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Everything You Should Know about the John Locke Institute (JLI) Essay Competition

By Jin Chow

Co-founder of Polygence, Forbes 30 Under 30 for Education

2 minute read

We first wrote about the world-famous John Locke Institute (JLI) Essay Competition in our list of 20 writing contests for high school students . This contest is a unique opportunity to refine your argumentation skills on fascinating and challenging topics that aren’t explored in the classroom.

The Oxford philosopher, medical doctor, political scientist, and economist John Locke was a big believer in challenging old habits of the mind. In that spirit, the JLI started this contest to challenge students to be more adventurous in their thinking. 

While not quite as prestigious as getting published in The Concord Review , winning the grand prize or placing in one of the 7 categories of the JLI Essay Competition can get your college application noticed by top schools like Princeton, Harvard, Oxford, and Cambridge. Awards include $2,000 scholarships (for category winners) and a $10,000 scholarship for the grand prize. (The scholarships can be applied to the JLI’s Summer Schools at Oxford, Princeton, or Washington D.C., or to its Gap Year programs in Oxford, Guatemala, or Washington, D.C.) 

But winning isn’t necessarily the best thing about it. Simply entering the contest and writing your essay will give you a profound learning experience like no other. Add to that the fact that your entry will be read and possibly commented on by some of the top minds at Oxford and Princeton and it’s free to enter the competition . The real question is: why wouldn’t you enter? Here’s a guide to get you started on your essay contest entry.

Eligibility

The John Locke Institute Essay Competition is open to any student anywhere in the world , ages 15-18. Students 14 or under are eligible for the Junior prize. 

JLI Essay Competition Topics

The essay questions change from year to year. You can choose from 7 different categories (Philosophy, Politics, Economics, History, Psychology, Theology, and Law). Within each category, there are 3 intriguing questions you can pick from. When you’re debating which question to write about, here’s a tip. Choose whichever question excites, upsets, or gives you any kind of strong emotional response. If you’re passionate about a topic, it will come through in your research and your writing. If you have any lived experience on the subject, that also helps. 

re are some sample questions the 2023 contest for each of the seven JLI essay subject  categories and the Junior Prize (the questions change each year):

Philosophy : Is tax theft? 

Politics : Do the results of elections express the will of the people?

Economics : What would happen if we banned billionaires?  

History : Which has a bigger effect on history: the plans of the powerful or their mistakes?

Psychology : Can happiness be measured?

Theology : What distinguishes a small religion from a large cult?

Law : Are there too many laws?

Junior Prize : What, if anything, do your parents owe you?

John Locke Writing Contest Requirements

Your essay must not exceed 2,000 words (not counting diagrams, tables of data, endnotes, bibliography, or authorship declaration) and must address only one of the questions in your chosen subject category. No footnotes are allowed, but you may include in-text citations or endnotes. 

Timeline and Deadlines

January - New essay questions are released

April 1st - Registration opens

May 31st   - Registration deadline

June 30th - Essay submission deadline

We highly recommend you check the JLI website as soon as the new questions are released in January and start researching and writing as soon as you can after choosing your topic. You must register for the contest by the end of May. The deadline for the essay submission itself is at the end of June, but we also recommend that you submit it earlier in case any problems arise. If you start right away in January, you can have a few months to work on your essay. 

John Locke Institute Essay Competition Judging Criteria

While the JLI says that their grading system is proprietary, they do also give you this helpful paragraph that describes what they are looking for: “Essays will be judged on knowledge and understanding of the relevant material , the competent use of evidence , quality of argumentation, originality, structure, writing style and persuasive force. The very best essays are likely to be those which would be capable of changing somebody's mind . Essays which ignore or fail to address the strongest objections and counter-arguments are unlikely to be successful. Candidates are advised to answer the question as precisely and directly as possible. ” (We’ve bolded important words to keep in mind.) 

You can also join the JLI mailing list (scroll to the bottom of that page) to get contest updates and to learn more about what makes for a winning essay.

Research and Essay Writing Tactics

Give yourself a baseline. First, just write down all your thoughts on the subject without doing any research. What are your gut-level opinions? What about this particular question intrigued you the most? What are some counter-arguments you can think of right away? What you are trying to do here is identify holes in your knowledge or understanding of the subject. What you don’t know or are unsure about can guide your research. Be sure to find evidence to support all the things you think you already know. 

Create a reading/watching list of related books, interviews, articles, podcasts, documentaries, etc. that relate to your topic. Find references that both support and argue against your argument. Choose the most highly reputable sources you can find. You may need to seek out and speak to experts to help you locate the best sources. Read and take notes. Address those questions and holes in the knowledge you identified earlier. Also, continue to read widely and think about your topic as you observe the world from day to day. Sometimes unrelated news stories, literature, film, songs, and visual art can give you an unexpected insight into your essay question. Remember that c is a learning experience and that you are not going to have a rock-solid argument all at once.

Read past winning essays . These will give you a sense of the criteria judges are using to select winning work. These essays are meant to convince the judges of a very specific stance. The argument must be clear and must include evidence to support it. You will note that winning entries tend to get straight to the point, show an impressive depth of knowledge on the subject with citations to reputable sources, flow with excellent reasoning, and use precise language. They don’t include flowery digressions. Save that for a different type of writing.

Proof your work with a teacher or mentor if possible . Even though your argument needs to be wholly your own, it certainly helps to bounce ideas around with someone who cares about the topic. A teacher or mentor can help you explore different options if you get stuck and point you toward new resources. They can offer general advice and point out errors or weaknesses. Working with a teacher or mentor is important for another reason. When you submit your entry, you will be required to provide the email address of an “academic referee” who is familiar with your work. This should be a teacher or mentor who is not related to you. 

Research and Prepare for your Competition or Fair

Polygence pairs you with an expert mentor in your area of passion. Together, you work to create a high quality research project that is uniquely your own. Our highly-specialized mentors can help guide you to feel even more prepared for an upcoming fair or competion. We also offer options to explore multiple topics, or to showcase your final product!

All essayists must register here by 11:59PM BST on 31 May 2024.

Enter your email address below to:

Register (if this is your first time here)

or Login (if you have already registered).

How much should we care about social cohesion?

Nayah Victoria Thu, Oslo International School, Norway

Winner of the 2019 Politics Prize ​| 7 min read 

Introduction

In a world where our common future looks increasingly uncertain, humanity needs a measure of collective potential: social cohesion. Using GDP as a proxy for progress is outdated, as purely economic measures are neither sustainable nor sufficiently holistic. Academics have previously dismissed " additional indicators [as] a fundamentally political question " (Feigl, Hergovich and Rehm). However, social cohesion is neither “additional”, nor solely “political”. Instead, it provides a central focus for the necessary shift in global mindset away from perpetual economic growth. Social cohesion is imperative as humanity moves towards the ecological and societal sustainability embodied in initiatives such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Referring to the “bonds” that hold society together, social cohesion can be defined as “ the willingness of members of a society to cooperate with each other in order to survive and prosper ” (Stanley). This concept was born of Emilie Durkheim’s attempt to define the quality lost during the “social erosion” of early industrialization. He baptized it the “ consciousness collective; the belief held by citizens of a nation-state that they share a moral community, which enables them to trust each other ” (Larsen). In the present day, Durkheim would notice striking parallels to his lifetime: great technological change in an increasingly connected yet polarized world. As Durkheim’s perspective can be used to defend forced homogeneity, his concept must evolve to reflect modern liberal values. The trusting community he mentions must originate organically in order to reach its full potential. While he refers to the “nationstate”, moving towards the ecological ceiling of our biosphere requires genuine cooperation on a much greater level. The infrastructure to improve measurements of cohesion should likewise be globally developed, encompassing factors such as: “life satisfaction, trust, prosocial behaviour, suicide and voter turnout” (OECD). Social cohesion’s utilitarian value lies in determining the factors necessary for the future prosperity of the human race.

Reimagining Development

Humanity needs to start measuring and appreciating the social qualities required to move into ecological and societal balance. In On Liberty , Mill argues for the ability of any person to do what they want provided they do not hurt others. Today, this capability to “hurt” includes future generations – redefining the individual as part of an interconnected system, where affecting others is the rule, not the exception. As “Identity is socially constructed” (World Bank), the independence and sense of fulfilment required for peace is only possible through the opportunities afforded by a socially cohesive state. It encompasses the social structure necessary for individual development and group identity, remaining deeply utilitarian in nature. It is a measure of “ inclusion…trust… and mobility ” (Fonesca, Lukosch and Brazier). Liberal values and cohesion are mutually supportive: respect of individual freedom makes people more willing to work together, and less likely to abuse others’ rights. In addition, the empathy and collaboration of a cohesive society increases altruism, serving general utility. Merely replacing “citizen” with “consumer” changed survey respondents’ values, causing “ reduced social involvement ” (Bauer, Wilkie and Kim). A holistic system to measure fulfilment and cooperation would be even more powerful than reversing this semantic change. It could transform the individual’s role from that of a narcissistic homo economicus to a cooperative member of humanity.

Cohesion and the State

Social cohesion provides a lens through which to objectively analyse the rise of countries culturally dissimilar to the West. It is a defining component of development, more important than historical similarities or differences. Locke justifies the state through tacit consent: the acceptance of state systems and benefits. High social cohesion measures citizens’ acceptance of and willingness to work with one another and the state, thus embodying tacit consent. As any country’s potential for development is contingent on its legitimacy and contemporary political situation, cohesion also constitutes the essence of sustainable growth. This sheds light on the significance of high trust levels present in China “across … the last couple of decades” (Ortiz-Ospina and Roser). The constituent elements of social cohesion, from prosocial behaviour to high voter turn-out, justify the Chinese government, enabling it to mobilize the population towards its common goals.

Although social cohesion is criticized as “ vague enough to follow political meanderings ” (Stanley), this applies to political misuse of the term, not its essence. Independently evaluating alleged social cohesion clarifies this distinction. In Greece, the “cost of protecting insiders falls largely on ‘outsiders’” (The Economist), as the bloated public sector excludes younger citizens from economic participation. While undertaken in the name of cohesion, this leads to social stratification – eroding organic trust and undermining cooperative potential. Greece is blatantly misusing the term. Nevertheless, elements of social cohesion are open to interpretation. For example, Plotke questions whether competitive elections are the only valuable method of political representation. He broadens “representation” to include interest and “type” representation and “ suggests that modern understandings of political representation are to some extent contingent on political realities ” (Dovi). Explaining the importance of cohesive inclusion in representing a diverse society, he recommends analysing of contemporary political systems. Their effect on representation can be extended to their ability to support social cohesion. For example, within Western democracies, first-past-thepost and plurality systems are markedly different. The latter cultivates a culture of compromise, while the former, used in the UK and USA, is more divisive. Countries relying on a winner-takes-all system must strengthen their true cohesiveness or remain susceptible to partisan division. Any government desirous to retain power must understand the significance of social cohesion.

Focusing on social cohesion makes any state accountable for its citizens’ welfare, no matter the form of government. The feedback loops of political participation incentivize the incumbents to do more for their citizens. This is clearly shown in the democratic process of voting, as “ average life satisfaction is significantly related to the vote share [of the incumbent party]” (Ward). If social cohesion were an accepted measure of success, it would incentivize authoritarian regimes like the government of Equatorial Guinea to polish their international image by developing their country and society, instead of chasing oligarchical economic gains, touting a deceptively high GDP per capita and “spending huge sums on public relations” (Birrell) to “prove” their development. The presence of moral norms, with the “expectations of a social contract backed up by public accountability” (Raworth 125) can have tangible effects on objective measures of welfare. A Ugandan hospital’s public noticeboard and results reporting led to “33% fewer children dying under the age of five” (125). Note that the phrase “social contract” is imperfect as it does not imply common ownership of solutions, unlike the inclusive concept of “society [as] a joint-stock company” (Emerson 3). Nevertheless, social cohesion can prevent a transactional, economic worldview, holding governments accountable for all their actions.

Cohesion and Development

Social cohesion within countries is paramount to measuring the potential for successful international aid. According to William Easterly, the IMF and World Bank’s efforts to fix long-term economic issues have been less successful than their crisis control. Attempting to forge societal development using economic tools, they block the “circuitous route to a free market” (Easterly). This route implies that social cohesion must grow organically to reach the minimum level of trusting co-operation required to implement economic plans. Working through corrupt governments, organizations cannot mobilize the population or increase vertical trust required for the country’s self-sufficiency. Willingness to cooperate must be present for economic tools to successfully encourage sustainable development.

Social cohesion can correspond to social homogeneity. Economically developed Botswana, unlike many African countries, has a dominate ethnic group, language and a relatively intact traditional hierarchy. Linguistic and social diversity pose a barrier to trusting interaction. They have a negative correlation with societal development as “Countries with high social capital…tend to be linguistically homogenous” (Prospero). Perceived cultural and linguistic norms allow for conversion of social capital into tangible benefits, as outlined by Bourdieu. However, Botswana is a case of naturally occurring homogeneity, comparable to monocultural countries like Japan and Iceland. Cultural homogeneity should be seen as a possible contributing factor to social cohesion, not a desirable end in itself.

