between developed and developing countries, prevent the domination of any single country over decision making, and forge a link between liquidity creation and development finance; (D) Guarantee an adequate transfer of resources for development on an assured, continuous, and predictable basis with respect to the criteria of independence and in a non-discriminatory manner not likely to create division among developing countries; (E) Urgently determine a satisfactory solution to the problem of public debt, particularly for the least developed and most seriously affected countries. (F) Providing adequate resources and appropriate technology on favorable terms for investment to ensure increased production of food agricultural inputs in the developing countries...
CONCLUSION: The Colombo Summit in the view of Heads of State or Government heralds a new phase in which the growing economic potential of non-aligned and other developing countries, creates a momentum for the establishment of the New International Economic Order, with a particular emphasis upon the new international monetary and financial system that is an essential element of that order. In the words of the Chairman of the Conference, Hon. Mrs. Sirvimavo Bandaranaike, 'If we really and truly want to blunt the weapons of imperialism and colonialism, we must surely fashion countervailing weapons in the areas of international money and finance.'
Full text of Colombo Declaration
The Establishment of a Bank of the Developing CountriesResolution for a Bank of the Developing Countries
The Conference of Heads of State and Government of Non-Aligned nations,
Recognizing that financial and monetary cooperation among Non-Aligned and other developing countries is a necessary aspect of economic cooperation and a practical expression of the concept of collective self-reliance;
Conscious that the present international monetary and financial system is controlled by and directed to serve the exclusive interests of the developed countries to the detriment of Non-Aligned and other developing countries, and that this system is the product of a colonial era and imperialist exploitation of the developing countries;
Aware that monetary and financial activity in many Non-Aligned and other developing countries is still controlled by the transnational financial corporations of developed countries which generate and export excessive profits and control and distort the pattern of trade and economic activity of developing countries;
Noting that Non-Aligned and other developing countries lacking the strong bargaining mechanism of a joint banking institution have been completely denied reciprocal access to banking and other financial business in developed countries;
Aware that the Non-Aligned and other developing countries have the capacity and the political will to mobilize their collective strength to increase their control over the international monetary and financial system;
Taking note that there are growing elements of financial and monetary cooperation sub-regionally, regionally, and intra-regionally among Non-Aligned and developing countries, through the mechanisms of clearing and payments arrangements, cooperation among Central Banks and the links among national commercial banks;
Recognizing that economic cooperation among Non-Aligned and other developing countries must now move into the phase of implementing concrete proposals and that the national commercial banking systems of Non-Aligned and other developing countries provide a framework for the establishment of a multinational banking enterprise among developing countries;
Mindful of the economic viability of the opportunities available in the developing world which such a multinational banking enterprise could help to realize in a wide range of cooperative economic activities such as the finance of direct trade among developing countries, the building up of merchant shipping fleets, industrial and agricultural projects, deposit banking in developing and developed countries, merchant banking, stocking of commodities, short-term balance of payments facilities, and in other areas;
Mindful too of the role which such a multinational banking enterprise could play in the strengthening of developing countries' capacity to control the international monetary system and eventually in the evolution of new systems of international liquidity and reserve creation for the developing world;
Decides that the feasibility of establishing a Bank of the Developing Countries should be studied and that a group of experts from Non-Aligned and other developing countries should be convened to examine and make recommendations on the measures and modalities required for its establishment and operation, including the proposed statutes for such a multinational banking enterprise, and its legal status within individual countries.
Frederick Wills Calls for International Development Bank at United Nations
Immediately following the Colombo Summit, the Foreign Minister of Guyana, Frederick Wills, addresses the United Nations General Assembly in New York, on September 27, 1976, and calls for the establishment of a new international economic order through the creation of an international development bank and a debt moratorium for the developing world. Wills declared that "there can be no meaningful economic advance without the implementation of the New International Economic Order."
Frederick Wills, foreign minister of Guyana, calls for an international development bank and debt moratorium at the United Nations in September 1976.
