(quick comment:)

Somethings he gets right, but there’s a lot that is off that prevents him from making some more radical conclusions. He sounds like a liberal who’s seen the wreckage of capitalism, but can’t quite articulate the why’s. He needs to read more Marx, less of the Bible. Also that little chart showing wages stagnating? This is key, but it didn’t start with Reaganomics- hello, the 1970s? In juncture with the decline of industrial manufacturing, union busting, and credit cards (amongst other factors) we’ve entered into this era of capitalism in which we’ve been forced to use credit cards to make up for the difference, increasing debt, in an economy driven by speculation and financial instruments. It’s a house of cards, but an endlessly exploratory and exploitative one. Capitalism could be on its last legs, but those legs could stand for quite a while.

Obviously, Moore’s background pushes him to a somewhat syndicalist stance, but that itself is not enough. He also talks a lot about “spreading the wealth” vis a vis a democratic-socialist welfare state, mentioning Germany and Japan with little actual analysis of their social and economic situations. The welfare state is dead/stagnating too. No, we need something much more radical, and in turn we need a much more radical reading of capitalism.

And electoral voting is definitely not the solution!

He doesn’t explore communism at all (besides some clips of soviet propaganda for kitsch) but guess that might be too much to ask given the ongoing redbaiting in this country.

Still, I enjoyed the small stories that he found, and really he would have done better to film a documentary on the Chicago Windows & Doors Plant and home occupations. The film suffered from lack of coherent organization, too much kitsch, and an uneven message.

I think this little David Harvey clip says much more than Moore’s film (albeit, without the human drama)