https://web.archive.org/web/20231029114044/https://medium.com/@chrisjeffrieshomelessromantic/harvard-study-51-of-young-adults-ages-18-29-do-not-support-capitalism-11bc73857670
A Harvard University survey found that 51% of young adults between ages 18 and 29 do not support capitalism, and less than half, 45%, view…
fwiw, the Russian people of 1916 didn't have an intensive understanding of Marxism either, they were just pissed off at the status quo and knew the tsar needed to go. You don't need your whole population to be learnt, just eager for change and open to new leadership.
Not that we have the makings of a Vanguard party either, but it's a lot less bleak of a prospect than getting 51% of Americans to read Capital.
I agree with the overall sentiment that a significant portion of the population needing to understand theory for a revolution is completely false (that's what the vanguard is for!) but it's gonna be a long while (like probably at least a century or so) for Americans material conditions to be anywhere near poor enough for them to want to risk their lives
You're completely correct. And the Bolsheviks also faced the issue of being outright atheistic in a country where the vast majority were fairly devout peasants for many of whom the Tsar was still a religious figure and who couldn't really imagine what developed capitalism, let alone socialism, would mean. It's also important to note that this was not an exclusively rural issue, as the majority of urban workers and soldiers had come fairly recently from peasant contexts.
In other words they had their work cut out for them in many ways that contemporary communists in the Imperial core do not. On the other hand, Russia in 1917 was not a society in which the core values necessary for the functioning of a capitalist society had fully imbued everyday culture and life in the way they had already done in Western countries and as is the case in the contemporary world, which is more capitalistic than any point prior to the 1980s (though I would argue that this peaked in the late 90s/early 2000s). The transformation of politics into another identitarian symbol and virtue-signalling component of western ultras' personal aesthetics is a reflection of this conception of politics as a part of personal identity, of the construction and selling of oneself as a purely aesthetic product. For many leftists in the west their leftism amounts mainly to a form of lifestyle aesthetics, and often as a kind of surrogate or substitute form feelings of communal belonging and spiritual, religious or historical meaning and significance. Now I'm not saying the latter are unimportant or necessarily bad in every respect, but it does seem to be the extent of the political participation of most people self-identifying as socialist in the west. Capitalism obviously sells us the opiates to lessen the anguish of the sense of nihilism it also naturally produces, and it has become less and less shy or reluctant to do so by repackaging leftist, socialist or communist symbols. This has a broader, more indirect effect on culture, which doesn't reduce to, say, a capitalist firm selling Che Guevara t-shirts. A great example from American popular culture is Hip Hop. Contemporary mainstream rap, especially trap, in many ways reflect how the political radicalism of 70s black politics was transmuted into the popularized black petit bourgeois entrepreneurialism of the 1980s, and which you see in contemporary rap music everywhere, only where the American dream ideology takes the classic form of socio-economic ascent from the lumpenproletariat as opposed to the traditional working class. Political radicalism is far less at the forefront of Hip Hop than it was in the 80s.
The key thing that the West is lacking is not dislike for the conditions of capitalism. Your average worker also does not think that the conditions capitalism forces them to live in are acceptable. The issue is that they do not think of these as the natural or inevitable conditions of capitalism. Most people cannot define capitalism, let alone correctly. One of the issues for contemporary communists definitely seems to me to be that of how to make clear sense of the fact that while the conditions of capitalist life in the West are worsening for the majority, there has not been more impulse towards the construction of vanguard parties. Definitely relevant is the general cultural factor mentioned above, as well as a truly industrial propaganda-media complex that leverages the 'failures' (real and imagined) of previous attempts at socialism and plays without shame on ideas of nationalism (including liberal ones of very limited modern progress on social issues in the US) in order leave little room for people to feel comfortable expressing openly communist ideas. Poor education is also an issue.
I would disagree that it doesn't mean anything. At the very least it shows half of young Americans are open-minded enough to consider an alternative to the unrestrained liberalism that they've been soaked in their entire lives.
Young people of every generation are statistically more open-minded than their older counterparts. It doesn’t necessarily indicate a generational shift until it can be demonstrated that the ideology persists in traditionally pro-capitalist age groups.
Was it not the boomers who were the edgy anti-capitalist hippies during the 60s and 70s?
I’m not holding my breath; I fully expect millennials and gen Z to go full grillpill when they have more stake in the status quo (401k, house, kids, career goals, etc).
I hope I’m wrong. But we should oppose simple optimism. Optimism doesn’t change the world, it encourages an attitude of helplessness and complacency at times when direct action is necessary.
I fully expect millennials and gen Z to go full grillpill when they have more stake in the status quo (401k, house, kids, career goals, etc).
so when do you think millennials are going to have those things? the youngest millennials are 27 and the oldest are 42. will we be able to afford housing and kids and have careers any day now?
About half of American millennials own homes, based on a quick Google search. I agree it’s bad for far too many younger Americans, but they also aren’t a uniform bloc all facing the same material conditions.
Possessing this or that particular stake in the status quo was not the essential point. The point was that having any stake at all tends to deradicalize people over time. This is all the more true when someone’s anticapitalism has no leftist theoretical basis or social organization.
I fully expect millennials and gen Z to go full grillpill when they have more stake in the status quo (401k, house, kids, career goals, etc).
the millennials who were going to de-radicalize mostly have by now
Optimism doesn't change the world, but if you don't take time to recognize something might be a positive, that just seems to increase helplessness even more to me. Like there has been action done to encourage the growth of socialism by people for decades, so seeing that there seems to be a least one indicator of it not going further backwards, we should reflect on that lest our spirits be completely crushed.
Angela Davis said a few days ago: “Hope is the condition of all struggles.” I believe this is true and don't desire for leftists to lose hope. But just as deadly to movements is blind optimism, the belief that things will necessarily improve automatically and without struggle.
