Ralph Nader - Breaking Through Power: Its Easier Than We Think

When I was a student at Princeton University I learned from my anthropology studies that the concentration of power in the hands of the few is common to all cultures, societies, nations, tribes, cities, towns, and villages. Even where the thirst for self-governance and democracy is strong, as was the case in New England towns before the American Revolution against King George III, wealthy Tories were there too. In Central and Western Massachusetts, the farmers used the term the River Gods to describe the rich merchants using the Connecticut River as a profitable trading route. These days, most people protesting for economic justice use the term the One Percent to describe the ultra-small group of people who wield enormous influence over our society today.

There is something about the differences in skill, determination, lineage, avarice, and pure luck that stratifies most people from the rulers who dominate them. In the political realm, the few become dominant because they hoard wealth and are driven to exercise power over others. When a small group of people rules a society the political system is considered an oligarchy; when only money and wealth determine how a society is controlled, the political system is a plutocracy. From the standpoint of a democratic society, both oligarchy and plutocracy are inherently unjust and corrupt.

Of course there are variations in the degrees of authoritarianism and cruelty that each system exercises over the communities it relies upon for workers and wealth. Scholars have resorted to using phrases like benign dictatorships or wise rulers or paternalistic hierarchies to describe lighter touches by those few who impose their rule over the many. Thomas Paine simply called them tyrannies. People, families, and communities can only take so much abuse before they rise up to resist. The job of the rulers is always to find that line and provide the lowest level of pay, security, housing, consumer protection, healthcare, and political access for society so that they can extract and hoard the greatest amount of wealth, power, and immunity from justice for themselves. In many ways, the majority of Americans live in a democracy of minimums, while the privileged few enjoy a plutocracy of maximums.

This small volume is not just about the ravages of power or the assaults against disadvantaged and downtrodden communities. The subject here is the dominating influence of the One Percent in business, politics, health, education, and society as a whole. Over the past fifty years, Americans have suffered the relentless commercialization of everyday lifetheir privacy and their childhoods, their parks and prisons, their public budgets and foreign policy, their schools and religious institutions, their elections and governments, and the most basic societal institution of them all: the family.

Consider all the family functions that have been outsourced to business. Eating, cleaning, childcare, counseling, therapy, entertainment, sports, lawn work, simple repairs, have been increasingly commercialized, commodified, packaged, and marketed back to us as products of luxury and convenience. Even mothers breast milk has been displaced by infant formula.

In a plutocracy, commercialism dominates far beyond the realm of economics and business; everything is for sale, and money is power. But in an authentic democracy, there must be commercial-free zones where the power of human rights, citizenship, community, equality, and justice are free from the corrupting influence of money. Our elections and our governments should be such commercial-free zones; our environment, air, and water should never fall under the control of corporations or private owners. Children should not be programmed by a huckstering economy where their vulnerable consciousness becomes the target of relentless corporate marketing and advertising.

American history demonstrates that whenever commerce dominates all aspects of national life, a host of ills and atrocities have not just festered and spread, but become normalenslavement, land grabs, war, ethnic cleansing, serfdom, child labor, abusive working conditions, corrupt political systems, environmental contamination, and immunity from the law for the privileged few. History also shows that whenever there have been periods when enough of the country organizes and resists, we see movements of people and communities breaking through power. Progress is made. Rights are won. Education and literacy increase. Oppression is diminished. It was in this manner that people of conscience abolished the living nightmare imposed by the laws and whips of white enslavers. The nation moved closer to promises of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness expressed in the Declaration of Independence. We won more control over our work, our food, our land, our air, and our water. Women secured the right to vote. Civil rights were elevated and enforced. Public schools, improved environments, workplace collective bargaining, and consumer protections did not spontaneously evolve; they were won by people demanding them and breaking through power.