The following essay is in response to this very important article by Glenn Greenwald that was posted on Salon.com circa July 23, 2010.
Glenn, it's becoming increasingly clear from your many excellent articles that socialists like myself are validated in our dislike for the capitalist system and our insistance that the system needs to be scrapped in favor of a new one in which money does not exist as a factor in society.
While too many progressives are today concerned about taming capitalism and restoring some "middle class" to prominence, the fact of the matter remains that if a system that runs on money and the pursuit of private profit continues to be the global order of things, then any government, no matter how much it claims to be based on democratic precepts, will continue to be enslaved by the small wealthy overclass that can literally buy the loyalty of the government. The current form of statist government was established to protect these private property interests, and that is what it should be expected to do.
Reports like this, while highly depressing, at least make me hopeful that the progressives of today will become the socialists of the future, and will no longer be afraid of that word and no longer believe the bunk that it's somehow the antitheses of American ideals. The Founders put Article V in the Constitution for a good reason, and it makes clear they never intended the present economic order to be graven in stone for eternity, but only so long as it serves the interests of everyone. Moving onto a more enlightened economic order will not constitute the betrayal of what the Founders established, but rather would be extending their vision towards a world where everyone can achieve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to the fullest thanks to the industrial technology of the present, which didn't exist at the time America was first established. Capitalism was a progressive system when it was established, and it was a great improvement over the previous economic order, feudalism, but now that technology has advanced to the point where an abundance can be provided for all, it's now time to move on to a new and better system, just as the American revolutionaries did in 1776. There is nothing more American than that.