The demand for more popular power is building up most insistently in industry, and the pressure for industrial democracy has now reached such a point… - Tony Benn

Even relatively benign and temporary authoritarianism that rests upon elected power is being challenged. We are moving rapidly towards a situation where the pressure for the redistribution of political power will have to be faced as a major political issue. In a world where authoritarianism of the left or right is a very real possibility, the question of whether ordinary people can govern themselves by consent is still on trial—as it always has been, and always will be. Beyond parliamentary democracy as we know it, we shall have to find a new popular democracy to replace it.

TONY BENN: In 1945 in the election, I drove a loudspeaker van around in the campaign, and we went to Covent Garden, and there was a guy called Knocker O'Connell. ... He did a political poem for me, and one line was this: "'F' stands for freedom, what Britain brags about. If you can't afford your dinner, you're free to go without." And that was the sort of freedom that capitalists believed in. You were free to starve if you weren't rich. This idea that keeping people down is the way you get freedom is ridiculous, because the world is dominated by multinational corporations that have never been elected. You can't get rid of them. How do you get rid of Bill Gates? You can't do it. But at least you can get rid of Clinton or Blair or Major or Bush. You can't get rid of corporations. And they are the ones who are dictating what sort of a world we live in. I think capitalism has one thing in common with communism: They both detest democracy. I used to go to Moscow on ministerial visits, and I'd meet the central committee for the Communist Party, and they had not been elected. And I would meet the commissars, and they had not been elected. And then I'd go on a ministerial visit to Brussels, and I'd meet the commissioners; they hadn't been elected. I'd meet the central bankers; they hadn't been elected. Communism and capitalism want to run society from the top, and you're allowed to decide whether your want Bush or Gore or Blair or Major, but you're not allowed to discuss capitalism in Russia or socialism in the West. Do you see what I mean? It's a very interesting thing to observe. Market forces destroy democracy by putting money above the voting machine or the ballot box.

Capitalism and British imperialism have exploited the world; and what I fear is that the only form of capitalism you could have would be a military form of capitalism, like Pinochet’s in Chile.