The ideas of the populist George S. Counts on education's role in fostering democratic economic change are relevant to a consideration of modern problems and the prospects for American socialism (defined here as community and worker control of economic production). Counts, writing in the 1920s and 1930s, felt strongly that capitalism no longer worked and that it bred a debasing economic individualism growing out of merchants' ideas of economic freedom. He called for a planned, socialized economy unopposed to the traditional individualism of the independent family farmer. Counts' strong belief in democracy and in the schools' role in its maintenance led to his theories that education cannot be neutral and that it should help bring about the new economic order. Like current Marxist educational critics, Counts understood schools' functions in maintaining the established order, but unlike them he offered ideas for school reform applicable to the present. Today's progressives who see that the limits to growth will soon require a new economic order can find much relevance in Counts' emphases on democracy, the need for social change, the necessity for socialism to spring from within America, and the schools' potential role in assisting social change. (RW)