With the economy sure to play an increasingly important role in the 2008 presidential campaign, here’s a perspective you probably haven’t heard.

The concept of the free market is treated with god-like reverence in the United States - but Harvard professor Stephen Marglin argues that the free market relationships we worship actually erode community values.

Generations ago, if a family’s barn burned down, their neighbors more than likely lent their time, money and energy to get them back on their feet. Now that family turns not to their fellow Americans, but to … their insurance company.

Insurance may be a more efficient way to organize resources, but social ties - the very essence of community - are weakened by a shift from human interaction and decency to this singular dependence on economic relations.

The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community is a book that reexamines the basic assumptions of economics and how they justify a world in which people are becoming increasingly isolated.

Isolated in the sense of their social connections, that is. More and more often, we Americans define ourselves in terms of how much we consume. Marglin theorizes how this ideology (and imbalance) came about and what to do about it.

It’s a timely, eloquent and much-needed critique of conventional wisdom, one that does not require an economics degree to follow.

Many people have lamented that the basic concepts of family and community are things of the past in the United States of America, but few have pointed a finger at business and the very market-based system that drives us all.