Why Nader would just as well see Gore lose

By Samuel L. Blumenfeld
web posted November 6, 2000

If you listened to what Ralph Nader had to say on the Sunday weekly telly shows, it becomes obvious why he has nothing good to say about Al Gore. Nader, a pure-bred socialist if there ever was one, considers Gore to be as beholden to corporate power as the Republican candidate. Therefore, a victory by Gore would set back Nader's plan to build a true socialist third party.

Ralph NaderWith a Bush victory, it would be much easier to energize and organize left-wingers in America around Nader's Green Party. To young college socialists, Nader is a hero and totally independent of corporate power. Those energized college students are the people Nader is counting on to help him build a strong progressive political movement for the long haul. A Gore victory would muddy up the dialectic. A Bush victory would make the dialectical process clear and definitive. Bush, representing capitalism, would be the thesis, Nader, representing socialism, the antithesis, and the battle would be joined. Nader's battle cry will be, "Are the people going to run this country or the corporations going to run it?"

The corporations and commercialism in general will be the bad guys, and government bureaucrats working for "the people" will be the good guys. Of course, what Nader fails to mention is that a vast number of "the people" are dependent on the corporations for their jobs and careers. And, in fact, it is the small businesses, or small corporations, that are now creating more jobs than the big ones.

But Nader's attack on corporations is meant to simplify the political rhetoric. America is more than just the big corporations, which incidentally must produce products that people want in order to stay in business. If they do anything that harms people, they could soon be out of business. A good case in point is what is happening to Firestone, once a name renowned for quality tires. Someone in that corporation decided to change the way they make tires. Perhaps the justification for the new method was that it cut the cost of production. But those tires have caused deadly accidents for which the company is being held totally responsible. Firestone will not only be required to pay for its production error, but may never again regain its reputation for quality. That's a high price to pay for corporate error.

On the other hand, government bureaucracies and enterprises may create untold hardships for people, but they are never called to account for the misery they cause. Take for example, the public schools, all government enterprises, that have turned millions of perfectly normal children into dyslexics and functional illiterates. The victims have no recourse against the system that has ruined their lives. But Ralph Nader doesn't seem to care about the victims of government malpractice. Only private corporations are villains in his scheme of things.

Thus, even though the historical record proves that socialist and communist governments have produced far more misery than the private corporations, Nader is willing to pursue a political philosophy that is incapable of providing people with happiness, economic growth and prosperity, and individual freedom. Individual freedom cannot be divorced from economic freedom. And that is why America has emerged as the greatest economic engine in the history of the world. It is the combination of economic freedom and individual freedom that has produced the world's highest standard of living, and the foundation of both is private property.

Most of the great corporations are based on the inventions of individuals. High-tech communications started with Samuel B. Morse, Alexander Graham Bell, and Gugliemo Marconi. These corporations have not only improved our lives, but produced enormous wealth for thousands if not millions of stockholders. The fact that they are private obliges them to take on enormous ethical responsibilities. Private ownership is what makes all of the progress we've seen possible.

Look at what socialism did to Russia, probably the richest country in the world when it comes to natural resources and land. Socialism impoverished the people, created more pollution than would have been caused by responsible private enterprise, enslaved millions of innocent people to work in gold and uranium mines in Siberia to provide their socialist masters with the foreign currency needed to keep the system afloat.

The most important ingredient of a free society is private property. The Clinton-Gore administration has done all in its power to undermine the legal system that protects private property. Extreme environmental laws have rendered private property rights null and void. Environmental regulations now deprive property owners of the right to manage their own property in their own interests. And when Gore tells us, "You ain't seen nothing yet," we can expect more regulations undermining private ownership. Socialists are never satisfied with the status quo. They will use whatever power they gain to expand their control over private property.

In Great Britain, the Fabian Socialists made it very plain what their aim was. In their Credo published in 1887, they wrote: "The Fabian Society consists of Socialists. . . . It aims at the reorganization of society by the emancipation of land and industrial capital from individual and class ownership, and the vesting of them in the community for the general benefit…. The Society accordingly works for the extinction of private property in land." In 1895, there appeared in Boston a new monthly journal called "The American Fabian." The editors wrote:

We call our paper "The American Fabian" because our politics must in a measure differ from those of the English Fabians. . . . England's (unwritten) Constitution readily admits of constant though gradual modification. Our American Constitution does not readily admit of such change. England can thus move into Socialism almost imperceptibly. Our Constitution being largely individualistic must be changed to admit of Socialism, and each change necessitates a political crisis.

And so, the socialists early on recognized that our Constitution was a bulwark against socialism, and therefore it would have to be utterly changed before they could realize their socialist dream. Our Constitution has provided Americans with the legal security needed to protect private property. But the socialists have found in the environmental movement the means to undermine the principles of private ownership. That is why Nader calls his movement the Green Party, not the Socialist Party.

Of course, the Fabians wrote of their socialist plans back in the days before communism and socialism had a chance to prove themselves in practice. One hundred years later, it's hard to understand how a Ralph Nader can still go around peddling this totally discredited philosophy. It's also hard to understand how so many American college students can be taken in by such a failed philosophy. Perhaps the reason is that there are so many Marxist professors in our colleges and universities who are skilled at seducing idealistic students into accepting socialism, even though we know it doesn't work.

In any case, according to Nader, the problem with Gore is that he owes too much to his corporate contributors to be able to carry out the socialist agenda with any zeal. There may be a Republican dominated Congress to contend with, where left-wing Democrats will need to engage in dialectical warfare. Nader has also criticized vice presidential candidate Lieberman as being too pro-corporation because Connecticut has insurance companies, drug companies, and defense contractors.

Nader has no illusions that socialists can win a national election. He knows that the only way to move America further leftward is to create the kind of dialectical conflict that only the Green Party is capable of. That's why a Bush victory makes better sense to him than a Gore presidency.

Samuel L. Blumenfeld is the author of eight books on education, including, "NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education," "The Whole-Language/OBE Fraud," and "Homeschooling: A Parents Guide to Teaching Children." These books and others are available on Amazon.com.

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