John Lennon Interview

I just discovered an incredible interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. More HERE.

TA: How do you think we can destroy the capitalist system here in Britain, John?

JL: I think only by making the workers aware of the really unhappy position they are in, breaking the dream they are surrounded by. They think they are in a wonderful, free-speaking country. They've got cars and tellies and they don't want to think there's anything more to life. They are prepared to let the bosses run them, to see their children f*cked up in school. They're dreaming someone else's dream, it's not even their own. They should realise that the blacks and the Irish are being harassed and repressed and that they will be next.

As soon as they start being aware of all that, we can really begin to do something. The workers can start to take over. Like Marx said: 'To each according to his need'. I think that would work well here. But we'd also have to infiltrate the army too, because they are well trained to kill us all.

We've got to start all this from where we ourselves are oppressed. I think it's false, shallow, to be giving to others when your own need is great. The idea is not to comfort people, not to make them feel better but to make them feel worse, to constantly put before them the degradations and humiliations they go through to get what they call a living wage.

The level of radicalism is unbelievable, isn't it? It actually makes me sad to think about modern day protests. There just doesn't seem to be a modern-day equivalent to John Lennon or Martin Luther King. Meanwhile, society seems more interested in reality television stars than substance, and the most vocal "believers" tend to be hardcore religious people. I keep thinking of Yeats' and his widening gyre...