Left wing populism is based on policies for the greater good

The argument

Proponents of this position argue that populism's contribution to political life is agenda-setting rather than governing. Many policies that had historically not been part of political discussions are now mainstream, and on this account the change is traceable to the rise of populist politicians. The mechanism is competitive: once a populist party makes an issue central to its appeal, other political groups cannot continue to ignore that issue without appearing indifferent to voters who have come to care about it, so they are forced to address it in order to stay relevant. Issues enter the mainstream, then, not because established parties independently reconsidered them, but because populist pressure raised the cost of leaving them out. Supporters of the position hold that this brings into the limelight serious problems that had previously been ignored. The instances they offer are universal healthcare for the poor and environmental problems falling disproportionately on racial minorities. What these have in common, on this view, is that each principally affects constituencies whose concerns were not reflected in the agenda as it stood, which is why the issues stayed out of debate despite their gravity. Proponents argue that such problems are not dealt with until they receive the attention that populism brings, so the attention itself counts as a substantive gain rather than a mere change of subject. From this the position draws its conclusion about the health of politics. A political system is healthy, on this account, when it registers the problems its citizens actually face rather than only those its established parties find convenient to discuss, and populism — here in its left wing form, pursuing policies for the greater good — performs precisely that registering function. Its value lies less in the answers populist parties themselves propose than in forcing recognition of neglected problems onto agendas that would otherwise have excluded them. On that basis proponents hold that populism means healthy politics.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Populist parties address issues that have traditionally been left off the political agenda because they do not have coherent views on key issues. Populism uses new issues to rally people behind them, but are not actually well equipped enough to address other issues. The fact that populism rests on one solution to multitudes of problems, shows that their policies are not complex enough to solve all the problems necessary to further the greater good. For example, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders suggests universal healthcare to help solve the issue of lower-class citizens possessing more health problems. However, by subscribing to this solution as a way to solve it, it does not account for the fact that those with less money cannot prevent health issues as easily. This shows that by providing a single simple solution to major problems, populism often ignores the underlying causes.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Agenda-setting is not specific to populism, or to its left variant. Single-issue campaigns, social movements, unions and think tanks all push neglected issues into mainstream politics, and the premise gives no reason to credit populism in particular. [Rejecting P2] The conclusion is far broader than the premises. That a movement raises worthwhile issues does not make the politics it produces healthy, and the question asks about populism as a style — usually characterised by an appeal to a unified people against a corrupt elite — which the argument never examines. It also generalises from congenial examples: the same agenda-setting mechanism operates in right-wing populism, whose issues the argument would presumably not endorse, and the counter-argument's objection about single simple solutions goes unanswered.