Two Cheers for Michael Moore
CHRIS MAISANO
“Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil. It must be eliminated.” That’s the conclusion Michael Moore comes to at the end of Capitalism: A Love Story, the latest blast of agitprop musket fire from the enfant terrible of documentary film making. As a socialist, it seems as if I should be experiencing unalloyed joy over the fact that the most visible and successful documentarian of all time is making this argument to millions of moviegoers in the U.S. and around the world. Unfortunately, I’m not. The film certainly has its share of bravura moments, but I’m afraid that the limitations of the messenger have limited the potential effectiveness of its often muddled message.
Moore’s general argument can be summarized as follows. From around World War II through the 1970s, capitalism in the United States seemed to work pretty well. People like his father worked for companies like the old General Motors, where the postwar settlement between management and the union provided a good salary, benefits, and job security and lifted workers into the middle class. Notwithstanding a few imperfections such as Jim Crow and Vietnam, this was the Golden Age, captured in the nostalgic Moore family home movies that appear in the film. Then came the Fall, marked by the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, which ushered in a period of rising inequality culminating in the collapse of the financial system and the grinding recession we’re currently suffering through.
In this fallen state, privatized juvenile detention centers make kickbacks to corrupt judges, airplane pilots live on food stamps, families get foreclosed on and evicted from homes they’ve lived in for decades, the rich buy off most of Congress through campaign contributions and receive favors from politicians and regulators in return. Only if we could return to the good old days of the New Deal and FDR, Moore not so implicitly suggests, the Golden Age could be restored and justice would once again rule the land.
Aside from the fact that Moore’s historical reconstruction is based on an overly rosy view of the postwar era, how does this argument square with his final conclusion that capitalism is an evil that cannot be meliorated, only overthrown? It simply doesn’t. Many of the abuses that he highlights in his film could be prevented with within the framework of a generally capitalist system, though doing so would of course require large-scale political struggle. FDR’s proposed economic Bill of Rights, which Moore presents as a set of principles that should provide the moral and ethical foundation our political economy, has largely been implemented in the more social democratic countries of northern Europe and is not in any way incompatible with capitalism as such. As is common with jilted lovers, Moore doesn’t seem ready to completely abandon the system that betrayed his trust and toyed with his emotions, even though he says that he really wants to. What results is an often incoherent whirl that doesn’t make a fully effective case for either reform or revolution.
Now, it’s entirely possible that I’m completely over thinking this film, and should just be happy with the things Moore does well. He rather effectively argues that capitalism and democracy are not necessarily compatible and gets on camera three Catholic priests who explain how capitalism violates moral precepts at the core of all major religious traditions. With the help of former industry insiders and bank regulators such as Bill Black, he accessibly explains how and why subprime mortgage speculation brought the financial system to the brink of collapse. Sitting down with Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) and bailout oversight chief Elizabeth Warren, he shows how Wall Street and its political allies held Congress hostage in return for billions of dollars in public money. The workers who occupied the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago last winter are offered as models for workers around the country to emulate, and even Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) makes a cameo appearance to show that socialists can be as American as Mom and apple pie. The film will expose millions of Americans to even a muddled critique of capitalism as a system for the first time, and I’m sure that many who see it will be spurred into political action. These are good things, and Moore deserves credit for making a film that takes on such a politically taboo subject.
Still, if moviegoers leave the theater ready to storm the barricades after watching this film, under what banner will they march? Since it does not offer any coherent alternative to the system it denounces, we don’t know. Unfortunately, even for Michael Moore, a man who has just made a major motion picture denouncing capitalism and calling for its elimination, socialism is still the love that dare not speak its name.
I don’t think you’re “over thinking” this film. Michael Moore always proposes these metanarratives that are constructed from/around actual events, but emphasize dramatic effect over actual resolutions/solutions. I’m sure that’s why his movies CAN be released across the nation instead of being relegated to UAW meetings or somesuch––they huff and puff, but they’re no more politically effective than your run-of-the-mill blockbuster. Even if he did take Phil Knight on a grand tour of Southeast Asia to see what Nike’s wealth is built upon, would it change anything? Or speak to Roger Smtih? Absolutely not. What he does succeed in is putting workers in low-income jobs––the security guards, the doormen, the personal assistants, etc.––in incredibly awkward positions by forcing his celebrity against what they know will get them fired. He harasses them. He makes their adherence to duty part of his show. What is sold as agit-prop ultimately succumbs to storytelling.
