Subject: Mankind's Future Lies with ThoseWho Resolve to Change The Underlying Axioms of  Society 

March 19, 1993 

Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.  

Keynote Session Presentation 
for ICLC Conference March 20-22,

1993

``Mankind's Future Lies With Those Who Resolve To Change the 
Underlying Axioms of Our Society''

This conference occurs at a time when all of civilization is 
in jeopardy. Over the coming decade or less, unless there is 
a fundamental change in the direction of policy-thinking among 
the leading institutions of the United States and Western Europe, 
there will be no civilization on this planet during the early 
part, at least, of the twenty-first century.

This is the case, because this planet as a whole has been developed, 
over the past 550 years since the Council of Florence of 1439-1440, 
under the influence of those elements of Western European civilization, 
including that of the Americas, which came out of the {Platonic} 
Golden Renaissance in Italy. While many other cultural currents 
on this planet have participated in this process of growth of 
population numbers, technology, conditions of life, enhancement 
of human freedom generally as a secular tendency, none of this 
would have been possible without the leading role, globally, 
of European civilization and specifically, within European civilization, 
the heritage of the Platonic current associated with the fifteenth-century 
Florence-centered Golden Renaissance.

The point is underlined if we compare Christian civilization 
with the culture of China. Like European civilization as a whole, 
China's history, as Leibniz understood it from his work, and 
as Michael Billington has continued this line of investigation 
with others recently, is characterized by a conflict between 
two tendencies, one typified by what we may rightly call the 
Confucian heritage, the other by the Taoist or legalist heritage. 
One might say that Mao Zedong, the recent dictator of China, 
is a true heir of the Taoist or legalist tendency. The collapses 
of China through history have all been the result of the influence 
of the Taoist or legalist currents or related developments, 
whereas all the upward tendencies in the history of China have 
been the result of the currents which we associate with the 
Confucian tradition.

The case of Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the most hopeful tendencies 
of modern China, is a perfect example of this connection. Sun 
Yat-sen was a Christian who sought and found in the Confucian 
heritage of China the connection between Western civilization 
and its contributions, and Chinese history. It is similarly 
so around the world. Indian culture is in large part a reflection 
of the Indo-European heritage which developed in Europe beginning 
essentially with the ancient Greek culture, in its Platonic 
and related currents, through modern Christian culture.

Greece owed a great deal to ancient Egyptian culture, before 
the influence of what became known as the Isis and Osiris cult, 
and also, of course, the crucial thing which transformed the 
Platonic heritage of Greece into the power we see flowing from 
the Golden Renaissance, was the Mosaic concept of God as articulated 
by such as Philo of Alexandria, who emphasized the concept of 
{imago Dei,} of man in the image of God, the concept upon which 
the positive currents of Western civilization are based.

Now we are in a period in which, especially over the past decades, 
the past 25-27 years, there has been an acceleration of a countercultural 
movement which previously existed, which has determined to eradicate 
Christianity from this planet--at least anything which could 
be decently called Christianity.

This has come out of, in the United States, such circles as 
those who, like Hugo Black and his fellow Ku Klux Klanners and 
fellow Masons of his persuasion, worked for the so-called separation 
of Church and State, which was a key vehicle in the corruption 
and destruction of our civilization.

The Science of Universal History

That is the question we have to face today.

Within that context, there are two things we have to consider. 
First of all, there is available to us, if we will master it, 
a science of universal history, in the sense that Friedrich 
Schiller defined it. This is based on principles which I have 
addressed in a number of articles recently, as well as in various 
locations over the past quarter-century.

The point I make, in pointing to the {risk of a collapse of 
global civilization} caused or brought about by the collapse 
of European civilization in particular and its chain-reaction 
effects upon the structure of global civilization, is based 
on this following principle.

Human behavior functions somewhat like a formal geometry. That 
is, in a formal geometry, one begins with a set of axioms and 
postulates; and in response to any proposition, one seeks to 
define a {theorem} which is consistent with the set of axioms 
and postulates from which that geometry starts. Every theorem 
which is developed in this manner, will be {consistent} with 
the original set of axioms and postulates, and every such theorem 
will be consistent with every other theorem of the same collection. 
Thus, that geometry is predictable in that sense.

