Nader is an avid reader of the history of this country, the rise of bullying financial and industrial empires, and the response to this subjugation by populists, socialists and progressives. Nowadays, he says, “economic policy debate tends to label policies favoring the rich as class warfare, while attacks on the poor and middle classes are known as reform” (Bauerlein 1995). Is democratic action to be seen as a challenge from below or as regulation from above? Resolving that question will be an inescapable task of the new politics of the 21st century, an issue left unresolved by the failure of popular movements in the early years of the last century.ĭuring his last campaign, Nader said of these movements that “the expansion of the power of the many vis-a-vis the domination of the few raised our society to new levels of human possibilities.” (Nader 1996) According to Nader, however, these social conflicts have to be put in perspective: “This country has witnessed class warfare by the rich against the middle class and the poor far more frequently than it has witnessed class warfare by the middle class and the poor against the rich.” This essay argues that Ralph Nader’s citizen politics recapitulates a long-standing agony over the meaning of populism, socialism and progressivism, resulting in ambiguity over issues of class conflict and the democratizing of the state and the economy. They demanded that economic power subside or be shared.” The earlier nineteenth-century democratic struggles by abolitionists against slavery, by farmers against large oppressive railroads and banks, and later by new trade unionists against the brutal workplace conditions of the early industrial and mining era helped mightily to make America and its middle class what it is today. “The struggle between the forces of democracy and plutocracy has ebbed and flowed throughout our history. RALPH NADER, ANNOUNCING his presidential candidacy in Washington, D.C. Walt Contreras Sheasby: Ralph Nader and the Legacy of Revolt Ralph Nader and the Legacy of Revolt - Walt Contreras Sheasby
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