ONE of the best parts of Capitalism: A Love Story is the footage shot in a Chicago factory whose laid-off workers occupied it for several days last December. The workers filed out obediently when they were let go but then returned, barricading themselves inside to demand the vacation and severance pay that had been denied them.

   Michael Moore’s camera was the only one allowed inside the building, and it captures some inspirational moments as downtrodden workers stand up for themselves. We also hear from a quietly charismatic union organizer, who says the workers are starting to consider options — like running the plant themselves — that they never would have thought of before. There’s no telling where this new thinking will lead, she says, but questioning the status quo is a huge step in the right direction.

   I think Moore wants his movie to do for us what resisting their layoff did to those workers. Capitalism is peppered with calls to the vast majority of Americans to rise up against the wealthiest 1 percent or so. After all, that moneyed elite controls not only nearly all of our wealth but also — as this movie makes clear — the legislative and regulatory checks and balances that are supposed to keep the robber barons from stripping the rest of us down to our skivvies.

   Moore doesn’t have many ideas about just what we should do once we wake up from our capitalism-induced coma, but that doesn’t seem to bother him. The important thing, he seems to believe, is just to get up and get moving.

   As always, he unearths some wrenching stories. This time, they’re mostly about people who have lost homes or jobs to the recession that was brought on by the games Wall Street played with other people’s money.

   Moore has a real gift for making a point with a telling statistic or a memorable phrase (he calls Congress’s 2009 bailout of Wall Street “a financial coup d’etat”), and he keeps the energy level high and the laughs coming fast by cramming his movie full of found footage like a faux ad for Cleveland that ends with “At least we’re not Detroit!” And he’s still got plenty of glib gimmicks to entertain us, like showing up outside AIG with burlap bags “to get the money back for the American people.” But this movie’s thesis is so poorly defined that those bits often feel random.

   I’m no great defender of capitalism, but Capitalism brings out the devil’s advocate in me. Sure, it’s scandalous that regional airline pilots are so badly paid that many have to depend on food stamps, but are pilots always paid well in socialist countries? Moore doesn’t say. A sidebar on the so-called “dead peasant” life insurance policies that corporations often take out on their employees will enrage you, but what’s the culprit here: greed or capitalism? And is the lack of democracy within the workplace really a problem only in capitalist countries?

   In addition, Moore’s nostalgia about the working-class paradise of his childhood undercuts his own argument, since the economic system that allowed his family to thrive was as capitalist as they come.

   Our economy was strong in the 1950s and ‘60s for a couple of reasons, Moore says. First, so many of the world’s other industrial nations were still recovering from World War II that there wasn’t much competition for our manufactured goods. Second, a robust system of regulations and high taxes on the rich kept Wall Street in check and reduced the gap between the richest and poorest Americans.

   So does that mean capitalism could work if we put the right regulations in place? Moore says no, but he never says why. “Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil,” he asserts in the voiceover that runs through the film. “You have to eliminate it and replace it with something that is good for all people. And that something is called democracy.”

   Hold on. Isn’t capitalism an economic system and democracy a political system? So how can you replace one with the other? I’m confused.

   Moore maintains his near-religious faith in unions as the best hope of the working class. He also exhibits a touching belief in the power of democracy and populist politicians.

   One of Capitalism’s heroes is Ohio congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, who urges her constituents to become “squatters in your own homes” if someone tries to evict them. Banks, she says, can rarely locate the mortgage on the properties they’re repossessing, because the financial deals behind them are so convoluted. And they can’t prove they own the house unless they can show you that paper.

   It’s a brilliant insight, and a rare piece of pragmatic advice in a movie that’s rich in anecdotes but poor at analysis.

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  Rated R for some language