No subliminal messaging there, just some pun fun. Michael Moore’s movie, Capitalism, A Love Story, is premiering in theaters everywhere tomorrow. Naomi Klein interviewed him for The Nation, and one exchange struck me.
NK: All right. Let’s talk about the film some more. I saw you on Leno, and I was struck that one of his first questions to you was this objection–that it’s greed that’s evil, not capitalism. And this is something that I hear a lot–this idea that greed or corruption is somehow an aberration from the logic of capitalism rather than the engine and the centerpiece of capitalism…
Why is it so hard to see the connection, and how are you responding to this?
MM: Well, people want to believe that it’s not the economic system that’s at the core of all this. You know, it’s just a few bad eggs. But the fact of the matter is that, as I said to Jay [Leno], capitalism is the legalization of this greed.
Greed has been with human beings forever. We have a number of things in our species that you would call the dark side, and greed is one of them. If you don’t put certain structures in place or restrictions on those parts of our being that come from that dark place, then it gets out of control. Capitalism does the opposite of that. It not only doesn’t really put any structure or restriction on it. It encourages it, it rewards it.
I’m asked this question every day, because people are pretty stunned at the end of the movie to hear me say that it should just be eliminated altogether. And they’re like, “Well, what’s wrong with making money? Why can’t I open a shoe store?”
And I realized that [because] we no longer teach economics in high school, they don’t really understand what any of it means.
The point is that when you have capitalism, capitalism encourages you to think of ways to make money or to make more money. And the judges never could have gotten the kickbacks had the county not privatized the juvenile hall. But because there’s been this big push in the past twenty or thirty years to privatize government services, take it out of our hands, put it in the hands of people whose only concern is their fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders or to their own pockets, it has messed everything up.
I don’t disagree with any of this exchange, but I think it falls short of offering an insightful critique of capitalism. To be insightful, there would need to be some discussion of class, i.e. “who is in a position to make greedy decisions,” or “who is almost always affected by these greedy decisions?”
Immediately after this exchange, they broach the idea of democratically-run workplaces, which are the borderline-cliched favorite alternatives of many on the left. Even that brief discussion does not seem to take the class issue head on. I wouldn’t think Moore is afraid of the accusation that he is engaging in class warfare, so what’s the downside of speaking on these terms?
The people who blame the crisis on greed are sorta like people who would blame airplaine crashes on gravity. As you point out, you’re blaming the constant, not the variable. For me, the exchange seems to actually strengthen the case for capitalism.
Don’t kick me out for saying this, but Milton Friedman had a great exchange with Phil Donahue (whodathunkit?) on the same subject decades ago:
I’m curious to hear your response to Friedman’s questions.
I’m not sure if I agree that it strengthens that case for capitalism…I suppose for background I should ask what your thoughts are on Adam Smith (not the cookie-cutter version of him, of course).
As for the Friedman video, he seems a bit like Gordon Gekko (though that was in vogue back then). I always think that setting up USSR et al. as the contrast is a bit of a straw man argument. Clearly a kleptocracy sans politcal freedoms is worse than capitalism with democracy, but Klein and Moore have always been a little more insightful than that.
My thought on Smith are that through his three big works (TMS, WoN, LoJ), he basically hit the social, economic, and political cases for free markets. Of course you can pull out short quotes to make him sounds like either a minarchist or social democrat, but overall he was a small government guy.
As for Friedman, I don’t think the USSR comparison was his most powerful, but when he asked “Do you think American presidents award virtue?” The answer is no. Political decisions are made with political considerations in mind – even in liberal democratic states. The only way to avoid this is to keep the power out of their hands in the first place.
Re para 1, have you read Gavin Kennedy’s excellent blog, Adam Smith’s Lost Legacy? He probably knows Smith’s collective works better than anybody and does a great job commenting on contemporary misinterpretations of Smith. I don’t think he would agree with your statement, especially given that Smith was speaking against mercantilism, not democratic socialism.
As for para 2, I’ve lost my faith, to a degree, in the American political system’s ability to do anything that actually gives power to the people, so in general I would favor a more communiatrian political and economic system. Gar Alperovitz, among others, has done some good work on this stuff.
The blog sounds interesting, I’ll have to check it out.
Smith was indeed arguing against mercantilism. I think the reason is that it was the dominent system at the time. There were proto-socialist theories floating around, but nothing that Smith would take to serious. Had he encountered such a theory, I have little doubt he would critique it all the same.