Wills asserts:
"The IMF and the Bretton Woods monetary system must give way to alternative structures like international development banks... The crippling problem of debt and the servicing of debt has assumed a special urgency. Developing countries cannot afford to depart from their basic and fundamental demand made in Colombo earlier this year calling for measures of cancellation, rescheduling, and the declaration of moratoria. We cannot afford to mortgage the future of unborn generations to the obligations of burdensome capital repayments and crushing debt servicing. The time has come for a debt moratorium."
Fred Wills to 31st Session of United Nations General AssemblyFrederick Wills at United Nations · Sept. 27, 1976
Guyana's Fred Wills tells the United Nations: 'The time has come for a debt moratium.'
Mr. President, recently the Non-Aligned Movement held its Fifth Summit meeting at Colombo, Sri Lanka. in the Indian Ocean... At Colombo, the golden thread running through the resolutions and discussions was the determination of 85 countries not to sacrifice their sovereignty and independence of the altar of ideological nicety. Mr. President, we of the Non-Aligned Movement have in effect chosen not to be for one side or the other. We have chosen to be ourselves. At Colombo, Non-Aligned countries denounced all forms of interference and emphasized the need for unremitting vigilance in this regard. Here in New York, at this 31st Session of the General Assembly, I call on the international community to consider in earnest, measures to safeguard the integrity and sovereignty of small states and to discourage all attempts to interfere with their right to pursue the paths they have freely chosen for themselves. This, after all, is one of the fundamental principles enshrined in the Charter to which we all subscribe.
But Mr. President, the security of developing states is inextricably linked with their economic survival and their economic advance. My delegation feels that there can be no meaningful economic advance without the implementation of the New International Economic Order as adopted at the Sixth Special Session. The Non-Aligned Movement and the Group of 77 have tirelessly sought to bring home to those in the developed world ever resistance to change, that the economic progress of the developing countries is in the security interests of the developed countries. The billions on this planet who live in the developing countries and whose existence is subjected to the constraints of the few who manipulate to their advantage the present-day economic system, have pinned their hopes on the modest program put forward in Nairobi [at the May 7, 1976 UN Conference on Trade and Development] and elsewhere. Their determination is adamant, inexorable, and relentless. The IMF and the Bretton Woods monetary system must give way to alternative structures like international development banks, which are not geared to the revival and reconstruction of Europe nor preferential arrangements for the developed market economies, but rather to the just distribution of the gains of an equitable global system. The crippling problem of debt and the servicing of debt has assumed a special urgency. Developing countries cannot afford to depart from their basic and fundamental demand made in Colombo earlier this year calling for measures of cancellation, rescheduling, and the declaration of moratoria. We cannot afford to mortgage the future of unborn generations to the obligations of burdensome capital repayments and crushing debt servicing. The time has come for a debt moratorium...
LaRouche Declares: The United States Must Integrate Itself Into The I.D.B.
LaRouche celebrates the victory at Colombo, stating that the United States will have to integrate into the IDB.
In his capacity as a presidential candidate for the U.S. Labor Party in the 1976 Presidential elections, Lyndon LaRouche celebrates the historic decisions made by the Non-Aligned Movement at the Colombo Summit saying: "We have succeeded in mobilizing 85 countries and 2 billion people around our program. That is what I have worked for all my life. Our small organization has accomplished what many termed impossible. We must use our victory at Colombo to organize the American working class behind our program. They want to do something but the average person lacks the sense of how to fight. Colombo changes this prescription. Colombo has shown these forces what can be done on a world scale with a cadre of a handful of people... The United States will have to integrate itself into the International Development Bank (IDB)."
How To Bring The U.S. Into The New World Economic OrderLaRouche Defines How United States Must Integrate Into IDB
LaRouche's campaign defined how the U.S. can participate in the New International Economic Order.
