A progressive reviews Michael Moore's new movie "Capitalism: A Love Story"

[Better Believe It]

Michael Moore's Smash and Grab
Moore's brilliant new film, Capitalism: A Love Story, will find an audience for its assault on America's political economy
by Mark Weisbrot
September 10, 2009



You know this film is going to be subversive when it opens with clips depicting actual bank robbers - caught on security cameras in the midst of their heists - grabbing their loot with Iggy Pop's cover of Louie Louie (a special version for the film) blasting away in the background. Moral equivalence for the titans of the financial industry, and their political protectors, is just around the corner.

Capitalism: a Love Story doesn't just go after the seamy side of the American economy, although that is captured neatly in the scenes of "condo vultures" feeding on Florida's housing bust, alongside the corporations (including Wal-Mart and Amegy Bank) which take out insurance policies on their employees and cash in big when they die young. These ghoulish derivatives go by the charming name of "dead peasants" insurance - which says it all, really.

But Moore has bigger targets in his sights: he is questioning whether the whole incentive structure, moral values and political economy of American capitalism is fit for human beings. Although this will not seem so radical in Europe, where most countries have had governments in the post-second world war era that at least called themselves socialist, or in most of the developing world, where socialist ideas have popular appeal, it's pretty much unprecedented for something that can reach a mass audience in the US.

But you don't have to be a revolutionary to appreciate this film. Indeed, it can be seen as a social democratic treatise, with Franklin Roosevelt's proposed "second bill of rights" - an "economic bill of rights" that included a job with a living wage, housing, medical care, and education - as its reform program. Roosevelt is shown proposing this now forgotten program back in 1944.

As in his previous films, Moore combines the grief and tragedy of the victims - people losing their homes and jobs - with hilarious comedy, cartoonish film clips from the 1950's, and sober testimony as needed. And there are victories, too - as when workers occupy their factory in Chicago to win the pay that they are owed.

Please read the rest of the film review at:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/10-7

[fascisthunter]

1. I See no Difference between Bank Robbers and those gaming the System

none... although now that I think of it, those on Wall Street gaming the system are much worse than the bank robber, for their actions carry more severe repercussions.

[aquart]

2. And the penalty should agree with that...but there is no penalty, is there?

Just reward.