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LAROUCHE-MANHATTAN PROJECT DIALOGUE

Einstein’s Model: The Best Choice for
Mankind’s General Self-Development

August 2016

This is an edited transcript of a dialogue between Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. and the Manhattan Project, on Saturday, Aug. 6, 2016.

A [PDF version of this article]appears in the August 12, 2016 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.


Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

Dennis Speed: My name is Dennis Speed, and on behalf of the LaRouche Political Action Committee I want to welcome you here for the Aug. 6 dialogue with Lyndon LaRouche. And we have Lyndon LaRouche with us today [applause] as you can see. So, I think the best thing to do is to ask Mr. LaRouche if he has an opening statement; and then from there, we go right into our questions and answers, since I’m sure he’s eager to get to that. So, Lyn?

Lyndon LaRouche: Well, I think the immediate question is how we in Manhattan in particular—but also in adjoining areas—are going to be able to mobilize the population the way we have to. I think what we’ve got right here before us, is a relatively significant population. There probably could be more, or probably will be more in the same room. But I think the important thing is to lay out the souls of people. I don’t mean by wild ideas and things. I mean just the idea to address what you really believe in, and what you can justify in believing in. That, I think, is the standard for discovery of truth.

Speed: Very good. So, let’s go right to our first question.

China Discovers its Soul

Renee Sigerson: Good afternoon. It’s actually a very exciting time, because this bad performance, this boring and bad performance called the election campaign is going through a natural death right now, and clearing the air. People are becoming accessible to discussing what we really have to do, as opposed to that bad Broadway hit, “Who You Gonna Vote For? Who You Gonna Vote For?” which is really completely ridiculous under these circumstances.

Diane pointed out last night that only 9% of the American adult population had anything to do with the primary process that was the hullabaloo before these conventions, which—thank God—have now ended. I’m finding there’s a really notable change in the way that people are responding to us, but that you have to know how to get at it. I’m going to ask you to comment on the difference between approaching organizing from the standpoint of an agenda, versus a mission, because what I’m finding is that when you first start talking to somebody, they’re really pent up with withdrawal from the world, because they’re so overwhelmed by what’s going on. So, if you begin to discuss a predicate with people—this particular thing—they just can’t respond and they want to get off the phone. They’re too busy; they have to get to work; the coffee just burned in the coffee pot; this kind of thing. But if you approach people from the highest level, which is that we’re reaching everybody because we are going to completely change the agenda on a worldwide basis, that we’re in touch with people all over the world, that on Tuesday morning, we’re hitting the street with a new newspaper that with its lead article is going to destroy Hillary Clinton . . . . And we want to talk to them about being part of a mission which is to change the entire agenda in the United States,— all of a sudden, they have time and they’re interested. They start asking questions. You find that people really are struggling—and a lot of the population today is very under-educated—struggling to understand how you deal with something like this.

I could go through a lot of details about this, but I think the point is made clearly enough by what I’ve said. It’s actually quite shocking to see the change that goes on in conversation with people if you approach it from that high level, as opposed to trying to appeal to them about an issue. I wonder if you would comment on that.

LaRouche: Sure! Glad to do so. The point is, Einstein. The standard which came into being, during and following the founding of the Einstein system, has given us a higher level, a more accurate level of understanding what mankind is. That standard tells you better than anything else,— to the extent it’s a self-standing operation,— it’s the most authoritative thing you can do in self-examination.

NASA
Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and his wife Zhuo Lin (right) being briefed by Johnson Space Center Director Christopher C. Kraft (extreme right) Feb. 2, 1979.

Follow-up to question: Okay. Let me just take that one step further. In discussing what we’re doing internationally with people, you find that the attacks on Putin really don’t work. Some people will even say, “I think he’s better than anybody we’ve had in the Presidency for a long time.” People can see the difference, but there’s a poorer understanding of China.