There is an analogous case in civilization. There are certain 
principles, such as the principles of post-Renaissance Western 
European civilization, which, when dominant in policy-making, 
ensured that the general tendency of European civilization was 
upward: an improvement in the productive powers of labor, a 
tendency toward improvement in the moral and political condition 
of the individual and the family, and so forth and so on.

In the recent period, we have embarked upon a downward course; 
and we are doomed, not necessarily because of any one policy 
which is presently prevalent, but because the majority of the 
population and institutions {accept a set of axiomatic-like 
assumptions} which ensure that every theorem developed by people 
who hold to those assumptions, will be a proposition of policy 
which leads the human race on a downward course toward its own 
self-destruction.

Thus, in a such a fix, {the only thing that will save mankind} 
from such destruction is some fundamental change in the set 
of underlying assumptions by which society is presently governed, 
by which prevailing opinions are presently shaped.

It is to that end that I believe that this conference is dedicated: 
to show, at least in part, what the problems are, what are the 
underlying assumptions or typical assumptions which are leading 
civilization to destruction, unless we uproot those assumptions 
from the shaping of leading institutionalized opinion; and to 
show not only what kinds of contrary assumptions might prevent 
that catastrophe, but to show from at least one example in our 
own experience as an organization, that we have demonstrated 
that such a change is possible.

To that end, a certain emphasis will be placed, during the course 
of the conference, on something in which I played a key part 
back in the early 1980s. That is that I was asked, for various 
reasons, by agencies of the U.S. government, to open up a new 
back channel with the highest level of the Soviet government. 
It was agreed, in the course of discussions between myself and 
representatives of the U.S.  government, that I would present, 
as a discussion point, my own proposal for a strategic ballistic 
missile defense policy--in which both the two superpowers and 
other nations would share in developing anti-ballistic-missile 
defensive systems which would relieve the growing danger of 
an accidental or kindred sort of thermonuclear exchange.

This policy, which I presented to the Soviet back channel beginning 
in February of 1982, appeared from the lips of President Reagan 
in March of 1983 as the stated proffered policy of the United 
States.

Prior to the President's enunciation of that policy, which became 
known as the Strategic Defense Initiative, the Soviet government 
at the highest level had responded to my proposal for such agreement. 
I had proposed that we decide to employ what are called new 
physical principles to deal with the threat of thermonuclear 
attack; secondly, that we agree to share the technologies among 
ourselves and with others needed to develope such defensive 
weapons systems; and that we do so with the idea of {fostering 
a worldwide growth in productivity and welfare of mankind,} 
through the use of these new technologies, to increase the productive 
powers of labor around the planet.

The Soviet government conveyed to me its opinion in February 
of 1983, about a month before the President's announcement of 
SDI--that it agreed with my proposal as to the feasibility of 
a strategic ballistic missile defense based on new physical 
principles, that is, laser and similar things. The Soviet government 
from the highest level also said that it agreed with my proposal 
that the use of such technologies for civilian as well as military 
purposes, would foster economic growth through growth in productivity; 
however, the Soviet government said it would reject this proposal 
because the United States and its allies would gain a greater 
degree of economic and related benefit from such a program, 
than the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact.

However, the Soviet government was also of the opinion, that 
it had been reassured by the highest levels of the Democratic 
Party that there were arrangements within the White House which 
would ensure that my proposal, as I would describe this tentative 
proposal to the Soviet government, would never be promulgated 
by President Reagan.

Well, as we know, a little more than a month after that meeting, 
the President of the United States, {despite} attempted resistance 
to this from within a high-level position within the White House, 
{did} go ahead with that famous March 23, 1983 speech announcing 
the SDI with its included offers to the Soviet government for 
technology sharing--an offer which the President repeated on 
a number of occasions after that.

The Soviet Empire After Rejection of the SDI

Before getting to the next point, let me just return to another 
part of that discussion, which will explain a great deal about 
the relevance of the example I am giving here.

During that February meeting with a Soviet representative, in 
which they and I discussed the Soviet rejection of the proposal, 
I warned that such a rejection would be a mistake, because if 
the Soviet Union were to attempt to maintain a military-strategic 
posture in opposition to the kind of proposal I was offering, 
within approximately five years, the Soviet economy would collapse, 
a collapse which I indicated would begin in Eastern Europe with 
the breakdown of the weak points in Eastern Europe, which would 
mean a chain-reaction breakdown of the Soviet economy itself.

