TONY BENN: No. What's happened is big corporations have seized governments and taken them over, making the state much stronger in the interest of cor… - Tony Benn

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TONY BENN: No. What's happened is big corporations have seized governments and taken them over, making the state much stronger in the interest of corporate finance. That's what has happened. The state in Great Britain is much more powerful than it was when Mrs. Thatcher came to power. She destroyed trade unions, she destroyed local government, she limited free speech, and she recruited a lot of riot police. So the idea that market forces have weakened the state is nonsense. It's been strengthened. The people who control market forces have taken over the state. I met an old governor of Ohio a year ago, and he said to me, "You'll never have democracy while big business buys both parties and expects a payoff from whichever one wins." We're not represented anymore. We're managed on behalf of global capitalism, and that's why in Seattle and Prague and everywhere else in the world, people are beginning to stir, because they realize they're being managed now. Nobody represents them.