It's clear that whatever choice people make, liberalism, populism, socialism, or any other system, the economy that results form it experiences difficulties specific to its type as well as brings benefits also specific to it. We have to, first of all, understand what they are, so we can clarify costs and benefits of alternatives.
What else is to be done today, given the range of choices that people are making? *********
I think the tactical advice Marx gave is still relevant, to wit:
"The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the *future of that movement*..."
and,
"In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.
In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, *the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time*.
"Finally, they labor everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.
"The Communists *disdain to conceal their views and aims*. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions."
* *Emphases mine.
Yoshie:
IMHO, it would make sense for leftists to figure out how to run a populist mixed economy as much in the interest of people as possible, until such time as people put socialism on the agenda, while always reminding people that there exists essential contradiction in a populist economy (as in any capitalist economy) that creates certain inevitable problems (that are specific to a populist economy, unlike those of either a liberal economy or a socialist economy).
*******
I think Marx's advice is clearer and preferable in terms of the communist project. Is what you're trying to say in so many other words an attempt at similar advice?
Mike B)
An injury to one is an injury to all http://www.iww.org/
____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better Globetrotter. Get better travel answers from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check it out. http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396545469