The Hamilton statue at Paterson National Park, home of his Society for Useful Manufactures
July 3, 2022
Alexander Hamilton, one of the most outstanding of our Founding Fathers, designed the scientific economic principles that built the United States into an industrialized power. He succeeded, with the support of President George Washington, in creating a manufacturing sector for the agrarian based 13 colonies. Hamilton was opposed by Thomas Jefferson, who led a campaign to prevent the industrial development of the young republic. We must succeed today against those who are intent in keeping African nations underdeveloped, economically held back by inefficient agricultural sectors.
My colleague, Nancy Spannaus, creator of the website: americansystemnow.com, discusses the contributions of Alexander Hamilton in her article below. Hamilton’s economic principles should be studied and applied by African nations today to ensure a prosperous future for their expanding population.
Without the industrialization of African nations with robust manufacturing and agricultural sectors, poverty, hunger, and insecurity, will not be eliminated.
Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in economic development policies for Africa for over 30 years. He is a teacher, writer, public speaker, and consultant on Africa. He is also the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com. Mr. Freeman’s stated personal mission is; to eliminate poverty and hunger in Africa by applying the scientific economic principles of Alexander Hamilton.
Ben Franklin, scientist, philosopher, and statesman, who helped establish the republican principles that were and are the foundation of the United States of America
Mr. Chaitkin is a longtime colleague of mine who expresses the aspirations of many Americans, like me, who want to see the United States disseminate its profound founding principles, not provoke unnecessary war. We, the United States, at our core, are far superior to our current practice of resorting to war and sanctions as the primary means of conducting foreign policy.
“Americans who cherish our country’s legacy are horrified by our headlong rush to war. America at its best was the very motor of world progress, higher living standards and peace.
“That is our true national identity. We betray “the better angels of our nature” by making military threats against those who are advancing world powers, as we once were. We commit suicide when we dishonor historic agreements that keep the world safe from nuclear annihilation.”
Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in economic development policies for Africa for over 30 years. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com. Mr. Freeman’s stated personal mission is; to eliminate poverty and hunger in Africa by applying the scientific economic principles of Alexander Hamilton.
Dr Arkebe Oqubay speaking during virtual TIPS 2020 Forum meeting
August 4, 2020
All three articles in this post highlight the essential role of infrastructure in building real economic growth in African nations as well as the United States. We are living in a perilous period of economic breakdown and loss of hundreds of thousands of lives due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Millions of impoverished people around the world are threatened with hunger, and tens of millions more are being forced into poverty and extreme poverty as a result of this dual crisis. Massive development of infrastructure, including nuclear energy, should be financed through public sector credit and a National Infrastructure Bank as part of a “New Economic Architecture,” which is urgently required. The economic principles to finance infrastructure and an expanding agro-manufacturing sector was brilliantly put forth by President George Washington’s Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton*. The levels of infrastructure required cannot be done by relying on the so called free-market, but must be accomplished by government intervention. When people are dying and suffering, you do not depend on the “markets.” Nations have the obligation to provide for the general welfare of their citizens.
Without infrastructure and manufacturing, AfCFTA will fall short – senior African policymaker
“An Ethiopian senior minister and special adviser to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has cautioned that, without major infrastructure investment and the development of manufacturing capacity, African countries will not be in a position to take full advantage of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), which is poised to liberalize trading conditions across 55 countries.”
Dr Arkebe Oqubay has been at the center of Ethiopian industrial policy making for over 25 years. He is the founding Chancellor of the Addis Ababa Science and Technology University (AASTU), and in 2015 he authored Made in Africa: Industrial Policy in Ethiopia
Plans to expand nuclear-power capacity fourfold by 2035
Kenya expects peak demand to top 22,000 megawatts by 2031
The government looks to expand its nuclear-power capacity fourfold from a planned initial 1,000 megawatts by 2035, the Nuclear Power and Energy Agency said in a report on the National Environment Management Authority’s website. The document is set for public scrutiny before the environmental watchdog can approve it, and pave the way for the project to continue.
President Uhuru Kenyatta wants to ramp up installed generation capacity from 2,712 megawatts as of April to boost manufacturing in East Africa’s largest economy. Kenya expects peak demand to top 22,000 megawatts by 2031, partly due to industrial expansion, a component in Kenyatta’s Big Four Agenda. The other three are improving farming, health care and housing.
The nuclear agency is assessing technologies “to identify the ideal reactor for the country,” it said in the report.
A site in Tana River County, near the Kenyan coast was preferred after studies across three regions, according to the report. The plant will be developed with a concessionaire under a build, operate and transfer model.
Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in the economic development policy of Africa for 30 years. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com
Hamilton Versus Wall Street: The Core Principles Of the American System of Economics By Nancy Bradeen Spannaus
A Review by Lawrence Freeman-March 28 2019
For those followers of our beloved Alexander Hamilton and for those new to his writings, this book is for you. Nancy Spannaus, in her just-released book Hamilton Versus Wall Street, makes a unique contribution to the existing volumes written on Hamilton’s political and economic thoughts. In her relatively short easy-to-read book, she weaves together Hamilton’s revolutionary ideas on political economy that served as the pillars for the creation of the United States, their legacy in the next two centuries of America, and their influence internationally. Throughout her treatise, Spannaus also provides constructive historical analysis of the battle inside the United States to adopt Hamilton’s concepts. This book is a valuable complement to Hamilton’s economic reports and will aid those unfamiliar with his seminal texts. *
Spannaus polemically begins by countering the popular myth that Hamilton was an agent for the banks (Wall Street) against the interests of the “little man,” agrarian society and the states, as espoused by Thomas Jefferson and others. She later devotes entire chapters to Hamilton’s opposition to the British central banking system and Adam Smith, exposing another slander which alleged Hamilton was a supporter of the British aristocracy.
Principles of Political Economy
Unlike like other publications on Hamilton that gloss over or give insufficient attention to Hamilton’s ground-breaking concepts of banking, credit, and manufactures, Spannaus makes a great effort to elaborate Hamilton’s contributions to: “The Core Principles of the American System of Economics.” **
All nations would benefit greatly, if their leaders and citizens studied Hamilton writings. American culture would not be at the low level it is today, if my fellow citizens had been taught Hamilton’s economic theories, which in fact were crucial to the creation of our nation from thirteen indebted, agriculturally-based colonies. Advanced sector countries that are dominated by financial systems dictated by Wall Street and the City of London, and underdeveloped nations that rely on resource extraction and farming, because they lack a manufacturing sector, could learn a great deal from Hamilton.
However, Hamilton’s thinking about economic growth was not limited to the mere production of goods. He understood for society to continually increase the productive powers of the economy, the development of the human mind was essential. Spannaus quotes Hamilton: “To cherish and stimulate the activity of the human mind, by multiplying objects of enterprise, is not among the least considerable of the expedients, by which the wealth of the nations may be promoted.” (p. 28).
Friederich List, a student of Hamilton’s philosophy in the nineteenth century, wrote that “capital of mind, capital of nature, and capital of productive matter” are all essential components to achieve economic progress. (p. 29)
Hamilton’s First National Bank (courtesy ushistory.org)
The Constitution and Public Debt-Credit
Hamilton knew that for a nation to be truly sovereign, it must possess the means to produce the physical wealth necessary to maintain the existence of its citizens and their posterity. It is no coincidence that the Founding Fathers embedded this concept in the profound Preamble to the US Constitution. As Spannaus emphasizes, for Hamilton, the importance of establishing federal credit through the creation of the National Bank, stabilizing the currency, developing the manufacturing capability of the young United Sates, and increasing the wealth of the nation through internal improvements, was coherent with the intent of the Preamble “to form a more perfect Union.”
Hamilton used the “general welfare” clause of the Preamble to justify his revolutionary idea to create a public-private National Bank to consolidate the separate states and establish a unified currency to promote national economic growth. Generations later, in the footsteps of Hamilton, Franklin Roosevelt, who studied Hamilton’s writings, would also rely on the “general welfare” clause to garner support for his New Deal and other programs he initiated to revive the U.S. economy wracked by the Great Depression.
Public Credit, anathema today to virtually all Democratic and Republican leaders, was another key concept Hamilton fought for, knowing that private sector funds and privately-owned banks would never adequately fund a nation’s economic growth, especially for large-scale internal improvements, i.e. infrastructure.
To emphasize the unique role of public credit, Spannaus lists four exceptional periods in U.S. history when the efficacious application of government-issued credit led to a pronounced expansion of the American economy. These are administrations of Presidents George Washington, John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt. (p. 55-56)
In chapter 7, the author concisely summarizes Hamilton’s outlook: “…it is the deliberate increasing of the productive powers of labor through technology, improvements in infrastructure, and the use of government power to create credit that will produce value in the economy.” (p.128) This is more than good advice that all public officials. government leaders, and informed citizens should follow to secure a joyful future for their nation.
In Africa and other underdeveloped regions of the world where nations have suffered from hundreds of years of exploitation of their natural resources, Alexander Hamilton’s wise words should be fully grasped: “The intrinsic wealth of a nation is be measured, not by the abundance of the precious metals contained in it, but by the quantity of the productions of its labor and industry.” (emphasis added p. 1)
*Hamilton wrote four major economic reports for Congress and President George Washington between January 1790 and December 1791: Report on Public Credit; Report on a National Bank; Report on Manufactures; and Opinion as to the Constitutionality of the National Bank.
**This is the subtitle of Hamilton Versus Wall Street.