It did not happen in exactly five years from 1988, but it did 
happen in a little over six years (1989 rather than 1988); and 
this brought down what has been called the Iron Curtain. Recently, 
in 1993, as a matter of reference, there was a conference at 
Princeton at which the significance of the SDI in bringing about 
the collapse of the so-called Iron Curtain was discussed by 
Western representatives as well as Russians who had been formerly 
Soviet officials, in which they stated that it was the SDI whose 
effects were augmented in the Russian political experience by 
the Chernobyl nuclear accident, which resulted in a collapse 
of the Soviet strategic posture under Gorbachov.

Despite the fact that we failed to bring off the SDI, and despite 
the fact that the U.S. government put me in prison after the 
Soviet government had demanded that in 1986 as a condition for 
the Reykjavik Summit, nonetheless, it must be said that the 
intervention we made, in the form of this proposal, succeeded. 
{We changed the course of history through the use of an idea,} 
the idea which became known as the SDI. {It was the idea which 
I personally conveyed} into the Reagan administration and into 
these discussions with the Soviet highest levels, which brought 
about the economic and correlated political collapse of the 
Soviet strategic posture.

The Productive Triangle

This brought about, at the end of 1989 and early 1990, the greatest 
opportunity for building global peace and prosperity in the 
twentieth century.

In 1988 and again at the end of 1989 and early 1990, I outlined 
some economic policy measures which must be adopted at the point, 
as I said in October 1988, of the early changes in the Eastern 
European situation, including in Poland, which would lead to 
a probable early reunification of Germany and the emergence 
of Berlin again as the capital of a united Germany--a change 
which would lead to openings for the Russians and opportunities 
to develop new kinds of economic relations with a post-German 
unification, Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union.

This proposal was known as the Productive Triangle proposal, 
which was the name it was given in the end of 1989 and 1990. 
There were many people who were for it; but the Anglo-Americans 
succeeded in preventing its implementation.

But for former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President 
George Bush's sabotage of this opportunity, we would not be 
in the trouble the world is in today; in fact, we would be on 
an upward course. One cannot say exactly how far up we would 
have come, but we would have come up from 1989, we would be 
in a much happier condition on this planet today. In fact, we 
must say that Thatcher and Bush will probably be remembered, 
in future history, if they are remembered at all, as two of 
the worst bunglers in politics in the twentieth century.

What the British and Bush and similar people did, rather than 
take a view, as proposed by the Deutsche Bank's Alfred Herrhausen 
toward the end of 1989, instead of opening up for economic development 
of infrastructure in Eastern Europe both the former Warsaw Pact 
nations and in what had been the Soviet Union, is to sabotage 
such possibilities. What disturbed Mrs.  Thatcher and her ministers 
the most, was the fear that a united Germany, hooking up with 
Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union's economic development, 
would emerge as the leader of a new continental Eurasian economic 
revival, and that this would diminish the relative power of 
the Anglo-Americans over the world.

In response to that, the Anglo-American faction behind the actions 
of Thatcher and Bush, instead of promoting a Paris-Berlin thrust 
toward the economic development of Eastern Europe and Eurasia, 
opened up conflict by launching the Serbian fascists of Milosevic, 
with support from Gorbachov and Gorbachov's Defense Minister 
Dmitri Yazov, in bloody destabilization in the form of murder 
of the non-Serbian peoples of Yugoslavia. This they did in order 
to attack the Southern Flank of continental Europe in general, 
and Germany in particular.

This unleashing of Milosevic's fascists for this kind of new 
Balkan adventure, was coupled with imposing upon the states 
of Eastern Europe, such as Poland, and upon the former Soviet 
Union, combinations of what were called shock therapy and IMF 
conditionalities which have {wrecked} the economies of Eastern 
Europe and wrecked the former Soviet Union's economy, to the 
effect that we can say that, at least over the past 20 or 30 
years, the effects of IMF conditionalities and of Thatcher-Bush 
policies for the peoples of Eastern European nations and the 
former Soviet Union, the effects of Mrs. Thatcher's and Mr. 
Bush's ``capitalism,'' have been vastly worse than the sufferings 
brought about by communism.

Course for War

As a result of this effect, the force of rage is building up 
within the former Soviet Union around the Russians in particular; 
and a sense of the failure of the reform policy, a sense of 
betrayal by the British and the Americans, is affecting not 
only the Russian populations, but the populations of other parts 
of the former Warsaw Pact.

