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American Almanac
"One of the biggest frauds in modern history, has been the acceptance of free
trade, a theory which cannot account for the actual progress of the human
race, because it fails to recognize the role of the creative powers of the
human mind."
with the notable exception of China. From the United States to Russia, from
Ibero-America to Africa, the doctrine of so-called free trade is hegemonic.
Regardless of whether it comes from the puppets of the Mont Pelerin
Society in Europe, or from the Newt Gingrich's Robespierre Republican
mob in the U.S.A., or from the U.N.'s misnamed Development Program for
Africa, or from the World Trade Organization; the truth is, that the
practitioners of free trade are committing mass murder.
In his first letter to Charles Ingersoll, List writes:
I confine my exertions, therefore, solely to the refutation of the
theory of Adam Smith and Co. the fundamental errors of which
have not been understood so clearly as they ought to be.
It is this theory, sir, which furnishes to the opponents of the
American System the intellectual means of their opposition.
Later on, in the same letter, List sarcastically makes fun of Americans who
foolishly follow the nostrums of Adam Smith, by suggesting how future
historians would commemorate the decline of the U.S.: "They were a great
people, they were in every respect on the way to becoming the first people
on earth; but they became weak and died, trusting in the infallibilitynot of
a Pope nor a kingbut of two books imported into the country, one written
by a Scotchman." Here, List is referring to Adam Smith's An Inquiry into
the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, written in 1776.
How long will it take for the majority of the population to give up their silly
opinionated support for killing our elderly and poor fellow citizens for the
chimera of balancing the budget? This depends on how quickly we extirpate
from our minds the historically unfounded notion, that the United States was
established on the principles of Adam Smith's free trade theory. For the
gullible, the essence of free trade is "buy low and sell dear," and, that the
"invisible hand" will transform the greed of every individual to maximize his
or her profits into a "good" for society. There is no provision for the creation
of new wealth or what might be called real net profit. Instead, the "invisible
hand" appears to create profit by stealing money from someone else's
pocket.
In the entire history of the human race, no nation has ever developed this
way, nor is it is possible that one ever could. However, empires have
survived through stealing, looting, and killing, using the strictest control of
prices, and regulation of trade, all under the guise of free trade, at the
expense of the majority of planet's inhabitants.
The British Empire's foreign minister, Lord Shelbourne, personally instructed Adam Smith to write The Wealth of Nations in 1763 to subvert the American System revolution already underway in the colonies. The revolution
succeeded, but the British did not give up, and have not given up their quest.
Only credulous fools, ignorant of history, would give credence to the notion,
that Smith's oligarchical employers sincerely believed in free trade. England
enforced the tightest regulations on trade to maintain her role as the hegemonic manufacturing center for the raw materials gathered from her vast
colonial empire. Those who still clamor today about the sanctity of maintaining the "freedom of the market place" ignore deliberately or otherwise;
that the markets have always been rigged. England as the manufacturing
center, intended to keep all her colonies in North America, India, Asia, and
Africa in a backward, agricultural dominated state, with no indigenous
industrial capability. Thus, the colonies would always be dependent on
prices set in London for their raw material exports and for their imports of
finished goods, just as the raw material and food cartels rig prices today.
Even the slightest impulse by any of the colonies to develop a manufacturing
industry was seen by the British Empire as a causus belli, which was in fact
the principle cause for the American Revolution. The British also discarded
any silly blather about free trade when conducting economic and political
warfare against the European continent, in order to hold onto their economic
primacy.
List, in his ninth letter discusses England's manipulations:
Her aim was always and ever to raise her manufactories and
commerce, and thereby her navy and political power, beyond all
competition of other nations, and always she accommodated her
conduct to circumstancesusing at one time and in one place
liberal principles, at another, power or moneyeither to raise
freedom or to depress it, as it suited her. Even her measures
against the slave trade are said to have originated from her
interest, and gave her a pretext to prevent other nations'
colonies from supplying themselves, whilst her own possessed
already the necessary quantity.
Clockwise from top left: Alexander Hamilton, first U.S. Treasury Secretary;
the cover of the first edition of Hamilton's Report on Manufactures, a major
source for List's work; May 10, 1869: completion of the U.S.A.'s Transcontinental Railroad; a 1904 political cartoon attacking the free trade policies of
the Grover Cleveland administrationfrom an era with more savvy on
questions of political economy.
Oakland Museum
his commentary, quotes List on this very subject: "The present condition of
nations is a consequence of an accumulation of all discoveries, inventions,
improvements, perfections and efforts of all generations which have lived
before us; they form the capital of mind of all living humanity, and each
nation is only productive to the degree to which it assimilates these achievements of earlier generations and knows how to enhance them with its own
achievements."
Lyndon LaRouche, who embodies and transcends, the best of the American
System school of thought, takes direct aim at the core of Smith's bestial
notion of man. LaRouche writes in his Afterword: "No variety of higher ape
known or conceivably comparable to mankind could have attained the
population of more than several millions individuals."
Where, in any of the axioms of free trade, or in the animal like behavior of
Smith's view of human nature, is there any location of that, which is responsible for the phenomenal growth of human population over the last five
hundred years? Nowhere in Smith's free trade system is the quality of
creative mentation, which is the unique governing quality of human behavior, to be found. All of Smith's gobbledygook can be boiled down to the
practice of making money, making a "profit" by robbing your neighbor;
"buy low to sell dear."
In LaRouche's conclusion, he addresses the actual source of new wealth-real
profit for society: "The central principle of both economic science and a
science of history is the creative principle of cognition, by means of which
the individual person may be developed to generate, to impart, and to
receive those mental acts by means of which valid axiomatic-revolutionary
discoveries in principles of art and science are made available for human
knowledge and practice." Only a human being endowed with potential for
creative reason can createadd new wealth to the economic process. Only
through the input of human beings can more come out of the system of
production than is put into it.
Thus, one of the biggest frauds in modern history, has been the acceptance of
free trade, a theory which cannot account for the actual progress of the
human race, because it fails to even recognize the role of the creative powers
of the human mind; what List refers to as "intellectual capital" or "capital of
the mind."