There’s a very interesting story about what really happened in China when Mao Zedong died and Deng Xiaoping took over, and Americans have no understanding whatsoever of what happened. To say it in brief—it’s a longer discussion in depth—but to say it in brief, the success of what Deng Xiaoping did, seems to me to be based on the fact that he was seeking an answer to this question of how to increase the productivity of the economy, that this was the foremost thing that was on his mind. It really made me think of how this question of productivity, also right now in the United States itself is so important. This is not unrelated to what you just said about Einstein, but I wonder if you would say something further about this question of productivity.

LaRouche: Well, the problem is obvious. China was being victimized by being self-subjected to conditions in which the nation as a whole were victims. What happened is, China discovered its own soul. I don’t say that China has fully discovered its own soul, but I think it’s done an excellent job on this so far. Particularly as in contrast to Obama. If you want to get a comparison, try Obama; and Obama is a failure at becoming a successful Satan. He wants to be Satan, but he doesn’t make the quality; he doesn’t have it.

What’s Missing

Question: Hi, Lyn. Alvin here in New York. It’s kind of two parts here that I want to run through with you. What I’m experiencing so far in conversations and having people sign the petition, people who have been generally one would kindly call “non-political”; I’ve used this petition to engage them. On the surface, there’s no problem getting signatures, none whatsoever. Of course, it’s in going through the leaflet with them and what the deeper implications are of it, what our intentions are, and what’s required; then they’re forced to think, not just sign. “Oh sure. The 28 pages are great; they should be released.” And it makes them think more about what their responsibility should actually become.

So, on the one hand it has been easy, but on the other hand, it really is forcing people to think. It’s bringing them into some realm of reality, should they decide that they want to be a part of reality.

The second thing I wanted to share with you, was that last week, over the weekend, the Schiller Institute had a concert in Spanish Harlem. I think this was a significant advancement of the Manhattan Project. The gentleman who was the leader of this community-based group has been in Spanish Harlem his entire life, and to his knowledge this was the first time that any Classical music had been performed there. So, as we and as I work toward building the audience for the series of concerts on Sept. 11, I thought that this was a significant event. It was a very good start for what we’re looking to do.

So, with those two things, the question to you is, are we on the right track with this? And is this enough? Is this going to work? Or, put another way, what’s missing in what we should be doing here in New York?

LaRouche: The latter—what’s missing. What’s missing is, people do achieve in Manhattan, for example; the population of Manhattan and around its environments is not a pure thing, but it’s a good enough thing in terms of functioning as part of the United States as a whole, to make people say, “Yes, there’s something good about this.” But the problem is, they don’t really get to the point. The point is, what do they have to do? It’s the Einstein principle, because everything depends upon what has been called legitimately the Einstein principle. The self-development of the individual to understand how the Universe actually responds to the demands of the Universe. That’s what Einstein did, and those who followed him in a deeper way have understood that.

So, the point is, the difference in trying to simply qualify to be a good fellow, or to simply be a good guy, does not meet that standard. The standard is, you’ve got to understand what the intention of Einstein was. Now, that’s not just that thing in itself. The point is, mankind is a creative force which changes and improves the human species. And that is the difference between what mankind represented, and the other practical people have represented. Because mankind’s ability to create something in itself which goes higher than the existing level mankind is functioning at now,— that’s the issue. And that’s where we still tend to fall short. We can start fixing that right now.

Diane Sare: My question is, we actually came up with this idea of the 9/11 Living Memorial at a meeting here some months ago, when Patrick asked you about the people who had died—the veterans and the first responders and so on. And now we are only five weeks away from a series of concerts, the Mozart Requiem performances. We have had a lot more people killed worldwide since that time, in all of these various terrorist attacks and mass shooting attacks which are, I guess you could call it, “cultural terrorism”—if it’s not coordinated out of Saudi Arabia, it’s coordinated out of Silicon Valley, with the new violence and the video games.

