"The system" is the reactive, situational, instinctual and not consciously volitional shared human underpinnings of the volitional choices of power-having agents in society. There doesn't have to be a conspiracy, because humans across society are running on brains with the same evolutionary history. Thus the commonality can be treated as having intentions as a social unit, because that's how it behaves, when what it really has are closer to reactive mood-influences in discrete humans acting without shared plans, which all point in the same direction.

The concept of "the system" got thrown out of mainstream discourse because the idea that there's a conspiracy is silly. But a conspiracy is just the simplest, crudest explanation for coordinated action.

Basically, "the system" is what you call society when you're angry with it.