In the wake of the Colombo Summit, LaRouche defined what the United States must do to integrate itself into the emerging dynamic for a New International Economic Order. The statement issued from his campaign read:
"Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., who authored the International Development Bank proposal on which the Colombo resolution was based, can assure you that the transition to an IDB economy will be smooth an orderly, as long as there is visible mass support for the IDB. Specifically, the U.S. working class must begin to mobilize around the particular pieces of legislation and industrial processes which will bring both the structure and productive capacity of the U.S. economy into compatibility with the goals of massive industrialization worldwide. The primary pieces of legislation are the National Banking Act and the Emergency Employment Act..."
"The process we propose is best conceived as a national bankruptcy procedure. occurring under the declaration of a national emergency (provided for in the Emergency Employment Act legislation). Those banking institutions which have put most of their effort into speculating, will be those destructive parts of the firm who are lopped off and out of existence as so much cancerous wood. Following the necessary surgical operations, two processes must begin immediately and simultaneously. The first is the start of negotiations on treaty arrangements with the Third World, Comecon and European nations according to the foreign policy provisions outlined in the Emergency Employment Act:
"The foreign economic policy of the United States is governed by the principle of increasing the nation's trade in raw materials and industrial commodities. with emphasis on capital goods exports, and entering into cooperation agreements with other nations, both industrialized and developing, to promote such general trade and the institutions of credit needed to facilitate it. To effect such results. the United States includes in its foreign economic policy a leading commitment to the internal and agricultural progress. using modern technology, by developing regions of the world, and pursues that policy in concert with both the developing nations and other industrialized nations. No one would deny that ample markets will be provided under such a policy...
"The second process is the establishment of national economic development through the adoption of programs which stress the fostering of basic scientific research and its applications, the expansion of industrial power on the basis of emphasis on improved technologies and capital-intensive development. and upon the development of the national infrastructure to meet those goals. Such policies will require the rapid expansion of labor power. The ruling principle of national policy concerning the labor force is to provide the improved opportunities and conditions of employment, leisure, and essential social services which foster a rising material standard of living in households, improved health and fruitful longevity of the individual, and substantial advances in the cognitive powers of the population both as a deliberating political body and as a labor force emphasizing high proportions of scientists, engineers, skilled industrial operatives, and including farmers who are both producers and available skilled cadres for assisting the development of agriculture in other nations.
"The net-result of such policies would be a growth rate of 25 per cent and above for the U.S. economy, a growth rate encouraged by a central government low-interest, high-liquidity credit regime. Because all issuance of credit will be tied to the direct production of tangible wealth in the form of expanded industrial and agricultural exports, high employment levels, and consumer goods including restoration of social services to pre-1971 levels, the very rapid expansion will be noninflationary."
- 1977:
LaRouche Situates India's Role in New International Economic Order
EIR publishes 'The Struggle for Indian Freedom' defining India's leadership role in the Non-Aligned Movement as crucial to securing the New Economic Order.
In a two-part special report called "The Struggle For Indian Freedom: A New Program" [Part 1, Part 2], LaRouche states that India can lead the Non-Aligned Movement in declaring a debt moratorium as a "strategic weapon," as well as establishing the International Development Bank to promote world economic development: "The first contribution India must make in this battle is to lead the developing countries, in concert with leading Third World nations, in a declaration of moratoria on the payment of all debt to the bankrupt monetarist institutions of the IMF-World Bank and their aid consortia. The freezing of unpayable debts to the monetarists is not only morally imperative but is the strategic weapon we must wield to open the way to the establishment of a new monetary system. As the 1975 programmatic document, The International Development Bank, proposed, the central task of a New World Economic Order is to facilitate the greatest possible flow of technologies and industrial process from the advanced sector into the developing sector."
Excerpt from 'The Struggle for Indian Freedom'For full document, see 'The Struggle for Indian Freedom' Part 1 & Part 2
As far as the non-aligned world is concerned, the Indian leadership of that movement may rightfully claim that the fundamental conflict in the world arean at this time is not between capitalism and socialism, but between monetarism and its institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and humanism as represented by both socialist republics and the workers movement and industrial capitalist factions committed to the idea of progress. India's special role in the fight for humanist goals must be one of contributing toward the formulation of a sound world monetary and commercial system that will replace the deadly and moribund monetarist monstrosity of Wall Street, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank.
