An old, but still relevant, essay

"[T]he radical believes that the system itself is the problem: in terms of economics this means that the system of profit does not create hardship as the unfortunate sidelight of an otherwise warm-and-fuzzy social order; rather, we believe that the pain experienced by people under such a system is very much inherent to that system, and is in fact required by it in order to function. People are out of work in such a system, and thus poor and even destitute, not because the system is breaking down, but indeed, because it is working exactly as intended.

This is an analysis that most don't want to accept. And that's no surprise, as "seeing the system" goes against everything most of us have been taught since we were young: the idea that one can be whatever one wants if one simply tries hard enough and plays by the rules. The notion of the U.S. as a pure meritocracy where individual failings are just that, is a very seductive ideological posture, and one that few have ever subjected to real challenge.

The good thing for those who are radicals however, is that every now and then we get a little help in proving the larger point from the most unlikely of sources, and this week was no exception. For as I write this, Americans have just been told that we must brace for a ratcheting up of interest rates: three times as we enter May, and another likely hike in the middle of the month. And why? Well, as Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan explains, the economy is too healthy, unemployment too low, and wages, God forbid, have inched upward for too many, thereby raising the specter of dreaded price hikes.

As such, it has now become necessary according to the worldview of the Fed -- one that is shared by all major players in both the Democratic and Republican parties and certainly by their Presidential candidates -- to raise the cost of borrowing money, thereby cooling off the expansion and hiring spree, and perhaps even nudging unemployment numbers up a bit. But wait: what was that? Intentionally slowing down job and wage growth? Intentionally doing something to push unemployment up and put folks out of work?

Exactly right, and thus, it is Alan Greenspan who has demonstrated this week the accuracy of radical analysis as to the nature of the economy under which we labor and live. This former devotee of the market-worshipping, pseudo-intellectual cultist, Ayn Rand, now demonstrating clearly that pain and suffering, low wages and poverty are not the result of individual moral failings or a decline in the Protestant work ethic, but rather, are built-in to the nature of modern capitalism. "

from Tim Wise's essay "Seeing the System" published May 10, 2000
http://www.lipmagazine.org/~timwise/seeingsystem.html