Jim Davis Ozark Bioregion, USA Planet Gaia
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/historical-materialism/7346550
----- Original Message ----
> From: shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com>
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Sent: Sunday, October 4, 2009 10:53:08 AM
> Subject: [lbo-talk] capitalism, a love story
>
> spoiler alert
>
> this isn't a review, just a rambling reaction to the film.
>
> went to see Moore's latest, Capitalism: A Love Story. While I've never had money
> to go to the movies that often (so I can't judge), I did think it unusual that,
> of the small crowd of about 40 people at a 10p.m. showing, about half stayed to
> see the credits and then some seemed to gather to talk about the show in the
> aisles afterward. I don't think this typically happens at the movie theater. Can
> others comment on that kind of thing?
>
> Typical Moore fare, though I think he pumped this one out quickly to address
> contemporary events and the film suffered for it.
>
> Moore opens with scenes of foreclosure, the opener is video footage of people in
> a house watching about 10 cop cars cruise up the road toward the house, a
> nondescript ranch --not some McMansion. The occupants talk to the sheriff on the
> phone explaining that they know they're on the way but they aren't coming out.
> The cops will have to break the door down.
>
> They do.
>
> I didn't actually understand what was happening in this first scene until the
> scene shifted to Detroit as people in a neighborhood harass a guy posting a
> foreclosure notice on a house.
>
> me personally? I would have just shown a rapid-fire succession of one
> foreclosure after another - big homes and small, ghetto and suburb, Detroit and
> Ft. Lauderdale, NYC and Indianapolis, San Francisco and Gooch Hollow.
>
> Next (I think I have events correctly), footage from what appears to be an
> educational film produced for high school history classes about the fall of the
> Roman Empire. The point is meant to compare the two. Ho hum.
>
> Moore talks to the guy who runs Condo Vultures, a company that unabashedly sets
> out to show foreclosed properties to people who are looking only to buy homes
> dirt cheap in order to turn them over later. The owner of Condo Vultures just
> tells it like it is. This is capitalism man. All the while, you're viewing
> condos in Miami in neighborhoods where some have been trashed. As he's showing
> the property, the camera pans out to another condo in the neighborhood, roof
> ripped off. Another, right next door, appears to be burnt out.
>
> Moore then moves into a story about how we got here, arguing that we have had a
> love affair with capitalism. History seems to begin in the 20th century, with
> the U.S. becoming the most economically powerful nation on earth, doing so out
> of the ashes of destruction visited upon Europe and Japan during WWII.
>
> He then describes his father's and his world in the 50s and 60s. Single earner
> family, enough money to get a mortgage and pay off the house by the time Moore
> was in kindergarten. It's all hunkey dorey: the great middle class. Dad had a
> pension no one could touch. He didn't have to pay to send kids to college. he
> had four weeks vacation.
>
> It all comes crashing down -- unexplained in the movie as to why. The fatal
> crash is signaled by Jimmy Carter's national malaise speech. You really wouldn't
> understand why Carter was making that speech if you either hadn't lived through
> it hadn't read about it. It was poorly presented, but I suppose most people
> could figure it out since the whole point of introducing Carter was as
> springboard to focus on Reagan.
>
> (Aside: I do not remember that speech. I have read it and about it. But, lord,
> that was ugly. That was a truly awful speech, a truly awful delivery. I can't
> even begin to explain it, but Carter came off as one of those speakers on one of
> those educational 50s propaganda films Moore likes to use in his footage.
> *shudder*)
>
> Next: some truly hilarious footage of Reagan portrayed not primarily as a movie
> actor, but as a Hollywood pitch man, shilling for everything from hand soap to
> coffee. Reagan, capitalist tool in his first career, is a natural as capitalist
> tool in his second.
>
> Reagan represents the wanton destruction of the 50s American dream. A series of
> charts shows the grim statistics. As the fat cats make more and more money, the
> little guy's pay has flatlined. The flatline of our paychecks is then contrasted
> against the upward growth of productivity. etc. Crime up. Incarceration up. CEO
> pay up. Paychecks stagnate.
>
> Reagan is showing making a speech on the stock exchange floor, rambling on about
> free enterprise. Don Regan by his side, Moore points Regan out and explains his
> ties to big finance. Then you hear Regan say: "you need to hurry it up"
> (paraphrase)
>
> "who else would tell Reagan to hurry it up?" implying that Regan represents
> forces that have the power to tell presidents what to do.
>
> I think several people criticized Fahrenheit 911 because it propagated a vulgar
> marxist position that could too easily slide into a kind of conspiracy theory of
> capitalism.
>
> This film is subject to that critique. I don't think Moore actually thinks this
> way, that Don Regan was Reagan's puppet master. It's just that he's trying to
> illustrate a concept -- the one we were just arguing over about the relationship
> of the state to the market. In the final analysis, the government is subject to
> the rule of capitalism. It may not accomplish this in any uniform,
> straightforward way, but the state generally operates in the service of capital.
>
> How do you do that for the uninitiated?
>
> It's a really tough one. How do you explain this really complex relationship
> between capitalists and politicians?
>
> While I don't think Moore has a simplistic view, that there is some conspiracy
> going on, he does seem to allow his interviewees to do that for him. He talks to
> that congresswoman from Ohio who's given her colleagues in the house and senate
> shit for the bailout bill. Can't recall her name. But she and another
> congressman both say that they think shenanigans were going on. They both say
> that the bill was rammed through and the nefarious forces behind this were the
> financial industry.