A change is now in process at this very time in the government 
of Russia.  What the change will be, is not exactly certain, 
but we can see the direction.  If the rage which is building 
up against the West because of the sense of betrayal in Russia 
goes on, then it will not be merely very strong anger against 
what Mrs. Thatcher and Mr. Bush represented, but it will be 
rage-driven hatred of the West; and then we are back to two 
thermonuclear powers, the United States without much in land-fighting 
capability but with a thermonuclear arsenal, and a Russian Empire 
with a thermonuclear arsenal, in a standoff again. And the world, 
rent by war, depression, and suffering of all kinds, with this 
misery, this chaos, shielded from relief by two thermonuclear 
arsenals; under such conditions, a devolution of the planet 
as a whole were the most likely outcome.

-  * * * -

So once, with our intervention in what became known as the SDI, 
we, a relative handful of people, working diligently, {changed 
the course of world history for the better.} That change for 
the better, came about {despite} the apparent defeat in our 
policy itself. The walls came down, despite the fact that our 
policy was defeated and that I was imprisoned as a result of 
my role in putting forth what became known as the SDI.

{A great opportunity was created by aid of our intervention 
as a weak force with the right idea at the right point in history--even 
though the proposal was defeated.}

The strategic crisis into which we have now entered is the result 
of the betrayal of the opportunity which we contributed to making, 
a betrayal by Thatcher, Bush et al. Unless that betrayal is 
overcome, unless that folly is overcome, we are headed, in the 
twenty-first century and the end of the twentieth, into a period 
far worse, more dangerous, than any we have experienced during 
the twentieth century.

The only thing that can stop it--and we do not know wehther 
it is 10 minutes to 12 or five minutes to 12 or one minute before 
12--but in the time which remains before a new case-hardened 
adversarial relationship emerges between Moscow and the West, 
the only thing that can stop it is a revival of the kind of 
initiative which we offered in 1982, 1983; which we offered 
again in the form of the Productive Triangle in 1989-1990; only 
the renewal of that approach can bring about an alternative 
to the hell which is about to be unleashed upon this planet.

I suggest that it is with that spirit, that we proceed with 
the events which are about to occur in this conference; and 
I suggest that you consider drawing to your attention, some 
of the methods which we have employed in the past to bring about 
the kinds of modest and other successes typified by what I have 
described as the successful effect of even the defeated proposal 
known as the SDI proposal; and to recognize that it is not necessary 
that a given trend in public opinion carry forth blindly in 
driving mankind to doom; it is not necessary to carry such a 
potential tragedy to its apparently lawful outcome. {It is possible 
at crucial points, even in the most desperate conditions of 
mankind,} to introduce an idea which, if accepted, even in a 
small degree, even if not fully successful, can {turn the course 
of history} to such effect, that out of a hopeless situation, 
a hopeful one is provided.

But this can only be done if we get beyond discussing superficial 
issues, if we get beyond the silly babbling about the agendas 
of various issues that people would like to discuss. Forget 
the issues that one would like to discuss, and concentrate where 
you must put your effort. Look at the axiomatic assumptions 
which underlie the cascade of follies now bursting upon us. 
Address yourself exactly to those axioms; address the central 
axioms, and pick out the axiom which we must change in order 
to prevent this unfolding geometry from becoming a tragic one. 
Consider the fundamentals of method. Learn how history works, 
and by learning how it works, learn how to change it.

I and others participating here today and in the coming days, 
have participated in ferreting out an axiom of the historical 
process, and have introduced ideas which have {changed} those 
axioms, {have changed the course of history,} without much in 
the way of physical resources to do it, merely by devotion and 
ideas, and organizing around those ideas. It was done in 1982, 
1983, on the foundations of work preceding. It was attempted, 
with some modest influence, in 1989, in 1990, around the Productive 
Triangle proposal. {It can be done now, it must be done now.} 
If such a change is not introduced at this time, then the horrible, 
tragic result, will fall upon the entirety of this planet over 
the decades to come.

The future of mankind lies in the hands of those few who might 
be resolved to introduce those axiomatic changes which divert 
the shaping of policy and practice away from the trends of current 
suicidal public opinion in the main.


From New Federalist v7, #12.