My Holiday Film and Book Picks

THOUGH I enjoy the blessedly straightforward reporting at SocialistWorker.org as my primary means of grasping the financial finagling of the rich and powerful, Charles Ferguson’s documentary Inside Job provides one thing SW can’t–onscreen confrontations with the astoundingly clueless and arrogant masters of the universe who crashed the economy while cashing in.

Matt Damon’s narration keeps the film moving along at a good clip, and the interview scenes will convince you that anyone who believes talent and merit rise to the top in our society is drinking capitalist Kool-Aid.

Sasha Polakow-Suransky has done an excellent job sleuthing out the details of Israel’s secret relationship with apartheid South Africa in The Unspoken Alliance. The author’s familial links to both nations and intrepid approach to research allowed him to dig up the dirt behind the smiley-faced lies of the Zionist regimes from Labor to Likud.

Readers are treated to a rare glimpse of how left-talking liberals inside government and out feigned solidarity with the oppressed while protecting billions in military profits. Particularly repellent is the special relationship cultivated between Jewish leaders and ex-Nazis in the apartheid South African government.

If you’re itching to see class struggle on the big screen, you can’t do much better than Made in Dagenham. Based on real events that included an all-out strike by women against Ford for pay equity in Britain in 1968, this film with Bob Hoskins and Sally Hawkins is fun to watch because the acting is great, and our side wins!

Listening to Hoskins quote Marx to foot-dragging union officials is worth the ticket price in itself, but the scenes of real-life struggle, both against the bosses and among the workers, are gems. Even though the film gives a nod to a cross-class sisterhood-is-powerful argument, Made in Dagenham remains a treat.

This originally appeared in Socialistworker.org