Ralph Nader’s new book, a slen­der vol­ume called Break­ing Through Pow­er: It’s Eas­i­er Than We Think, is real­ly two brief books, or per­haps two long essays. The first is a lament about the ways that pri­vate inter­ests monop­o­lize Amer­i­can soci­ety and destroy the com­mon good. The sec­ond speaks to his title — explor­ing the ways in which we can over­come such interests.

"We know the problems. We know what needs to be done. Here’s an action plan. It’s time to stop talking and get to work."

The ways that cor­po­ra­tions use their elect­ed stooges to chan­nel pub­lic goods for their own gain are legion. Nad­er runs though some of the most offen­sive. He is espe­cial­ly upset that pub­licly-owned air­waves have been near­ly lost as a tool for push­ing back against reign­ing ide­olo­gies. For exam­ple, when Ronald Rea­gan rescind­ed the Fair­ness Doc­trine in 1987, he unleashed a flood­gate of prof­it-moti­vat­ed con­tent. That doc­trine, usu­al­ly more an ide­al than an enforced pol­i­cy, required broad­cast­ers to pro­vide at least two view­points on issues rel­e­vant to the com­mu­ni­ty. After the repeal, ​“plu­to­crats pur­su­ing prof­it through com­mer­cial media have felt … no oblig­a­tion to pro­vide views that point any­where beyond their adver­tis­ers’ prod­ucts,” Nad­er writes.

Of course, the sell­off of pub­lic assets with no pay­off to the pub­lic isn’t lim­it­ed to invis­i­ble resources. The Gen­er­al Min­ing Act of 1872, for exam­ple, stip­u­lates that a com­pa­ny can stake claims on fed­er­al land for just a few dol­lars per acre, Nad­er notes. Under the law, the Cana­di­an com­pa­ny now known as Bar­rick Gold Cor­po­ra­tion paid less than $10,000 for land expect­ed to be worth more than $10 bil­lion. The min­ing indus­try, which invests heav­i­ly in polit­i­cal cam­paigns, has killed every effort to reform the law.

Speak­ing of pol­i­tics, Nad­er writes that half the mon­ey raised in this year’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign comes from few­er than 400 fam­i­lies. He says: ​“The wealthy few invest heav­i­ly in shap­ing laws that strive to place unlim­it­ed pri­vate prop­er­ty and cor­po­rate expan­sion above and beyond all else, includ­ing the lives of peo­ple … the capac­i­ty of soci­ety to func­tion as a democ­ra­cy, and the sta­bil­i­ty of the liv­ing bios­phere itself.”

And so it goes. Nad­er is often described as a con­sumer advo­cate, which is true but bare­ly begins to cap­ture what he’s up to. He’s more in the vein of a prophet decry­ing the many sins of cor­po­ra­tions in par­tic­u­lar and of soci­ety in gen­er­al, before point­ing the way toward sal­va­tion in the non-mon­e­tary val­ues that we hold in common.

That sounds abstract and pre­cious. Nad­er doesn’t intend it that way. The sec­ond half of his book is ded­i­cat­ed to the idea that break­ing through pow­er is actu­al­ly ​“eas­i­er than we think” and that there are proven ways to cre­ate a healthy and vibrant democracy.

Nader’s the­sis is that one per­cent of the peo­ple, pas­sion­ate about a cause and orga­nized enough to get the polit­i­cal system’s atten­tion, can push through a stun­ning amount of reform.

“Con­sid­er major changes in U.S. his­to­ry,” Nad­er writes. ​“Was there ever more than one per­cent of the Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion active­ly press­ing for abo­li­tion of slav­ery pri­or to the Civ­il War, for guar­an­tee­ing women the right to vote, or for advanc­ing the right of work­ers to orga­nize unions? Very unlikely.”