Violet, there’s actually a lot less of that sort of thing in this film than some of his previous efforts. I’ve never gotten that worked up about his supposed endangering of working people because they’ve probably never actually been adversely affected by his stunts (don’t you think we would have heard about it if some poor guy at GM headquarters or KMart or wherever got fired because of a Moore stunt?), but it’s always been tedious and unfunny and has definitely succumbed to the law of diminishing returns.
It’s also worth noting that he apparently could not get anyone of any importance in the business world to talk to him in this film, like he was able to do in previous movies and TV shows. He’s able to interview some low-level, smarmy real estate vulture in Florida, but people at places like Goldman Sachs and AIG know better than to appear in his films at this point. And the choice of the actor Wallace Shawn (Mr. Hall in Clueless and the voice of Rex the dinosaur in Toy Story) as the guy he uses to badly explain what capitalism is (apparently it’s a system in which you get to choose which brand of ice cream you like best), was beyond lame. He couldn’t get some sort of lefty economist or something? Sheesh.
Proyect also dislikes Moore declaring worker run business as an alternative to capitalism: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/09/29/are-worker-owned-companies-an-alterative-to-capitalism/
But I think businesses such as those are a step forward.
They are a step forward. They’re not The Answer, but they part of the answer.
Marx, Capital Vol. III:
“The co-operative factories of the labourers themselves represent within the old form the first sprouts of the new, although they naturally reproduce, and must reproduce, everywhere in their actual organisation all the shortcomings of the prevailing system. But the antithesis between capital and labour is overcome within them, if at first only by way of making the associated labourers into their own capitalist, i.e., by enabling them to use the means of production for the employment of their own labour. They show how a new mode of production naturally grows out of an old one, when the development of the material forces of production and of the corresponding forms of social production have reached a particular stage. Without the factory system arising out of the capitalist mode of production there could have been no co-operative factories. Nor could these have developed without the credit system arising out of the same mode of production. The credit system is not only the principal basis for the gradual transformation of capitalist private enterprises. into capitalist stock companies, but equally offers the means for the gradual extension of co-operative enterprises on a more or less national scale. The capitalist stock companies, as much as the co-operative factories, should be considered as transitional forms from the capitalist mode of production to the associated one, with the only distinction that the antagonism is resolved negatively in the one and positively in the other.”
I’m a fan of the “market socialist” model laid out in “After Capitalism”. Worker owned businesses without socialized investment is basically just a group capitalist ethos. Obviously if done right workplace democracy is a step forward.
Also I’m for worker control, but social ownership. I think there is a difference.
The negatives of the experience in Yugoslavia should also be taken into account.
what is the difference between worker control and social ownership?
I’m still on record for supporting worker ownership, possibly even going as far as worker councils (I’m aware of the Yugoslavian model but I’m not that acquainted with it), but I can’t think of a proper way (aside from through spontaneous revolution, ie a naturally occuring movement towards this not led by a vanguard) that we might move to such a model.
“Spontaneous revolution” isn’t going to happen. Pre-revolutionary situations can and do occur in capitalist democracies, but without mass (revolutionary) socialist parties with deep roots in the working class already existing, the revolution doesn’t happen. For a recent example, see Argentina.
If we really want to overcome capitalism, we have to build up the organized workers’ movement, as far as possible on the basis of open defense of a principled socialist program, i.e. one based on working class (majority) rule as opposed to “people’s fronts” and governmental class-coalitionism, democratic republicanism as opposed to the oligarchical capitalist state, and socialist internationalism as opposed to all forms of nationalism. And yes, building a network of worker-owned co-ops would be part of this strategy — hopefully with the labor movement financing their creation.
What Jason said.
Harrington’s criticism of this idea was that with the Socialist Party of America we attempted the “plant our flag SPD-style of organization” and this didn’t work as well in the United States or the United Kingdom.
Hindsight and century of socialist tactics though tell us that a principled socialist pole of opposition is what we should be aiming for. Even if it seems unrealistic that we can ever amass majoritarian support — having a presence with even a Green Party 2000-level drawing would certainly help reshape the paradigm of US politics.
I could live with a significant party of the left in this country, one that at least had the power to act in the way the NDP in Canada acts with the Liberals, that being that the Liberals have to work for their parliamentary votes in order to achieve the majority necessary to either block the Conservatives or pass any sort of progressive legislation.