So, I’ve had a certain idea of these concerts, something like what Putin did in Palmyra, where you’re demonstrating a commitment to a certain principle of humanity over barbarism and transforming the population. But I just wanted to get your thoughts now, because I think the situation is extremely intense in terms of the purpose and the direction in the way we should be organizing and planning for this series of Mozart’s Requiem concerts.

Roosevelt’s Contribution

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

LaRouche: That’s a very important thing. Because this was of course, on the edge of his [Mozart’s] own death, which was actually largely induced, induced by force of malice from outside.

But what he did in his religious devotions,— which are the most important, most significant thing of all of his work, and when people get into those motions, those arcs, and are able to sing that kind of music, then something happens to them. And it’s comparable in a sense, to Beethoven. Beethoven was a different kind of person in many respects. That is, his muscular power of the mind was something unique. But actually there’s very little difference morally between one and the other. They both have a part of the same heritage and intention, and that’s what you can work with.

People should just work with that. I mean working with Einstein, working with the musical leaders, are all the same thing. They are the self-directing development of the human individual, and that’s what it is.

It’s a good way to go. There are other ways to go which are also useful and comparably so. But that is the thing I suggest, really is the way to go, particularly when music is present.

Question: Hi Mr. LaRouche, this is R— from Bergen County, New Jersey. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation from the days of the Depression, it seems to me, was absolutely essential to saving people and bringing some sanity back into the economic system, and of course that is coupled with the Glass-Steagall. It seems to me at this point, that with the Glass-Steagall on both of the Party platforms, that in some sense it has entered into the consciousness at least of some people. Do you think we’ve reached a point that we do more to strongly link up the Glass-Steagall with the idea of a national credit bank, and that if we don’t establish a national credit bank, the United States is really going to sink, it’s really going to be bad? That it is absolutely essential at this point? What is your feeling on that?

LaRouche: Absolutely. This was Franklin Roosevelt’s contribution to the future of mankind. And I had some indirect contact with him, because I was associated with people in the leadership of the President’s functions, and therefore, by knowing these people and having an indirect connection to them, I came to understand what the Franklin Roosevelt principle really meant as such.

And so, therefore, we really should simply understand that what the model of Franklin Roosevelt represents is something which people should use as a likely way of bringing out in them, some of those kinds of development which Franklin Roosevelt represented in his own way.

Question: Good afternoon Mr. LaRouche, speaking as G— from Queens, New York. And my question is about one of the handouts from LaRouche PAC which has to do with exposing 9/11. And in the back of the handout we have five demands; and the first demand was to disclose or declassify the 28 pages, and we check that off the list. And it says that the 28 pages can help to reveal the Anglo-Saudi apparatus which supported the 9/11 hijackers. Now, the second demand is the public disclosure of the “Al-Yamamah” weapons for petroleum deal negotiated by then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Saudi Prince Bandar. Now, the Al-Yamamah deal is the weapons for petroleum deal “which created the sufficient off-the-books finances needed for the 9/11 attacks.”

My question to you is how difficult would it be to go from step 1 to check off step 2? To declassify the Al-Yamamah deal?

LaRouche: Well, first of all, the whole package which I had some firsthand experience with, together with some people in Britain who shared my view—they were not treated as nicely, as the British citizens of relevance. But the main thing about this is the British Empire has always been since its beginning, as a beginning, has been a Satanic operation. It has been intrinsically Satanic. And what’s happened is the effect of that kind of culture, and the fact that people try to get by, by satisfying the demands of that culture,— that is the way in which many people of the United States have lost their souls. They’re still running around, they look the same way, somewhat, except the bad faces on their attitudes. But the point is, that’s it. This is something we have to cope with, because that is exactly what we have to examine in ourselves, or in general.

The Case of India

Question: Good evening Mr. LaRouche. I am looking at what I call a “cross-Atlantic apocalypse” right now. On the eastern side of the Atlantic, the British central bank just cut interest rates for the first time in seven years. Italy’s economy is at the crossroads with Greece. And Deutsche Bank is drowning in toxic derivatives. On this side of the Atlantic, the western side, we have almost no real choice politically speaking. The U.S. economy as far as it is reported this morning, is household consumer-driven but not investment driven. In between, we have the Caribbean region which is dependent on tourism, from both of these sides, on export agriculture, and also on remittances, which account for up to 43% in some cases. The future outlook for this region looks very grim.

