On Sunday I went to see the Glasgow Film Festival’s showing of Michael Moore’s new film ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’. Although out in the US since last September the film won’t go on general release in the UK till Friday. I’m not sure about other cinemas across Scotland but it will definitely be showing for a good while at the GFT.

I’ve seen a few of Moore’s earlier films and definitely wasn’t disappointed this time. It’s easily accessible for those who don’t care much for dry economics and has its funny moments while at the same time really showing up the utter devastation and despair which capitalism brings. We see 10 police cars turning up and the cops breaking their way into families’ homes to carry out eviction orders from the banks, leaving those who have lived there all their lives in tears with nothing left and nowhere to go. Many of these people had been encouraged to refinance their homes before being caught out by unfair terms and charges they were unable to keep up with.

And we see workers at a recently shut factory in Chicago who weren’t even paid the money owed to them since the bank wouldn’t provide the necessary finances despite themselves being at the receipt of billions of dollars of taxpayers money. Frustrated the workers go back and occupy the factory, receiving strong support from the local community and with even Obama expressing his sympathy for their cause. In the end the workers win a small but significant victory as the bank changes its mind and gives them their redundancy pay in full. The resistance in the US (and most other places too) may as of yet be isolated and sporadic but as cases like this show only through collective action can ordinary people ever hope to claim back what is theirs.

Moore returns briefly to his home town of Flint, Michigan to show us the twisted wreckage of the factory where his Dad once worked and which was torn down by GM despite record company profits. It is in Flint where he made his first film ‘Roger & Me’ back in 1989 not so long after GM’s chief Roger Smith had chosen to inflict so much misery upon the local population. As with many places hit by de-industrialisation the town has never recovered, being left to rot by successive governments and by an economic system which is completely incapable of meeting people’s most basic needs.

In some of the film’s funnier moments we see Moore, in his typical style, trying to get to get interviews with top bankers and CEOs and turning up at the banks with an armoured van to collect the American people’s stolen cash. It’s safe to say that security didn’t let him get too far in either instance. More successfully though he interviews some Catholic priests and bishops who seem to united in the belief that capitalism is a sin and an evil which must be eradicated. Moore, himself a Christian, asks on whose side Jesus would likely have stood in a country in which religion is so frequently used to justify inequality and right-wing political causes.

An interesting fact mentioned in the film is that the top rate of income tax in the US was once as high as 90% -- and right enough this was the case from during the war through to the mid 60s. By the time Reagan took power in 1980 it was still 70% but he soon changed that – appointing a finance department completely filled with his Wall Street cronies who slashed the top rate to just 28% and oversaw a decimation of American industry. Any pretence about having a democracy which is impartial and serves the interests of all its citizens has been stripped away as one small interest group – that of finance capital – has been able to achieve total control over all decision making processes at the highest levels.

Moore’s appeal is primarily to democracy, to the right of all citizens to have equal to the political and economic decisions that shape their lives. We see two different examples of workers’ cooperatives, one in which assembly line workers get paid three times as much as the average American airline pilot all because there isn’t a profit being skimmed off to go on bonuses for fat-cat bosses and shareholders. Everything goes back to the company and to those workers who keep it going through their common effort. And decisions are voted on democratically by all which creates a sense of solidarity and belonging.

There’s also, in the film, a good deal of praise for the sort of social-democratic model most European countries at least attempted to adopt in the decades after the war. One thing I hadn’t heard about which we see in the film is Roosevelt’s proposal of a ‘Second Bill of Rights‘ which would have guaranteed all Americans a home, a job and adequate medical care among other things. Unfortunately he died a year later and no later President took up the idea. The 50s, 60s and 70s nevertheless are often seen as the golden age of capitalism with almost all Americans having a job, decent housing and extensive work-related benefits, particularly for those belonging to the strong middle class for whom anything seemed possible.

But, as I think Moore himself alludes to, this endless growth and endless consumption is of course not sustainable. Especially now with the dangers of climate change (which the film itself doesn’t go in to) we need to completely rebuild and reorientate our economy towards serving the needs of all in a way which is at harmony with our natural environment. We can no longer afford to see the two as somehow being at odds with each other. But this will of course never be possible for as long as a tiny business and finance elite remains in charge. All progressive change throughout history has come from the bottom-up and it’s up to us as ordinary people to fight back and construct a better society and a better world.

