Oz as economic allegory?

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | Secrets of the Wizard of Oz

I hadn't heard this theory before, but it's kinda interesting:

...the story has underlying economic and political references that make it a popular tool for teaching university and high school students - mainly in the United States but also in the UK - about the economic depression of the late 19th Century.

Read the rest of the article to get the details. It does seem odd, however, that no one published the idea until 1964.

I just always thought that the story was quite anti-religion, with its strong themes of self reliance and the revelation that the Wizard has no clothes, so to speak. Sort of a gentler expression of Philip Pullman's themes.

Which leads me to note that a Pullman interview was recently in The Times. There is one comment he makes that I have some sympathy with:

When people talk of his books and about those characters of his who carry their daemons like visible souls, they talk also of spirituality. They may know less of his views than of his creations, but it is a good job he can't hear them as this is what he says of the S-word: “I never use it. I never know what it means. It could mean any one of a whole raft of things, from vague feelings of emotional uplift...and then you're off into the realms of the ‘intense inane', as Shelley called it. I find it almost unbearably stupid when people talk about exploring their spirituality because I don't know what the f*** they mean. I think they mean ‘I'm no end of a fine fellow and you ought to respect me because I've got a higher dimension than you material people'.”

I also tend to be rather leery of the usage of "spirituality" these days, but I don't have well thought out views on this, so it will have to await another post.