I've seen two movies lately that I'm convinced are anti-capitalist. Which isn't so surprising. What is surprising is that they're not actually anti-capitalist, so long as you know what capitalism is.

The movies I'm referring to are Serenity (and Firefly) and Pirates of the Carribean. At the end of the latest installment of Pirates, (spoiler alert: it's a happy ending), Lord Beckett of the East India Trading Company dies saying, "It was just good business." It's only good business if you have a government-enforced monopoly. The East India Trading Company was a major source of friction between the colonies and England in the Revolutionary War. Mercantalism is the set of economic policies that maintain that trade surpluses are absolutely mandatory. Yes, that's like what Democrats are kvetching about with regards to China. It's also what justified the treatment of the natives of North America and the horrendous treatment of slaves in the New World. It's what we call, "Not Good". No sane, educated person is justifying the East India Trading Company, but I don't get the feeling Hollywood understands the difference between that and Capitalism.

The other, which is about as Libertarian as it gets and I love it, is the show Firefly (Serenity is the movie based on the TV show). There's a line in the commentary by Morena Baccarin, who plays Inara, makes a comment to indicate that the government essentially consists of an alliance of several large companies. Presumably, as the terrible end-game of free trade. Anne MacCaffrey writes an essay in Finding Serenity that practically ends with "Workers of the world, unite!" (In all fairness, I couldn't bring myself to finish the essay, so maybe she ended in a place less-than-obvious) Except that this, also, isn't Capitalism. It's not impossible; it's happened before, in fact. When the Roman government collapsed in Europe and law-and-order broke down, the rich rural landowners could afford to hire security guards. They could then expand their influence and salvage what could be salvaged. This grew into "Kings" and "Lords", but those are just words; business and wealth can grow into new forms of power. If you call a stock-holders meeting "Parliament", that doesn't change what it is. But it's not Capitalism; just like back then, it's called Feudalism. (One of the things I really wanted to learn, before the show was cancelled, was why there was a power vacuum for the businesses to step into) I wanted to learn what Feudalism looked like when it was divided by industry rather than geography (as a Feudalist system that grew out of modern corporations would suggest to me, as opposed to one that grew out of an agricultural society). However, no amount of condemning the Blue Sky corporation is going to make Serenity anti-capitalist.