01.10.2015

Kids and the alternative

The perceptions most young people have of socialism are not like they were during the cold war days, says Commissaress: they’re worse

Oh, the days when socialism was relevant. I have no idea how it felt to turn on one of those tiny TVs as thick as a border fence and see something about how great and free (insert western country) was, compared with them evul commies or how communism was wrong or a threat or … something.

But, apart from how I would feel a bit indignant at hearing any country called ‘communist’ (and proceed to bore whoever was unlucky enough to be in my presence at the time with a rant about state capitalism), I am not going to deny that if I heard anyone at all outside a leftwing circle or a history lesson bring up communism of their own accord, I would feel a little bit chuffed. As though I was being praised or something. This is not entirely because I want to show people how edgy my politics are, but there is so little opportunity to discuss socialism and see what my fellow Generation Y-ers think about it when no-one has any idea what it is! Socialism is not just ‘sooo 1991’, like a trend that could be revived one day when people with the political equivalent of nice bodies and savvy social media usage decide it’s cool again. It is more like the mullet skirt: people have just totally forgotten what it is.

You might be thinking: well, gone are the days of long explanations of the capitalist production relations in the Soviet Union, of well-off people getting personally offended about you supposedly wanting to redistribute their wealth and quips about Stalin (I said 20-year-old Stalin was cute one time, guys, one time!). Isn’t that a relief? But taking away the old bogeyman of the cold war ‘communist’ states does not make socialism more appealing at all. Instead, in the modern world where the question is not whether countries should be capitalist, but how they should do so, and where children grow up with the formula, ‘Pass exams + get good job + make money = success’, drilled into them whatever they do, and where atomisation and alienation and all-round dissatisfaction with life are more common than embarrassing dads, it creates an environment of even more unquestioning obedience than there already was. In 1975, people supported, agreed with, and lived their lives according to capitalism because they disagreed with the available alternatives. In 2015, people do not support, agree with, and live their lives according to capitalism, because doing so would be akin to living life according to the rule ‘A=A’. Capitalism is now totally axiomatic. This is freaking terrifying.

And the scariest thing about it becomes apparent when you talk to young people about communism and detect a pattern in their objections to it. You will go through the whole drill of explaining what social ownership of the means of production and the corresponding lack of a state or class system is, because no-one really knows. Then maybe you will have to explain away the Soviet Union/China/Cuba/the DPRK if the person you are talking to is particularly well-informed.

But their other objections will all be on the abstract level. They simply will not be able to fathom how a world without private property or without money or without everyone hating their jobs would work, to entertain the notion of collectives, as opposed to individuals, to think that the structure of the bourgeois family is anything but ingrained and permanent. Even descriptions of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is sometimes described as containing a variant of capitalist production relations, seem too far-fetched for them, because their entire mentality is so predicated upon the idea that capitalism and the morality and culture that accompany it are the only way. While there was still a visible alternative to capitalism present in the world and global politics was a battle between capitalism and that alternative - even if it was only an alternative by name - it was easier to think about the possibility of a different sort of society. But the total economic, cultural and political hegemony of liberal-democratic countries that we have today changed that. The fear of ‘the other system’ has become fear of anything other than the status quo.

But wait. Aren’t young people radical? Don’t they want change? What I have said above seems completely counterintuitive, since it is precisely young people who were the driving force behind Occupy Wall Street, the surges of the Scottish National Party and Green Party, and more recently the massive anti-austerity demonstration and Corbynmania. Surely, it would be impossible for so many young people to support such causes if they were physically incapable of thinking outside the paradigm of capitalism; in that case, wouldn’t they all be reactionary robots? Well, no. No sort of class-consciousness or clear idea of an alternative system or presence of an ostensible alternative system is required to get angry. Which is all these young people are really doing.

This is going to sound harsh, and I am not trying to belittle people for being angry because it is all well and good, and justified. But the anti-austerity or just anti-political sentiment seen amongst many young people today does not have with it a positive preposition of what exactly will replace austerity or ‘the system’, or whatever else, because, although young people can know the awful effects of austerity or other specific phenomena within capitalism, most of us cannot look at the bigger picture and consider the possibility of removing capitalism as a whole from this picture - we have been conditioned and it is hard to find anything that will shake us out of our conditioning unless we go looking for it. We have energy, we have passion, we can see problems in society and we want to change them, but we are still limited by the constraints of the capitalist mentality.

This mentality can be seen very clearly even in the politics of some of the young, self-proclaimed socialists whom I know: they tend to see socialism in terms of justice and equal rights and getting what one deserves, and other abstractions. The entire concept of ‘deserving’ something is modelled around a market transaction: one ‘earns’ a right in return for performing an action (this action can be something like existing or turning a certain age). There is class-society morality right there, even if you say everyone ‘deserves the same’ (whatever that entails). Similarly, ‘justice’ has always been a concept used by the ruling class to make its ideology, and often its oppression of others, sound abstractly appealing, whether this concept is used to describe stoning gay couples to death or preventing women from getting abortions.

Which is why viewing things in terms of concrete material circumstances and social relations, as Marxists do, is so important. And, of course, not many of the people who oppose austerity are proposing to abolish markets and money as well, because ‘they’ve existed forever’.

All this is why young people need socialism. Without breaking free of the capitalist mentality and being clear in our theory and direction, we will never be able to make the change we so desperately want to, and we will forever be rebels without a cause (see, I can make old-people references!). Socialism offers a way to do this. The problem is, not enough people have the faintest idea of what it is. We need to stop supporting any compromises, brush off any traces of capitalist mentality, make use of the fresh start afforded to us by the fading memories of 20th century communism and, most importantly, get out there and differentiate ourselves.

I know this is much, much easier said than done, but it is going to be worth it. Because when you combine passionate young people and theoretical clarity, we can change the world.