>
> Moore buttresses that point by connecting the Bush administration's use of fear
> to ram through a war, to ram through the patriot act, to try to get elected to
> the use of fear to ram through the bailout bill.
>
> In another section of the movie, Moore seems to obsess over dead peasant
> insurance. This is insurance that a company takes out on its employees. When an
> employee dies for whatever reason, company collects. Moore pulls heart strings,
> spending a lot of time with family members crying over the loss of the loved
> one, as if this crying is *about* the dead peasant insurance. It would have been
> enough to just speak to one family and then explore the ramifications, but he
> ends up talking to another family, dragging it all out. It's only toward the end
> of the segment that Moore gets to the point: life insurance is for beneficiaries
> who have a stake in the person being alive. I can't take out insurance on my
> neighbor for no reason. It's illegal. Moore and others think dead peasant ins.
> should be illegal as well.
>
> (Of course, it is prob. legal be/c companies will argue that they are merely
> insuring themselves for the cost of losing the employee. Their logic is likely
> that it will cost X to replace that employee, so the insurance pay off defrays
> their costs. This isn't explored in the film since it would be too complicated.
> But that difficulty is precisely why it makes it hard to imagine doing Marxism
> 101 for the general population without using a reductionist vulgar marxist
> approach.)
>
> Moore does the right thing. After presenting a bleak analysis, he points to
> peole actually fighting back. But, to you and me, this fighting back looks kind
> of anemic on film. The people who fight back are the people at Republic Window
> and Doors, as well as a group that reclaims homes that have been foreclosed,
> helping families move back into their homes, and then standing around jeering
> and finger wagging at anyone who tries to operate as lackeys for the bank by
> evicting them again.
>
> He also points to a couple of examples of democratically run companies to make
> the case that it doesn't have to be this way. There are successful enterprises
> operating where everyone owns the company, everyone has equal input and voting
> rights, etc.
>
> He also impresses upon people that, when the U.S. assisted Germany, Italy, and
> Japan in revising their constitutions, they actually created constitutions that
> were more advanced than our own, recognizing rights of workers. it raises the
> question in the viewer's mind: why did we support such things for *them* and not
> us?
>
> You then learn about how much better off everyone is in Japan and Europe where,
> Moore's film argues, you have a much better social safety net.
>
> I'm not sure exactly of the sequence, but at some point Moore discusses the
> U.S's own history of recognizing the rights of workers and people more generally
> to a social and economic safety net. In a rather stunning bit, he reveals
> footage of Roosevelt arguing for a 2nd Bill of Rights.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Bill_of_Rights
>
> This footage was taken of Roosevelt just before he died, 1994. In it, he argues
> for a 2nd Bill of Rights, expressing what became known as Welfare Liberalism in
> its emphasis on extending to people the right to a *good* education, the right
> to a job with a decent wage, a right to medical care, etc. If you're old and
> politically aware, like me, you are not surprised by this. You remember a time
> when these things were embraced by ordinary people and no one was ashamed to say
> it -- as they tend to be now.
>
> I think Moore should have played on this one a lot more. Why did the footage get
> buried? What happened? Why did these sentiments become so unpopular> He has sort
> of already explored this, but he hasn't made it crystal clear. It made me wonder
> ifthere was something weird about the footage.
>
> Anyway, what I found unusual, though I shouldn't be surpised, is that it's the
> theme of democracy that moore presses hardest.
>
> I was floored by the name he gave to the system that was the opposite of
> capitalism. For Moore, it's democracy.
>
> uh....
>
> While he hints at the "other ism" in another scene, he chooses to avoid direct
> confrontation with it by saying that we need to have a democracy, not
> capitalism.
>
> He tells people he's tired of protesting, alone basically. You see him wrapping
> a Wall St. enterprise with police crime tape, trying to make a citizens arrest
> of the finance fat cats inside. He's doing it all alone, while people stand by
> and watch, taking video footage with the phones.
>
> He wants some help with this. We can do it. We can fix this problem like the
> people at Republic Window and Door and like the people who reclaim foreclosed
> homes. We have to get together.
>
> And then the film closes, with some interesting quotes and factoids interspersed
> among the credits.
>
> But you are never given an opportunity to find out how to do something.
>
> There is no organization, no web site to which you are directed. Zippo. I think
> that was the most tragic part of this film. Why get people interested or try to,
> and then provide nothing for them? Why get people fired up, or try to, and then
> expect them to figure out what to do on their own. What? Are they supposed to go
> to meetup.com and type in a search, "burn down capitalism" or something?
>
> Oh, and BTW: Yes, Moore does go after democrats. He says it was democrats who
> made the whole bailout thing work.
>
> As for Obama? Well, you see, capitalists didn't know what to do about him.
> Seemed kind of dangerous. Lots of people thought he was a socialist during the
> campaign. You get footage of the wingnuts espousing such views. you get Obama
> talking with Joe the Plumber, talking about equitable distribution.
>
> And yet the attempt to brand him socialist didn't work, Moore shows. The polls
> kept going up for Obama.
>
> Moore says that capitalists still didn't know what to do about this guy, Obama.
> In the end, they do what they always do: they threw money at the guy. And then
> Moore throws out the names of all his financial backers, one big corporation and
> financial firm after another.
>
> To me, of course, this was unsatisfying. To the average viewer, I'm not sure.
> Of course, your average politically aware person going to see this film is going
> to think that most politicians are on the take, bought and sold, anyway.
>
> Sure. But there's always that "Not my Nigel" thing going on. Oh sure,
> politicians are ratfuckers, just not *my* favorite politician-cum-fuckstain. :)
>
> Anyway, I'm sick of typing. :)
>
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