Just as social cohesion’s value lies in serving general utility, homogeneity’s value lies solely in its ability to generate social cohesion. Utility is served by social inclusion; “ The process of improving the ability, opportunity, and dignity of those disadvantaged on the basis of their identity to take part in society ” (Bordia Das). Durkheim attempted to artificially recreate natural homogeneity. However, he mistakenly neglected to acknowledge that marginalizing minority groups strips social cohesion of its utilitarian value. Today, modern academics recognize that “[forced] social homogeneity may be detrimental to social cohesion” (Stanley). For instance, destabilizing legal initiatives to create social homogeneity leave minorities like the Rohingya “lack[ing] basic rights” (Blakemore). This diminishes incentives to cooperate, breeding a culture of fear inconducive to the trust that forms the essence of social cohesion. With the ensuing power imbalance, authoritarian states lack the fluidity to respond to threats to their social and group identity. Considering current migratory pressure and the importance of inclusion for utility, social homogeneity becomes an unworthy goal.

Our Common Humanity

Inter-group, pro-social behaviour is arguably a greater source of legitimate power than any monopoly on physical force. Bourdieu argues that owners of social capital could become much stronger if owners of economic capital did not pit them against each other. Though such solidarity is difficult to maintain, moments of collective human identity and purpose can inspire group action. Grassroot efforts, personified in protests like Occupy and Extinction Rebellion , are imperative in raising awareness of our shared humanity. Similarly, according to Roger Griffins, counter-movements in less cohesive states succeed because they rely on shared, inextinguishable moral ideas. These commonalities establish trust, increasing group efficacy. A tendency towards self-interest does not prevent unifying goals from nurturing the horizontal trust necessary for social cohesion.

Just as the technological change and inequality of the industrial revolution worried Durkheim, so should the current power of social media merit a greater focus on social cohesion. Social media algorithms confirm, not challenge, extremist views as various groups discuss complex issues “within politically homogeneous ‘echo chambers’” (University of Pennsylvania). This creates a dichotomy between collective human identity and divisive factions, accelerating polarization. However, " egalitarian social networks, in which no individual is more powerful than another ” utilize the “remarkably strong effects of bipartisan social learning on eliminating polarization" (University of Pennsylvania). By refocusing, governments and media companies can not only accelerate, but also mitigate polarization. Even technicalities such as “the shade of blue and the size of buttons” (The Economist) greatly impact people’s willingness to listen to each other and empathize with other groups. Social media can facilitate constructive interaction, as long as it aims to promote social cohesion.

Social cohesion is a fragile, long-term goal that requires a sense of our common future. Focusing on interaction and present similarities facilitates this understanding. Inter-group exchange enables cohesion to grow organically in a larger, inclusive moral community. It is infinitely preferable to denying the presence of minority groups or persecuting them in misguided attempts at creating homogeneity. Mill argued “The only people who need to concern themselves regularly about … society in general are those few whose actions have an influence that extends that far” (Mill 13). The interdependence of 21st century society means that every individual’s actions reverberate globally in some regard, solidifying the importance of a cohesive human identity and global awareness.

There is no single panacea for the challenges facing humanity. Solutions are not solely technological, political, economic or cultural, but complex webs of vertical and horizontal cooperative effort. Social cohesion is a crucial measure of our propensity to cooperate, focusing on stability and holistic development as opposed to short-term economic gain. Only by appreciating its essence can we harness our collective potential to achieve harmony within the limits of our shared planet.

Bibliography

Bauer, Monika A., et al. "Cuing consumerism: situational materialism undermines personal and social well being." Psychological Science 16 March 2012: 517-523.  

Birrell, Ian. The Observer: Equatorial Guinea . 23 October 2011. 27 July 2019. < https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/23/equatorial-guinea-africa-corruptionkleptocracy>.  

Blakemore, Erin. Who are the Rohyinga People? 8 February 2019. 13 July 2019. < https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/people/reference/rohingya-people/>.  

Bordia Das, Maitreyi. Social Inclusion . n.d. 7 July 2019. < https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/socialinclusion>.  

Dovi, Suzanne. "Political Representation." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . Ed. Edward N. Zalta. Fall 2018. etaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2018. 13 July 2019. < https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/political-representation/>.  

Easterly, William. The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Effort's to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good . Penguin Random House, 2006.  

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Self Reliance." Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Essays: First Series . 1841.  

Feigl, George, Sven Hergovich and Miriam Rehm. "Beyond GDP: can we re-focus the debate?" Social developments in the European Union 2012 . 2012. 63-89.  

Fonesca, Javier, Stephan Lukosch and Frances Brazier. "Social cohesion revisited: a new definition and how to characterize it." Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research (2019): 231-253.  

Larsen, Christian Albrekt. "Social cohesion: Definition, measurement and developments." Research Paper. n.d.  

Mill, J.S. Utilitarianism . 1863.  

OECD. "Social Cohesion Indicators." Society at a glance: Asia/Pacific 2011 . OECD Publishing, 2012.  

Ortiz-Ospina, Esteban and Max Roser. Trust . 2019. 28 July 2019. < https://ourworldindata.org/trust>.  

Prospero. Social capital in the 21st century . 18 June 2015. 13 July 2019. < https://www.economist.com/prospero/2015/06/18/social-capital-in-the-21st-century>.  

Raworth, Kate. The Doughnut Economy . Chelsea Green, 2017.  

Stanley, Dick. "What Do We Know about Social Cohesion: The Research Perspective of the Federal Government's Social Cohesion Research Network." The Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers Canadiens De Sociologie 28.1 (2003): 5–17.  

The Economist. The Cruelty of Compassion . 28 January 2010. 17 July 2019. < https://www.economist.com/leaders/2010/01/28/the-cruelty-of-compassion>.

—. Whatsapp Suggests a Cure for Virality . 26 July 2018. 26 July 2019. < https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/07/26/whatsapp-suggests-a-cure-for-virality>.  

University of Pennsylvania. Can social media networks reduce political polarization on climate change? 3 September 2018. 22 July 2019. < https://phys.org/news/2018-09-social-medianetworks-political-polarization.html>.  

Ward, George. Chapter 3: Happiness and Voting Behaviour . 20 March 2019. 28 July 2019. < https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2019/happiness-and-voting-behavior/>.  

World Bank. Inclusion Matters: The Foundation for Shared Prosperity . Washington DC: World Bank, 2013.

An examination of modern faith and our human nature to want to look beyond scientific fact has earned a Westminster pupil a podium place in a prestigious global essay competition

Selected from hundreds of entries to the Theology category of the 2022 John Locke Institute Essay Competition, Chloe (PP, Sixth Form) was awarded third place for her essay, Is Faith Anything Other than Uncertain Belief on Incomplete Evidence? , a study of the emergence of new interpretations of faith in the early twenty-first century. In considering the New Atheist stance that theological beliefs cannot be supported by logical or empirical evidence and are, therefore, meaningless, Chloe explores why such an approach to faith could be deemed as reductionist to a religious believer. She concludes by suggesting that human nature implores us to find meaning beyond simple scientific explanation and, for many, religious faith is essential in providing the foundations to do so.

The John Locke Institute’s annual, global essay competition invites young scholars to show their depth of knowledge and persuasiveness of writing across seven different subjects: philosophy, politics, economics, history, psychology, theology and law, and gives a chance for work to be read and assessed by experts from the University of Oxford . This year more than 8,000 students entered from across the globe. In the Theology category, Chloe was placed behind only students from Australia and the USA, and across all seven categories just three UK students were placed within the top three.

As a shortlisted essayist, Chloe was invited to attend three days of lectures to debate issues surrounding theology, law and economics at the John Locke Institute, Oxford.

Twitter Post

The defence of faith beyond scientific reasoning explored by Westminster pupil in award-winning essay Selected from hundreds of entries to the Theology category of the 2022 @JohnLockeInst Essay Competition, Chloe (PP, Sixth Form) was awarded third place. https://t.co/aQVDmKPPyv pic.twitter.com/CWPSAK3tNS — Westminster School (@wschool) October 6, 2022

Chloe said of winning third prize: “The news came as a shock to me. I had read the essays of previous winners on the website, all of which were incredible, and I never dreamed that I would be able to produce anything of that level. During the awards ceremony, whilst the judges were announcing the names of people who had received a commendation for their essays, I was shivering all over because I thought they had forgotten about me. I’m still in disbelief.

“As someone who grew up in a largely secular background, I had always wanted to know more about the different and diverse worldviews across the globe. Writing to address a question that required in-depth knowledge about religion thus helped me further my understanding of individual religious communities. Putting academics aside, however, I was aware that the topic I had been exploring was extremely poignant and personal, which made writing it all the more meaningful.

“It took me around a month to research and write the essay. Initially, I had spent a week on my first draft, but afterwards I completely redrafted a second version of the essay where I changed my entire stance.”

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Alex Chen '23 Wins Third Prize in Global Essay Competition

• Alex Chen '23

John Locke Global Essay Competition (Standard Prize & Junior Prize)

Our Essay Competition invites students to explore a wide range of challenging and interesting questions beyond the confines of the school curriculum.

Entering an essay in our competition can build knowledge and refine skills of argumentation. It also gives students the chance to have their work assessed by experts. All of our essay prizes are judged by senior academics from the University of Oxford. The judges will choose their favourite essay from each subject category and an overall 'best essay' across seven subjects: Philosophy, Politics, Economics, History, Psychology, Theology and Law.

The Institute awards two separate prizes:

• For the standard prize a prize is awarded for the best essay in each category.
• For the Junior Prize there is only one winner.

The prize for each winner of a subject category, and the winner of the Junior Prize, is a scholarship worth US$2000 towards the cost of attending any John Locke Institute program and the essays will be published on the Institute's website. The prize-giving ceremony takes place in Oxford, at which winners and runners-up will be able to meet the judges and other faculty members of the John Locke Institute. Family, friends, and teachers are also welcome, subject to capacity constraints.

​

The candidate who submits the best essay overall will be awarded an honorary John Locke Institute Junior Fellowship, which comes with a US$10,000 scholarship to attend one or more of our summer schools and/or gap year courses.

Location(s)

• Entries are due no later than June 30

Cost/Compensation

Eligibility requirements.

• Students must be 18 or younger
• Entries are open to candidates from every country

Application or Entry Requirements

• Registration is required, which one can do  here.
• Essays should address only one of the questions in a chosen subject category but students may submit more than one essay so long as they are in different categories.
• Essays must not exceed 2000 words (not counting diagrams, tables of data, footnotes, bibliography, or authorship declaration). 
• Essays should be submitted in pdf format, through the website. 

Notifications of Decisions

• Short-listed contestants announced: July
• Junior Prize announced: August
• Economics Prize announced: September
• Politics Prize and Law Prize announced: September
• Philosophy Prize and Theology Prize announced: September
• Psychology Prize announced: October

Financial Aid Details

Other dates to keep in mind.

• Essay questions released: February

Have other questions?

The John Locke Institute encourages young people to cultivate the characteristics that turn good students into great writers: independent thought, depth of knowledge, clear reasoning, critical analysis, and persuasive style. We work to embolden the best and brightest students to become more academically ambitious and more intellectually adventurous. Through our various programs - residential courses, revision seminars, essay competitions, and special events - we inspire students to aim high and we equip them with the skills they need in order to achieve their goals.

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BHS students win honours in global essay competition

Sienna Spurling learnt about embryonic stem cell research in biology class at the Bermuda High School.

The 14-year-old was intrigued by the controversy. Embryonic stem cells are the building blocks of the body and can become any kind of cell. Scientists want to use them to research a range of diseases but harvesting them kills the embryo.

“There is a global debate with so many different views political, religious, and scientific,” she said. “It is very similar to the abortion debate in that there are opposing pro-life and pro-choice camps.”

Two thousand words on the topic won her a distinction in the prestigious John Locke Institute 2023 Global Essay Competition , based in Oxford, England.

Her classmate, Joy Yammine, also received a distinction in the Under-15 category; 13-year-old Aditi Varwandkar was shortlisted.

Each year 19,000 students from around the world enter the competition; 100 are shortlisted. Three winners are chosen; the top 15 per cent receive distinctions.

Essays were judged on the writer’s understanding of the relevant material, the use of evidence, quality of argumentation, originality, structure, writing style and persuasive force.

The contest was named for the English philosopher John Locke and asks students 18 and under to ponder questions such as why John Locke is considered the father of liberalism; why safety is more important than fun; and if you had $10 billion, how would you use it to make the world better.

Sienna and Joy wrote in response to the question, what is something important that people are often wrong about?

Joy took a philosophical angle, making her essay about happiness.

“It is something I have been interested in for a while,” she said. “My essay was about how people pursue happiness. Often happiness is looked at as a destination, when it is really a journey. It is not a tangible feeling. You do not know if you have reached happiness.”

The 14-year-old looked at the correlation between money and happiness.

“Beyond the point where all your basic needs are met and you are comfortable with food and shelter, there is no correlation with happiness,” she said. “Money does not make you any more happy.

