Capitalism: A Love Story (1 Viewer)

[murphyad]

Went to see it yesterday with a fair degree of interest and perhaps apprehension.

It was frustrating and funny, yet it ultimately lacked the incision needed for an adequately deep message. While the 'Dead Peasants' made me sick (as did the Citibank memo), I felt there was a bit too much of the same old Michael Moore publicity-stunt activities (eg citizens' arrest). Furthermore, Moore's overall critique of capitalism was too shallow and was over-reliant on a sense of pathos - instead of pointing to genuine flaws with modern capitalism such as the expropriation of power away from the lower classes, growing and unjustifiable wealth inequity etc, his delivery was too unsophisticated: "look at this system fucking these people over. you should hate it."

Perhaps Moore was simply afraid to overtly raise the spectre of the left to an American audience. I mean, where the hell was Marx? Like him or not, he is the authority in any capitalist critique, but he was nowhere to be seen in CALS, though some of his ideas were informally raised without a reference or explanation.

Has anyone else seen it and (dis)agrees with me?

 

[loquasagacious]

I think you are right in that Michael Moore is overtly socialist in nature and though I don't know enough to define him as a marxist, stalinist, maoist, trot, etc it is clear that his ideology is informed by communist/socialist thinkers like Marx. You are also right that the ideas of Marx would not be referenced because Moore is smart enough to know that Marx doesn't sell to americans.

You touch on one weakness of Moore's work that it is essentially an emotive polemic, in my mind the second weakness is that he does not present an alternative. Capitalism may well have flaws but that doesn't matter if it is the best option we have.

 

[Cyrus the Great]

Micahel Moore is so fucked that he cant even distinguish that democracy is a political system and capitalism is an economic system.

The idiot doesn't even believe capitalism made him rich.....it was democracy.

what a fucking baboon. Probably has connections with the Socialist alliance fucks that hang out in front of UTS all day.

 

[murphyad]

He didn't mean that they were in polar opposition. Essentially, Moore accused capitalism of overriding democratic interests in the modern world, and suggested that the inverse should occur - capitalism, whilst potentially still useful, should ultimately remain subservient to democracy. Well, that was my reading.

 

[yoddle]

Micahel Moore is so fucked that he cant even distinguish that democracy is a political system and capitalism is an economic system.

The idiot doesn't even believe capitalism made him rich.....it was democracy.

what a fucking baboon. Probably has connections with the Socialist alliance fucks that hang out in front of UTS all day.

How true. Politics and economics are completely separate concepts are not interdependent on each other in any way.

 

[yoddle]

Oops didn't realise it's a troll