New York, NY —

The last few weeks of turmoil on the financial markets and all the talk of bailouts and rescue plans has brought government intervention in the economy to the forefront of debate in a way it hasn’t been in a long time.

But there are some who have been advocating alternatives to capitalism all along, and for them, this crisis is also an opportunity. WNYC’s Siddhartha Mitter reports.

REPORTER: Socialism! It’s in the air these days. At least, if you’re still tuned in to the election campaign, where John McCain and Sarah Palin have taken to calling Barack Obama a socialist who wants to use government to redistribute wealth.

PALIN: [Speech excerpt] ... Joe the Plumber said it sounded to him like socialism. [BOOS]

REPORTER: Meanwhile, both Obama and McCain have supported an actual, big-time, recent government intervention in the economy – the Wall Street rescue plan – also known as the bailout. And that of course is an example of the kind of policy that critics like to call “corporate welfare” or, “socialism for the rich.”

But, none of this actually means that a new socialist dawn is upon us. And in those circles where socialism is a regular topic of discussion -- and a desired outcome for society -- no one is impressed with the current state of affairs.

MORALES: This financial meltdown – just brings to the fore how the whole system we live under is based on exploitation here and around the world, and is completely worthless. Nothing, nothing is going to change for the better until this system is overthrown.

REPORTER: That’s Travis Morales. He’s with the Revolutionary Communist Party USA, which operates Revolution Books in Manhattan. Morales dismisses both Republicans and Democrats. He says both major parties want to shore up capitalism and expand the American military empire. But he does see the current financial crisis as a teachable moment -- a time for revolutionary education.

MORALES: It’s an opportunity both for raising people’s political and ideological consciousness – understanding not only why system the way it is – and also why world doesn’t have to be this way ---- how a revolution is possible.

REPORTER: Not everyone on the Left is an uncompromising revolutionary. In between the Democrats and the various hard-line Communist parties, there’s a whole new network of self-described progressive and radical groups. Many have sprung up since the 1999 Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization.

OSOFSKY: Basically I think that the radical Left has matured in the past decade. If you sort of see Seattle as the birth of what I would call a new Left.

REPORTER: Gregg Osofsky is one of these new leftists. He and his laptop are often found at the Bluestockings bookstore on the Lower East Side, which is a hub for activists.

OSOFSKY: while there hasn’t been as big of a splash, one moment, they’ve been steadily populating different organizations creating their own institutional frameworks, and there is a radical and progressive set of institutions and they work together.

REPORTER: Osofsky works with different organizations – from the relatively mainstream MoveOn to True Majority, the Indypendent, and Code Pink. He says the Wall Street crisis makes now a good time to present alternative viewpoints.

OSOFSKY: We're very used to getting the story told from up above. And this is a moment when people realize there's really no reason to trust anything that's coming from up there, and they're open to hearing a different perspective.

GUPTA: Part of the problem is the confusion. People know this is a moment of great crisis; they don't know how it affects them.

REPORTER: That’s Arun Gupta – he’s an activist and an editor with the alternative newspaper The Indypendent. As soon as the first bailout plan was announced, he sent out an e-mail with his own blunt analysis.

GUPTA: I was flabbergasted and dumbfounded. It struck me immediately that this was a massive swindle, the biggest economic crime in history.

REPORTER: Gupta’s e-mail got forwarded around. He called for people to go protest near Wall Street on the Thursday after the bailout plan was announced. He says it went viral – leading to 200 separate protests around the country.

GUPTA: It was just tapping into this moment of absolutely immense anger, because it was clear to see that the fix was in.

REPORTER: These activists believe that their mobilization helped drive some of the phone calls and e-mails asking Congress to reject the first bailout plan. And they say the second version -- that did pass -- was at least a little bit better. But they also say they feel new interest out there in leftist views. It’s hard to quantify, but Gupta sees it in turnout for panels at places like the Brecht Forum in Manhattan – like one he did recently with fellow authors William Greider and Naomi Klein.

GUPTA: They are just getting huge audiences, of 100-200 people plus for economic subjects where a year ago there were five people in the room.

REPORTER: Two hundred people might not sound that huge -- but it's a start. Gupta says the next step will come after the election, when activists adjust to the new political landscape.

GUPTA: Particularly if Obama wins, which it looks like, the Left will be in a better position to be able to pressure his presidency than it looks like if it’s a McCain presidency. Those discussions are happening behind the scenes.

REPORTER: By contrast, Morales of the Revolutionary Communist Party says Obama is peddling false hope that capitalism can be saved. But no matter where they stand vis-à-vis the system, the financial crisis plus the end of the Bush years has given many on the left the sense of an opening for their ideas -- for the first time in a long while. Their challenge now is to take advantage.

For WNYC I'm Siddhartha Mitter.