False prophet rails against false profitMichael Moore's new film about capitalism scores some points, yet misses the point
If there were a gospel according to contemporary American capitalism, how would Jesus Christ respond when asked to heal the sick, or show the way to eternal life? Michael Moore, the polemical documentarian right-wingers love to hate, offers his own answers in his new film, “Capitalism: A Love Story”. The first request is declined—Christ, in voice-over, says he is unable to heal someone with a pre-existing condition—and the answer to the second is “Go forth and maximise profits”. When it comes to the jokes, at least, Mr Moore is back on form after his previous, rather turgid film about American health care, “Sicko”.
Indeed, Mr Moore has leavened his latest outpouring of conspiratorial left-wing nonsense with some genuinely amusing moments. As well as his gospel of capitalism, there are some thoroughly enjoyable clips of experts such as a former IMF chief economist, Ken Rogoff, failing to provide an easily understandable explanation of derivatives. There are some satisfying swipes at George Bush. And there are plenty of bemused security guards at Goldman Sachs as Mr Moore tries to enter their building to perform a citizen’s arrest on their chairman before wrapping their building in yellow “crime scene” tape.
The crime in question was the $700 billion bail-out of Wall Street passed by Congress, at the second attempt, to end the panic triggered by the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. According to Mr Moore, this bail-out was a “financial coup d’état”, for what other reason could there possibly be for the government to act to stop the entire banking system from collapsing? This was, he says, the final robbery of the American people by capitalists who had spent the previous 30 years deregulating finance in order to rip people off in every possible way.
It is hard to believe that Mr Moore wants to be taken seriously, given that the only economics he offers in support of his analysis is supplied by his friend, Wallace Shawn, a character actor who appeared in “The Princess Bride” and who took a few classes in the dismal science. The capitalism he describes as “evil” and in need of being eliminated is clearly a straw man. To top it all off, he ends the movie with a rousing version of the socialist anthem, “The Internationale”.
The leading capitalists of the past 30 years, and especially in the run-up to the recent crisis, should probably be grateful for Mr Moore’s lack of seriousness, because the movie contains plenty of moments that could have been used to make a genuinely insightful documentary. A scene in which workers whose factory is shut by Bank of America just before Christmas successfully protest against the failure to pay them the wages they were owed is genuinely uplifting. And, on reflection, was it really such a bright idea to hire four heads of Wall Street firms as treasury secretary (of the ten who have served since the start of the Reagan era), and put them in charge of deregulating the financial system?
Mr Moore also airs some serious concerns about the terms on which the $700 billion was handed over to the banks, expressed by Elizabeth Warren, a respected Harvard law professor who chairs the Congressional Oversight Panel created to monitor the bail-out. And even the most committed capitalist should share Mr Moore’s outrage that Chris Dodd, despite having received a lucrative low-interest “Friend of Angelo” mortgage from Countrywide’s boss Angelo Mozilo, remains one of the people in charge of clearing up the mess caused by the issuance of so many ill-conceived mortgages by lenders like Countrywide, as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.
This movie, like Mr Moore’s early masterpiece about the failings of General Motors, “Roger and Me”, is on to something important. But Mr Moore’s ideology means he cannot see it or describe it in ways that could really make a difference. Just as GM needed new leaders with a new attitude, capitalism needs significant reform. But “eliminating” it, whatever that means, is not the answer, just as Mr Moore’s advice to increase union power would not have saved GM.
Capitalism never seems to get a balanced treatment in the movies, whether documentary or fiction. A previous documentary that focused on it, “The Corporation”, argued that capitalism’s demand for profit turned companies into psychopaths. In the 1980s the villainous protagonist of “Wall Street”, Gordon Gekko, argued that “greed is good”; nobody expects the forthcoming sequel to be any more nuanced. And although there is apparently a movie in the works of Ayn Rand’s pro-capitalist novel “Atlas Shrugged”, that is unlikely to provide the sort of balanced analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of capitalism, and of how it might be improved, that is now so badly needed.
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