Capitalism, we're through

[dcsmart]

For people without health care or who are losing their jobs, the love affair with the free market is already over--the question is when they'll find somebody new.


IN FRANCE, you pay nothing to go to college. In Britain, the National Health Service is free. And in Sweden, any woman who gives birth receives two years of paid maternity leave.

Meanwhile, in the richest country on the planet, the United States, college graduates are buried in debt, medical bills are the leading cause of personal bankruptcy, and if you have children--well, you're on your own.

It shouldn't come as any surprise that the former countries have formidable labor unions and even independent labor parties. In the latter, we have no such labor party.

But we do have Michael Moore. His new film, Capitalism: A Love Story, is at turns, infuriating, hilarious, shocking and inspiring. He could have made a film just about the financial crisis, or just about the foreclosures, or just about Wall Street, but he didn't. Moore made a film about the whole damn system.

His work is both an expression of a new consciousness and a catalyst for its development. Millions of people will find, in this film, confirmation of their own ideas, frustrations and aspirations.

Crucially, Moore reminds us of the high hopes that were invested in the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. Obama talked about "redistribution," and for that, the right wing labeled him a "socialist," which only made him more popular, and made left young people curious about "the S word."

But this isn't a film about socialism. It's a film about capitalism. And yes, it's a love story.
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But is democracy possible at work? Capitalism takes us inside the Republic Windows & Doors factory in Chicago, where workers staged an old-fashioned occupation of the plant when it faced closure without workers getting promised severance pay.

Inside the occupied factory, we see workers meeting, discussing and making decisions together. Moore shows us a worker-owned robotics plant, where employees make collective, democratic decisions about their work. Moore is introducing the audience to a fundamental idea of socialism--workers' democracy.

There's much more to the case for socialism than this film takes up. But Moore is expressing something basic about what's wrong with the system we live under, and what could replace it. "Capitalism is evil," he says, "and you cannot regulate evil. You have to eliminate it and replace it with something else...with democracy."
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Angry people, meet America's new socialist movement. Socialist movement, angry people. You're meant for each other.
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FULL ARTICLE
http://socialistworker.org/2009/10/02/through-with-capitalism

[Blu_Statr]

1. The devil is in the details, and they aren't listed here.

I'd like to see how all the free benefits described above get paid for. No matter how nice this sounds, _somebody_ is paying for it. There ain't no free lunch, regardless of what Moore would have you think. I think he does a disservice to progressives because he doesn't deal with these detail (that I can see). Maybe he will when I see the movie, but some of his other efforts don't make me optimistic.

And after talking with some friends and relatives who have experienced government-run healthcare, either first-hand or via their friends, (in Canada, England, Russia and Ukraine) I'm not sure that I can afford - or survive - "free" healthcare.

If we are going to make the world a better place, it has to be genuine, not just sound good.