That said, aside from legislative activity, I still prefer an organic growing of change, watered by organizing, mind you, to the more deterministic building towards revolution. Not to say that I don’t think this should occur as soon as possible (I’m still very much a Luxemburgist), but this is all complicated by my own pessimism.
Andrew says: “I still prefer an organic growing of change, watered by organizing, mind you, to the more deterministic building towards revolution.”
I don’t understand what this means.
Andrew says: “I still prefer an organic growing of change, watered by organizing, mind you, to the more deterministic building towards revolution.”
That’s precisely what the “strategy of patience” represents, the slow building of “grassroots” progressive forces. Luxemburgism and other forms of ultra-leftism actually seem very contrary to what it sounds like your vision of social change are (which is a good thing).
The reform/revolution dichotomy is a silly one. Of course any pole of opposition trying to amass support is going to do so by engaging in the struggles of the day, but having a post capitalist vision would simply mean articulating the need to transcend the confines of liberalism. Call that thought revolutionary if you like
A quick note though — part of the problem in Canada and across the Western left is the fact that the left is constantly suckered into taking a defensive posture. “Support the liberals to prevent the conservatives from coming to power in Canada.” I think this defensive posture is a big problem. Alain Badiou’s book “The Meaning of Sarkozy” makes this point in-depth.
As for Moore: The most important thing he’s done is raise questions. Your average American will be looking for solutions, and sometimes you either don’t get clear ones (Roger and Me), or you get ones that aren’t going to move the more hardened yet sympathetic progressives (ending Sicko with a look at the Cuban experiment, while telling about our lack of egalitarianism, probably wasn’t the image you wanted people to take home).
I really want to get some thoughts on this movie from non-political types. It’ll be a good way to open up a conversation on the capitalist model with those who aren’t movement types.
Ok, so Luxemburgism is a stretch, but I try not to be too bogged down in theory. There’s a lot of inspirations we should draw from, of course.
My biggest concern is getting locked into rigid ideology, which is what I sometimes read from certain contributors on here. It’s wonderful to draw from Marx as an inspiration, but I’d rather not lock myself into looking for people who can parrot the correct line.
I’m not sure if that concern is applicable to our times. We’ve had decades of marginalization, and the bankruptcy of many of the core ideas of the left— namely traditional social democracy and state socialism. Intellectually we’ve had the rise of postmodernism and the deadening of critical opposition that went along with the attack on the metanarrative (and more generally the legitimacy of communities of “belief”). Our “left” today is largely post-political and muddled in identity politicking. Though our bewildering stances on the rise of Islamism and general lack of any sort of emancipatory vision begs the question– do we deserve the label at all. Organization and the reaffirmation of theory is something I think we need a lot more of today. Genuine workers movements have always been multi-tendency, but I think we would be a lot better off if the left adhered to a few common principles.
On the brightside, I think DSA is a fine model for what an embryo of a good movement of opposition should look like. We do everything pretty well proportional to our size.
No ideology is more rigid than that which deliberately avoids “theory” or “ideology.”
Don’t want to “parrot the correct line”? Should we parrot the incorrect line instead? Should we not care whether we’re right or not, or treat our political perspectives as if they weren’t important? Shouldn’t avowed socialists care about whether or not the political positions we take are consistent with the cause we’re supposedly advancing?
[to preface i'm not saying this is Andrew's argument, just one I've heard repeated]
Also, it is false to say that ideology alienates leftists from a mass base or somehow pushes us further into the fringe. If anything the broad politics of the contemporary liberal-left consists of knee jerk anti-imperialism that devolves into a mess of latent anti-semtism and crude anti-Americanism — rampant precisely because we are in a post-political epoch and don’t have any sort of broader context to put our actions and world events into.
A return to ideology and to the idea of mass politics if would be (at the very least — relatively) mainstreaming for the radical left. Turns to authoritarianism didn’t happen because of ideology. They happened because socialists all too often eschewed the idea of mass politics and building towards majoritarian support (what Harrington called “visionary gradualism”) and seized and held onto power anti-democratically (and lacked a democratic and materially efficient post-capitalist vision). Ironically, I think that the current “anti-authoritarian” left is closer to mimicking these follies.