Despite its strong US focus ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’ is, I believe, just as relevant here with a government which is equally committed to the insane neoliberal model which it so brilliantly ridicules and tears apart. As always there are right-wing fools who will denounce it as propaganda, and perhaps some of them genuinely believe our economy is being managed in the most sensible and rational way possible. If there’s one good thing to come out of the economic crisis though it’s the complete loss of credibility in the eyes of the public for the claims of the economic elites who expect all the praise when things are going (relatively) well but attempt to shirk all responsibility and shift the blame elsewhere when the problems inevitably begin to arise.

Here’s the trailer:

These people used to control the United States’ nuclear weapons.

From our American correspondent, Andrew Weir.

So. Healthcare, eh?

Since I got to the US, I’ve been trying very hard not to be “that Brit” (and “that commie Brit” come to that), who goes around saying “Well, with the National Health Service, things work much better than this. You know, you guys really should just socialize your healthcare system as soon as you can.” Doing that would be a bit smug and rude, frankly.

However one thing that a Brit is struck by is the things that are said here by certain right-wing politicians in criticism of the British NHS. Now god knows the NHS is not above criticism. It suffers creeping bureaucratization (I speak as one who briefly worked as an NHS bureaucrat!), but more than that, the outsourcing/privatization drive that it has been subjected to in recent years has increased the tendency (which “socialized” medicine should not show) to aim for profitable operation rather than most efficiently healing the sick. The NHS is also chronically underfunded (most Brits take this as being not too surprising; looking after the health of all sixty million of us is a big undertaking).

The NHS. If it was a biscuit, it would probably be chocolate digestive. Lovely lovely chocolate digestives.

But these sort of criticisms are not the criticisms that are raised here by right-wing politicians. No, the sort of thing they say is that:
Patients have to go in front of panels to determine whether they are “worthy” of treatment.

You have to be under a certain age to qualify for a hip replacement.

Steven Hawking would be dead now if he was British.

OK, Steven Hawking is British, but he only got treatment because he’s a famous physicist.

NHS doctors live in penury on miserly state-bureaucrat salaries.

All of these statements are false. But they’re more than false, they’re stunningly blatantly false from the point of view of anyone who has actually grown up with the NHS. Even the most hardened libertarian-capitalist ideologue (and the UK does have a couple) would agree that these statements are false.

Now my point in this note is not so much to call these people out as liars; lots of other people have done that (although people need to continue to do it).

My point is more to say that, if these people are making these completely unresearched statements that can be shown to be completely untrue — what reason is there to believe them about anything else at all? Is there any reason at all to believe what they say about Venezuela, Cuba, Palestine, the “War on Terror”, the nature of democracy, the need for anti-trade-union legislation, the need for public sector cuts during a time of recession, etc. etc. etc.?

Or is it more likely that, just as they lie about the NHS, they are systematically lying about all of the above things as well?

Director Spike Lee in an interview with Jeremy Paxman hits the nail on the head.

Paxo – “That doesn’t mean he does it because the President is black though is it?”

Spike – “Look, how long have you been Black?”

“I’ve never been Black”

“Thankyou very much so from someone whose been living in America for 2 years and whose ancestors were slaves for a hundred years, I’m trying to answer your question, racism still exists in the United States of America”

Theres a lot of things Socialists can criticise about Obama, but so far most attacks on him have come from the Conservative and Far-Right in the United States and a lot of it is based on racism.

For example – accusing him of being Kenyan born and not a US citizen, being a jihadist Muslim and that he has a “deep seated hatred of white people”. That last charge comes from Glenn Beck, a Fox News professional psycho who makes Bill O’Reilly look like Tony Benn by comparison.

Obama is probably gonna sell out on his health reforms because he doesn’t have the will or the ability to take on the US Health Insurance lobby. Even if his reforms did go ahead, it would not be the incorporation of private healthcare into a National, Universal, free of charge Health System which every other first world country apart from the USA enjoys.

Nevertheless when Obama is attacked by the right on racist and pro-market grounds it’s important Socialists respond to and rebut their arguments as the Obama camp has been useless at doing so, particularly over healthcare.

Still maybe Spike is a bit harsh, there will be a significant section of opposition to Obama which might not be racist but just nuts – like the one third of New Jersey Conservatives who think Obama is the antichrist