The first contribution India must make in this battle is to lead the developing countries, in convert with leading Third World nations, in a declaration of moratoria on the payment of all debt to the bankrupt monetarist institutions of the IMF-World Bank and their aid consortia. The freezing of unpayable debts to the monetarists is not only morally imperative but is the strategic weapon we must wield to open the way to the establishment of a new monetary system.
As the 1975 programmatic document of the U.S. Labor Party, The International Development Bank, proposed, the central task of a New World Economic Order is to facilitate the greatest possible flow of technologies and industrial process from the advanced sector — both capitalist and socialist — into the developing sector. Such a new system ought to be designed to meet two primary requirements:
1) to facilitate the transfer of economic values among three generally distinct portions of the world economy, the socialist sector, the capitalist sector, and the developing sector, each of which, for historical reasons, adheres to different social-political determinations of wealth. It is therefore necessary to return gold to its historical monetary-exchange role for the final settlement of balances in exchanges among nations.
2) Such a new system must also establish criteria for short and long term credit issuance which will eliminate the practice of monetarism and fictitious money-lending and will meet the credit demands for an unprecedented drive for world industrialization. It can be done. The nature of credit is ultimately political. Whether credit will be used to promote world industrial development or monetarist looting depends exclusively on the program and moral content of the political leaderships who control the policies of credit-issuing institutions. Short of more detailed elaboration, what can by stated with respect to credit-issuing policies of such a future institution as, say the International Development Bank, is the following:
The governing body of a bank of this sort, committed to playing the role of the central credit engine for a quarter-century world industrialization drive, must essentially represent the interests of the pro-industry and pro-progress governments and leading institutions of each of the three world sectors.
The mutually agreed upon universal criteria for credit issuing policies must be the commitment of recipient nations to total mobilization of national material and human resources for technological, scientific, industrial, and agricultural progress. The policies of any national government can be judged only by those criteria of absolute profitability of the national economy which result from the mobilization of its resources. We, and any other nation, do not want charity, such as is bestowed upon the permanently immiserated. Rather than such degradation, we must demand of ourselves, a full effort toward self-sufficient development.
This is the context in which India's national revival must be forged if that national revival is to meet with success and give to the people of our nation a rightful sense of human importance, accomplishment, and indispensability in the community of nations. The key task of the leadership that India needs now is to mobilize and harness this nation's resources for that great goal...
For full document, see 'The Struggle for Indian Freedom' Part 1& Part 2
- 1978:
Indira Gandhi Delivers Exclusive Interview To EIR Magazine
Indira Gandhi delivers an exclusive interview with Executive Intelligence Review on development of India
The year before her stunning comeback victory as Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi delivers the first of several exclusive interviews to LaRouche's Executive Intelligence Review magazine. In the interview, conducted at her home in New Delhi, Gandhi strongly defends a return to the non-aligned foreign policy of her father Jawaharlal Nehru, and insists that only a policy of aggressive government support for investment in science and technology can save India from crushing poverty: "...Science and technology, this is essential to fight poverty. It is ridiculous to say that you can solve rural problems without science and without industry; you simply can't. In our scheme of things, there is no conflict between agriculture and industry; they complement one another."
After her victory in the 1980 elections, Indira Gandhi delivers a second interview to EIR magazine.
In another interview with EIR immediately after her victory in the 1980 elections, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi elaborates on her development policy: "India is a developing country, and development has been rather uneven. It is obvious that where there is industry it is much easier for that area to grow and for people to get more jobs. We have a program for developing backward areas and we have made progress in it... We have to encourage investment to increase production, we have to build up the distribution system for essential commodities... We have to take up again the special programs for the poorest and weaker sections of the population."
