Published: Saturday, Oct. 10, 2009 / Updated: Saturday, Oct. 10, 2009 01:19 AM

Moore takes us inside capitalist system

The Oct. 3 political cartoon in The Herald portraying filmmaker Michael Moore as a fat-cat capitalist misses the mark. Moore is a very successful (albeit overweight) small-business entrepreneur. True, his films have made money, but he has used profits to support good causes and to make more, and better, films. In a real sense, he turns out a good product, so people buy it.

Twenty years ago, Moore took on General Motors in his award-winning documentary film “Roger and Me.” In it, he pointed out that unless top management (the real fat cats) changed the way they operated, GM was headed for bankruptcy. We all know how that story ended.

In his film “Sicko” — financed from the success of earlier ones — Moore showed the inequities in the American health care system. It was all there: people who could afford no coverage, those who could not afford their co-pay, those denied coverage for pre-existing conditions, those whose insurance had been dropped when they tried to use it. This story is to be continued. But when we finally get national health insurance, Michael Moore will deserve credit for helping make it happen.

In his new movie “Capitalism: A Love Story,” Moore takes on the economic system we've all been programmed to love. At one point in the film, a shaken George Bush tells us that the capitalist system is the most efficient, the most productive, and the most successful in the world. This was just after the financial sector meltdown, when Wall Street was in a panic. Bush looks and speaks as if he has been living on another planet.

When the Democrats balked at bailing out the banks, former Wall Streeters (Henry Paulson, Larry Summers, Robert Rubin and others) in Washington went to work spreading fear and confusion. Their story to Congress was simple: Bail out the banks, or the entire system will fail, and it will be your fault. The power play worked. Cowed Democrats folded, surrendering in effect to a financial coup d'état that shifted control from Washington to Wall Street fat cats who run the country. (You didn't think it was Rep. John Spratt and his colleagues in the House and Senate, did you?)

Moore shows us the pain and suffering caused by our unquestioning allegiance to a system that fails so many while allowing others to accumulate vast sums of money. One percent of the population controls more of the wealth than the bottom ninety-five percent. In that sense, we've become a Third World country. There are serious side effects: gun violence, double-digit unemployment, high infant mortality, woefully inadequate schools, drug use and trafficking and crumbling infrastructure.

Moore's logic is hard to deny. An economic system — regardless of how much it benefits the few — is evil if it does evil things to people. And, as one priest in the film says, “You can't regulate evil.” If this characterization makes you squeamish, see the film, and listen to the priests and bishops. Every day, they witness the harm that greed and the mindless pursuit of profit have on peoples' lives. The clerics call it what it is.

Too many of us still confuse democracy with capitalism. Moore refuses to fall into that trap. So did Franklin D. Roosevelt. One year before he died, FDR proposed a second Bill of Rights for Americans. It included the right to a secure home, a job and a living wage, adequate health care and an old-age pension. Germany, Italy and Japan — the countries we defeated in World War II — included these rights in their new constitutions. Americans are still waiting.

Moore shows us, however, some encouraging signs that things might be starting to change. Americans are beginning to wake up to the fact that they have been screwed by the system. Two decades of stagnant wages for the middle class will do that. Told by management to pack it up, workers at Republic Windows and Doors occupied their workplace until a settlement was reached over back wages. Communities are supporting homeowners in Miami when Bank of America operatives come to evict them.

But money still talks on Wall Street. In Washington, it whispers, but the message is loud and clear: Talk all the change you want, but rig the game for the fattest felines. Michael Moore thinks an aroused populace will storm the ballot boxes and create a new order. Maybe. But for the past 30 years, capitalism has run roughshod over democracy. Changing this high-stakes game will require more than a visit to the ballot box. To paraphrase Warren Buffett's quote in the film: We are in a state of class warfare in this country, and the wrong side (his own class) is winning. Keep the cameras rolling, Michael.

Wayne Clark lives in Rock Hill. His email address is waclark@comporium.net