I am watching these two on HBO now. Maher is actually more incisive than
Moore, reminding him that democracy is not an economic system. In the
end of his movie, Moore says that we need to replace capitalism with
democracy--a point that Maher found fuzzy to say the least. Now I don't
think that Moore has to recite lines from the CM, but you really have to
talk about what will replace it. You can use all sorts of formulations
to make the points without using the word "socialism", like the economy
should be controlled by those who produce the goods, etc. Anyhow, it is
interesting to see open discussions about the capitalist system. Moore
was followed by Krugman and Elliot Spitzer who are about at the same
place as Moore. Spitzer says that we haven't had capitalism in the past
10 years or so, as if derivatives and subprime mortgages were not in
keeping with the accumulation cycle. I have a feeling that they have
this idealized notion of the system out of high school government textbooks.
Here, btw, is Moore explaining his economic ideas to Amy Goodman.
Basically, it sounds like a call for worker-owned businesses, as if
something like Mondragon is not subject to the laws of capitalism:
MICHAEL MOORE: Well, I’m very clear in the film that, you know, I’m not
an economist. But the alternative, the economic order that we need to
create for the twenty-first century—and that’s what we really need to
do. We need to quit having the argument about the economic system that
was invented in the sixteenth century versus the one that was invented
in the nineteenth century. We need to—come on, we’re smart people. We’re
in the twenty-first century. We have a whole new set of issues and
problems that we face. Can’t we come up with an economic order that has
these two basic underpinnings: that it is run democratically and that it
is run with a sense of ethics and morality? So, whatever we construct,
for me, personally, it has to have those two things in its foundation.
I do show in the film some very specific examples of workplace
democracy, where a number of companies have decided to go down the road
of having the company actually owned by the workers. And when I say
“owned,” I’m not talking about some ding-dong stock options that make
you feel like you’re an owner, when you’re nowhere near that. But I mean
these companies really own it. And I’m not talking about, you know, the
hippy-dippy food co-op, and I don’t mean that with any disrespect to the
food co-ops who are listening or any hippies that are listening. But I
go to an engineering firm in Madison, Wisconsin. These guys look like a
bunch of Republicans. I mean, I didn’t ask them how they vote, but they
didn’t necessarily look like they were from, you know, my side of the
political fence. And here they all are equal owners of this company. The
company does $15 million worth of business each year.
I go to this bakery. It’s not a bakery really; it’s a bread factory out
in northern California, Alvarado Street Bakery. And they’re all paid.
They all share the profits the same. They’re all shared equally,
including the CEO. And they vote. They elect, you know, who’s going to
be running this and how this is going to function. The average factory
worker in this bread factory makes $65,000 to $70,000 a year, which, I
point out, is about three times the starting pay of a pilot who works
for American Eagle or Delta Connection. And that’s another harrowing
scene in the movie, where I interview pilots who are on food
stamps—pilots who are on food stamps because of how little they’re paid. So—
full: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/9/24/after_20_years_of_filmmaking_on
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
