A Deeper Conception of Credit

Many people have expressed confusion over LaRouche's concept of a Creditary System, as developed by Alexander Hamilton and inherent in the US Constitution (although largely ignored today), as opposed to the Monetary System of the British model. Asked about this during his address to the nation of September 30, Lyn gave this brief, impassioned description of the deeper meaning of the Creditary System. I encourage you to consider it carefully, as the world financial system is evaporating before our eyes.
Mike Billington
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- A Deeper Conception of Credit -
Lyndon LaRouche: Well, credit, you know, is a funny thing. Because, when you're talking about credit, you're not talking about peanuts. You're talking about an investment by more than one generation. All of the great projects which we need now, as in the past too, are projects which require multigenerational investment. They require the incurrence of debt, a debt which spans generations. And one of the great things that we have to master in this respect, is what is the nature of human beings, or what should be the recognized nature of human beings and their adopted purpose in living?

Now, we think, well, we die, and that's it. That's the popular view. There're some mystical views, which really shouldn't be popular, because they don't make any sense. But what is the thing that can be done which bridges from one life, through death, to another life? What is that connection?

So mankind, after all, is not simply another animal, which dies in its time as every animal does. Mankind is something different. Mankind has something that no animal has: the power of creativity, the power of introducing a higher state of organization by the human will, and no species on this planet otherwise, has ever been able to do that. Therefore, we do not simply die! Though that often happens to us, that people go on, from one life to another life following, and they don't see much of a connection between the two.

The point is to have a purpose in life which transcends death. And this is only possible through the creative powers of mind of the human individual. And therefore, this leads to what? It leads to something that no animal knows: credit. Credit! Because the things we invest in are the things we create, things which transcend the death of people, of individuals, the investment of a life in a transition to a new life which is a continuation of the old, even though the persons who were succeeding one another have died.

So therefore, the idea of credit is not a physical or financial conception. The idea of credit, first of all, is human. And no species known to us, other than human beings, knows what credit is! It doesn't exist for anything except for human beings, to our knowledge.

Therefore, we design a monetary system, or a financial system, based on a system of credit, which means the development of one individual, who transmits something which is of use to a second generation. And this is not a process of continuation; it's a process of development. And the unit of development is what we should call "credit."

Now, this was something that has been understood for a long time by some people. But this system, this concept of credit, is unique as a worked-out system, to the United States. The Massachusetts Bay Colony, for example, was a system of credit. The system authored in the founding of our Constitution was a system of credit. And the system of credit is not a monetary system; it's not a cash collection! The system of credit is the transition, and the continuation, of the activity of a life, through the transmission of a continuation of an effort, an intended effort, to a second life, and a life beyond that!

Credit is history: Credit is human history.

And what we're going to require now, in order to get out of this mess, which has been created for us in the United States and other places, we're going to have to cancel this idea of money the way it's conceived now. It's conceived as animals, who eat, or whatever they do, and then die. But human activity, a human economic system, is not animals dying! A human credit system is the advancement of mankind, the powers of mankind, the accomplishments of mankind, from generation to generation. And the connection among the living, and the living that follow them, and the living that follow them, is credit. That's the true meaning of credit: that we pledge something to the future. We praise and protect something which was given to us, from the past, for the future.

And the idea of an economic system, a true economic system, a physical economic system is that: the system of credit. But the content of credit is not cash, the content is not money, the content is not notes and bills of exchange. The content is human creativity, from generation to generation.

People die, but humanity must never die. And once we have that concept, we've got it right. LaRouchePac Website