“In my conclusion, I said that if you want to pursue happiness over a long period of time, you first need to find fulfilment, and contentment.”

Aditi tackled the question what, if anything, do parents owe their children?

“My take on it was that a parent owes their child the best life possible and the tools to succeed in life,” she said.

The teenager discussed central things that children need, such as food, water, clothing, and love. She felt they also needed practice for the real world and tools such as education.

“All children deserve a parent but not all parents deserve a child,” Aditi said. “It’s just about making sure that you’re in the position where you can give your child that better life.”

Their prize was a weekend seminar at Oxford University and admission to a prizegiving reception and gala dinner there.

The girls were scheduled to be in England for the weekend of September 16, but Hurricane Lee intervened, brushing past Bermuda with high waves and power cuts.

“Our flights were pushed back,” said Sienna. “Joy and I arrived a day late.”

That meant they missed the gala dinner and workshops arranged for the Saturday morning.

“At least we got to go to most of the seminars and the main award ceremony on Saturday evening at the Sheldonian Theatre,” Joy said. “That was really great.”

The awards ceremony was very formal.

“They don’t make you walk across the stage to receive your certificate [but] they call your name,” Sienna said. “It is very exciting to see so many people from around the world.”

It was her second time attending after she was shortlisted last year for an essay on taxes.

“We were told we were in the room where students take exams,” Sienna said. “There was a giant clock on the wall. The instructor told us that if we went to Oxford this would be one of the most stressful places for us.”

Seminar topics covered everything from essay writing, to tips on the United Kingdom university application process, to application to Oxford and Cambridge. The winning students also shared their essays.

“Getting into Oxford or Cambridge is not my main goal but that was very interesting,” Sienna said. “There were lots of people at the awards ceremony. It was good that BHS could be represented.”

Students took part in the competition with the help of BHS global politics and history teacher Amy Dingley-Jones.

“I’ve directed students to the John Locke essay prize for the last eight or nine years while working in different countries,” she said.

She added that the competition was a great opportunity for students to explore subjects they were interested in.

“They have to cut it down and structure it in a way that is readable but also different to the other thousands of entries,” Ms Dingley-Jones said. “They also have to give references. It is really impressive that they have been not only shortlisted but received distinctions, as well.”

Reading and writing about embryonic stem cell research cemented Sienna’s fascination with science. “I might go into biology or medicine,” she said.

Joy would like to take courses in psychology. “As a career, I might go into medicine or dentistry,” she said.

Meanwhile, Aditi was also considering psychology, or law.

• For more information on the John Locke Institute Global Essay Competition see www.johnlockeinstitute.com/essay-competition

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The Ultimate Guide to the John Locke Essay Competition

Humanities and social sciences students often lack the opportunities to compete at the global level and demonstrate their expertise. Competitions like ISEF, Science Talent Search, and MIT Think are generally reserved for students in fields like biology, physics, and chemistry.

At Lumiere, many of our talented non-STEM students, who have a flair for writing are looking for ways to flex their skills. In this piece, we’ll go over one such competition - the John Locke Essay Competition. If you’re interested in learning more about how we guide students to win essay contests like this, check out our main page .

What is the John Locke Essay Competition?

The essay competition is one of the various programs conducted by the John Locke Institute (JLI) every year apart from their summer and gap year courses. To understand the philosophy behind this competition, it’ll help if we take a quick detour to know more about the institute that conducts it.

Founded in 2011, JLI is an educational organization that runs summer and gap year courses in the humanities and social sciences for high school students. These courses are primarily taught by academics from Oxford and Princeton along with some other universities. The organization was founded by Martin Cox. Our Lumiere founder, Stephen, has met Martin and had a very positive experience. Martin clearly cares about academic rigor.

The institute's core belief is that the ability to evaluate the merit of information and develop articulate sound judgments is more important than merely consuming information. The essay competition is an extension of the institute - pushing students to reason through complex questions in seven subject areas namely Philosophy, Politics, Economics, History, Psychology, Theology, and Law​.

The organization also seems to have a strong record of admissions of alumni to the top colleges in the US and UK. For instance, between 2011 and 2022, over half of John Locke alumni have gone on to one of eight colleges: Chicago, Columbia, Georgetown, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale.

How prestigious is the John Locke Contest?

The John Locke Contest is a rigorous and selective writing competition in the social sciences and humanities. While it is not as selective as the Concord Review and has a much broader range of students who can receive prizes, it is still considered a highly competitive program.

Winning a John Locke essay contest will have clear benefits for you in your application process to universities and would reflect well on your application. On the other hand, a shortlist or a commendation might not have a huge impact given that it is awarded to many students (more on this later).

What is the eligibility for the contest?

Students, of any country, who are 18 years old or younger before the date of submission can submit. They also have a junior category for students who are fourteen years old, or younger, on the date of the submission deadline.

Who SHOULD consider this competition?

We recommend this competition for students who are interested in social sciences and humanities, in particular philosophy, politics, and economics. It is also a good fit for students who enjoy writing, want to dive deep into critical reasoning, and have some flair in their writing approach (more on that below).

While STEM students can of course compete, they will have to approach the topics through a social science lens. For example, in 2021, one of the prompts in the division of philosophy was, ‘Are there subjects about which we should not even ask questions?’ Here, students of biology can comfortably write about topics revolving around cloning, gene alteration, etc, however, they will have to make sure that they are able to ground this in the theoretical background of scientific ethics and ethical philosophy in general.

Additional logistics

Each essay should address only one of the questions in your chosen subject category, and must not exceed 2000 words (not counting diagrams, tables of data, footnotes, bibliography, or authorship declaration).

If you are using an in-text-based referencing format, such as APA, your in-text citations are included in the word limit.

You can submit as many essays as you want in any and all categories. (We recommend aiming for only one given how time-consuming it can be to come up with a single good-quality submission)

Important dates

Prompts for the 2023 competition will be released in January 2023. Your submission will be due around 6 months later in June. Shortlisted candidates will be notified in mid-July which will be followed by the final award ceremony in September.

How much does it cost to take part?

What do you win?

A scholarship that will offset the cost of attending a course at the JLI. The amount will vary between $2000 and $10,000 based on whether you are a grand prize winner (best essay across all categories) or a subject category winner. (JLI programs are steeply-priced and even getting a prize in your category would not cover the entire cost of your program. While the website does not mention the cost of the upcoming summer program, a different website mentions it to be 3,000 GBP or 3600 USD)

If you were shortlisted, most probably, you will also receive a commendation certificate and an invitation to attend an academic ceremony at Oxford. However, even here, you will have to foot the bill for attending the conference, which can be a significant one if you are an international student.

How do you submit your entry?

You submit your entry through the website portal that will show up once the prompts for the next competition are up in January! You have to submit your essay in pdf format where the title of the pdf attachment should read SURNAME, First Name, Category, and Question Number (e.g. POPHAM, Alexander, Psychology, Q2).

What are the essay prompts like?

We have three insights here.

Firstly, true to the spirit of the enlightenment thinker it is named after, most of the prompts have a philosophical bent and cover ethical, social, and political themes. In line with JLI’s general philosophy, they force you to think hard and deeply about the topics they cover. Consider a few examples to understand this better:

“Are you more moral than most people you know? How do you know? Should you strive to be more moral? Why or why not?” - Philosophy, 2021

“What are the most important economic effects - good and bad - of forced redistribution? How should this inform government policy?” - Economics, 2020

“Why did the Jesus of Nazareth reserve his strongest condemnation for the self-righteous?” - Theology, 2021

“Should we judge those from the past by the standards of today? How will historians in the future judge us?” - History, 2021

Secondly, at Lumiere, our analysis is that most of these prompts are ‘deceptively rigorous’ because the complexity of the topic reveals itself gradually. The topics do not give you a lot to work with and it is only when you delve deeper into one that you realize the extent to which you need to research/read more. In some of the topics, you are compelled to define the limits of the prompt yourself and in turn, the scope of your essay. This can be a challenging exercise. Allow me to illustrate this with an example of the 2019 philosophy prompt.

“Aristotelian virtue ethics achieved something of a resurgence in the twentieth century. Was this progress or retrogression?”

Here you are supposed to develop your own method for determining what exactly constitutes progress in ethical thought. This in turn involves familiarizing yourself with existing benchmarks of measurement and developing your own method if required. This is a significant intellectual exercise.

Finally, a lot of the topics are on issues of contemporary relevance and especially on issues that are contentious . For instance, in 2019, one of the prompts for economics was about the benefits and costs of immigration whereas the 2020 essay prompt for theology was about whether Islam is a religion of peace . As we explain later, your ‘opinion’ here can be as ‘outrageous’ as you want it to be as long as you are able to back it up with reasonable arguments. Remember, the JLI website clearly declares itself to be, ‘ not a safe space, but a courteous one ’.

How competitive is the JLI Essay Competition?

In 2021, the competition received 4000 entries from 101 countries. Given that there is only one prize winner from each category, this makes this a very competitive opportunity. However, because categories have a different number of applicants, some categories are more competitive than others. One strategy to win could be to focus on fields with fewer submissions like Theology.

There are also a relatively significant number of students who receive commendations called “high commendation.” In the psychology field, for example, about 80 students received a commendation in 2022. At the same time, keep in mind that the number of students shortlisted and invited to Oxford for an academic conference is fairly high and varies by subject. For instance, Theology had around 50 people shortlisted in 2021 whereas Economics had 238 . We, at Lumiere, estimate that approximately 10% of entries of each category make it to the shortlisting stage.

How will your essay be judged?

The essays will be judged on your understanding of the discipline, quality of argumentation and evidence, and writing style. Let’s look at excerpts from various winning essays to see what this looks like in practice.

Level of knowledge and understanding of the relevant material: Differentiating your essay from casual musing requires you to demonstrate knowledge of your discipline. One way to do that is by establishing familiarity with relevant literature and integrating it well into their essay. The winning essay of the 2020 Psychology Prize is a good example of how to do this: “People not only interpret facts in a self-serving way when it comes to their health and well-being; research also demonstrates that we engage in motivated reasoning if the facts challenge our personal beliefs, and essentially, our moral valuation and present understanding of the world. For example, Ditto and Liu showed a link between people’s assessment of facts and their moral convictions” By talking about motivated reasoning in the broader literature, the author can show they are well-versed in the important developments in the field.

Competent use of evidence: In your essay, there are different ways to use evidence effectively. One such way involves backing your argument with results from previous studies . The 2020 Third Place essay in economics shows us what this looks like in practice: “Moreover, this can even be extended to PTSD, where an investigation carried out by Italian doctor G. P. Fichera, led to the conclusion that 13% of the sampling units were likely to have this condition. Initiating economic analysis here, this illustrates that the cost of embarking on this unlawful activity, given the monumental repercussions if caught, is not equal to the costs to society...” The study by G.P. Fichera is used to strengthen the author’s claim on the social costs of crime and give it more weight.

Structure, writing style, and persuasive force: A good argument that is persuasive rarely involves merely backing your claim with good evidence and reasoning. Delivering it in an impactful way is also very important. Let’s see how the winner of the 2020 Law Prize does this: “Slavery still exists, but now it applies to women and its name in prostitution”, wrote Victor Hugo in Les Misérables. Hugo’s portrayal of Fantine under the archetype of a fallen woman forced into prostitution by the most unfortunate of circumstances cannot be more jarringly different from the empowerment-seeking sex workers seen today, highlighting the wide-ranging nuances associated with commercial sex and its implications on the women in the trade. Yet, would Hugo have supported a law prohibiting the selling of sex for the protection of Fantine’s rights?” The use of Victor Hugo in the first line of the essay gives it a literary flair and enhances the impact of the delivery of the argument. Similarly, the rhetorical question, in the end, adds to the literary dimension of the argument. Weaving literary and argumentative skills in a single essay is commendable and something that the institute also recognizes.

Quality of argumentation: Finally, the quality of your argument depends on capturing the various elements mentioned above seamlessly . The third place in theology (2020) does this elegantly while describing bin-Laden’s faulty and selective use of religious verses to commit violence: “He engages in the decontextualization and truncation of Qur'anic verses to manipulate and convince, which dissociates the fatwas from bonafide Islam. For example, in his 1996 fatwa, he quotes the Sword verse but deliberately omits the aforementioned half of the Ayat that calls for mercy. bin-Laden’s intention is not interpretive veracity, but the indoctrination of his followers.” The author’s claim is that bin-Laden lacks religious integrity and thus should not be taken seriously, especially given the content of his messages. To strengthen his argument, he uses actual incidents to dissect this display of faulty reasoning.

These excerpts are great examples of the kind of work you should keep in mind when writing your own draft.

