Why many young Millennials and Generation Z embrace woke and progressive causes
Interview with Kristian Niemietz (IEA): "It is not capitalism that causes resentment, but resentment that causes an anti-capitalist interpretation of the phenomena … It is time to start again to explain the reasons for the market economy" …
Kristian Niemietz is Head of Political Economy for the IEA in London. His recent essay “Left Turn ahead? Surveying attitudes of young people towards capitalism and socialism ” shows how the Millennial generation, initially described as apathetic and disinterested in politics, ended up marrying woke and progressive causes, as did the subsequent Generation Z.
ARIANNA CAPUANI: How did you decide to study the political beliefs of the younger generations?
KRISTIAN NIEMIETZ: This paper can be seen as a continuation of my third last, written at the height of the Corbynmania that was raging in the UK. This time I wanted to investigate how popular socialist ideas really were, since some data seemed to indicate broad support from young people, a phenomenon denied by some proponents of the free market who branded it as a product of social media , a product of " bubble ”of Twitter .
I therefore thought I had to clarify the matter definitively, by gathering the data of the already existing polls, filling in the gaps and adding our conclusions, hoping that all this would be a wake-up call for the proponents of the free market. In fact, if young people reject your ideas, you have a big problem, even if it hasn't manifested yet. Following the 2019 election victory, the center-right thought that if Corbyn was defeated, this meant that socialism had ceased to be a problem. I had the impression that this was not true, and that underestimating your opponent you ended up causing him to win.
AC: The most common objection would be that young leftists grow up to become conservatives, which experience proves this, but you don't seem to believe it.
KN: This is exactly one of the mistakes I try to correct. It is not only 18-year-olds who express socialist views, but also 40-year-olds. After forty, some changes begin to appear, but the 41-year-olds already have their opinions well-formed, which means that something has broken. This may not have been the case for previous generations, but it cannot be extrapolated from those data: if the baby boomers , radicals in the 1960s, became ministers of the Blair government, this does not mean that the same will also happen in the case of Millennials . .
Ed West said the same thing, but on the side of social attitudes, showing how Generation X and Millennials have shifted to the left. This seems to have also occurred in the economic field, Millennials or younger representatives of Generation X are supporters of Thatcherism, but it cannot be enough because it is not about things that emerge in the debates, and we should already see some trajectory – if not detect the signs, then it means we will never see it.
AC: Why do you think this shift has occurred? Was it because Millennials and Generation Z enjoyed fewer opportunities, and less dynamic societies than those of their mostly boomers , or perhaps because they attended state schools?
KN: On this point I can only speculate. Proponents of socialism would reply that the rejection of capitalism is a symptom of the system's failures, and if it worked, it would not have happened. Obviously I don't believe this explanation, because every time we discuss some problem on social media , someone always finds a way to bring it back to capitalism. And then, thousands of likes and retweets cascade. This causes an opinion to cement itself into commonplace, and therefore the opposite is true, we do not have problems that lead to a rejection of capitalism, rather the rejection of it is the starting point and therefore, whatever happens in the world , we inevitably end up attributing it to capitalism. It is not capitalism that causes resentment, but resentment that causes an anti-capitalist interpretation of the phenomena.
If the assumption is that capitalism is terrible, anything will become its confirmation. Perhaps the most striking example was the Grenfell Tower tragedy. Within minutes, people blamed the tragedy on capitalism. I would rather say that it was a tragedy caused by a human error not attributable to any particular economic system. It's just that once the mechanism works, it will continue to find fertile ground, because it confirms what people already believe about it.
AC: In your essay you speak of superficial beliefs, and also of some contradictions in the concept of right and left
KN: Yes, often these are shallow beliefs, because we are not talking about highly politicized people, or scholars of Marxism. In fact, many adopt socialist positions as if it were a fashion, a “cool” thing to be treated like taste in music. Political belief x is treated as a signal, as something to be able to talk about oneself. For young people, these are strong ideas about which they know very little, ideas for which they often end up getting defensive, belligerent. It has become trendy to be socialist, to be woke , and it is very different from the times of the French Marxist groups, the Socialist Workers Party is no longer in fashion nowadays, they have a reputation as sectarians, weirdos, not very pleasant people. At one time no one would have thought of being a Marxist for a matter of image, but today it is all right. We can say that it all started from corbynmania , with all the events organized for young people in that context.
AC: So I seem to agree with Ed West, it's basically vanity. But then what needs to be done to spread the ideas of the classical / conservative liberal area?
KN: It depends on the definitions, I don't call myself a Tory and I think the conservatives have become a 'nimby' party. So I would say to them, stop playing the nimby , because in the long run you cannot build an electoral coalition exclusively on the boomers with their own homes; it will end with Millennials and Generation Z as a permanent progressive majority. We have been experiencing a housing crisis for some time, which in a more rational world should push us to become more capitalist, to see boomers with home ownership as an interest group defending their position, and we should therefore understand that it is necessary to open up. the market.
If I were not already an advocate of the free market, the crisis would make me such, but if you start with anti-capitalist assumptions, any problem is brought back to capitalism, and so is the real estate sector as well. This conclusion is quite intuitive, since the state does not normally build houses. It follows that to understand that this is a failure of the state and not of the market, it is necessary to use a bit of abstraction. It is certainly a private sector where supply is limited at the behest of those who already own it. Even though, on a logical level, the situation should prompt us to adopt a free market solution, this doesn't happen because people don't think that way. But in the event of supply-side liberalization, rents would collapse and many would finally be able to afford modern and spacious homes, and as a result it would be more difficult to voice anti-capitalist resentment. Even if it is partly a fashion, it still needs to be anchored to something, which represents the experience of ordinary people.
Speaking of capitalism only in the abstract, we can only get to a few people. But if you start saying "you live in a hole that you pay too much", the matter would become more tangible and real for ordinary people. In short, if I were a conservative I would definitely be anti- nimby and in favor of building new homes, it being understood that the voters with their own homes would turn against us, but this would be the only way to make sure that young people do not start hating us. . The conservative vote is heavily influenced by baby boomers and those who remain from the previous generation, and this is not sustainable in the long run, despite the high life expectancy.
To classical liberals, I would say that if we don't want to limit ourselves to talking to just one generation, we need to relearn how to explain the advantages of capitalism in comparison with socialism. For a long time it was said that it was not necessary to explain why the market worked, because we had witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now is the time to start explaining the reasons for the market economy again. We need to be able to interact with socialist ideas, and refute them.
The post Why many young Millennials and Generation Z embrace woke and progressive causes appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL https://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/perche-molti-giovani-millennial-e-generazione-z-sposano-le-cause-woke-e-progressiste/ on Sun, 06 Mar 2022 03:49:00 +0000.