You seem to like to take socialism and chain it to your specific view of what our correct influences should be. On numerous occasions, you’ve lambasted and dismissed a number of socialist perspectives, from reformist ideologies to Fabianism to sort of left-syndicalist perspectives. If it’s your view that socialism should be chained to what you or your various intellectual inspirations have taken away from Marx as opposed to a multi-tendency left, then say so (Cornell West, as an avowed non-Marxist socialist, might take issue with that). I was under the impression this was a multi-tendency democratic socialist organization, not a journal of Marxist thought. It’s great to acknowledge Marx as an inspiration, obviously he’s a prime inspiration for socialists. But to tie our ideology so strictly to his vision and not concentrate instead of the myriad of social justice movements reeks of a sort of ivory-tower intellectual vanguardism.
What I “like to do,” Andrew, is take the goal of socialism seriously and try to figure out what kind of political approach might actually have a shot of moving the U.S. (hell, the world) towards it, or which at least has a shot at building a mass movement of the working class which can achieve greater economic and social democracy here and elsewhere. If I critique other approaches — most of which claim to be more “realistic” or “pragmatic” than my own — it is because those approaches DO NOT WORK, HAVE NOT WORKED, AND WILL NOT WORK.
Example: as I recall you had nice things to say about Andy Stern. But the Stern approach to expanding unionism in the U.S. is an absolute disaster — it does nothing more than build a 21st century form of company unionism that does not even do the basic task of defending workers’ basic economic interests. To stand with Stern is to give up on the fight for a labor movement that does what a labor movement should do — fight for the interests of workers. It is to give up on the fight for serious, “social democratic” reform — which is what the SEIU did when it put unionizing HMOs above the need for single-payer health insurance in the U.S. It is to disavow the very real class struggle in favor of “Team U.S.A.,” workers and corporations working hand in hand against competitors around the world. It’s just not socialist.
Actually, as someone whose obviously woefully behind on my analysis (or maybe over-analysis) of the contemporary left, maybe I should just stop talking. Maybe the intellectual wing of this movement isn’t my place. I just hope that we don’t get too bogged down in tossing about analysis of the left as opposed to trying to organize a movement that moves beyond a narrow ideology which apparently the working class will just inevitably pick up eventually (hopefully before we have a privatized school system).
Of course the left is and should be multi-tendency, but valuing the freedom of argument and discussion doesn’t mean I think all analysis were created equally. Or else what would be the point of staking out any specific position? So we argue, debate, polemicize, etc, but we are showing respect for the views of others on the left, by not immediately ignoring or casting aside the views and actions of other groups on the left as irrelevant. (a healthy movement would have more polemics imo). Objectively I think that the wide range of beliefs that I’ve criticized are wrong or at least “more wrong” than what I’ve espoused. If arguing a minority position can be called intellectual vanguardism– I’m fine with that label, but in general my ideas have been born through praxis (actual activism at campus and local levels) and not in the ethereal spheres of academia.
Judging from the vast majority of your articles you seem to be quite sharp so it would be a shame if you took honest, open engagement for a reason to “stop talking”. I do think that you misunderstood some of the points that I’ve and others have made.
But yes, I have broadly criticized a wide range of politics. Knee-jerk anti-imperialism that puts some in our movement in bed with mullahs is unacceptable in my view, but equally so is the type of politics that has illusions about the nature of imperial power. CCDS or CPUSA style relations with the Democratic Party is doing little to movement build, but neither is brick throwing and lifestylism on the otherside of the spectrum. Dependency theory hogwash that doesn’t acknowledge the role of market forces in lifting millions upon millions out of poverty in India and China doesn’t sit well with me either. I think the alternative I’ve posed is relatively pragmatic and would make for more effective politics. Am I expecting the majority of the working class to adopt a socialist program in my lifetime? No. I am sure that it is possible to build a relevant, minority pole of opposition. I also would also contest the idea that I (or whoever you were addressing) were just inspired by a bunch of different people My ideas are all cohesive and build on just a few basic principles, they aren’t unassailable of course and I reserve the right to be fundamentally wrong about the possibility of overcoming class society, but they are definitely not eclectic pluckings from interesting thinkers.
Very well. I look forward to continued engagement. You’ll have to excuse me for being naturally defensive. I was booted from my officer job in the last supposed “multi-tendency left” group I was in due to a stance I took on Israel (the ugly borderline anti-semitism raises its head) therefore I guess I (largely irrationally) tend to tiptoe around when voices to the left of me arrive.
Groovy.
Also let’s not forget that practically we’re basically in agreement about the struggles of today. These more lofty political questions will only be actualized if we actually have some sort of mass movement. The even more esoteric ones that involve the “question of power” will almost definitely not come to pass in our lifetimes.