6 Winning Tips from Lumiere

Focus on your essay structure and flow: If logic and argumentation are your guns in this competition, a smooth flow is your bullet. What does a smooth flow mean? It means that the reader should be able to follow your chain of reasoning with ease. This is especially true for essays that explore abstract themes. Let’s see this in detail with the example of a winning philosophy essay. “However, if society were the moral standard, an individual is subjected to circumstantial moral luck concerning whether the rules of the society are good or evil (e.g., 2019 Geneva vs. 1939 Munich). On the other hand, contracts cannot be the standard because people are ignorant of their being under a moral contractual obligation, when, unlike law, it is impossible to be under a contract without being aware. Thus, given the shortcomings of other alternatives, human virtue is the ideal moral norm.” To establish human virtue as the ideal norm, the author points out limitations in society and contracts, leaving out human virtue as the ideal one. Even if you are not familiar with philosophy, you might still be able to follow the reasoning here. This is a great example of the kind of clarity and logical coherence that you should strive for.

Ground your arguments in a solid theoretical framework : Your essay requires you to have well-developed arguments. However, these arguments need to be grounded in academic theory to give them substance and differentiate them from casual opinions. Let me illustrate this with an example of the essay that won second place in the politics category in 2020. “Normatively, the moral authority of governments can be justified on a purely associative basis: citizens have an inherent obligation to obey the state they were born into. As Dworkin argued, “Political association, like family or friendship and other forms of association more local and intimate, is itself pregnant of obligation” (Dworkin). Similar to a family unit where children owe duties to their parents by virtue of being born into that family regardless of their consent, citizens acquire obligations to obey political authority by virtue of being born into a state.” Here, the author is trying to make a point about the nature of political obligation. However, the core of his argument is not the strength of his own reasoning, but the ability to back his reasoning with prior literature. By quoting Dworkin, he includes important scholars of western political thought to give more weight to his arguments. It also displays thorough research on the part of the author to acquire the necessary intellectual tools to write this paper.

The methodology is more important than the conclusion: The 2020 history winners came to opposite conclusions in their essays on whether a strong state hampers or encourages economic growth. While one of them argued that political strength hinders growth when compared to laissez-faire, the other argues that the state is a prerequisite for economic growth . This reflects JLI’s commitment to your reasoning and substantiation instead of the ultimate opinion. The lesson: Don’t be afraid to be bold! Just make sure you are able to back it up.

Establish your framework well: A paragraph (or two) that is able to succinctly describe your methodology, core arguments, and the reasoning behind them displays academic sophistication. A case in point is the introduction of 2019’s Philosophy winner: “To answer the question, we need to construct a method that measures progress in philosophy. I seek to achieve this by asserting that, in philosophy, a certain degree of falsification is achievable. Utilizing philosophical inquiry and thought experiments, we can rationally assess the logical validity of theories and assign “true” and “false” status to philosophical thoughts. With this in mind, I propose to employ the fourth process of the Popperian model of progress…Utilizing these two conditions, I contend that Aristotelian virtue ethics was progress from Kantian ethics and utilitarianism.” Having a framework like this early on gives you a blueprint for what is in the essay and makes it easier for the reader to follow the reasoning. It also helps you as a writer since distilling down your core argument into a paragraph ensures that the first principles of your essay are well established.

Read essays of previous winners: Do this and you will start seeing some patterns in the winning essays. In economics, this might be the ability to present a multidimensional argument and substantiating it with data-backed research. In theology, this might be your critical analysis of religious texts .

Find a mentor: Philosophical logic and argumentation are rarely taught at the high school level. Guidance from an external mentor can fill this academic void by pointing out logical inconsistencies in your arguments and giving critical feedback on your essay. Another important benefit of having a mentor is that it will help you in understanding the heavy literature that is often a key part of the writing/research process in this competition. As we have already seen above, having a strong theoretical framework is crucial in this competition. A mentor can make this process smoother.

Lumiere Research Scholar Program

If you’re looking for a mentor to do an essay contest like John Locke or want to build your own independent research paper, then consider applying to the Lumiere Research Scholar Program . Last year over 2100 students applied for about 500 spots in the program. You can find the application form here.

You can see our admission results here for our students.

Manas is a publication strategy associate at Lumiere Education. He studied public policy and interactive media at NYU and has experience in education consulting.

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25 Best Writing Competitions for High School Students – 2024

April 12, 2024

Over the past several years, the number of college applicants has been steadily rising. [i] As college admissions become more competitive, there are many steps a student can take to achieve high school success and become an outstanding candidate for college admissions: earning high SAT scores, securing strong letters of recommendation , and participating in various competitions will all boost your admissions prospects. [ii] In particular, writing competitions for high school students are a popular way to win scholarships and prize money, receive feedback on writing, build a portfolio of public work, and add to college application credentials!

Below, we’ve selected twenty-five writing competitions for high school students and sorted them by three general topics: 1) language, literature and arts, 2) STEM, environment and sustainability, and 3) politics, history and philosophy. It’s never too soon to begin thinking about your future college prospects, and even if you are a freshman, many of these writing competitions for high schoolers will be open to you! [iii]

Writing Competitions for High School Students in Language, Literature, and Arts

1) adroit prizes for poetry and prose.

This prestigious creative writing award offers high school students the opportunity to showcase their work in Adroit Journal . Judges are acclaimed writers in their respective genres.

• Eligibility: All high school students (including international students) are eligible to apply. Poetry contestants may submit up to five poems. Prose contestants may submit up to three pieces of fiction or nonfiction writing (for a combined total of 3,500 words – excerpts accepted).
• Prize: Winners will receive $200 and their writing will be published in Adroit Journal . All submitted entries will be considered for publication!
• Deadline: May 1st (specific deadline may vary by year).

2)  Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest

This unique essay competition allows writers the chance to explore and respond to Ayn Rand’s fascinating and polemic 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged . Specific essay topics are posted every three months; prizes are granted seasonally with a grand prize winner announced every year.

• Prize: Annual grand prize is $25,000.
• Deadline: Deadlines occur every season, for each seasonal prompt.
• Eligibility: Essays must be written in English and be 800-1,600 words in length.

Writing Competitions for High School Students (Continued)

3)  the bennington young writers awards.

Through Bennington College, this high school writing competition offers three prizes in three different genre categories: poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Winners and finalists who decide to attend Bennington College will ultimately receive a substantial scholarship prize.

• Eligibility: U.S. and international students in grades 9 through 12 may apply.
• Prize: First place winners receive $1,000; second place wins $500; third place winners receive $250. YWA winners who apply, are admitted, and enroll at Bennington receive a $15,000 scholarship per year (for a total of $60,000). YWA finalists who apply, are admitted, and enroll at Bennington will receive a $10,000 scholarship per year (for a total of $40,000).
• Deadline: The competition runs annually from September 1st to November 1st.

4)  Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) Student Essay Contest

Do you love Jane Austen? If so, this is the high school writing competition for you! With the JASNA Student Essay Contest, high school students have the opportunity to write a six to eight-page essay about Jane Austen’s works, focused on a specific, designated topic for the competition year.

• Eligibility: Any high school student (homeschooled students also eligible) enrolled during the contest year may submit an essay.
• Prize: First place winner receives a $1,000 scholarship and two nights’ lodging for the upcoming annual JASNA meeting. Second place wins a $500 scholarship and third place wins a $250 scholarship. All winners will additionally receive a year membership in JASNA, the online publication of their article, and a set of Norton Critical Editions of Jane Austen’s novels.
• Deadline: Submission accepted from February-June 1st (specific dates may vary by year).

5)  The Kennedy Center VSA Playwright Discovery Program

Young aspiring writers with disabilities are encouraged to apply to this unique program. Students are asked to submit a ten-minute play script that explores any topic, including the student’s own disability experience.

• Eligibility: U.S. and international high school students with disabilities ages 14-19 may apply.
• Prize: Multiple winners will receive exclusive access to professional development and networking opportunities at The Kennedy Center.
• Deadline: January (specific deadline date may vary by year).

6)  Leonard M. Milburg ’53 High School Poetry Prize

Through Princeton’s Lewis Center for the Arts, this prestigious writing competition for high school students recognizes outstanding poetry writing and is judged by creative writing faculty at Princeton University.

• Eligibility: U.S. or international students in the eleventh grade may apply. Applicants may submit up to three poems.
• Prize: First place wins $1,500; second place wins $750; third place wins $500.
• Deadline: November (specific deadline date may vary by year).

7)  Nancy Thorp Poetry Contest

Nancy Thorp was a student at Hollins University who showed great promise as a poet. After her death, her family established this scholarship to support budding young poets.

• Eligibility: Female high school sophomores and juniors are eligible to apply. Applicants must be U.S. citizens.
• Prize: First place wins $350 and publication in Cargoes literary magazine, along with a $5,000 renewable scholarship (up to $20,000 over four years) if the student enrolls in Hollins University, and free tuition and housing for Hollins University’s summer creative writing program (grades 9-12). Second place wins publication in Cargoes, along with a $1,000 renewable scholarship ($4,000 over four years) if the student enrolls at Hollins and $500 to apply toward Hollins’ summer creative writing program.
• Deadline: October (specific deadline date may vary by year).

8)  National Council of Teachers of English Achievement Awards in Writing

Students may be nominated by their English teachers to win this prestigious writing award. Winners “exhibit the power to inform and move an audience through language” and prompts and genres may vary by competition year.

• Prize: A certificate will be awarded to students who are judged to have exceptional writing skills. Student names will be displayed on the NCTE website.
• Eligibility: U.S. high school sophomores and juniors are eligible for nomination.
• Deadline: February (specific dates may vary by year). Contest prompts released in August.

9)  National Scholastic Art and Writing Awards

At Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, numerous opportunities for scholarships and awards await those who submit writing in various genres: literary criticism, drama, poetry, and fiction. In all, there are 28 generic categories of art and writing to choose from!

• Eligibility: Teens in grades 7-12 (ages 13 and up) may apply.
• Prize: Various types of recognition and scholarships (up to $12,500) are offered for these award winners.
• Deadline: Scholastic Awards opens for entries in September; deadlines range from December to January.

10)  National Society of High School Scholars Creative Writing Scholarship

In this creative writing competition for high schoolers, students have the opportunity to submit a piece poetry or fiction (or both – one in each category!) for the opportunity to be published on the NSHSS website and win a monetary prize.

• Eligibility: Rising high school students graduating in 2024, 2025, 2026 and 2027 may apply.
• Prize: There will be three $2,000 awards for the fiction category and three $2,000 awards for the poetry category.
• Deadline: Submissions Accepted from May to October (specific dates may vary by year).

11)  National Writing Award: The Humanities and a Freer Tomorrow

This writing competition allows high school students the chance to be nominated by a teacher for a piece of writing in response to Ruth J. Simmons’ “Facing History to Find a Better Future.” Specific prompt topics may vary by year.

• Eligibility: Nominating teachers can submit work from 11th and 12th graders in one category (fiction, poetry, prose, or essay).
• Prize: One top prize of $1,000. Four additional prizes of $500 each. Winners will have the opportunity to have their work published by NCTE.
• Deadline: Applications are open September to October (specific dates may vary by year).

12)  New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award

Although this prestigious award isn’t exclusively for high schoolers (anyone younger than 35 may submit a work of fiction), if you’ve written a collection of short stories or even a novel, you should certainly consider applying!

• Eligibility: Any writer below the age of 35 may submit a novel or collection of short stories to participate in this competition.
• Prize: $10,000 award.
• Deadline: September (specific date may vary by year).

13)  Princeton University Ten-Minute Play Contest

This writing competition for high school students awards three annual top prizes for the best ten-minute play. Play submissions are judged each year by an acclaimed guest playwright.

• Eligibility: U.S. or international students in the eleventh grade may apply. Students may submit one play entry; entries must be ten pages or less. Plays must be written in English.
• Prize: First place prize is $500; second place is $250; third place is $100.
• Deadline: Varies by year. However, students are recommended to submit before the deadline date – the submission portal will close when a maximum of 250 applicants have applied.

14)  YouthPLAYS New Voices One-Act Competition for Young Playwrights

In this exciting writing competition, students have the chance to submit an original play script for a play of around 10-40 minutes in length. An excellent competition choice for any student considering a future in the theatre!

• Eligibility: Prospective authors ages 19 and under may submit a script for consideration in the competition. See specific writing guidelines here .
• Prize: First prize wins $250 and publication with YouthPLAYS; second prize wins $100.
• Deadline: Submissions run from January 1st to May 1st.

STEM, Environment, and Sustainability High School Writing Competitions

15)  engineergirl essay contest.

This wonderful essay contest invites students to explore topics related to engineering and science. Each year a new, specific prompt will be chosen for young writers who wish to compete.

• Eligibility: High school students are eligible to apply. Previous winners and close family members of employees of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine are not eligible.
• Prize: First place winners receive $1,000; second place receives $750; third place receives $500.
• Deadline: Competition opens in September and submissions are due February 1st of the following year. Winners are announced in the summer.

16)  Ocean Awareness Contest

The Ocean Awareness Contest is an opportunity for students to create written and artistic projects that explore sustainability, environmentalism, and positive change. High school freshmen (up to age 14) may apply to the Junior Division. Students ages 15-18 may enter the Senior Division.

