[Reader-list] Fwd: (fwded)Michael Moore Film Reviewed: Brian Jones ======== CAPITALISM, WE'RE THROUGH ===========================================

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Subject: (fwded)Michael Moore Film Reviewed: Brian Jones ========
CAPITALISM, WE'RE THROUGH ===========================================
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http://socialistworker.org/2009/10/02/through-with-capitalism

Review: Brian Jones
======== CAPITALISM, WE'RE THROUGH ===========================================

For people without health care or who are losing their jobs, the love affair
with the free market is already over--the question is when they'll find
somebody new.

October 2, 2009

IN FRANCE, you pay nothing to go to college. In Britain, the National Health
Service is free. And in Sweden, any woman who gives birth receives two years
of paid maternity leave.

Meanwhile, in the richest country on the planet, the United States, college
graduates are buried in debt, medical bills are the leading cause of personal
bankruptcy, and if you have children--well, you're on your own.

It shouldn't come as any surprise that the former countries have formidable
labor unions and even independent labor parties. In the latter, we have no
such labor party.

But we do have Michael Moore. His new film, /Capitalism: A Love Story/, is at
turns, infuriating, hilarious, shocking and inspiring. He could have made a
film just about the financial crisis, or just about the foreclosures, or just
about Wall Street, but he didn't. Moore made a film about the whole damn
system.

His work is both an expression of a new consciousness and a catalyst for its
development. Millions of people will find, in this film, confirmation of
their own ideas, frustrations and aspirations.

Crucially, Moore reminds us of the high hopes that were invested in the
presidential campaign of Barack Obama. Obama talked about "redistribution,"
and for that, the right wing labeled him a "socialist," which only made him
/more/ popular, and made left young people curious about "the S word."

But this isn't a film about socialism. It's a film about capitalism. And yes,
it's a love story.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

IN MANY ways, /Capitalism/ plays like a long-delayed sequel to /Roger and
Me/, the film that put Moore on the map precisely 20 years ago//. Like
/Roger/, /Capitalism/ makes clever use of vintage propaganda reels and home
movies, and casts Moore as a barnstorming muckraker, pounding on the doors of
power with cameras rolling.

The love story begins with Moore's own home movies, through which we
experience his nostalgia for the middle-class lifestyle his family enjoyed,
based on the once-thriving automobile industry in Flint, Mich. In exchange
for their loyal service, workers could count on jobs for life, family wages
and a good pension.

But that social contract was shredded in the 1970s, and Moore runs down the
numbers on-screen with graphs that explain our pain--workers' growing
productivity vs. their stagnating wages vs. the corporations' skyrocketing
profits.

Moore tours us around the "heartland"--foreclosures in Cleveland, evictions
in Peoria, young people incarcerated for profit in Wilkes-Barre--and asks
what all of these things have in common. The answer: each is an example of
how the free market works against human needs.

We are shown a leaked Citigroup memo that boasts of the results of Wall
Street's unbridled profiteering. America has become a "plutonomy," the memo
gloats, where 1 percent of the population effectively owns and controls
everything that goes on. The memo warns about a lingering danger--everyone
else still has 99 percent of the vote--and asks: "Is there a backlash
building?"

Enter Barack Obama.

On virtually every issue that matters, Obama has deeply disappointed his
supporters. /Capitalism/, however, takes us back to a moment when the Obama
campaign mobilized the very backlash Citigroup foresaw. Moore shows us the
faces of people--particularly African Americans--living through a moment of
extraordinary change: Election Night 2008. We see the tears of joy, the
dancing in the streets, and we remember the feeling that things were changing
for the better in this country.

Enter Goldman Sachs.

Moore shows how "Government Sachs" alums worked in the Bush administration
/and/ in the Obama administration to manipulate the financial crisis to their
advantage--at our expense.

Anyone who's seen the trailer in theaters or on television will know that
Moore shows up on Wall Street with empty sacks "get the money back for the
American people." It's pure shtick, but the point still lands--these people
wrecked the economy and were rewarded with trillions of /our/ dollars.

While Moore is happy to skewer Democrats and Republicans alike for corruption
and corporate cronyism, he leaves the question more open regarding Obama.

Viewers may be shocked to see and hear the footage of President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt arguing that jobs, homes, education and, yes, health care
should be guaranteed to all Americans under a new bill of rights. We should
keep in mind that FDR was speaking in a context of a labor movement that was
organizing near-insurrections in several American cities, and was on the
brink of forming its own political party.

One gets the feeling that the intended audience for this film isn't only
those who are questioning capitalism, but also Barack Obama personally. Moore
seems to be saying to the president: "You don't have to be a corporate tool,
you could be an FDR."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

BUT THERE'S another, more radical dimension of the film that mainstream
reviewers have missed: Moore points to solutions beyond what Obama may or may
not do. He points to what /we/ could do to replace capitalism.

"There's got to be a rebellion," says a man in the process of being evicted
from his home in Illinois, "between the people that have nothing and the
people that have it all."

But what would that rebellion look like? What is the alternative to the free
market?

Here, Moore turns our attention to the arena that does the most to define our
lives--the workplace. Most workplaces, he says, are "dictatorships," with
zero democracy.

But is democracy possible at work? /Capitalism/ takes us inside the Republic
Windows & Doors factory in Chicago, where workers staged an old-fashioned
occupation of the plant when it faced closure without workers getting
promised severance pay.

Inside the occupied factory, we see workers meeting, discussing and making
decisions together. Moore shows us a worker-owned robotics plant, where
employees make collective, democratic decisions about their work. Moore is
introducing the audience to a fundamental idea of socialism--workers'
democracy.

There's much more to the case for socialism than this film takes up. But
Moore is expressing something basic about what's wrong with the system we
live under, and what could replace it. "Capitalism is evil," he says, "and
you cannot regulate evil. You have to eliminate it and replace it with
something else...with democracy."

For people without health care, who are losing their jobs and losing their
homes, the love affair with the free market is already over. They may not
know what the solution is, but many are ready to discuss the fact that
capitalism itself is the problem.

In other words, being ready to break up isn't the same thing as finding
someone new. But millions of people are starting to look. If you're reading
these lines, chances are you're already on your way. Go ahead and make the
breakup official--get yourself to the nearest socialist meeting. And while
you're at it, bring three of four of your friends with you.

Angry people, meet America's new socialist movement. Socialist movement,
angry people. You're meant for each other.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Columnist: Brian Jones
Brian Jones is a teacher, actor and activist in New York City. His commentary
and writing have been featured on GritTV [1], SleptOn.com [2] and the
/International Socialist Review/ [3]. Jones has also lent his voice to
several audiobooks, including Noam Chomsky's /Hegemony or Survival/ [4],
Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove's /Voices of a People's History of the United
States/ [5] and Zinn's one-man play /Marx in Soho/ [6] (forthcoming from
Haymarket Books).

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Review: Movies
/Capitalism: A Love Story/ [7], written and directed by Michael Moore.

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Material on this Web site is licensed by SocialistWorker.org, under a
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[1] http://grittv.org
[2] http://slepton.com
[3] http://www.isreview.org
[4] http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FHegemony-Survival-Americas-Dominance-American%2Fdp%2F1559279419%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D1226338910%26sr%3D8-1&tag=socialistwork-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325
[5] http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FReadings-Voices-Peoples-History-United%2Fdp%2F1583227520%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D1226338931%26sr%3D8-1&tag=socialistwork-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325
[6] http://www.marxinsoho.com/
[7] http://www.capitalismalovestory.com/
[8] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0




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