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I saw it Friday night. I considered it important to see it on the first weekend rather than wait until it came to the $2.00 movie house. It is important to show our solidarity with him.
And then I had all the mixed feelings afterwards. Not feeling sorry for people who used long time family homes as an ATM machine. Particularly when one family had pictures of Bush on the wall. People suffering need to know that their vote has consequences.
The pay of pilots under $20,000 astonished me. And just barely in the $20,0000 was not less so. I knew about the juvenile detention center before and was relieved to see it included. And the Wisconsin coops were a wonder.
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| But I began to think about capitalism in the abstract. I think of it as Marcuse described it as like pac man, eating everything including the most vibrant criticisms of it. Mao said it was like a weed and wherever you saw it you must pull it up. I think of it as quicksilver, running into all the spaces available to fill them up, into all aspects of life that have nothing to do with consuming,until there is no place it isn't and no way to even consider what life could be like without it.
As you may or not know I know a good deal about Ayn Rand and Objectivism. Rand herself was a proponent-if that could be considered the word-of romantic love. She could not sanction any other form of love in her mind or her novels.
Romantic love is divorced from capitalism, is it not? Money, class, power, physical appearance is not the primary of romantic love. Without marriage one may fulfill sexual desire during this experience. With marriage one becomes initiated into a market of exchange. How much do I love her can be expressed with the ring. How valuable is it? The wedding introduces all sorts of exchanges and gradually the marriage begins to enter the nexus of capitalism. The wedding, the honeymoon, where to live, children and on and on until romance becomes cynicism, especially among people with not much money. And then you are in it above your neck and it is all about money except for the windows of pure feeling that still exist. And lack of money constantly will close those windows. That is not to say that having money will lead to happiness, but then you are making choices at that point that may or may not have to do with how much money you have. Or those choices may have to do with high levels of material wealth. But the choices will not be about going to the doctor or the dentist or eating good for you food or other mundane decisions.
But I think as capitalism in Moore's film begins to move into the financial sector it seems to me to stop being capitalism. Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production. But nothing is being produced on Wall Street. Nothing but paper. All those derivatives had and have nothing to do with capitalism. There is no product, just a meaningless piece of paper.
Yes it is evil. Not because it is capitalism, but because it isn't at all. It is simply gambling based on fear and greed, masquerading as capitalism. It is doublespeak. Capitalism is theft here, which is the way Marx looked at it. But someone who develops some kind of production, markets it, employs people to make it and expects to make a profit feels OK to us. It feels moral that he should get a reward. So where does the evil come in? With the power to hire and fire, to control someone else's life? With growing greed for more and more? With taking risks? I don't think there is a definite boundary. It is like taking alcohol. Where is the boundary between social drinking and addiction? Where is the line? Is there one? Should there be one?
So I return where I always return, to Gandhi. If you want to change the world, you must begin with the children. What encourages greed in the human personality. It is there. Now what makes it grow and what enables it to exist within boundaries that are not harmful to the person or anyone else? |
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