• Eligibility: Students ages 11-18 may apply (international students included).
• Prize: Monetary prizes ranging from $100-$1000 will be awarded each year. Additionally, $500 will be awarded to ten students who identify as Black, Indigenous, or Latino via the We All Rise Prize program.
• Deadline: June 10, 2024 (specific deadline may vary by year).

17)  Rachel Carson Intergenerational Sense of Wonder / Sense of Wild Contest

If you are interested in issues of sustainability, environment, biology and the natural world, this is one of the high school writing competitions that is just for you! Essay prompts explore the natural world and our place within it and may include poetry, essays, and photography.

• Eligibility: Students must pair with an adult from a different generation (e.g. parent, grandparent or teacher – contestants need not be related). Entries must be submitted as a team.
• Prize: Winners will receive a certificate from RCLA; their first names, ages, and entry titles will be posted on the RCLA website.
• Deadline: November 16th, 2024 (specific deadline may vary by year).

18)  River of Words Competition

This writing competition for high school students is another top choice for those thinking of pursuing majors or careers in biology, environment, and sustainability; this specific contest hopes to promote positive education in sustainability by “promoting environmental literacy through the arts and cultural exchange.”

• Eligibility: Any U.S. or international student from kindergarten through 12th grade may apply.
• Prize: Winners will be published in the River of Words
• Deadline: January (specific deadline may vary by year).

Writing Competitions for High School Students in Politics, History and Philosophy

19)  american foreign service association essay contest.

With this writing competition for high school students, entrants may submit essays ranging from 1,000-1,500 words about diplomacy, history, and international politics (specific prompts vary by year).

• Eligibility: Students in grades nine through twelve may apply. Students whose parents are in the Foreign Service Association are not eligible.
• Prize: The first-place winner will receive $2,500, an all-expense paid trip to Washington, D.C. for the winner and the winner’s parents, and an all-expense paid voyage via Semester at Sea. The second-place winner receives $1,250 and full tuition for a summer session at the National Student Leadership Conference’s International Diplomacy program.
• Deadline: Early spring (specific deadline may vary by year).

20)  Bill of Rights Institute We the Students Essay Contest

In this writing competition for high school students, civic-minded U.S. high schoolers may explore the principles and virtues of the Bill of Rights Institute. Interested applicants should review the specific submission guidelines .

• Eligibility: Any high school student aged 13 to 19 may apply.
• Prize: Prizes range from $1,500 to $10,000.
• Deadline: Submissions for 2024 due May 19th (specific deadline may vary by year).

21)  JFK Presidential Library and Museum Profile in Courage Essay Contest

For students interested in history and political science, this competition offers the chance to write about U.S. elected officials who have demonstrated political courage.

• Eligibility: U.S. high school students from grades 9-12 may apply.
• Prize: First prize is $10,000; second prize receives $3,000; five finalists receive $1,000 each; ten semifinalists receive $100 each; eight students receive honorable mention.
• Deadline: Submissions accepted from September to January (specific deadline may vary by year).
• Sample Essays: 2000-2023 Contest Winner Essays

22)  John Locke Institute Essay Competition

This essay competition is for students who would like to write about and cultivate “independent thought, depth of knowledge, clear reasoning, critical analysis and persuasive style” from one of seven intellectual categories: philosophy, politics, economics, history, psychology, theology or law.

• Eligibility: Students from any country may submit an essay.
• Prize: $2,000 for each subject category winner toward a John Locke Institute program; winning essays will be published on the Institute’s website.
• Deadline: Registration must be completed by May 31st, 2024; essay submission due June 30th, 2024 (specific deadline may vary by year).

23)  Society of Professional Journalists and the Journalism Education Association Essay Contest

This exciting writing competition for high schoolers allows students to explore topics related to journalism, democracy and media literacy. Specific prompts will be provided for contestants each year.

• Eligibility: All U.S. students from grades 9-12 may submit original writing to participate in this contest.
• Prize: First-place winners will receive $1,000; second place is awarded $500; third place receives $300.
• Deadline: February (specific deadline may vary by year).

24)  Veterans of Foreign Wars Voice of Democracy Youth Scholarship Essay

This audio essay allows high school students the opportunity to “express themselves in regards to a democratic and patriot-themed recorded essay.” One winner will be granted a $35,000 scholarship to be paid toward their university, college, or vocational school of choice. Smaller prizes range from $1,000-$21,000, and the first-place winner in each VFW state wins $1,000.

• Prize: College scholarships range from $1,000-$35,000
• Eligibility: U.S. students in grades 9-12 may submit a 3-5-minute audio essay.
• Deadline: October 31st
• Sample Written Essay: 2023-2024 Prize-winning essay by Sophia Lin

25)  World Historian Student Essay Competition

The World Historian Student Essay Competition recognizes young scholars who explore world historical events and how they relate to the student scholar personally. Ultimately the student writer must describe “the experience of being changed by a better understanding of world history.”

• Eligibility: Internationally, students ages K-12 may submit an entry. See specific prompt and submission guidelines for writing instructions.
• Prize: $500

Writing Competitions for High School Students – Sources

[i] Institute for Education Sciences: National Center for Education Statistics. “Number of applications for admission from first-time, degree/certificate-seeking undergraduate students were received by postsecondary institutions in the fall.” https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/TrendGenerator/app/answer/10/101

[ii] Jaschik, Scott. “Record Applications, Record Rejections.” Inside Higher Ed . 3 April 2022. https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2022/04/04/most-competitive-colleges-get-more-competitive

[iii] Wood, Sarah. “College Applications are on the Rise: What to Know.” U.S. News & World Report. 21 June 2022. https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/college-applications-are-on-the-rise-what-to-know

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Jamie Smith

For the past decade, Jamie has taught writing and English literature at several universities, including Boston College, the University of Pittsburgh, and Carnegie Mellon University. She earned a Ph.D. in English from Carnegie Mellon, where she currently teaches courses and conducts research on composition, public writing, and British literature.

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Archives from the Competition

June 12, 2015 Diana

Delve into the history of the XV International Tchaikovsky Competition thanks to these archive pictures from the Tchaikovsky Competition – featuring Van Cliburn, Dmitri Shostakovich, Nikita Krushchev, Boris Berezovsky, Gidon Kremer, Daniil Trifonov and many others.

Van Cliburn and Emil Gilels, 1958

Nikita Khrushchev congratulates Van Cliburn after he receives the Gold Medal at the I International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958.

Van Cliburn shaking hands with Dmitri Shostakovich.

Van Cliburn in the streets of Moscow, 1958

Vladimir Ashkenazy at the II International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1962.

Nikita Krushchev (middle) poses with the two first prize ex-aequo of the II International Tchaikovsky Competition in piano: Vladimir Ashkenazy and John Ogdon (1962).

The audience of the II International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1962 (Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory).

Misha Dichter, Emil Gilels, and Grigory Sokolov, 1st Prize winner at the 1966 International Tchaikovsky Competition.

Singer Jane Marsh, 1st Prize winner at the 1966 International Tchaikovsky Competition

The Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory in 1966.

Gidon Kremer, 1st Prize winner at the 1970 Tchaikovsky Competition.

Mstislav Rostropovich presiding over the cello jury at the 1970 Tchaikovsky Competition.

Mstislav Rostropovich and the 1970 Tchaikovsky Competition 1st Prize winner in the cello category, David Geringas.

Violinist David Oistrakh presiding over the violin jury for the 1974 Tchaikovsky Competition.

Mikhail Pletnev receiving the 1st Prize at the 1978 Tchaikovsky Competition (piano category).

Soprano Deborah Voigt, 1st Prize winner at the IX International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1990.

Boris Berezovsky at the IX International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1990.

Boris Berezovsky receiving the 1st Prize (piano category) at the IX International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1990.

Daniil Trifonov after his concerto performance at the XIV International Tchaikovsky Competition in 2011.

Pianist Daniil Trifonov receiving the 1st Prize and the Grand Prize at the XIV International Tchaikovsky Competition in 2011.

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China and A Community Of Principle

By lyndon h. larouche, jr., related pages article on moscow conference.

At the Sept. 23 opening sessions of the conference, LaRouche spoke on a "Vision for the 21st Century." He represented the Schiller Institute in the United States and Germany, and was also introduced to the conference as an American Presidential candidate.

The Moscow conference also featured Russian speakers from the Institute of Far Eastern Studies and other institutions, as well as speakers from Jilin Academy of Social Sciences in China. Subsequent panels discussed economic reforms in China; China's history and historiography; policy and social relations in China; and problems and prospects of inter-civilizational liaisons between China and other nations, in the era of globalization.

On Sept. 24, following a morning panel discussion, a round table was convened, with wide-ranging discussion focussed on various aspects of the Chinese economy.

Among the audience of about 250 people were diplomats, press, Russian Foreign Ministry personnel, other Russian government representatives, members of the Russian Academy of Sciences and other participating institutions, as well as a high-level delegation from China. In addition, numerous long-term friends and associates of LaRouche in Russia attended.

LaRouche prepared the paper we publish here as a written attachment to the proceedings of the conference. Further coverage of this important international event will appear in EIR 's forthcoming issue.

We may regard the often-expressed proposal to establish “a multipolar world,” as, in and for itself, an understandable rejection of the imperialist intent expressed by certain circles currently occupying key positions in the government of the U.S.A. Since the 1989-1992 collapse of the Soviet Union, those circles have foreseen what they have expressed as belief in the opportunity to create a global “American,” or “Anglo-American” empire. They have declared their intention to create such an empire, otherwise identified as “world government,” by means of revival of Bertrand Russell's 1940s doctrine of Anglo-American “preventive nuclear warfare.” Russell's original threat ended, for a time, with the successful Soviet testing of a thermonuclear weapon-prototype; that threat has been revived by U.S. Vice-President Cheney and others, as official U.S. policy, in the aftermath of the shocking events of Sept. 11, 2001.

During post-1988 Administration of President George H.W. Bush, U.S. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney had already attempted to revive Russell's old threat; but his proposal was rejected at that time by Bush, Sr. Nearly a decade later, in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, the preventive nuclear warfare policy has been successfully pushed by the same Dick Cheney, now as Vice-President, up to the present time. As some leading circles in various governments already know, a continuation of that new imperial policy beyond the present occupation of Iraq, threatens to drive the world toward a point of desperation which could become the brink of a more or less global, but asymmetric form of nuclear-armed warfare.

Unless Cheney and his neo-conservative confederates were removed from power, the risk of that form of warfare would not only persist, but increase spectacularly. The poorer the other military capabilities of the U.S.A. prove to be, the greater the temptation of Cheney's co-thinkers to launch nuclear warfare. Fortunately, the timely ouster of Cheney is now possible, if, unfortunately, not yet assured.

On this issue, up to a certain point, I agree—up to a point—with the concerns expressed by today's proponents of a “multipolar world,” but not with that proposal itself. I agree that we must prevent the implementation of the new imperialist doctrines associated with Cheney, et al. Yet, I also see a new source of dangers in the notion of “a multi- polar world” as that term is broadly, and loosely understood today. I think it important to explain why I, speaking from the standpoint of one among several currently leading U.S. Presidential candidates for the November 2004 election, have proposed the notion of a community of principle among sovereign states, as a specific alternative to the inherently self-contradictory concept of a multipolar world. What is needed in the present circumstance, is more or less global support for a clear, positive, unifying, ecumenical principle, such as the principle of “the advantage of the other,” which was the pivotal feature of that Treaty of Westphalia which brought the imperial, religious, and related reactionary warfare of the 1511-1648 interval to an end.

My choice of anti-imperialist alternative, is, as I shall explain, the establishment of a global community of principle among perfectly sovereign nation-states. I have presented one aspect of this proposal in a paper entitled, The Sovereign States of the Americas , which is being widely circulated currently by my U.S. Presidential campaign. It is not sufficient to defend the principle of national sovereignty; there must be a unifying and integral principle of positive cooperation, a principle which requires each of us to defend the sovereignty of the other nations, as what we see clearly as an indispensable source of historical benefit to our own. The present leaning toward a system of treaty-agreements which would provide much-needed economic benefits, and also efficient security arrangements, throughout the Eurasian continent, points toward the timeliness of the adoption of such a community of principle.

I present the case for the adoption of such a principle, in the setting of the challenge presented by the presently ongoing, terminal phase of collapse of the world's present form of monetary-financial system, the floating-exchange-rate system as it has continued to degenerate in both principle and practice since it was initially established during 1971-1972. My argument here will focus upon what I regard as the unavoidable interconnection between two of the leading factors determining the issues and outcome of the current world conflict. I define those factors as follows.

In the first case, my primary focus is upon current new trends in Western continental Europe pointing toward long-term economic cooperation with China and other nations of central and east Eurasia. That trend in policy-making defines an implicit commitment to developing a Eurasian economic bloc of long-term economic cooperation and mutual security among states. This tendency is not yet a solid commitment, but the tendency in that direction has been strengthened during recent years, first since the Autumn of 1998, and, more recently, since the looming of the current general war-danger during the last months of 2002. The hopeful trend in direction of such Eurasian cooperation implies a new quality of long-term economic treaty-agreements throughout much, perhaps all of the Eurasian continent. The success of a treaty-driven Eurasian initiative of that sort would set a pattern for a much-needed, broader reform of relations among nations world-wide.