- 1979:
LaRouche Defines Program For The Industrialization of Africa
The Fusion Energy Foundation held an international conference on the industrialization of Africa as part of the New Economic Order
The Fusion Energy Foundation, an international association of scientists founded by Lyndon LaRouche, holds an international conference in Paris titled "The Industrialization of Africa" on the subject of a New International Economic Order as the indispensable precondition for the development of the African continent. The proceedings of the conference are published in a book [PDF] whose preface declares: "The purpose of this present book is to make the ideas and conceptions accessible to a broader leadership and, thereby, to make it an active element in the present conflict over the New World Economic Order... The purpose is to demonstrate, in concrete form, a perspective for the development of the entirety of Africa as an alternative to Malthusian polices... to launch the industrialization of Africa in the context of the New World Economic Order in the 1980s."
The first section in 'The Industrialization of Africa' features a policy paper by LaRouche on the Hamiltonian principles behind the International Development Bank.
Lyndon LaRouche authors a paper for the conference titled The Myth About Equilibrium Economics which contains a section called "The Hamiltonian New World Economic Order" in which he elaborates the Hamiltonian principles underlying his original IDB proposal. This document is a follow-up to a report LaRouche authored the previous year titled The Theory of the European Monetary Fund, in which he stated: "The success of the United States has been based on the same essential 'dirigist' policy outlined in the IDB proposal. This policy was articulated in Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton's 1791 Report on Manufactures... The crucial feature of Hamilton's Report on Manufactures is his proof that the sole source of wealth of nations is technological, capital-intensive advances in the productive powers of labor."
Excerpt from 'The Myth About Equilibrium Economics'For full document, see The Myth About Equilibrium Economics
For more than half a century, it has been well known that the application of twentieth-century science and technology can transform the semi-arid, starving region of the Sahel into the breadbasket of the African continent. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt outlined the main features of such a post-war effort to Prime Minister Winston Churchill during their war-time meeting at Casablanca.
Each decade, governments, financial institutions, engineering firms, and others complete studies of new projects. To date, for Africa alone, we have a substantial accumulation of projects of investment which are not only technologically feasible beyond doubt, but which would produce a substantial contribution to the national surplus of the nations and the regions in which they are intended to be placed.
Indeed, at this moment we have more sound projects to launch than the combined forces of the industrialized and developing nations have the present economic means to launch simultaneously.
Our practical task for development is that of selecting a combination from among those proven projects. We must allocate limited capital resources for development to a combination of selected projects which, taken together, will have the optimal effect in raising per-capita output in the developing nations...
I refer our attention on this point to the wartime policy-proposals of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. At the Atlantic and Casablanca meetings with Prime Minister Churchill, Roosevelt informed an understandably enraged Churchill that the United States was not going to fight a second world war for the purpose of once again saving the British Empire. Roosevelt added that under his policy for the post-war world, the United States would crush all efforts by the British and others to subject the international economy to "British eighteenth-century methods."
Unfortunately, Roosevelt died on the brink of peace in Europe. To put the matter in the kindest possible terms, President Harry S. Truman was no Franklin Roosevelt.
Excepting such cases as President Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" policy and the policies associated with Charles de Gaulle, the post-war Bretton woods monetary system has been a cancerous revival of what Roosevelt rightly denounced as "British eighteenth-century methods." This Bretton Woods system has meant leaving former colonial nations to carry independently their accumulated debts — independent of significant assistance from the industrialized nations. This is the phenomenon which developing nations often describe as "neocolonialism." On balance, since the death of President Roosevelt, the United States government has worked to perpetuate the old British Empire in thin disguises, and has done so by embracing what Roosevelt denounced as "British eighteenth-century methods." ...Without rejecting those methods, without junking those miserable varieties of political-economy, the New World Economic Order could not be brought into being.
For such reasons, it is a wishful delusion to speak of the development of regions such as Africa without committing ourselves to the replacement and eradication of those kinds of economic doctrine associated with Cambridge and the London School of Economics.