My question to you is, what basket of strategies do you think, both social and financial, is needed for us to steer free in the near future?

LaRouche: Well, take the case of India, which is a relevant case for this discussion; and therefore we have to understand what the good has been in each of the cultures which have dominated at certain times and beyond. Now, that’s the starting point, but we always have to look out for a further starting point, not just that. We have to find out a higher level of starting point than the one which is culturally characteristic of any culture or subculture.

And so it’s that desire to create, the sense of the need to create, to create in mankind, the living mankind, the living population,— to achieve something which that mankind heretofore has not actually achieved. Therefore the idea of the self-achievement within the culture of the particular kinds of cultures, of languages and so forth, these things all come together as one mix. This is what is the history is, from my standpoint—and I had a lot of experience with India at times, and other things, and I’ve seen this. But it comes down to the fact, if you have the kind of commission, self-commission to yourself, to discover a higher order of achievement in your own characteristic population, the adopted one, and if you find that you are able to improve on the effect of that culture as it is developed, then you are making progress, and you are making progress for mankind.

Question: Mr. LaRouche it’s good to see you. This is H— from New York. Actually, I have my child here today, and we were discussing a certain summer camp that has certain leftist—both good points and bad points. Anyway, they were discussing a story about the Quechua Indians who live in Ecuador and this area in South America, and they were forced to give up their oil to China, and also there were demonstrations against the government in Ecuador, which were probably some effects that were not even something that they knew about.

The problem is that people get caught up in these stories that involve justice both in the United States and other countries. And how does a young person know if they’re true or not, in general, when we get these stories about the oppressed and so forth?

India and Einstein

LaRouche: Well, I don’t think you can really take it from that standpoint. I think these are—fetishes, really, in effect.

What’s important is what mankind can achieve in mankind’s own person; that’s the real thing. Now, therefore, you have to have an object, that is an object of mission, and that mission becomes your dominant interest; and that’s what we have to do. We have to actually improve mankind. We do that by thinking, not of what we can do for ourselves, or do in ourselves, but what we can do in and for the people around us.

That’s the real issue. And that’s the only way you can really achieve that. It’s creation of the other people, of the people with other cultures, who need to bring cultures together in a certain way.

Now, look at what’s happened in China. China is a great power right now. In every moral sense, and somewhat beyond, China is a great power, and has become a great power through the leadership of leading Chinese figures in their process. This is one of the great building blocks for a future mankind, for all mankind—just as other parts of the world, outside of that of China’s culture, have similar destinies available to them. They may not practice that, but they have something available to them that will do that.

And so therefore you have to rejoice in the fact that you have helped to create a higher level of development and achievement of the human species. That is what makes you happy.

Avneet Thapar: Hi Lyn, because you brought up India and Einstein, it provokes a question in my mind, because in the earlier 20th Century it was very clear to a lot of Indian patriots and leading thinkers that the way to alleviate India’s condition was not just being anti-British—it had to be more; that India had to develop a real identity and had to be a place where you can say, the “East meets the West.” So Tagore, who was a leading Indian thinker and philosopher, and a Nobel Prize winner—Tagore in various letters to Einstein and others brought that up, that it is through science that we are going to unite humanity together around a higher purpose. So, I just wanted your thoughts on that.

LaRouche: Well, simply, the great problem in India has been, insofar as I know India,— and I have a considerable amount of experience with India, either directly or indirectly. I spent a good deal of time in India. So you see, what is it that sometimes makes some of the population of India self-destructive? Certain family practices which are induced, which are destructive?

