I think democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the world.
Far more revolutionary than socialist ideas, or anybody else's idea.
But if you have power,
you use it to meet the needs of your community.
And this idea of choice that Capitol[ism]
talks about all the time, "you gotta have a choice",
Choice depends on the freedom to choose.
And if you're shackled in debt, you don't have a freedom to choose.
It seems that it benefits the system,
If the average working person is shackled and is in debt?
Yes, because people in debt
become hopeless, and hopeless people don't vote.
See, they always say that everyone should vote
But I think, if the poor
in Britain or the United States turned out
and voted for people representing their interests, it would be
a real democratic revolution. So they don't want it to happen.
So keeping people hopeless and pessimistic...
See, I think there are 2 ways in which people get controlled:
first of all, frightening people, and second, you demoralize them.
An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern.
And I think there's 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 own 80 percent of the world's wealth.
It's incredible, the people put up with it,
but they're poor, they're demoralized, they're frightened.
And therefore, they think,
"Perhaps the safest thing to do is to take orders and hope for the best."
Well, if you go back, it all began with democracy,
before we had the vote.
All the power was in the hands of rich people.
If you had money, you could get health care, education,
look after yourself when you're old, and what democracy did,
was to give the poor the vote.
And it moved power from the market-place
to the police station. From the...
wallet to the ballot.
And what people said was very simple.
They said, "In the 1930's, we had mass unemployment.
"But we don't have any unemployment during the war.
"If we could have full employment by killing Germans,
"why can't we have it building hospitals,
"building schools, recruiting nurses, recruiting teachers?"
If you can find money to kill people, you can find money to help people.
This certainly flipped the pos[ition on the] issue
very straight forward.
This was 1948.
"Your new national health service begins on the fifth of July.
"What is it? How'd you get it?
"It will provide you with all medical, dental and nursing care.
"Everyone, rich or poor, men, women or child could use it or any part of it.
"There are no charges except for a few special item.
"There's no insurance qualification, but it's not a charity.
"You're paying for it mainly as tax payers
"and it will relieve your money worries in times of illness."
Now... Somehow, that-- the few words sum the whole thing up.
Even Mrs. Thatcher said,
"the nation health service is safe in our hands."
It's... as non-controversial as vote for women.
Nobody could come along and say why women should[n't] have the vote now
because people wouldn't have it, and not in Britain.
They wouldn't accept
the deterioration or destruction of the national health care.
If Thatcher or Blair had said "I'm going to dismantle National Healthcare..."
That would be the revolution, yeah.
