A Quote by Tommy Douglas

Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege.

Tommy Douglas

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Tommy Douglas
Canadian - Priest
October 20, 1904 - February 24, 1986

Political democracy cannot flourish under all economic conditions. Democracy requires an economic system which supports the political ideals of liberty and equality for all. Men cannot exercise freedom in the political sphere when they are deprived of it in the economic sphere.

Mortimer Adler

We still have a lot of work to do when it comes to democracy. We have political democracy but not economic democracy.

Anker Jørgensen

I'm a great aficionado of history. I was deeply affected by seeing the disintegration of any chance of democracy coping with fascism in the Weimar republic, where woolly-minded, well-meaning liberalism actually allowed the forces of darkness to use democracy, to exploit democracy, to overturn democracy.

David Blunkett

Democracy doesn't mean much if people have to confront concentrated systems of economic power as isolated individuals. Democracy means something if people can organize to gain information, to have thoughts for that matter, to make plans, to enter into the political system in some active way, to put forth programs and so on. If organizations of that kind exist, then democracy can exist too. Otherwise it's a matter of pushing a lever every couple of years; it's like having the choice between Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola.

Noam Chomsky

Money power cannot be separated from democratic power without miscarriage and ensuing frustration - political and economic. Democracy implies the sovereignty of man; and, since man cannot be sovereign without the money power, there can not be democracy under the political money system.

E.C. Riegel

Political democracy has failed in the U.S. because there hasn't been economic democracy.

David Dellinger

You can’t have meaningful political democracy without functioning economic democracy.

Noam Chomsky

The ruling class is the rich. . . . And those people are so able to manipulate our democracy that they really control the democracy.

Walter Cronkite

All that socialism means to me, to be very frank with you, is democracy with a small 'd.' I believe in democracy, and by democracy, I mean that, to as great an extent as possible, human beings have the right to control their own lives. And that means that you cannot separate the political structure from the economic structure.

Bernie Sanders

If democracy is control by the people, as it is supposed to be, it is the right form of government. I believe in a complete democracy - individual, political, social, economic. If we really had that, which we don't now, it would be in harmony with divine purpose.

Peace Pilgrim

I believe in a democracy and we live in a democracy. We have a titular head of state as the monarch but without political power.

Jeremy Corbyn

Just as I'm opposed to political fascism, I'm opposed to economic fascism. I think that until major institutions of society are under the popular control of participants and communities, it's pointless to talk about democracy.

Noam Chomsky

We think about democracy, and that's the word that Americans love to use, 'democracy,' and that's how we characterize our system. But if democracy just means going to vote, it's pretty meaningless. Russia has democracy in that sense. Most authoritarian regimes have democracy in that sense.

Timothy D. Snyder

Democracy, taken in its narrower, purely political, sense, suffers from the fact that those in economic and political power possess the means for molding public opinion to serve their own class interests. The democratic form of government in itself does not automatically solve problems; it offers, however, a useful framework for their solution. Everything depends ultimately on the political and moral qualities of the citizenry.

Albert Einstein

For Russia, there is not and there may not be another political option but democracy. However, Russian democracy is... not at all the realization of standards imposed on us from outside.

Vladimir Putin

In the words of Louis Brandeis, the Supreme Court justice, we have a choice between a democracy or vast concentrations of wealth. We have vast concentrations of wealth which has bought its way into our democracy with its political leaders who exemplify the merger of that economic and political elite.

Jill Stein

A Quote by Tommy Douglas

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