Ralph Nader: The Rolling Stone Interview
Ralph Nader, ten years in public service, is still the great enigma of American politics. He has built an empire of citizen action groups that has a major impact in areas ranging from tax reform to nuclear energy.
But Nader himself is a mysterious figure who only materializes every so often to testify before a congressional committee or chat on a TV talk show. No one is quite sure of his motives or who he really is or why he’s so damn dedicated. He still guards his private life with a passion that verges on paranoia: He lives somewhere in Washington and close associates say he sometimes dates women, but Nader doesn’t like to talk about that sort of stuff. Although his various groups have offices all over Washington, Nader doesn’t have a desk of his own; he doesn’t even have a briefcase. (“Ralph’s briefcase is his head,” an associate says.)
Prior to this interview, Nader had sat still for only a handful of in-depth sessions with the press. (“The only way Playboy got me was to trap me in a hotel room during a blizzard,” he says.) I managed to trap him twice in midwinter and once last spring at his Center for the Study of Responsive Law in downtown Washington. All three times Nader started off slowly, cautiously, formally, but grew more informal and excited as we progressed. At age 41, he still looked quite boyish; very tall and thin, his clothes profoundly unstylish, his dark hair short, with a few flecks of gray.
I had heard somewhere that Nader didn’t like to talk in generalities about politics but preferred to stick to the specifics of whatever issues were on his mind at the time. He surprised me almost immediately, though, by his willingness to speculate, theorize and even fantasize about his vision of utopia. Most of our time together, in fact, was spent in a discussion of Nader’s long-range goals.
You’ve been in Washington for ten years now. Has there been any progress? Have things changed?
I think people have become more aware now. You don’t have to convince them that oil companies are gluttonous gougers any more. Ten years ago you would have. You don’t have to convince people that the government isn’t protecting as it should, that the government is corrupt. So I think it’s time to go on to the next stage, to ask more fundamental questions.
What about your own philosophy — has that changed in any way?
My philosophy hasn’t changed. But I remember that when we were students we liked to talk about world problems, about cosmic issues — we were generalists. Then I realized that you have to be more concrete if you want to reach people — I went from the general to the specific. Which is why the automobile issue was so important. See, you start with unsafe automobiles: fake bumpers, pollution, lemons, high insurance … and then people begin to understand that someone actually produces these things, and it’s General Motors! And then, people become more interested in the structure of the corporation itself.
Does that mean you’re entering a new stage of your career?
It isn’t new in terms of what I do each day. But it is time to start looking for some basic structural changes in the society.
What kind of basic structural changes are you talking about?
Consumers don’t control any economic institutions —with the exception of a few cooperatives, like food co-ops — and yet there is no reason why consumers can’t control their own insurance companies, their own banks, their own food stores— for starters.
How far would you go? Would consumers control General Motors, or the companies you’d break GM up into?
Well, the best economic system, I think, is one where it’s broken down into as small parts as are economically possible, and those parts are run by the constituency for whom they were supposed to operate; and where, if anything happens that is harmful or corrupt, the victims have nobody to blame but themselves.
For example, there can be a large supermarket cooperative, that sells things exactly the way Safeway does. But, if it’s a true cooperative, and the people can run the management, can vote them out, then they have no one to blame but themselves if they’re not satisfied. It’s a little more difficult to develop with manufacturing operations, but the beauty of at least a retail cooperative system is that it develops enormous bargaining power and can influence the marketing and processing sectors.
But what about the manufacturing sector? Wouldn’t you reorganize that too?
Now, the manufacturing sector could be organized in one of two ways. You could divide the economy into two areas: retail and manufacturing. And the workers should run the manufacturing and the consumers should run retail. And that is a nice sort of countervailing power. Another way would be to have the retail organizations — the consumer cooperatives — own the manufacturers. But that raises the problem of hierarchy: more and more remoteness from the consumers down at the market level.
How is that different from the classic left definitions of socialism or Marxism — how do you see yourself in terms of those definitions?
The theory of socialism is that the government would own the means of production, and since the government represents the working people, the working people would basically run the society. The big flaw in that theory is one word — it’s called bureaucracy — and there never was sufficient recognition of the fact that if the government becomes a bureaucracy with its own momentum and ability to be secretive, heady, corrupt, introverted, then the society is basically trading one master for another.
Whichever way you opt for in reorganizing the society, you have to follow one principle of responsive power: Power has to be insecure to be responsive. It’s got to have something to lose. And the definition of perfect tyranny is an institution that really has nothing to lose. And that’s the problem with a government bureaucracy — it has nothing to lose.
What about the newer Marxist variations — a decentralized socialism with participatory democracy — isn’t that what you’re essentially talking about?
Well, instead of participatory democracy, it’s best to talk about initiatory democracy. Participatory democracy is too passive. Initiatory democracy involves a positive act by people. It involves people — lower-income people — owning property and helping to make the policies that are supposed to be for their benefit.
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