Now, these things are not necessary. This is not a natural thing. This is a self-destruction. For example, education in India in former times, education of an individual Indian citizen, child: These things were things which the adult population, or many parts of the adult population, do not really comprehend. Because the question is not how to be servile, or how to achieve according to a fixed standard. The point is, can an Indian for example, rise to an achievement to teach some of their own family in terms of culture? That is, by looking at ways to find out how to create advances in the quality of culture. And this has happened in some cases in China, and it’s happened in India; where the general problem up to now, is that we have to make sure that all governments, all nations, have access to that kind of self-improvement.

Xinhua
China’s Experimental Fusion Reactor EAST.

It’s the self-improvement, not what they get, but the self-improvement, that makes their life worthwhile.

Question follow-up: Thanks. That’s a lot to think about.

Question: Good afternoon, Mr. LaRouche, this is S— from Harlem. I just got back from a month-long trip in China. I visited five different cities, had a chance to see all their cultural elements: museums, gardens, the railway system. It’s all wonderful. And anyone that’s espousing that China’s having some sort of economic slowdown, there’s no proof of that from what I saw.

LaRouche: China is a real revolution, in and of itself. And the creation of the current administration of China is a marking feature of what China has accomplished by self-development of China as a nation. That’s true, that’s important. And that’s something that Chinese people can, and do largely, represent. That’s their attitude, that’s their outlook. And you find out, you know, the development of China’s role in this current role, is really a very creative one. It has a very strong value for all nations, and it’s going to grow. It’s going to get bigger, that is, in that way; better in that way.

Yes, China really is a miracle right now.

Question follow-up: Something else I also found out is that the government is pro-actively helping the population re-embrace Confucianism. All the places that were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, they’ve rebuilt them. They’re actually helping out, basically rekindling the flame of Confucianism within the country. And also the whole ban on Facebook and Google in China,— what you can do, is use a personal VPN, and you can get Facebook and Google and the country doesn’t persecute you for it. So it’s not that they don’t want their people to have the information or the access, I think it’s on the other side: they don’t want Facebook and Google to have access to their population.

Einstein People

LaRouche: I think the leadership in China, presently, in the present regime and in the present actions, and its relationship to Russia, these things and other things as well . . . India tends to be drawn into closer affinity with China. And there are more instances of that.

The root of the matter is the principle of action by which nations develop themselves. When you see the self-development process of a nation, and you find that it is a good one and that it works, as China today in comparison to some of the things that China experienced earlier. It’s all there. And this is what defines mankind.

Xinhua/Liu Junxi
This photo (taken April 25, 2016) shows the ion cyclotron resonant heating (ICRH) antenna, a key part of a nuclear fusion facility, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Plasma Physics (ASIPP) in Hefei, China. This world-class ICRH antenna, manufactured by ASIPP, was delivered to a French institute in Anhui Province.

You know, this is the Einstein principle that I’m talking about. Einstein is probably the leading genius in all modern history, because of what he did. As a matter of fact, he’s still doing it. He’s been dead for over a generation, but he is still creating and generating into the population a great movement for progress of the human mind.

So this self-development of the human mind, as the human mind, simply as the human mind,— and the question is are you going to be a participant in the self-development of the human mind? That I think is the best example of what has to be done.

Elliot Greenspan: Hi Lyn. We in the Manhattan Project are in the middle of a national Presidential campaign, which certainly would qualify as the most fraudulent, and potentially tragic campaign in the history of the country. It needs a new ingredient, and what you have made clear since Sunday, is that your intention is to shape a new Presidency. You have a moment, as Helga emphasized in her speech in Beijing a few days ago, a combination of crises, perhaps unparalleled,— but we have new paradigm, which you and she have helped to shape, and have initiated over decades. There was a crucial point that was made by one of our organizers a couple of days ago, in discussion, which she’s emphasizing in her discussions with supporters, that perhaps the last time there was a sovereign decision, a sovereign policy initiative made by an American President, was March 23, 1983, when Reagan put forward the Strategic Defense Initiative—your policy, your idea, a campaign which you had initiated several years earlier. And she was saying this in part, because people get totally wrapped up, or much of the electorate is wrapped up in the “lesser of evils,” as they might think of it. These are evil. But policy is made, in general, above the President; it’s made within the institution of the Presidency, or it’s made by ideas and by thinkers, as you have exemplified.

