It was not a vote for Hohmann or against Merkel - it was a vote for an open society.

Democracy’s great recent successes — in India, Portugal, Spain, Greece — show that our confidence in this system is not misplaced. Being confident of our own future, we are now free of that inordinate fear of communism which once led us to embrace any dictator who joined us in that fear. I’m glad that that’s being changed. For too many years, we’ve been willing to adopt the flawed and erroneous principles and tactics of our adversaries, sometimes abandoning our own values for theirs. We’ve fought fire with fire, never thinking that fire is better quenched with water. This approach failed, with Vietnam the best example of its intellectual and moral poverty. But through failure we have now found our way back to our own principles and values, and we have regained our lost confidence.

If you have a society where a large section believe they are not part of the political discourse, that is a situation for trouble. The Labour election of 1945 was a tremendous victory for democratic ownership of the economy. We need to remember and learn from the lessons.

The fact must be faced that Europe will never return to the practices, conventions and principles of pre-war. There is not only political paralysis in Western Europe; there is a profound lack of confidence in conventional values; and this is true for all social classes. This is accompanied by a deep spiritual malaise arising from a prolonged hesitancy to choose between a number of proffered alternatives. It is probably true that Western Europe would have gone Socialist after the war if Soviet behaviour had not given it too grim a visage. Soviet Communism and Socialism are not yet sufficiently distinguished in many minds. The large Communist votes in Western Europe, especially in France and Italy, are evidence that millions of men and women do not believe that competitive private enterprise has any future; at least of a sort that would commend itself to them. It is extremely doubtful whether the Communist vote is a vote for Communism. It is partly a protest vote and partly a demand for Democratic Socialism after the fashion of the first five years of the British Labour Government.

The days of dictatorship are over. … We have come a long way. Millions of Egyptians and Iraqis have cast their votes at the ballot box. The Palestinians will follow suit.

The toppling of the Berlin Wall. The overthrow of Ceausescu by the people he had so brutally oppressed. The first free elections in Eastern Europe for a generation. The spread of the ideas of market freedom and independence to the very heart of the Soviet Leviathan...Our friends from Eastern Europe reminded us that no force of arms, no walls, no barbed wire can for ever suppress the longing of the human heart for liberty and independence. Their courage found allies. Their victory came about because for forty long, cold years the West stood firm against the military threat from the East. Free enterprise overwhelmed Socialism. This Government stood firm against all those voices raised at home in favour of appeasement. We were criticised for intransigence. Tempted repeatedly with soft options. And reviled for standing firm against Soviet military threats. When will they learn? When will they ever learn?

the political situation in the past year and a half cannot be viewed in simple terms of growing strength of reaction. On the contrary, it is the strength of the democratic mass movement, the overwhelming Roosevelt victory in the 1936 election, and the tremendous growth and strike achievements of the C.I.O. that have caused the economic overlords to organise a widening offensive in an effort to halt and disrupt the legions of democracy. To defeat this offensive, to guarantee for our country "democracy-and more democracy," security, and peace, unity is needed, unity behind the recovery program, unity in the creation in every locality and on a national scale of a democratic front in the elections such as emerged with notable results in the last New York City campaign. The time is short in which to achieve this unity, but it is not yet too late.

[The 1964 General Election] was a decision that not only our industrial system but every aspect of our national life that has been corrupted by the doctrine of a self-perpetuating establishment should give way to an open society where knowing your job would mean more than knowing the right people. It was a decision that national purpose should override sectional interest, that earning money took precedence over making money. It was a decision for change: not change for its own sake, but change, radical and dynamic, for economic and social purpose. It was a decision, in short, that Britain should have a government and that the government should govern.

Translation: On this day, in this holy country, we get the honor for the victory of democracy. (22 March 1992, 1 month before the elections)

The overthrow of communism gave a green light to the unbridled exploitative impulses of Western corporate interests. No longer needing to convince workers that they live better than their counterparts in Russia, and no longer constrained by a competing system, the corporate class is rolling back the many gains that working people in the West have won over the years. Now that the free market, in its meanest form, is emerging triumphant in the East, so will it prevail in the West.

In the 1980s capitalism triumphed over communism. In the 1990s it triumphed over democracy and the market economy.

The struggle of the mass of the people for liberation from the colonial yoke and foreign independence is gaining momentum in the Far East. The leadership of this struggle has passed from the bourgeois nationalists to the Parties which are guided by the teachings of Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin. The struggle for democracy in Japan is one of the fronts of the world democratic movement.