Rebuild the U.S. Economy with Fusion and the Space Program

Lyndon LaRouche shared the view of our founding fathers, of Abraham Lincoln, and of Lincoln’s economic advisor, Henry Carey. In 1981 Carey wrote,

Two systems are before the world ... One looks to pauperism, ignorance, depopulation, and barbarism; the other in increasing wealth, comfort, intelligence, combination of action, and civilization. One looks towards universal war; the other towards universal peace. One is the English system; the other we may be proud to call the American system, for it is the only one ever devised the tendency of which was that of elevating while equalizing the condition of man throughout the world.

Such is the true mission of the people of these United States.... To raise the value of labour throughout the world, we need only to raise the value of our own.... To improve the political condition of man throughout the world, it is that we ourselves should remain at peace... To diffuse intelligence and to promote the cause of morality throughout the world, we are required only to pursue the course that shall diffuse education throughout our own land, and shall enable every man more readily to acquire property, and with it respect for the rights of property. To substitute true Christianity for the detestable system known as the Malthusian, it is needed that we prove to the world that it is population that makes the food come from the rich soils, and food tends to increase more rapidly than population, thus vindicating the policy of God to man.

It was in the spirit of “increasing … intelligence, combination of action and civilization,” and suppressing the “detestable system known as the Malthusian,” that LaRouche developed his “Four Laws.”

1. Re-enactment of the Glass Steagall Act, separating commercial from speculative banking and ending public bailouts of Wall Street gambling debts.

2. A new national bank or other credit-issuing mechanism, such as Lincoln’s Greenbacks, capable of producing massive amounts of credit for long-term economic projects.

3. Use of this national banking mechanism to selectively fund projects that will raise national physical productivity and create high-paying jobs in productive sectors of the economy.

4. A crash program to develop fusion power—not only providing power for the entire planet, but to end raw materials shortages and to support mankind's exploration and development of the Solar System.

Read Mr. LaRouche's policy memo, Four Laws to Save the U.S.A.

When most people think about economic policy, they think of money and markets. When Lyndon LaRouche developed his economic discovery, he studied the relation between human creative discovery and increasing productivity.

The pandemic-precipitated economic shutdown has only served to highlight the vulnerability of post-industrial economy, based on money, consumerism and entertainment.

While the current meltdown of the world monetary system makes the adoption of Glass-Stegall and a credit system an urgent priority, such changes will fall short unless they are guided by an image of man which is radically different from the image of man which underlies monetarism.

In his Fourth Law, LaRouche states,

"The knowable measure, in principle, of the difference between man and all among the lower forms of life, is found in what has been usefully regarded as the naturally upward evolution of the human species, in contrast to all other known categories of living species. The standard of measurement of these compared relationships, is that mankind is enabled to evolve upward, and that categorically, by those voluntarily noëtic powers of the human individual will."

In the following video, LaRouche puts that concept into action in his discussion of the impact that a Moon-Mars mission will have on our economy, and on our very identities.

Think about the image of man presented in that short segment. Now, contrast that to the image of man put forward by Adam Smith, the father of free trade and monetarism. In his 1790 "Theory of Moral Sentiments," Smith asserts that man is only a creature of his physical senses and his passions, and cannot know the consequences of his actions, and therefore cannot act for the future. All that man can do is "avoid pain and pursue pleasure." That is the basis of a "monetary" system.

LaRouche discusses the contrasting image of man that shapes a credit system: