Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story"

My feeling about Moore is typically very contextual. On the one hand, he's obviously not as rigorous in his use of facts as he should be and his theoretical lens is quite flimsy. On the other hand, he is excellent at finding clear illustrations of his point which, even if you don't agree with the point, are a rare space in US culture where these illustrations are even broached. For instance, in Sicko, while his use of Canada, the UK and France (not to mention Cuba) as examples of well run health care programs are likely quite partial and exaggerated; the nuances of each system would likely find places they could be repaired or altered not to mention the people who probably virulently despise them. But it is striking that, in the US conversation about Health Care, there are so few moments when this illustration is made--when even the mention of the fact that every other industrialized world has some system of nationally providing or enabling the provision of health care in a social democratic way. I don't mean people just casually mentioning it as some abstract external category: I mean people using the dominant forms of the visual media to communicate examples of these experiences in anything approaching a coherent, comprehensive, or balanced way. The fact that he has to resort to buffoonish tactics to keep the movie entertaining may be both a plus and a minus--in general, I think it would be better for him to direct a more attractive, less annoying person to do this, but I guess it's part of his blue collar agitation shtick to be fairly unconcerned with appearances. So yes, on one level I find Moore a complete buffoon; on the other hand, it shows the deep impoverishment of our culture that it takes an utter buffoon to make what are clearly relevant points using visual media such as film in a widely distributed fashion. It's like taking a class where there is an annoying almost intolerable student who nonetheless asks the kinds of questions and poses the kinds of dilemmas which should animate any classroom setting--yet which would otherwise be completely absent from the discussion.

I feel roughly the same way about Moore's analysis in his most recent film, Capitalism: A Love Story. Many of his points are sloppy and oversimplified--and his misplaced faith in Obama and the popular agitation of late 2008 is almost unforgivable--but he still represents one of the few voices that actually attempts to articulate a full throated critique of the current economic system. True there are people like Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, and the late Howard Zinn among public intellectuals who might critique this system: likewise the new generation of critics of the food system--people like Michael Pollin. But Pollin has ambivalent resonance in US culture (it is easy to opt for a gated community of organic food to protect yourself from these evils--or to think you are) and the others are mainly marginal to US culture. They are great resources for the left, but for the most part there are much better resources for actual theory and history; they preach to the already curious. Nader is even more polarizing and in the current circumstances it is unclear how productive his interventions are. Moore, on the other hand, buffoon that he is, can get media attention to his cause and does a decent job of making the critique of capitalism something that is a little cathartic rather than just a downward spiral of endless bad news. Of course the catharsis is an illusion, but without some utopian impulse it is hard to imagine anyone standing up to the system he discusses.

As to this discussion, he is very vague on capitalism per se. He celebrates the post-war economy which was most assuredly capitalist, even if it was less brutal than the current situation. And he is characteristically moralistic and melodramatic in talking about both the people who benefit from the current system and those who are hurt by it. On the other hand, he provides some clear evidence to support the validity of this convention (a memo from Citigroup analogous with the recommendations of the trilateral commission; people put out of their homes by refinance schemes with variable interest rates; a juvenile detention facility that, after being privatized, bribed judges to raise incarceration rates.) And if nothing else he begins to illustrate again what many mainstream outlets refuse to contemplate, namely the claim he begins making early on that capitalism itself is the problem and it can't be regulated. (He calls it "evil" multiple times and gets several interlocutors to agree with this contention.) It is an extreme position, but one that has gotten no play at all in the current discussion: the claims that we are moving toward socialism make an actual discussion of what is capitalist about the current situation almost impossible. Perhaps even more helpful--and less discussed--are his visual representation of the kinds of long term economic indexes that are more relevant to the current situation of the average US citizen than the incessant discussions of fluctuations in the Dow: namely, the changes in the productivity numbers vs. stagnant wages; change in the percentage of household indebtedness; and change in the ratio of wages for average workers vs. CEOs. These three indexes are intricately related to the basic failure of the current model--which is why they are so rarely discussed in depth as problems to solve, much less as problems that were directly caused by certain regimes of policy and ideology or by the capitalist system itself.

Moore brings up this impossible line of inquiry, even if he is sloppy and sentimental in doing so. I could chide him for doing this, but it makes no sense to criticize someone for being less than ideal when there is no one else even close. I wouldn't say he's some sort of national treasure or anything (I reserve that designation for John Stewart and Stephen Colbert, who are perhaps the two administrators of a much more regular space of criticism); but he is an index of both what our national conversation could look like in its range and its fundamental failure: if it is up to Michael Moore to say this stuff, we really have a problem. As egotistical as I think he is, I can't help but think he'd agree on some level.