Lyndon H LaRouche
Lyndon H. LaRouche | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | September 8, 1922 Rochester, New Hampshire, United States |
| Died | February 12, 2019 (aged 96) Virginia, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Plasma |
Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche Jr. (September 8, 1922 – February 12, 2019) was an American political activist, economist, and founder of the LaRouche movement, an international network of political organizations and publications. Over a career spanning more than five decades he ran for President of the United States eight times and promoted a heterodox framework he called the "science of physical economy," together with an array of views on science, energy, and world affairs that critics and mainstream commentators have widely characterized as conspiracy theories.
Biography
LaRouche was born on September 8, 1922, in Rochester, New Hampshire. He attended Northeastern University in Boston but left in 1942 without completing a degree. After the Second World War he worked as a management consultant in New York City beginning in 1953. In the 1960s he became active in Marxist study circles, teaching classes on Marxist theory at New York City's Free School beginning in 1967 and writing under the pseudonym "Lyn Marcus."
In 1968 LaRouche founded the National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC), which grew out of student activism at Columbia University. Over the following decade his politics shifted markedly from the far left toward the far right. The movement he built never exceeded a few thousand members but was highly active, running candidates in thousands of elections during the 1980s and raising large sums through fundraising operations. Commentators and former members have variously described the organization as a political movement or likened it to a cult.
LaRouche sought the U.S. presidency in every election from 1976 to 2004, initially as the candidate of his own U.S. Labor Party and later as a candidate in Democratic Party primaries. His campaigns drew national attention but never approached electoral success.
In December 1988 LaRouche was convicted in federal court of conspiracy to commit mail fraud, in connection with defaulted loans solicited from supporters, and of tax-related charges. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison, began serving his sentence in 1989, and was released on parole in 1994. He and his supporters maintained that the prosecution was politically motivated, a characterization rejected by the courts. He died on February 12, 2019, in Virginia, at the age of 96.
Views and work
LaRouche's economic and scientific ideas are collectively associated with what he termed "physical economy." His movement holds that the health of an economy should be measured not by monetary or financial aggregates but by physical indicators such as productive output, infrastructure, and technological progress. Central to this framework is the concept of "energy-flux density," which LaRouche described as the rate of energy use per person and per unit area of an economy; his writings present increasing energy-flux density as a fundamental principle to be pursued through higher-density energy sources.
On energy policy, LaRouche and his associated organizations strongly advocated the expansion of nuclear fission and the development of nuclear fusion, which they presented as essential to continued economic and human progress. To this end he founded the Fusion Energy Foundation, which published the magazine Fusion (later succeeded by 21st Century Science & Technology). During the 1980s the movement supported research into space-based and directed-energy technologies associated with the Strategic Defense Initiative.
In economics, LaRouche's writings called for a return to a fixed-exchange-rate international monetary order in the tradition of the Bretton Woods system, replacement of existing financial institutions with a national banking framework, and large-scale public investment in infrastructure. His philosophical writing drew on figures such as Plato, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and Johannes Kepler, and his followers have framed his economic model in Neoplatonic terms emphasizing scientific and technological progress.
LaRouche's broader statements on political, historical, and scientific matters have been widely described by journalists, scholars, and critics as conspiracy theories, and a number of his positions, particularly certain writings from the 1970s, have been characterized as antisemitic. Supporters within his movement continue to describe his ideas as a coherent scientific method, while mainstream commentators reject that characterization. These competing assessments remain contested.
Works
- Dialectical Economics: An Introduction to Marxist Political Economy (1975, published as Lyn Marcus)
- Numerous articles and pamphlets published through the Executive Intelligence Review, New Solidarity, and Fusion magazine, which he founded or helped establish
External links
- Lyndon LaRouche at Wikipedia
- Views of Lyndon LaRouche and the LaRouche movement at Wikipedia