Is Michael Moore a closet Marxist?

Michael Moore's new film Capitalism: A Love Story has received good reviews and sufficiently worried someone in the industry not to get a mainstream distribution deal - despite being high-grossing box office material in the US.

One issue that has provoked comment, however, is how Moore ends the film. As we have come to expect from this film-maker, it is a high-octane denunciation of capitalism. At the end he asks what will replace the market system. Moore's answer? Democracy.

This has baffled several reviewers who seem to feel that he should at least have offered some non-market answer, such as socialism or communism.

There is nothing in Moore's background to suggest that he is a Marxist, but he is certainly on the broad left side of public opinion.

There are two possibilities here.

First, Moore very understandably does not regard what currently exists as democracy and would like to see a genuine democracy - economic as well as social.

Second, perhaps Moore prefers to use the phrase democracy because he does not feel comfortable using a word like socialism.

It may well be that the film-maker himself will clarify matters.

But the discussion raises wider historical points.

The question of what words could best describe what the left stood for - while communicating with a wider audience - was one that received some consideration in Britain after the defeat of the 1848 revolutions.

Over several conferences, the Chartists decided that the six points of the 1837 People's Charter did not really describe the kind of democracy they were working for. They wanted not just political but economic and social democracy as well. The slogan coined for this was "The Charter and something more."

The programme finalised in 1851 does not mention socialism, but, as the late historian John Saville noted, it was in reality the most advanced socialist programme of the 19th century.

The seventh of the 12 points of the programme, on the land, was "to provide for the final and complete nationalisation of the land."

The programme also called for nationalisation of the railways and democratisation of the army and the press.

These are what might be termed "transitional" demands — things that were unlikely to be conceded by mid-19th century British capitalism, a point underlined by history since nearly all remain unfulfilled more than 150 years later.

Karl Marx faced a similar problem when it came to his authorship of the 1864 programme of the International Working Men's Association.

Having missed several meetings, Marx was confronted with a text couched in the ideas of the Italian nationalist Mazzini.

In response he decided to carry out what these days would be called a "cut and replace" job.

Marx replaced the existing 40 rules with 10 and added a new address. The committee agreed his text but insisted on the use of the words "duty" and "right." However Marx noted that he had inserted them in a way that could "do no harm."

The real issue, as Marx noted in a letter to Engels, was not the politics but the manner in which they were expressed.

"It was very difficult to frame the thing so that our view should appear in a form that would make it acceptable to the present outlook of the workers' movement.

"In a couple of weeks, the same people will be having meetings on the franchise with Bright and Cobden.

"It will take time before the revival of the movement allows the old boldness of language to be used. We must be fortiter in re, suaviter in modo [strong in deed, mild in manner]."

Perhaps this is what Moore has in mind in Capitalism.