Capitalism : A Love Story

Capitalism: A Love Story

"Citigroup's research department wrote three memos to investors concluding that wealth and power in the U.S. were increasingly concentrated in the hands of the top 1%, stating the top 1% of the population now have more financial wealth than the bottom 95% combined" (www.michaelmoore. com).

It should come as no surprise that reactions to Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story are as varied as viewers' political attitudes – or lack of them. A random sample of blog reviews on the Internet shows a considerable diversity of opinions, ranging from the dismissive ("stale" , "a point-by-point retread" of Roger & Me, Michael Moore's "most purely Marxist film" , "largely provocative, not substantive" , "heavy on critique and light on solutions") to the adulatory ( "a wholesale indictment of capitalism" , "scathing, mad-as-hell" ). One reviewer sees the film as "a religious attack on capitalism"; another; as the "collapse of the social contract"; others see in it "a lampooning of Wall Street" and "an argument against neoliberalism". And there are those who find in it merely a cult celebration of Michael Moore the celebrity/millionaire.

While it is not impossible it could be all these things, significantly none of the reviewers manages to get beyond a threshold of anti-capitalism. One anarchist does lament Moore's failure to present a simple explanation of what capitalism is and how it works, or to "counter how the Right has defined Socialism" and looks forward to the day when a film with a revolutionary socialist message gets screened everywhere.

Untransformable demands?
Another blogger cogently points out that Moore's film takes aim not only at the now decades-old corporate attack on the working class but also at the very capitalist notion that the scramble for profit is what life is all about.

This writer betrays an unfortunate cloudiness in his point of view, however in raising the question of how "socio-economic crises within capitalism" relate to "the sort of systemic crisis that could undermine capitalism as a system" – provoked by the unabsorbable demands of the working class. "If we want to be truly anti-capitalist, " he concludes, "then we have to stop believing in [capitalism] " .The problem is that there are no "revolutionary demands": the working class can only demand something from its rulers. If, on the contrary, it stops believing in capitalism, that means it has ceased to be interested just in fighting the wages struggle because it finally understands that anything with capital and wages still in it is a losing game for all people.

Immediate abolition is the only way out.
The true form of anti-capitalism, immediately abolishing wages and capital, is therefore not a "demand" but logically speaking, the preamble to regenerating the whole basis of society, grounded in common (not state) ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth production. It marks a radical break with the practice of formulating demands. Instead of securing political representation as "labour" , the working class abolishes itself and thereby precipitates the atrophy of the state.

A working class that can think for itself is in the nature of the case ready to make its break with capitalism – but only because it has grasped the impossibility of expecting any kind of capitalism, even the most benevolent, to meet everyone's needs. "Anti-capitalism" is very much in vogue nowadays, as we may infer from the gathering sophistication of efforts to stifle large protests. But very few leftists have a coherent idea of what replacing capitalism entails, either because they are so busy being practical or because they have never taken the time to think about what exactly makes the project of replacing capitalism viable in the first place. Or they may just lack confidence in the possibility of a socialist revolution.

Beating the giant
You can stick with Michael Moore's earthy, ingratiating and certainly entertaining myopia if you like. But demands that justice be done at last to the working class are challenges to an unbeatable giant. The only way to beat Capital is to abolish the employment system from under its feet. Down will come capital, profits and the whole nefarious superstructure, including its wars, divisions and barbarities. We can even look forward, unfettered, to rescuing our planet's biosphere before Mother Nature comes to get us.

That is a world fit for human beings, and the only thing separating us from it is a conscious socialist majority ready to act politically.

A member of the WSPUS

Michael Moore is reported to have said "What I'm asking for is a new economic order," he says. "I don't know how to construct that. I'm not an economist. All I ask is that it have two organising principles. Number one, that the economy is run democratically. In other words, the people have a say in how its run, not just the 1%. And number two, that it has an ethical and moral core to it. That nothing is done without considering the ethical nature, no business decision is made without first asking the question, is this for the common good?"

SOYMB finds it strange and sad that Moore has not yet come across the case for socialism especially since Karl Marx is a well-known economist who did indeed advocated for a free association of producers , the basis of the two prerequisites that Moore expects from a new economic system. .