Michael Moore’s new film Capitalism: A Love Story is playing in many countries now, including the Netherlands.
The film starts off by comparing the USA, as they had become by 2008, the last year of George W. Bush’s presidency, to the Roman empire. Seemingly strong, but still heading for decline.
The film discusses the 2008, last year of the Bush presidency, bailout by taxpayers’ money of banks and other big businesses. A Democratic member of the House of Representatives being interviewed tells how Congress voted for the Iraq war based on government lies. The Bush bailout proposals, he says, were again based on lies, and he did not want to vote for them. Still, after an initial rejection, they passed, with enough Democrats for Bush voting for them.
This is a video from the USA about “dead peasant” insurance.
The part in the film about US big businesses like Wal-Mart having “dead peasant” insurance on their workers, giving them financial interests in their workers’ deaths, reminds one of the shipowner in Herman Heijermans’ play “Op Hoop van Zegen”, and the slave trade practices depicted by William Turner.
The film mentions that there are no pro capitalist statements in either the United States constitution (contrary to the draft European Union constitution, and its successor, the Lisbon treaty, by the way) or the Christian New Testament. Both often mentioned by today’s US propagandists of capitalism.
The last part of the film is the singing of first the Internationale (with Henriette Roland Holst’s lyrics in the Dutch language subtitles, made in Belgium), then Woody Guthrie’s “Jesus Christ“.
The music is accompanied by quotations by eighteenth century founding fathers of the American revolution like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, critical of capitalism.
A conversation with Austin Chu, co-director of The Recess Ends. A film about the impact of the economic crisis in the US: here.
