From: Louis Proyect
My take on Michael Moore's latest: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/capitalism-a-love-story/ CB: I doubt the real Moore is as naive about class analysis as the character Michael Moore he plays. After all these years in class struggles around Michigan, you can be sure he has been informed of it by many Marxist groups and commentators like Lou. I know personally that he was involved in the plantclosing struggles in Detroit and Flint, 25 years ago or so, and there was plenty of class analysis in the rallies and left newspapers and media then. He live through the sixties and seventies , too. I guess one could say “so what ?”. I’m thinking he has decided that his “Capitalism is evil” and “we must replace it with democracy” line that I heard him deliver in an interview on the movie on one of the major network morning shows last week is the most left position that a great mass of Americans might be able to get to. Of course, it is also likely that a basic socialist or communist position would not long be allowed to reach the mass audience that his films are allowed to reach. What would be naive would be to think the US powers-that-be are now tolerant of communist free speech. Moore is getting away with being about as left as one can be as a major public journalist. He's sort of like the Bolivarians: he just doesn't use the "c" word. His contrasting capitalism with democracy is not a bad formulation in this reality. Actually ,the more I think about it, it is extraordinarily advanced to pose to an audience as large as Moore’s the notion that capitalism _as a system_ is no good. How often do lefts criticize liberal critiques of capitalism for not posing the issue as a systemic problem ? There's Michael Moore on a morning talk show saying "the capitalist _system_ has got to go" ! _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