He offers an agen­da for reform, includ­ing high­er tax­es on pol­lu­tion, addic­tive prod­ucts, cor­po­rate crime and Wall Street spec­u­la­tion, empow­er­ing peo­ple to sue cor­po­ra­tions and the gov­ern­ment, audit­ing the Depart­ment of Defense bud­get and cre­at­ing a lev­el play­ing field for local busi­ness­es by revers­ing ​“the unfair advan­tages that glob­al cor­po­ra­tions have lob­bied into law.”

Nad­er also offers his ideas for the orga­ni­za­tion­al frame­work it would take to push these reforms.

If each (Con­gres­sion­al) dis­trict had about 4,000 com­mit­ted activists, each vol­un­teer­ing about 200 hours each year, they could estab­lish an office ded­i­cat­ed to pur­su­ing their goals, hire a small staff and estab­lish a rela­tion­ship with their rep­re­sen­ta­tives. These offices would, in turn, be con­nect­ed to one anoth­er across the nation and would ​“learn from one another’s sto­ries, ideas, pro­pos­als, and strate­gies,” he writes.

Nader’s vision is ambi­tious — crit­ics would say utopi­an — but it is true that sev­er­al thou­sand high­ly-mobi­lized, orga­nized peo­ple in each Con­gres­sion­al dis­trict would make a dra­mat­ic dif­fer­ence. Oth­er voic­es are call­ing for some­thing sim­i­lar. More con­tro­ver­sial­ly, Nad­er believes that the notion of the Unit­ed States as a deeply polar­ized soci­ety is just anoth­er tool of the cor­po­rate oli­garchs to keep us from embrac­ing our power.

“It is pre­cise­ly because peo­ple want the same basic things in life, with obvi­ous vari­a­tions, that the rul­ing pow­ers have dri­ven their divide-and-rule strate­gies through­out his­to­ry,” he writes. The things we hold in com­mon include a desire for clean elec­tions, fair pay for hon­est work, healthy food and safe water, afford­able med­i­cine and health­care, clean air, rea­son­able tax­es and effi­cient government.

Since 2000, Nader’s frus­tra­tion with the two-par­ty system’s inabil­i­ty to hon­or these com­mon goals has dri­ven him to flirt with, or actu­al­ly mount, third-par­ty pres­i­den­tial bids. In the process, he has angered many Democ­rats and pro­gres­sives. He’s been blamed for being a nar­cis­sist and help­ing to elect George W. Bush in 2000 — a charge that he round­ly rejects. And he hasn’t done the cam­paign of Hillary Clin­ton any favors. Last year, he called her ​“a cor­po­ratist and a mil­i­tarist” and ​“a menace.”

Nader’s belief that we should cul­ti­vate a left/​right alliance to pur­sue com­mon goals has also opened him up to crit­i­cism. In 2004, when he appeared at a con­fer­ence in New Hamp­shire with the leader of a group called the New Alliance Par­ty, a writer for The Nation called it an ​“ultra­sec­tar­i­an cult-rack­et,” asked why Nad­er would be ​“in bed” with the group and spec­u­lat­ed that his ​“eerie iso­la­tion” might be caus­ing him to lose his polit­i­cal judgment.

But a dozen years lat­er, Nad­er, now 82, seems any­thing but iso­lat­ed. Break­ing Through Pow­er was released in coor­di­na­tion with a four-day con­fer­ence of the same name, held in late Sep­tem­ber, where there were ses­sions devot­ed to such top­ics as share­hold­er activism, state­hood for Wash­ing­ton, D.C., pub­lic bank­ing and build­ing com­mu­ni­ty through bartering.

Nader’s quest for cross-ide­o­log­i­cal alliances, like the brevi­ty of his book and his third-par­ty efforts, seems like more a symp­tom of impa­tience with the pace of progress than evi­dence of fal­ter­ing judg­ment. One has to admire that Nad­er is still press­ing for­ward, still cau­tious­ly hope­ful — even after so many decades in the are­na. Things may seem grim but the num­bers and the evi­dence are on our side, he’s say­ing. We know the prob­lems. We know what needs to be done. Here’s an action plan. It’s time to stop talk­ing and get to work.