My question, which I think would be valuable for the participants in the Manhattan Project who will hit the streets by Tuesday with The Hamiltonian, with this new publication that we’re about to unleash,— it would be valuable, I think, for people to have your insight and input into the process by which you and the Policy Committee and the rest of us, have the challenge and opportunity to shape and create a new Presidency, over this 100-day period. That’s my question.

LaRouche: Well, I think the Einstein model is probably the best choice of model for mankind’s self-development, and this is a general self-development, not just for some people. And the lack of that kind of development among our people, is the source of the greatest weakness shared among the people generally.

But that idea, the Einstein conception: Why? See, people think that human beings are born as babies, just simply as babies. They think that the baby naturally is human, and that the baby will behave according to a naturally human development of progress. Well, that isn’t true.

The fact is, what happens is whole cultures, or sections of cultures, have shown, by Einstein’s effort and by the consequences of this effort, that mankind is capable chiefly, of coming to an understanding of the building of whole hordes of people who are creative. And these are people who are really Einstein people. That is, that they were not trained in simple ways; they really developed a commitment inside themselves, to become really, truly, creative human beings.

And that is the thing that most people fail to understand: What is it that makes a human being creative? And I think most people don’t know what that means.

We’re on a March

Albert Einstein in 1931.

Judy Clark: I think that would be the best place to end the discussion, but I’ve been asked to say a couple of words about a wonderful day we had in Manhattan midweek. Some of our most loyal and patriotic adherents to your leadership in Manhattan, most of them over 65, like myself, some over 70, came out into the streets in just a couple of hours at midday, very near our location here where our meetings are; and just greeted fellow citizens on their way to the grocery store, on their way to the subway, on their way to the doctor, and we found a resonance that I think surprised each of us, delightfully. When we said, “we’ve got a petition here that Mr. LaRouche is circulating in his own name to beguile you into taking your Manhattan identity back and fighting for a future, that neither Hillary nor any other candidate you’ve seen,” since you’ve run, Lyndon, for the office of the Presidency, has upheld. And that we’re rallying around the injustice of 9/11 and the breakthrough that’s finally been made in opening up those 28 pages, and we led that fight, and Sen. Richard Black from Virginia said that in his own words, recently here, in a dialogue that we participated in with him; that it was “the LaRouche forces who have led this relentlessly.”

And so when we presented them a petition that says, “we’re going to achieve justice all the way on this, and we’re going to work with Russia, and we’re going to fight these bloody terrorists, and we’re going to bring justice back.”. . . And we’ve tapped into something: There were octogenarian professors and people in the arts, and retired door-men, and so forth, and all of them,— you know, you get your weakling, who says, “ohhh, that’s LaRouche. . .” And then they’re trying to remember why they don’t like LaRouche, and then you say, “He’s the one that the Bushes put in jail because he’s been fighting against these stupid wars his whole life, since he fought against Hitler. . .” and then they go, “Oh? Okay!” and then, you know, you can just blow away decades of decadence and degeneration and tragedy by stepping forth as you have done with us now, to say, “Well, we’re planting the guidon and we are going to win this one.”

LaRouche: Sehr gut! Thank you!

Speed: All right, so we seem to have clear directives from you. There haven’t been any vocalized objections, so I guess what I’d like to ask you, Lyn, is to give us whatever summary remark—actually, what you said to Elliot was pretty clear, but I don’t know if you have anything else for us.

LaRouche: Well, simply, we should consider ourselves as in a march, a march for victory, a victory for mankind; a victory for the United States, a victory for the future of mankind in general. And for achieving things as people, which mankind has never successfully done well, so far.

Speed: OK, thank you. I hope we see you next week!