Since I began to gain public notice for my work on this matter, about five years ago, some important progress toward a New World Economic Order has been made.
During the Spring of 1974, my associates and I proposed the immediate reorganization of the European Community's monetary structure into the form of what we termed then a "Golden Snake." We demanded the pricing of monetary gold at its price of production, not some fictitious gold valuation of the sort earlier used under Bretton Woods. We proposed that a gold-based EC currency-bloc would be made economically feasible through economic-cooperation agreements with the Comecon nations.
Happily, that 1974 demand of ours has been satisfied on the initiation of President Giscard d'Estaing and Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. The establishment of the European Monetary System, combined with new accords among Moscow, Paris, and Bonn, has established the indispensable cornerstone for the new, needed world monetary system.
During April 1975,1 announced a further proposal at a press conference in Bonn. This proposal was later publicized in a series of reports under the title of The International Development Bank...
THE HAMILTONIAN NEW WORLD ECONOMIC ORDER
The illustration I have just given I have emphasized because of its direct bearing on the New World Economic Order. The methods Roosevelt used for 1940-1945 war-mobilization in the United States are a model of reference for the methods by which I proposed to make the New World Economic Order a reality.
Contrary to official U.S. government statistics, the U.S. economy as a whole is currently operating at a net loss. The statistical reports of economic growth and profitability are largely fictitious, they are based on including within Value Added items of revenue which involve non-productive or even outrightly wasteful purchases. The agricultural and industrial sectors of the U.S. economy, in particular, are in a cannibalistic phase, where a shrinking capacity is maintained by "triaging" part of output-capacity as a whole.
Although the U.S. could secure export-contracts for capital-goods increasing the level of exports by about $100 billions annually, the U.S. economy has shrunk since 1966-1967 to the point that prompt delivery on such increased volumes of exports is presently doubtful. I emphasize the figure of $100 billions because that is the approximate level of increased annual exports of capital-goods the U.S. must contribute to launching the New World Economic Order during the course of the immediate four years ahead.
Therefore, the problem of bringing the U.S. economy to the point it can deliver an additional $100 billions of capital-goods exports annually is a problem very much like the war-mobilization problem Roosevelt confronted in 1940.
On condition that the European Monetary Fund is implemented in the way I have indicated earlier, and on condition that the United States and Japan are brought into support of the EMF, that will establish a new world monetary system, replacing the bankrupt and cancerous relics of the Bretton Woods System — the IMF, World Bank, and London financial market. This new system, being based on a true gold-reserve basis, can generate hundreds of billions of dollars-equivalent annually, provided that the credit issued is for sound projects, and that the credit is issued primarily for world-commerce either in capital goods or in commodities circulated in payment against capital-goods purchases. In other words, it is a world-wide, peaceful equivalent of a war-economy.
On that basis, anticipating nuclear-energy plants to be a large component of total increased capital-goods exports, we are projecting levels of added world commerce in capital goods in the order of between two and three hundred billions dollars-equivalents annually, as soon as production-levels can be cranked-up to meet such requirements.
East-West economic cooperation will be an essential part of this. For various reasons, the Comecon nations are not suited to become a significant part of the world division of labor in consumer products. Therefore, unless the Soviet Union, for example, were to meet its purchase obligations with a combination of gold bullion and primary commodities, there would appear to be important difficulties in the way of adequate expansion of East-West economic cooperation. However, the Comecon economies, especially the Soviet economy, have excellent potentials for producing high-quality capital goods for Third World use. Thus, the Comecon can increase its purchase of imported capital goods for its own internal development against the proceeds from supplying other capital goods exports for development of Third- World nations.
Admittedly, this effort depends upon the subordination of old Third-World debt to the long-term credits of high-technology development. With a new, gold-based monetary system replacing the cancerous IMF, the suitable reorganization of old debt-structures can be accomplished without causing dislocations in the internal banking systems of industrialized nations...
If those victimized regions of the world had lived under the hegemony of the "American System," ra