On the second point: as soon as we put our attention on the subject of Eurasian cooperation, we are compelled to ask ourselves, would such an Eurasian bloc be possible, unless the U.S.A. were induced to reject the presently ominous influence of its own current, imperialist war-party faction? The crucial questions is: Can the present U.S. government be brought to the point, that it will reject the current form of geopolitical war policies of the so-called neo-conservatives, and, then, even tolerate the implementation of a policy of cooperation in economy and security among the nations of Eurasia? Why is U.S. cooperation essential to the successful, longer-term implementation of such a Eurasia policy? Therefore, is such a change in current U.S. policy likely? I know that such a change is possible, but it will be possible only to the degree some of us muster the will and influence to cause it to occur. I shall return to review those questions at the close of this presentation.

Since man is a creature of free will, it is impossible to predict changes in general human behavior of nations in a statistical way. It would be deadly incompetence to propose that we can do better than forecast forks in the road of policy-making by, and among nations. We can foresee the dangers embedded in the future outcome of an ongoing bad policy, and the benefits of an alternative policy.

For example, we know man must explore space, not because we know in advance what we shall find there, but because we must discover what is lurking there, as knowledge of the future opportunities and dangers for mankind on this planet.

So, similarly, we can estimate the location of that fork in the road of history where the forecast decision among choices must be made. We must see the looming future as an opportunity to make great beneficial changes in world affairs. Then, we must prepare ourselves to effect the needed changes in direction, when that fork in the road of decision-making is reached.

We have now reached such a fork in the road of world history. The prospect is, on the one side, terrifying to anyone with the courage to see what lies presently before us; but, the alternatives are wonderful, if we have the wisdom and will to bring those changes about. The prospect of a new dynamic form of Eurasian cooperation is wonderful; we must all work to aid its success. We must also proceed to bring about similar changes in relations among states in the world as a whole.

For my purposes here, I combine the two topics, the Eurasian option and the present crisis in U.S. policy, as inseparable matters. I ask you to join me in reviewing the two prospects, positive or negative, in the light of the strategic implications of the crisis-wracked political-economic situation inside the U.S.A. today. I begin with the second of the two topics, U.S. policy, which I have just identified here.

1. The Threat of Asymmetric Strategic Conflict

Briefly, the present global strategic crisis is broadly comparable to that of the 1928-1933 interval of collapse of that then-dominant world monetary-financial system which had been adopted in the Versailles Treaty proceedings. There are broad political and economic similarities between that crisis and today's, although I warn that the present economic crisis of Europe and the Americas is much deeper than that of the 1933-1939 interval. Also, given nuclear weapons and related arsenals, the failure to conquer the economic crisis today, would be more threatening to humanity as a whole than anything since the June 1940 actions by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and then British Defence Secretary Winston Churchill. I refer to those 1940 actions, taken in the context of the British Expeditionary Forces' evacuation from Dunkirk, actions which produced the initial preconditions for what later proved to be not only the ultimate defeat, by chiefly an Anglo-American and Soviet alliance, of the global imperial ambitions of the Adolf Hitler regime at that moment, but the doom of that regime itself.

The same type of danger experienced during 1936-1940 has now reappeared in a new form, as a relatively immediate risk, a risk which has been accelerating since the series of seismic, global monetary-financial crises of the 1997-1998 interval. The present threat to the planet now posed by Vice-President Cheney's policies, is an outgrowth of the failure of the U.S. government, and others, to deal competently with preceding phases of occasional eruptions—now expressed as the presently onrushing crisis—during the 1996-1998 interval.

To restated the preceding point with greater precision, the threat identified by Cheney's policies is best understood by recognizing his presently expressed intent for nuclear warfare, as the fourth comparable such internal threat to European civilization since Summer 1789. Each and all of the principal threats of this type have characteristic features in common. The first was the 1789 French Revolution with its built-in Napoleonic outcome; the second, the geopolitical war of 1914; the third, the 1939-1945 war; and the fourth, the present re-eruption of what had been the global nuclear-warfare threat launched during 1945-46. All these crises were produced as reactions by a leading circle of private bankers in the 14th-Century Lombard banking tradition, reactions to what they considered a mortal threat to their collective, global monetary-financial interests.

In all four cases, including the case of so-called “neo-conservatives” associated with Cheney, the central political feature of the launching of intended warfare was the role of a notorious freemasonry deployed by a syndicate of those bankers. This freemasonic cult was known originally as the Lyons, France-based Martinists, and has also been known, since the close of the 1914-1917 war, as that Synarchist International which produced the fascist regimes of Italy's Benito Mussolini, Germany's Adolf Hitler, Spain's Francisco Franco, the Vichy and Laval regimes of France, the Japan war-party of the Second Sino-Japanese war, and kindred groups throughout Europe and the Americas. In the U.S.A. today, they are merely typified by the self-styled “neo-conservatives.”

All four of these threats have coincided with the eruption of systemic general economic crises. The first, was the financial crisis of the French monarchy, which had been orchestrated over the 1782-1789 interval by the sometime British Prime Minister, the British East India Company's Lord Shelburne. The second, was the set of economic crises of 1905, organized chiefly by the British monarchy of King Edward VII, in his preparations for what became, shortly after his death, the geopolitical 1914-1917 war. The third, following the great financial crises of 1928-1933, was the aborted effort by the Synarchists behind Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco, to combine the naval and other forces of Western and Central Europe for the two-fold objective of, first, destroying the Soviet Union, and, then, conquering the U.S.A. and the other parts of the Americas. The fourth, is the effort, which had been led initially by Russell, to establish world government through terror of nuclear weapons. The latter, renewed effort by the same continuing faction among private bankers and their Synarchist assets today—by the same faction which had been behind putting Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, et al., into power then—reflects the impact of the presently systemic collapse of the world's 1972-2003, floating-exchange-rate form of the IMF monetary-financial system.

It is calculably foreseeable, that this pattern of the 1789-2003 period of globally extended European history will persist, either until civilization plunges itself into a new dark age of humanity, or until the nations bring an end to the hegemonic role of those so-called independent central-banking systems which are often more powerful than the governments over which

Stated in those terms, the great strategic issue of today, can be redefined in terms of the need for long-term agreements among sovereign states premised upon public credit at rates of between 1% and 2% simple interest. The presently increasing tendency for long-term economic cooperation among Western and Central Europe, and with both Russia and the nations of Central, East, Southeast, and South Asia, requires a foreseeably massive flow of newly created credit; that, over an initial period of up to two generations' duration. Such a mass of long-term credit for development must occur largely in the form of corresponding treaty-agreements among nations and regional groups of nations. For that purpose, a system of approximately fixed-exchange-rate currencies, akin to the original Bretton Woods system, is required.

The painful lessons of the 1971 collapse of the original Bretton Woods system, show us two things of crucial strategic importance for today. First, that, despite certain radical changes from U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt's post-war intentions under U.S. President Harry Truman, the surviving elements of Roosevelt's original intention of Bretton Woods worked very well in fostering post-war reconstruction in western Europe and many other parts of the world, until approximately the middle to close of the 1960s. Second, that the spread of measures of so-called financial deregulation introduced from the U.S.A. and Britain during the late 1960s, through the 1970s, and beyond, wrecked the original Bretton Woods agreements, and led, stepwise, to the presently hopeless bankruptcy of the present form of IMF system.

It is no accident, that what is happening to the present, floating-exchange-rate monetary system, is, in principle, an echo of that same kind of financial collapse as Europe's so-called “New Dark Age,” which overtook the usurious Lombard banking system of the Fourteenth Century. The late-1960s seizure of political control by private interests representing so-called “shareholder value,” has produced a cancer-like increase of the ratio of financial gains to physical-economic growth, a process which has driven physical-economic output below a true breakeven-point, but has maintained nominal financial profits of shareholders through an implicitly hyper-inflationary spiral of nominal financial assets driven by wild-eyed monetary expansion.

The result is, that the total of the extant financial claims implicit in the world's present monetary-financial system, far exceeds the foreseeable physical assets of the world economy as a whole. At this point, the U.S. economy is kept from collapsing under the increasing threat of general financial disorder, only by the nearly depleted ability of governments to continue subsidizing the existing monetary-financial bubble with new masses of nominal, essentially fictitious, even electronic-printing-press monetary assets.

So, Europe's Lombard banking system plunged itself into the Fourteenth-Century New Dark Age, during which no less than an estimated one-third of the existing population-level was wiped out. Now, as then, the crucial political issue is: shall government cancel, or defer payment of the unpayable portion of hyperinflated financial debt: or shall financier interest loot the government and its population to the degree of causing a recurrence of something resembling that New Dark Age? Shall the government protect the nation and its people, or defend the private financier interest by destroying much of its own population? Nothing less deadly than that is the choice before the nations now. That has been, increasingly, the general state of world affairs for more and more of the world, since the October 1987 collapse on the U.S. stock exchange.

The nexus of modern society's financial crises and wars, is essentially the following.

As long as nations remain sovereign, they have the lawful authority, under the superior rule of natural law, to put bankrupt financial institutions into receivership for government-supervised financial reorganization. This means the authority to extinguish the fictive existence of useless enterprises and financial claims, and to sustain and promote those bankrupt, public or private enterprises which are needed in service of the essential public interest. In such proceedings, the natural-law principle known by such names as “the general welfare” and “common good,” rightly prevails over contrary claims which might be advanced by special interests. Under conditions such as those, the usurious shareholder-interest becomes the menacing adversary of the very existence of any government which is committed to the natural-law principle of the general welfare. Under such conditions, predatory wars between nations, become likely. Under such conditions, the impulse from among much of private financier interest, is expressed as the wish either to destroy the existence of all sovereign nation-states, or to reduce existing nations or other forms of local self-government to mere objects of some form of an imperial rule established on behalf of rentier-financier interests.

The Shelburne Syndrome

In medieval and modern European history, the relevant model for new empires is the Rome of the Caesars, as the British East India Company's Lord Shelburne's imperial will was expressed by such among his lackeys, as the historian Gibbon, the so-called economist Adam Smith, and the leader of his Secret Committee, Jeremy Bentham. The case of Shelburne's decades-long preparations, since 1763, for, and direction of the period of the successive phases of the 1789-1815 French Revolution, is the model for such a modern European form of that quality of imperial design.

However, to understand extended European history since 1789, we must add a qualification. Although Shelburne's referenced model of Empire is that of the Caesars, the more immediate variety of that model is that of that de facto imperial maritime power of the financier oligarchy of medieval Venice, an imperial power which Venice maintained through such forms of collaboration with the Norman chivalry as those so-called Crusades of the interval from the Norman conquest of England, deep into the Thirteenth Century. During the course of the Seventeenth Century, the emergence of the Anglo-Dutch Liberal model of imperial maritime power as the successor to Venice, a power exerted by a financier oligarchy, emerged to become the principal factor in determining the history of European civilization to date. On this account, the British East India Company of the Eighteenth Century defined itself as “the Venetian Party.” The development of the doctrine of geopolitics by the British Fabian Society, is symptomatic of the way Shelburne's Britain earlier had seen the imperial conflict between the Anglo-Dutch form of maritime power, and the threats it located in sources of resistance to that maritime power from the Americas and mainland Eurasia.

So, we have the history of Shelburne's fostering and use of that Lyons-centered, Martinist, neo-Dionysian form of freemasonic cult, that of Cagliostro, Mesmer, and Joseph de Maistre, which was behind both the Jacobin Terror and the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte's empire. The operations of this cult were originally conceived and directed to the ends of preventing that 1776-1783 virtual alliance of France and the Americas, and of the League of Armed Neutrality, which was, at that time, the principal challenge to the imperial designs of Shelburne's British East India Company. The alliance of Spain's Charles III with both the American and French cause, represented, together with the broad sympathy for the cause of U.S. Independence across pre-1789 Europe, a massive threat to the future power of the emerging British empire.

The proposal by Shelburne's lackey Gibbon, for the establishment of a paganist revival of the Roman Empire as a British Empire, and the “free trade” dogma of another Shelburne lackey, Adam Smith, were among the most characteristic expressions of the Anglo-Dutch Liberal model which has played a determining role in global extended European history, from that time to the present. Since that time, the model of Napoleon Bonaparte's imperial tyranny has been what became known as, variously, the Synarchist International and fascism, during the decades following the 1914-1917 war. The cultish formation known as Martinists or Synarchists, is, today, as then, the creature of a concert of private financier interests corresponding to the neo-Venetian, Anglo-Dutch Liberal model.

To bring the picture up to date, the following amendment must be taken into account.

The special war-time relationship which developed in June 1940, between U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and then British Defence Secretary Winston Churchill, was premised upon the evidence that certain pro-Hitler forces within the British oligarchy were disposed to join with defeated France in an anti-American, anti-Soviet pact with Hitler's Germany. Churchill was among those in the U.K. whose abhorrence of becoming appendages of Hitler's world empire, prompted them to form a national-patriotic alliance with Roosevelt, against Hitler. Until the war was virtually won, with the 1944 breakthrough at Normandy, even those financier interests of Britain and the U.S.A. which had supported Hitler's rise to power in Germany, remained temporarily loyal to the role of U.S. President Roosevelt's war-time leadership.

