The Lead
Human Economy, Not Hobbesian War
by Dennis Speed (EIRNS) — Oct. 30, 2026
The popular ferment that has spilled into the streets of many countries in Europe; the hope that has appeared in the voting booths of Brazil and Israel; the potential expressed in China’s October 23-25 Global Governance Forum in Xiong’an; Pope Leo XIV’s “Unarmed and Disarming Peace” inter-religious conference in Assisi, October 25-27, and the Third Russia-Africa Summit, October 28-29 must be immediately advanced with solution concepts based on “heavy ideas.” Here is one such idea, as stated by Lyndon LaRouche, the late economist, statesman, and eight-time United States Presidential candidate: “The crucial historical fact referenced by economic science, is the combined increase in per-capita productive powers, and potential productive fruitfulness of land-area, resulting from societies’ progress from lower to higher levels of culture. This progressive change in both elements, is incorporated within and subsumed by the notion of a rate of increase of potential population density.”
If the concept contained in those two sentences is disseminated and studied by the youth forces presently in motion, by clergy and non-clergy considering how to end war before war ends us, and by scholars and experts who would discover—that is, re-discover—the science of physical economy, this will result in a great realization. Human economy, which recognizes that it is the human mind which is the primary source of wealth in the universe, can invent a method of economic practice by means of which the world can sustain more people, at a higher standard of living, by increasing, not decreasing, energy consumption through advanced energy systems, and with positive and even salutary effects on the biosphere as a whole.
The new concepts necessary for a new security and development architecture will not be simple. If solutions were simple, they would already have been suggested, adopted and implemented. The new concepts require a shift in axioms—particularly about the human race. And there will be great resistance to this.
There is a “holy war” of ideas that is about to erupt. It has been declared in what the Pope had to say at the Assisi gathering this week—"War can never be waged in the name of God….there is no such thing as a holy war. Only peace is holy.” The German ambassador to the Vatican, Bruno Kahl, objected, in direct response to the Pope: “As long as human beings live in this world as sinners, they must expect war…That sounds good, but it doesn’t help in the face of reality.” He also admonished, “Russia is afraid of democracy and is fighting against it; maintaining an equidistant stance is no longer appropriate.”
Kahl, who headed Germany’s BND intelligence service from 2016 to 2025, longer than anyone except the BND’s founder, Reinhard Gehlen, did his doctoral dissertation on “elements of Catholic Thought in secular political theory in the early work of Carl Schmitt.” Schmitt was the infamous jurist who provided the legal justification for the implementation of the March 23, 1933 Enabling Act, giving Adolf Hitler the power to enact legislation independent of the German parliament. This could be done under a condition of emergency. Schmitt said, “The exception is more interesting than the rule. The rule proves nothing; the exception proves everything.” His student Leo Strauss, in a 1932 letter, said, “The ultimate foundation of right is the principle of the natural evil of man. Because man is by nature evil, he therefore needs dominion. But dominion can be established—that is, men can be unified—only in unity against other men.”
This is the Hobbesian idea of humanity that insists that war is the natural condition of mankind. This is the view of humanity expressed by young Israelis, quoted in the days before Tuesday’s elections who have expressed that the views of Israeli cabinet member Ben-Gvir, who has said, “I think targeted assassinations should be carried out in Gaza, taking down 30 to 40 every night. Not just those who pose an immediate threat—there are people there who are not worthy of life. They shouldn’t live. They’re not even people."—are too “left wing.”
Unfortunately for Ben-Gvir, the Palestinian citizens of Israel, also referred to as “Israeli Arabs,” who make up 2 million of Israel’s 10.1 million people, do not agree. On Tuesday, they voted their disagreement in record numbers. As of this writing, though there had been some contesting of the vote’s legitimacy, they still appear to hold as many as 19 seats in the Knesset. By exercising their right to vote—80% voted this time, compared to 53% in the last election—they have carried out a nonviolent civic action, which has asserted, as did striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, in the spring of 1968, “I am human.” They have now become a critical factor in how Israel will be governed, despite the fact that they are viewed by many of their fellow citizens as less than human. (It should also be noted that today, Pope Leo XIV submitted a mail-in ballot, to cast his vote in the U.S. midterm elections.](https://apnews.com/hub/vatican-city) “Pope Leo XIV, formerly Robert Prevost, ‘has exercised his right to vote as a United States citizen’ as he has done ‘whenever he was eligible to do so,’ the Holy See press office said.”
It has just been announced that a meeting has taken place between Yair Golan, one of the members of the opposition bloc headed by Gadi Eisenkot, and Mansur Abbas of the United Arab List. Whatever the immediate outcome, the fact is that a public dialogue is now taking place, not about an election, but actually about the nature of humanity in the world, and in Israel.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s Tenth Principle of her "Ten Principles for a New Security and Development Architecture”states, “The basic assumption for the new paradigm is, that man is fundamentally good and capable to infinitely perfect the creativity of his mind and the beauty of his soul, and being the most advanced geological force in the universe, which proves that the lawfulness of the mind and that of the physical universe are in correspondence and cohesion, and that all evil is the result of a lack of development, and therefore can be overcome.”
Helga Zepp-LaRouche has said that her Tenth Principle is the most controversial. It need not be so. As journalist Patrick Lawrence put it in February of 2022, in his article "The World Just Turned”, “It is always difficult to understand the present as history for the simple reason we are living it and cannot see it historically without great effort. But we are living through a passage of the 21st century whose long-term significance is hard to overstate. The future is arriving, to put the point another way.” That future, without perpetual war, with development as the new name for peace, must determine the present. And that can be done only with the help of heavy, human ideas.