No, not by the standard of the South.
If you doubt it, look at, for instance, Iran's neighbor Pakistan, where the end game appears to have begun:
<http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/27/asia/letter.php> Grumbling in the army bodes ill for Musharraf By Carlotta Gall Wednesday, June 27, 2007
> Financial Times - June 30, 2007
>
> 'Pulse of Iran' sounds a warning for president
> By Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran
<snip>
> The imposition of petrol rationing, which
> provoked the burning of 10 petrol stations on Tuesday night, came on
> top of a recent fuel price rise and steep increases in the cost of
> housing and dairy products.
Historical data show that Iran has seen much worse inflation in the past: see endnote 9 based on the IMF's data <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/furuhashi130706.html> and <http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=ir&v=71>.
Given the domestic economic and international political conditions, the government of Iran has to invest in petrol refineries and curb petrol consumption, both of which it is doing now.
I very much doubt that leftists, Iranian or Western, know how to run Iran's economy better than the Iranian government. At least, I have yet to hear about any concrete alternative proposed by them.
On 7/2/07, andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
> -- and (more controversially here) in economics, no
> one has proposed a plausible alternative to a mixed
> economy, where that means one that combines large
> elements of markets and planning (whether or not it
> involves private property and wage labor), at least in
> the "interim"; like the next 300 years. (Long enough
> for me!) But please, let's not get derailed by that
> because I am not going to defend this proposition. I
> just note that it is one on which Yoshie, Doug, and I
> all agreed pretty recently.
On 7/3/07, andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Liberalism is the ONLY thing that has ANY prospect of
> offering even a remote chance at a civilized life. As
> a worldwide system? We should be so lucky. At this
> point it's an embattled hope in Europe, Japan, North
> and some of South America. (Which isn't, actually, all
> that bad for an ideal that 400 years ago was pretty
> much confined to parts of England.) Can it fix global
> warming, world poverty, imperialism? No. But only
> liberalism can provide the conditions under which WE
> can fix those things.
Historical materialism suggests that mixed economy gives rise to mixed government and mixed political philosophy, rather than an ideal-typical type of liberalism or communism.
Those on the Left who are critical of liberalism and the dominant tradition of Marxism have turned to not only Nietzsche and Spinoza but Machiavelli. In my view, it is Machiavelli who can tell us how best to defend liberty in the context of mixed economy and government. -- Yoshie