After the Normandy breakthrough, a profound shift in loyalties came to the surface, notably in the support for U.S. Senator Harry S Truman's nomination as a Vice-Presidential candidate at the Summer 1944 Democratic Party convention. The nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the brutal military suppression of the independence of former French, Dutch, and other colonies, and Winston Churchill's “Iron Curtain” speech, marked the sharp turn to the wild-eyed right which persisted throughout the Truman Presidency, and was checked, temporarily, by the Presidency of the military traditionalist Dwight Eisenhower.

Since the missiles crisis of 1962 and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, an accelerating process of change came over the U.S.A. and Britain, leading through the U.S. Indo-China war, and through the 1971-72 establishment of the floating-exchange-rate IMF system, into the present, global monetary-financial catastrophe.

Presently, the events of Sept. 11, 2001 have brought the U.S. to the brink of being transformed into an imperial form of fascist dictatorship bent on preventive nuclear wars. Fortunately, the neo-conservative cabal, presently grouped around Vice-President Cheney and Attorney General John Ashcroft, has not yet succeeded in consolidating its intended power, and might be ousted. Nonetheless, it is made clear that a U.S. controlled by that Synarchist interest expressed by the neo-conservatives, is bent upon succeeding where Hitler failed. The difference between 1940 and today, is that, in June 1940, Roosevelt and Churchill cooperated to defend the world from Hitler's global imperial ambitions; whereas, today, the Cheney-Blair partnership typifies the threat of a fascist world empire imposed by an English-speaking interest now centered in what had been formerly President Franklin Roosevelt's war-time U.S.A.

So far, I have done as much as I have actually accomplished in the effort to free the U.S. government from the grip of the so-called neo-conservatives, only because an increasing number of influential patriots have acted in support of what I have been doing in leading the internal resistance to the circles associated with Cheney and Ashcroft. The U.S. of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt has become virtually a sleeping, now slowly awakening giant inside the U.S. institutions. The neo-conservatives and their financial backers are still but a vulnerable, actually tiny, if extremely aggressive minority, which can be defeated if the giant is fully aroused in time. My objective is to rely upon awakening that sleeping giant, so that we might succeed today where true heros such as Bailly and Lafayette were defeated by the sundry post-1787 follies of a French King and his Habsburg wife, in July 1789. For us, Bailly, Lafayette, Lazare Carnot, and their like are not forgotten; they are our comrades-in-arms in the continuing battle for the cause of civilization. Their war goes on, in our time, and by our hands.

The point has been reached, at which that Synarchist threat could be, and must not merely be defeated, as it was only set back in June 1940. This time, the existence of contemporary means of warfare requires that the Synarchist threat must be eradicated, and the private rentier-financier interest of so-called “shareholder value,” must be tucked safely into appropriately regulated constitutional cages within which its inbred, Venetian disposition for rapacity can be kept under control. We have no choice but to act so; the human and related costs of a new land-war in Asia would be too great for any among us to allow the conditions for that war to be brought about.

2. The Eurasian Option

The 1971-1972 creation of the decadent, floating-exchange-rate mode of the IMF monetary-financial system, has produced a complex of paradoxical shifts in the relations among Europe, English-speaking North America, and Australia-New Zealand, on the one side, and the rise of some of the leading economies of East, Southeast, and South Asia.

As a result of a 1971-1972 rigging of the international monetary-financial markets—a rigging effected through agencies including the IMF and World Bank—the relative value of currencies has been rigged to the effect of lowering the relative value of currencies in nations exploited for cheap-labor production of exports for consumption by the G-7 economies; meanwhile, the G-7 economies, led by the U.S.A. and U.K., have been destroying their own relatively “high-priced” forms of basic economic infrastructure and productive employment. The gamblers have taken over the economy, and transformed our farms and factories into virtual mere casinos.

Thus, the 1971-2003 interval has accomplished the common ruin of the prevalent conditions of life of the majorities of populations, in both the G-7 nations, and many of the so-called developing nations, while sending sub-Saharan Africa to a sojourn in Hell. In this process, the internal economies of the G-7 nations, have shifted their essential characteristics, from their former role as producer societies, into an increasingly parasitical, decadent form of “consumer,” or “pleasure” societies, a turn reminiscent of the decadence of ultimately doomed ancient imperial Rome. The U.S.A. and U.K. have led in this process, since about the time of the first Harold Wilson government of the U.K.; but, the economies of continental Europe and Japan have also moved in the same general, downward direction.

In this process, there has been a relative advance in the relative technological competitiveness of certain nations of East, Southeast, and South Asia, led by, notably, China, India, South Korea, and Malaysia. This pattern among those nations within Asia is complemented by Japan's continued, but declining success as an industrial-export nation, despite the downshift toward some post-industrial habits, especially since the mid-1980s impact of the notorious “Plaza Accords.” Meanwhile, the growth of population in this region, as typified by the cases of India and China, requires a large increase in long-term investment in basic economic infrastructure, long-term investment with increasing emphasis on investment high-technology capital goods. The leading requirement is for rapid increase in long-term gains in productivity per capita and per square kilometer; and, as in the case of China, transforming large areas within its territory into the form of prosperous future communities. The complementary requirement, is for the development of mineral and other natural resources needed to feed the requirements in the more densely populated regions of that continent.

These combined requirements define a new quality of natural partnership of: on the one side, East, Southeast, and South Asia; on the other side, Western and Central Europe; and, in the middle, the characteristically Eurasian economies of the CIS nations. So, Japan has no reasonable economic future, unless it shifts back to a role as a hard-commodity exporter, especially of capital goods, especially to the growing market represented by its neighbors in Asia. The present markets for high-value hard-commodity products from Western and Central Europe, are represented, on the one hand, by high-gain development in East, Southeast, and South Asia, and also the potential Eurasian market typified by Russia and Kazakstan, which must play a crucial mediating role in economic relations between Europe and the indicated nations of East, Southeast, and South Asia.

The fulsome realization of the great objective economic potential this represents for all those partners, requires a new monetary-financial system of relatively fixed exchange-rates within Eurasia. Under such a reformed system, the credit needed to generate adequate flows of hard-commodity exports, can be generated largely through long-term treaty-agreements designed to create the needed state-backed credits for such growing volumes of trade. Implicitly, this requires a new international monetary-financial system, as the context within which Eurasian development proceeds over the coming terms of twenty-five to fifty years of capital cycling (two generations).

This also requires a subsumed system of long-term protective pricing arrangements, and related tariff and trade agreements. In general, the states which become party to such agreements must recognize, that the essential responsibility of a government, in creating an issue of national currency, is to take such regulatory measures as are necessary to prevent the price of money from soaring above the former price of standard market-baskets of physical goods and essential services.

That much said, we must now recognize that the attempt to define costs and prices on the basis of competition within a monetary system, is useful only up to a certain limit. When the implications of factors such as basic economic infrastructure are taken into account, policy-shaping must shift emphasis from monetary, to physical-economic considerations. We must examine the situation from the standpoint of the principles of physical economy, rather than some form of monetary doctrine.

Money and Physical Economy

The remaining key question is twofold. First, how should Eurasia develop its economy at this point in history. Second, what is the specific role which the U.S.A. should play in a world which must tend to become dominated by a new Eurasian development-process?

The needed keystone of the arch of progress in Eurasia, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and to the Indian Ocean, is not money-economy, but physical economy. When we add regard for the future role of the mineral and related potential of North and Central Asia, physical economy means the principles implied by scientist V.I. Vernadsky's notion of the Noösphere. I mean the view of both the ecology and economy of our planet from the standpoint of reference of the three great, phase-space classes of universal physical principles, abiotic, biotic, and noëtic, as defined by Vernadsky's extension of the notion of experimental physical chemistry to the larger domain of geobiochemistry.

As I look at the Eurasian continent from my standpoint in the history of my own republic, the United States, modern European civilization has been divided, by opinion, among principally three, distinct concepts of economy. One of these three, is national economy, a concept of physical economy which the founders of the U.S. republic derived from the successive contributions of France's Jean-Baptiste Colbert and Leibniz's founding of physical economy as a body of science. The second, is the Anglo-Dutch Liberal model, often called “capitalism” today, as codified by the British East India Company's Haileybury School of Shelburne's crew, by such Shelburne lackeys as Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham. The third is the range of socialist models associated variously with the continental social-democracy and the Soviet system. The collapse of the Soviet and Comecon economies, toward the close of the 1980s, was often perceived by the credulous Americans and Europeans as final proof of the superiority of the Anglo-Dutch Liberal version of “capitalism”; unfortunately for all concerned, the world's most successful form of modern economy, the American System of political-economy of Franklin, Hamilton, Friedrich List, and Henry C. Carey, was not taken into the general equation during that 1989-1992 interval.

Now, the hegemonic present world economic system, a radical version of the imperial British East India Company model, is gripped by the closing phase of a decades-long slide into its present state of general collapse. The characteristic feature of this collapse is the inevitable outcome of any system of political-economy which pursues the increase of nominal monetary and financial values by means of the destruction of the physical-productive forces of what Vernadsky defined as the Noösphere. The currently onrushing general collapse of the U.S. system of generation and distribution of power, a collapse caused by that predatory financial speculation set in motion by deregulation of that system, typifies the mental disease which must now be eradicated from the world's economic thinking. What must be eradicated is blind religious-cult-like belief in that London-born cut-purse of usury, the alleged god of Bernard Mandeville and Adam Smith known as “The Invisible Hand.” What must be eradicated, in effect, is what has become known as the contemporary, radically monetarist definition of “capitalism.” What is required is something which is neither the former Soviet model, nor the Anglo-Dutch Liberal model. What is required is a new global standard for measuring the performance of a money-economy, the standard of physical economy. A glance at some essential features of the work of Vernadsky provides the best way of approaching such a review of the history of the world's present political-economic crisis.

The historical root of the present problem is the known history of forms of society, such as legendary Sparta or imperial Rome, in which some people hunted, or herded and culled populations of other people as they were human forms of cattle. The essential immorality of these forms of society was that they, in both doctrine and practice, denied the existence of a fundamental distinction between man and beast. For, if man were merely a beast, than how else should society be composed, but as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke prescribed, as man behaving as a beast toward man, man as a candidate for the Lockean status of another man's property.

In the Anglo-Dutch Liberal model, and its economic dogmas, there is no room for the role of that which sets the human individual apart from and above the mere beasts, the role of what Vernadsky defines as the specifically human, no‰tic principle of Classical scientific and artistic composition. The entirety of the true progress of modern European civilization and its influence, since Europe's Fifteenth Century, has been premised on elevating all persons to their recognizable place as apart from and above the beasts, as persons whose economic and cultural development to higher powers is the principal obligation of that modern state sometimes known as a “commonwealth.” So, national territories ceased to be mere farms on which landlords milked or culled human cattle; modern Europe began to transform those mere farms, thus, into nation-states governed by their obligation to promote the general welfare of all humanity within that realm.

In respect to the role of physical science as such, the source of physical-economic progress, as measured per capita and per square kilometer, is the application of technologies which are derived from the discovery of universal physical principles. No true profit is generated within any economy except as the fruit of the kind of change in cultural practice typified by scientific and technological progress. It is by means of this noëtic capacity, and nothing else, that mankind's population has been increased from the potential of several millions living individuals, available to species of higher apes, to more than six billions today. To call anything else “profit,” is to make the name of “profit” a dirty word fit only for the mouths of such depraved creatures as thieves and gamblers.

This specifically human faculty is reflected in mathematical physics by that notion of the complex domain which Carl Gauss specified, in opposition to a sophistry by Euler and Lagrange, in a 1799 paper; a Gaussian notion developed to a certain degree of approximate completeness by Bernhard Riemann.

The related, essential concept bearing upon a science of physical economy, is the understanding that the human sense-organs are part of our biological apparatus, such that our senses shadow the impact of the real universe around us, but imperfectly. As the point is illustrated by modern progress in microphysics, there exist universal physical principles, beyond the direct reach of sense-perception, which we discover as experimentally proven mental solutions to the paradoxes of sense-perception. The significance of the mathematically complex domain for physics, is that it reflects the discrepancy between the shadow-world of sense-perception, and the real universe behind the shadows.

These solutions, as they appear in the domains of both physical science and Classical artistic composition, represent the accumulated heritage of present and preceding generations of mankind, combined, and are the principles by aid of which mankind is able to increase its potential relative population-density as no other species can imitate this. The crucial implication of this for political-economy, is that true profit of an economy as a whole is produced solely as the result of the application of accumulated discoveries of this sort. This poses the crucial problem of all attempts to define a rational form of economic science. The task is to foster that cultural progress associated with the notion of scientific and technological progress; there is no other source, than that, of true profit, of true value.

