Michael Moore's "Capitalism' (2nd review)

Michael Moore's new film, Capitalism: A Love Story, much resembles his previous documentaries in style and presentation. A handheld camera follows the director as he goes in search of culprits for the disastrous state the world is in. Moore dresses down, working-class casual, with a cap that hearkens back to a bygone era over his unruly mop.

His manners, though, are imploringly (and mockingly) polite, and you almost expect to hear him say, "'Scuse me, governor," as he knocks vainly but persistently at door after door in the seemingly endless corridors of power. He's Everyman asking why he's always on the bottom looking up, or Diogenes with a modern lantern, looking for one honest man among the rich and smug.

In this sense, the subject of a Michael Moore film is always Moore himself. So considered, he's no different from any other Hollywood star who knows his image is bankable. Clint Eastwood he ain't, but there's value in brand identity, and Moore has established his. Whenever you see Clint on the screen, you know the subject is Justice. When you see Michael, you know it's Truth— emphatically with a capital "T." This sets a certain comfort level, even when the material is, or is meant to be, disturbing.

Man on a mission

Moore has dealt with such hot-button topics as the lie-in (a phrase I prefer to "run-up") to the Iraq war, and the medical-industrial complex that has given us the G-20's worst health system at its most inflated prices. Now, however, he turns to the universal explicator, capitalism itself, whose pratfall last year has plunged millions into a world of ruin that promises to continue (for salary rats like me, not the bonus babies of Wall Street) into the indefinite future.

Of course, Moore has been hot on capitalism's trail for a long time. The slow, agonizing death of his hometown of Flint, Michigan has been a leitmotif throughout his films, ever since General Motors pulled the plug on the city a generation ago. In one of Capitalism's most wrenching scenes, a couple being evicted from their family farm near Flint are given the ragpicker's job of stripping their home for the new owners for the princely sum of $1,000, a payday they are too destitute to refuse.

Now, of course, it's GM's turn to go down the tubes, as the big shakeout reveals the system's core survivors— i.e., the master predators. These are the banks and brokerage houses that are Too Big To Fail, and get to tap directly into the Treasury's teat when funds run short. The film's climactic scene shows Moore, in characteristic Average Joe mode, cruising up and down Wall Street with a laundry bag marked with a dollar sign, trying to get the public's money back, or at least make a citizen's arrest. Needless to add, Bernie Madoff is nowhere to be seen.

Secrets of the holy fathers

OK, Michael, we get your point. Capitalism (the system) does have its shortcomings. And, yes, it's shot through with greed, corruption and hypocrisy, not to mention sublime indifference to the human devastation it wreaks. But evil? That's not a judgment a sociologist can make, or even a muckraking filmmaker.

To get the skinny, Moore goes to his old parish priest and assorted other clericals, including even a bishop. They assure him that, theologically speaking, capitalism does in fact constitute evil. The holy fathers should know: The church invented double-entry bookkeeping, and has for many centuries been the world's largest owner of real estate.

My rabbi, Karl Marx

And what is a layman to conclude? On these subjects, I consult my own rabbi, Karl Marx. Marx didn't think capitalism inherently evil; in fact, as readers of The Communist Manifesto know, he praised it, albeit a bit lefthandedly, in terms that would have made Adam Smith blush.

What got Marx's dander up was human exploitation as such— the same "tyrannical principle," as Abraham Lincoln put it, that set one man to make bread that another could eat it. Lincoln had slavery in mind, of course, not capitalism; but, as Marx pointed out, one was the precursor of the other. Capitalism was merely the most perfected form of exploitation, the most efficient and least sentimental, and therefore the most candid.

What then? Can the Devil be made honest? Michael Moore thinks he has got him by the cloven hoof, and means to twist it until Old Nick tells the truth. But if he thinks bringing back Flint's assembly line or buying into Christian charity is going to help, he is one pilgrim with still a long way to go. ♦


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