He used to make polemics.

Now Michael Moore admits he's made a manifesto.

It's called Capitalism: A Love Story, and it's about the fight to take back his country from the 1% of the population who have -- in his estimation -- stolen it (most of whom seem to have worked for the financial firm of Goldman Sachs between stints at the White House).

And part and parcel with that, he says, is the fight to take back his good name.

"Why continue to allow Fox News to define who Michael Moore is?" he said yesterday.

"Godless, hates America, etc., when I've been nothing but someone who loves this country, who still goes to (Catholic) Mass, who is married to the same person I met when I was 17. I've led such a conservative life, no investments," he adds with a laugh (he says all his money is in a savings account).

Actually I was the one who uttered the word "manifesto," inspired by the ending of Capitalism: A Love Story, in which Moore runs footage of FDR's call for a Second Bill of Rights, guaranteeing the right to education and health care, to work at a decent wage and to retire with adequate pension.

Moore notes in his narrative that the U.S. never got those things, but erstwhile enemies Germany and Japan did.

"I refuse to live in a country like this -- and I'm not leaving," he says, in the movie's final words.

"It's funny you say that, because there was a point where Manifesto was a potential title for the film," he says. "I really set out to make this with the attitude that, if I weren't able to make another film, what would this film say?"

Roger & Me, Bowling For Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, Sicko ... "I've always thought these were films about capitalism without naming it.

"But thanks to Joe the Plumber, where Obama had his socialist moment, talking about sharing the wealth -- I mean, you never hear about socialism and capitalism in our public discourse, right? So okay, all bets are off now, I guess I can talk about it too."

A mixed bag of outrages, Capitalism: A Love Story includes footage of foreclosure evictions, a ghoulish life insurance practice in which companies take out policies on their own employees (we meet a family turned destitute when their breadwinner died of cancer, while his former employer cashed in a $1.5-million death bounty), visits to the wastelands of Ohio and Michigan, a juvenile court judge paid off by a privately-owned detention centre to up his conviction rate, and the convolutions of the federal bailout that led to the elimination of virtually all of Goldman Sachs' competitors.

But it also has its flashpoints of rebellion, including a Chicago factory whose workers refused to leave after being laid off, a Wayne County sheriff who announced his officers would no longer enforce foreclosure evictions, and a Dade County neighbourhood where the citizenry made human chains to protect their foreclosed neighbours.

In between, there's the usual quota of documentary stunts that have been Moore's trademark since Roger & Me 20 years ago. Among them: wrapping Wall St. in yellow "crime scene" tape.

"I don't consider them stunt documentaries," he says. "I'm trying to do satire here, but in a non-fiction form. Hopefully the stunt will illustrate the larger thing, but I'm not doing it just to dink around. I think people are at that point where they might just be happy with someone calling it what it is. This is a crime scene, these people are criminals, and they've really messed with our future.

"I'm not against business," he says. "I'm not against somebody starting a company and working hard and doing well for themselves. I don't want to be pigeonholed into being against that definition of capitalism. And frankly, I'm not against anybody wanting to invest in the stock market for the purpose for which it was invented."

But he scoffs at the rebound in the stock market as a vindication of the system.

"The unemployment rate went up again this month, the foreclosure rate continues to be extremely high. These are the things that affect real people -- not that the stock market is back up over 9,000 and Goldman Sachs is now posting record profits.

"When we have a society where the top 1% have more than the bottom 95%, when anthropologists dig us up, what are they gonna call that?

"I'm calling for an economic system where you and I have a say in how our economy is run, where we apply the principles of the democracy that we love to our economy."