The great paradox of economy is that true human creativity, as typified by the discovery of experimentally validated universal physical principles, occurs only within the sovereign bounds of the individual personality. However, the realization of these discoveries occurs only through a social process, and also requires those forms of mankind's alteration of the total area of habitation which economists classify as basic economic infrastructure. In a viable form of modern economy, no less than approximately half of the total expenditure of economic effort of society must be allotted to the development and maintenance of basic economic infrastructure. Money is properly created, and managed, only by the sovereign nation-state, and used as a necessary, useful-fictional bridge between the individual and the reality of social processes of the national economy as an integrated process.

This is reflected in the American System of political-economy, as described by Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, as a necessary general division of labor between entrepreneurial ventures such as those of agriculture and manufactures, and the responsibility of government for developing the basic economic infrastructure of the area of the whole nation. In that system, the physical functions of a notion of entrepreneurship premised on sovereign individual powers of creativity—not so-called “shareholder values”—constitute the accepted notion of the legal right to exist of business enterprises. The recent decades of systemic destruction of the true entrepreneur, as in the U.S.A. and Germany, in favor of the financier's large corporations, typifies the means by which the spread of something worse than economic mediocrity has infested the Americas and Europe. The hypocrites of these times speak much of “human freedom,” but do all in their financial-corporate power to crush actual creativity out of its rightful essential place in the economy at large.

Meanwhile, the mental disease called “free trade,” has the effect of driving prices on the world market to levels below the true cost of production. The result is a vast destruction of essential physical capital in both the private production of goods and in essential basic economic infrastructure of such categories as production and distribution of power, water management and general sanitation, mass transport of people and goods within both the nation at large and the local communities, and in health-care and education. The result of the recent decades rampage of monetarist “free trade” dogmas has been a disastrous lowering of the physical income of much of even that portion of the world which had been generators of net physical progress earlier. In effect, the actually produced physical income has fallen, as in the U.S.A. today, below that needed to produce the labor-force at its recent levels.

Money is, by its nature, worse than an idiot, and knows nothing about real economy. Money is needed as a mediation of the role of the creative individual within the society at large; but, money must be regulated to the following included effects: a.) That the price of goods sold must be “a fair price,” which reflects nothing less than the true physical price of production, including the physical costs to society of public infrastructure; b.) That the price of labor must reflect the true costs of producing and maintaining the family household at levels of physical improvement consistent with the adopted goals of economic progress; c.) That the accounted costs of improving and replenishing the environment in ways consistent with the long-term goals of society, must include mankind's management and improvement of the Biosphere and its essential abiotic substructure.

The latter consideration strikes with great force as we turn to the physical-economic role of the regions of Central and North Asia in the present and future development of the growing economies of Eurasia as a whole. We have come to the threshold of the need to think of managing and replenishing of the essential mineral resources of that region in accord with the increasing per-capita needs of the growing populations of regions such as East, Southeast, and South Asia.

‘The Advantage of the Other’

The crucial political challenge in Eurasia today, is the need to overcome the discrepancy between perceived and actual self-interest of nations and peoples. Currently, Western and Central Europe need East, Southeast, and South Asia, and those regions of Asia need Europe. For both parties, the fulfilment of that need requires the success of the progress of the other. Asia's success depends upon the benefits supplied from Europe, and Europe's economic security requires the successful growth of the economies of Asia. Both require the keystone cooperation of that Eurasian nation known as Russia. Both require the unleashing of Russia's largely fallow economic-technological potential; and Russia needs the needs of Europe and Asia on this account. The future of all of these requires the relevant development of Central and North Asia.

This specific concept was put forward by the peace-maker Cardinal Mazarin during the period of the 1618-1648 Thirty Years War. The desired outcome of the Treaty of Westphalia was expressed by the work of Mazarin's collaborator, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, in launching the general revival of the economy of France and the scientific progress of all Europe, during the period preceding the great follies of France's King Louis XIV.

The crippling folly of Europe since Louis XIV pushed Colbert from power, has been Europe's general accession, to the present day, to the independent power, superimposed upon the will of governments, of consortia of private merchant-bankers and related financial institutions: the contemporary institution of the “independent central banking system.” Originally, the 1787-1789 establishment of the Federal Constitution of the U.S.A., had banned private financier institutions from exerting control over the currency and credit of the U.S. republic. This had been intended to spread to a constitutional reform of France's monarchy, and, thence, to other parts of Europe. The intervention of the London-directed French Revolution prevented that. Since that time, a relatively weakened, or betrayed U.S. government has consented to domination of the U.S. economy by the influence of the British gold standard-system, or, more directly, the U.S. Federal Reserve System installed in the interest of British King Edward VII's New York City asset Jacob Schiff.

However, President Abraham Lincoln had reactivated that Constitutional authority, as President Franklin Roosevelt did, to a large degree, later. The original constitutional design of the U.S. republic gives that authority to the U.S. Federal government; even in the darkest periods, the tradition of that authority lurks, ready to strike to regain its original authority.

In contrast, the Anglo-Dutch Liberal model of parliamentary government is inherently enslaved to the yoke of an independent central banking system. As the history of Europe shows, since 1789, the combined effect of a Habsburg legacy and its rival, the Anglo-Dutch Liberal model, has led to many awful upheavals in European governments, upheavals which reflect, chiefly, the inherent weaknesses built into the Anglo-Dutch Liberal model. Thus, despite the great Civil War which Britain's Lord Palmerston orchestrated in the U.S.A., the U.S. Federal Constitution remains essentially intact, as a form of government today; no nation of Europe, barring the special case of Switzerland, could claim the same.

This means, that if, and when the U.S.A. returns to the original intention assigned to it by the great European Classical humanist movement which sponsored its coming-into-being, it has a special kind of inherent moral authority which could, and must be put to work to the advantage of the world at this present time of crisis. There are two points on which this historically determined, potential role of the U.S.A. is of special importance to the world at large. First, to help in inducing other nations to free themselves from the tyranny of so-called independent central banking systems. Second, to project the intention referenced by the United States' John Quincy Adams for the Americas, in particular, and, implicitly, for the world in general: the establishment of a community of principle among sovereign nation-states. That principle is what the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia recognized as “the advantage of the other.”

In contrast, unfortunately, the notion of a multipolar world implies a peaceful arrangement among a collection of individually Hobbesian states. The logic of such a simplistic defense of national sovereignty, is that it leads toward what that pair of

There must be an affirmative principle, not an a priori one, but rooted in reality, as any scientific principle is. The principle

We have passed the time that war should be considered for anything but strategic defense, and that danger itself avoided by developing a community of nations each dedicated to the advantage of the other. The challenge of today's Eurasian continent has become thus the principal battlefield of ideas on whose outcome the future of humanity will depend for generations to come. The United States must, hopefully, play its part in service of that cause.

LaRouche Gives 'Wake-Up Call' To Moscow Conference on China

By karl-michael vitt.

On September 23-25, 2003, the 14th Conference on “China, Chinese Civilization and the World: Past, Present and Future,” took place in Moscow. The main subject of this year's conference was: “China in the 21st Century—Chances and Challenges of Globalization.” Among the organizers were the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Academic Council for Comprehensive Studies of Contemporary China, the Institute of Far Eastern Studies, and the Russian Association of Sinologists. The conference was dedicated to 87-year-old Academician S.L. Tikhvinsky, one of the leading Sinologists of Russia during the past decades. Tikhvinsky was among the speakers who opened the conference, which was attended by approximately 250 people.

A delegation of 30 high-level representatives had come from China, representing different scientific institutions which assist the Chinese government and Communist Party. In addition to foreign diplomats and Sinologists who had travelled to Moscow, there were also numerous experts on the Far East from other cities all over Russia. But the largest section of the attendees came from scientific institutes in Moscow associated with the Academy of Sciences, or working under direction of the government.

The opening of the congress was reported by journalists from China and Russia.

Schiller Institute Delegation

Among the foreign guests was a delegation of the Schiller Institute, around American Presidential candidate Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. The Congress began on the eve of Russian President Putin's visit to the United States, and of the visit of the Russian Prime Minister to China. How should Chinese-Russian relations develop in the present world situation? Should the unilateralism of the present U.S. government be answered only with the concept of a multipolar world? Should the U.S.A., which is hit by an economic and financial crisis, be left to itself, until it implodes and collapses, as the Roman Empire did in the past? Should one only care about one's own problems and try to move ahead slowly, in good neighborly relations? These questions, LaRouche addressed for the conference.

To prove to be a friend of the United States, but not to support the imperial course, seems the right course to many Russians and Chinese; they argue from the strong economic growth in China, or the sound financial position of the Russian government because of the income from oil and gas deals. Therefore, many looked forward to LaRouche's speech, to hear the voice of the opposition in the U.S.A.; several representatives attended only for that purpose. Because of his numerous visits to Russia since 1994, he is highly respected. The two last visits were in 2001: in June of that year, LaRouche addressed a hearing on the global financial crisis, held by the Economic Committee of the Russian State Duma; and in December, he spoke at a conference commemorating scientist Pobisk Kuznetzov.

The conference was opened by the director of the Institute of Far Eastern Studies, Academician M.L. Titarenko, who concentrated on the stabilizing role which China plays in the Southeast Asian region, and therefore in the world, today, and has played in the past. Particularly following the financial crisis which hit these countries hard in 1997, China helped the region regain stability, through credits. But this was not understood in the United States; otherwise, one could not explain why America, after 12 years of a stable exchange rate with China, now wants to change it to China's disadvantage. Titarenko also stressed China's peacemaking role in overcoming the North Korean crisis. Here, too, the United States should acknowledge that China's wise approach will contribute to solving the conflict, he said.

Following remarks by the honored Academician Tikhvinsky, a high-level diplomat from the Chinese Embassy in Russia, Jhou Li, spoke, representing the ambassador, who was engaged with the Russian prime minister's visit to Beijing. The diplomat praised the extraordinary role which the Institute of Far Eastern Studies has, for Russian-Chinese relations. In particular, cooperation of scientists from the two countries, Jhou said, was of enormous significance. He described the globalization process in the world, and contrasted to it the economic successes of his country. He particularly stressed the development of Russian-Chinese cooperation in the energy sector, as crucial for China's growing economy, and urged that the two countries continue to build energy infrastructure, like pipelines for gas and oil. However, he added, cooperation should not be limited to the energy sector. Cooperation in high technologies and science are also extremely important. Here, Zhou stressed an important point for Russia; it is currently running the risk of becoming a raw-materials exporter. High technology sectors and machine-building were and must remain areas of Russia's strength.

Importance of Nations' Community of Principle

LaRouche's presentation (see box, and advance publication in full in EIR , Oct. 3, and at www.larouchepub.com) highlighted the importance of these high-technology economic sectors of Russia, for the development of its cooperation with China and other countries of Southeast Asia.

One well-known Russian professor commented on LaRouche's speech, saying that what was of particular importance was LaRouche's description of the “hawk” or war party around Vice President Dick Cheney, their intentions, and the danger which they represent for the whole world. One can not leave such a United States to run its own course in the current situation, this expert said; LaRouche's concept of a community of principle among sovereign nation-states, especially the “strategic triangle” of Russia, China and India, is of great importance.

Through vast infrastructure development in Eurasia, the world economy can regain stability, when it is threatened especially in light of the U.S. budget and foreign trade deficits. The U.S. trade deficit with China alone is annually $80 billion. This means, that when the U.S. economy is shaken, China's economic success will be suddenly overthrown. Thus LaRouche's speech, the professor continued, came just at the right moment.

Another experienced scientist noted after the conference, that the participants were all very much impressed by the way LaRouche had presented the policy of the current U.S. Administration, as well as the connection he made between the ongoing systemic financial crisis, and the danger of a nuclear conflict which could evolve as a result of the Cheney faction's weakness. LaRouche's comparison of the present situation with the strategic picture in 1940, when Churchill allied with Roosevelt against the Synarchist alliance of Hitler, Franco, and Vichy France, was considered very appropriate. In addition, LaRouche's future-oriented development perspective for the Far East, which could be realized through cooperation among Russia, Japan, Korea, and other Southeast Asian countries, were warmly welcomed by the conference participants, who saw in it, hope for securing peace. One Russian “insider” called the speech a wake-up call for Russians still slumbering about the grave global strategic and economic threats. Conference director Titarenko, too, underlined that LaRouche's intervention had left a deep impression on all those present.

Russia's Relationship to Universal History- LaRouche - 1996 article

LaRouche Dec. 15, 2001 Address to CEMI Forum, Moscow, Russia

Schiller Institute-Strategic Studies- Us Strategic Interest in Russia

Bad Schwalbach, Academician Vladimir S. Myasnikov

LaRouche Interviewed in Russian Entrepreneur-Magazine - Oct. 30, 2001 Schiller Institute

L. LaRouche, S. Glazyev and S.Menshikov Keynote Panel May 2001 Schiller Institute Conference

Russian Scientists Discuss Ideas of LaRouche and Vernadsky

Fidelio Article - Schiller Institute-The Promise of Mikhail Lermontov

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Lyndon and Helga LaRouche Dialogues, 2003

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