Democracy

Tony Benn, Former Member of Parliament (UK) from the movie SiCKO:

See it all began with democracy, before we had the vote, all the power was in the hands of the rich people. If you had money, you could get health care, education, look after yourself when you were old, and what democracy did was to give the poor the vote and it moved the power from the marketplace to the polling station. From the wallet to the ballot!

And what they said was very simple. In the 1930s, we had mass unemployment, but we don’t have unemployment during the war. If you can have full employment by killing the Germans, why can’t we have unemployment by building hospitals, building schools, recruiting nurses, recruiting teachers? If you can find money to kill people, you can find money to help people.

…

I think democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the world. Far more revolutionary than socialist ideas, or any body else’s idea. Because if you have power, you use it to meet the needs of you and your community. And this idea of choice, which capital always talks about all the time, you got to have a choice; choice depends on the freedom to choose. If you are shackled with debt, you don’t have the freedom to choose.

The people in debt become hopeless and the hopeless people don’t vote. See they say everyone should vote, but I think if the poor in Britain or the US turned out and voted for people who represented their interests, it would be a real democratic revolution. So they don’t want it to happen, keeping people hopeless and pessimistic.

See I think there are two ways in which people are controlled. First of all frighten people, and secondly demoralize them. An educated, healthy, and confident nation is harder to govern. And I think there is an element in the thinking of some people: we don’t want people to be educated, healthy, and confident because they would get out of control.

The top 1% of the world’s population and 80% of the world’s wealth…its incredible people put up with it. But, they are poor, they are demoralized, they are frightened, and therefore they think perhaps the safest thing to do is to take orders and hope for the best.