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The biggest problem the Left has faced since the fall of the Wall has been in deciding where to focus its efforts. Unfortunately too many have chosen to concentrate on identifying the cracks within capitalism Worse still, many of those within the Left have all but completely abandoned any idea of class in order to focus on issues of race or gender or sexuality and as such have manouvered themselves into a kind of ideological cul-de-sac, unconsciously paving the way for a kind of liberalism which can only articulate itself by trying to make capitalism a bit 'nicer'.
Marxism in the Soviet era failed for a number of reasons, many of which were internal to its own mechanisms. And yet I sincerely believe that as a concept it is superior to capitalism. As such I think the job of the Left now isn't to focus on the inadequacies of its nemesis (inadequacies which anyone, let alone a Marxist, could easily identify, simply by living under it) so much as to withdraw and take a long look at the very reasons why it failed and try and address those reasons so that in the future, when capitalism proves itself to be wholely inadequate to deal with emerging social developments, it can emerge renewed. Even the staunchest of capitalism's advocates, such as Francis Fukuyama, is now forced to revise his triumphalism at what he once saw as capitalism's emphatic victory of communism. He too now sees that capitalism is unravelling. It's the job of the Left not to help it unravel (after all, it hasn't needed the Left's help in that department so far) but to ensure that a viable alternative is ready when it does.
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