Religion may help the masses cope with the world, but it is still illusory and often leads to counter revolutionary thought, if one puts more faith in external causes rather than revolutionary ie human-driven change.
A poll of youth opinion of capitalism is meaningless in itself and needs to be normalized with historical data, such as the tendency for younger age groups to be historically more optimistic by default before those same people become more cynical and reactionary in later life.
That is true, much more important than faith and optimism or anything like that is determined action. I think I've just been feeling a bit too pessimistic/stressed lately so felt like I needed to defend positivity haha.
I feel you, it’s hard lately especially with Palestine. In spite of everything I said, there are still things which make me hopeful. There is more support for Palestine among western citizens than I remember from past events in the region. Leaders from the global majority countries are cooperating more and more, and the disproportionate influence of the US has been waning in significant strides in the last 20 years. These occurrences of blatant imperialism will hopefully grow more infrequent as a result. Of course, that’s what the neoliberals also promised in the 1980s, but I think there is a stronger case for it this time.
No boomers were always incredibly reactionary. The 60's was driven by a minority of radicals and young people who were rebelling against the draft in a context of heavy unionization and the existence of the ussr. If you look at the actual polling though boomers were actually more economically conservative than their parents.
I fully expect millennials and gen Z to go full grillpill when they have more stake in the status quo (401k, house, kids, career goals, etc).
Thats a reasonable expectation. I don't know how much of a stake in the staus quo anyone from these generations will ever have though. Which is bad to live through, but promising in terms of radicalizing
I would say this is unnecessarily pessimistic view of things. People like to make eternal pronouncements about the "nature" of labor in the imperial core being inherently reactionary, but the truth is that most of those are base off of a limited historical data set that is much more nuanced than most admit. I think things are unquestionably looking up and this polling is just one bit of evidence of that. I know for my part I have had infinitely more luck trying to organize my work place over the past 4 years than I ever had before. People aren't going to magically become Marxists in America, but we will have a significantly better go of it if people are starting from a position of "capitalism sucks" rather than "capitalism is the most perfectest ting ever!"
This "the youth will always just hate the establishment" meme is still harmful and based on very little. The only basis for the idea that people will become more pro-capitalist with age is based on a very weak correlation of the parties voted for by populations as they age, which is just not great data on so many fronts.
I think this is that one survey from 2016. If I remember right it only asked for reactions to certain words, positive or negative. Whenever I see similar polls it makes me consider the average American doesn't see the terms capitalism and socialism like we do. The average person sees these as character traits, not movements or distinct economic structures. Capitalist simply means greedy businessman, nothing structural. Socialism is high taxes and government doing stuff.
There's not a lot of coherent public discourse about this.
A lot of Americans who own ZERO capital consider themselves ideological capitalists. This isn't an impossible stance. I wouldn't even say it's a hypocritical one. But it is absolutely a moronic stance born from ignorance basically like you laid out above. I'd only argue with you that a lot do not even think of it as greedy. They conflate capitalism with "freedom" and socialism with "not freedom." And that happens because of the past 100 years+ of red scare bullshit.
Whenever I see similar polls it makes me consider the average American doesn't see the terms capitalism and socialism like we do. The average person sees these as character traits, not movements or distinct economic structures. Capitalist simply means greedy businessman, nothing structural. Socialism is high taxes and government doing stuff.
I would very much agree with your assessment. I think the public discourse has failed to get the idea of structural thought into these words. It's really sad to me that while most people would totally be onboard with socialism and communism but lack the language to even understand what they actually are. I always feel like you have describe Socialism in these very obtuse ways to obfuscate what it's called to get average Americans onboard. As soon as you call it what it is, they bug out.
Well, that's propaganda in effect. But I do reject the notion that people, even my fellow dipshit Burgers, need to have socialism spoonfed to them. Not that you were advocating for that, but many do, often as a joke but not always.
Many leftists and "leftists" get caught up in this weird debate perversion/ 24/7 media cycle spin spin spin spin talking points driven thing mixed with caveats upon caveats instead unapologetically just saying shit.
I would say if advocates made it super simple like: "do you believe in democracy? Do you want things to be run as the majority of people want it to be run? Then why do you not extend that to the workplace?" Make them turn those rusty cogs and force them to consider the fact that they do not own capital. They do own no factories, they probably aren't landlords, they in fact suffer under the boot of those people. And you tell them that you simply support an economic system that says "no, those people do not get to do that. The people will decide how rents are handled and how wages are determined- not owners."
I mean it's super anecdotal but my Trump-enjoying dad (he admits he's a dumbass, but I think he finds Trump just entertaining) was pretty much fully on board with this furiously nodding his head along. I never broke the news to him that he just endorsed communism and will surely be executed beside me someday.
But seriously, you're right that the words have absolutely been poisoned. I don't think we should abandon correct terminology though. Just maybe cut the 30 minute "definitions of socialism" which include 28 minutes of "I formally renounce the atrocities of...[insert every socialist nation ever]." I get why people feel the need the need to do that, but capitalists will never renounce Jefferson, or Andrew Jackson, or Reagan, or Clinton, or Obama... etc. to include every neoliberal, liberal, fascist, etc. that has ever existed. I guess my problem is... people are cowards. They won't just speak out and say how they feel, they recoil instantly from any accusation of "supporting Xi" etc. There are good reasons to be afraid, look at what the Israeli lobbies and their little shitty Gestapo squads are doing to student protesters right now, but if people want to be on the right side of things, if that means something to them, you have to take on some risk and some pain. The pain of missing a Harvard grad school position due to disgusting essentially Nazis wanting to murder kids is nothing compared to the pain of, I dunno, being those kids and their families.
So, I dunno how I got off on that rant, but whatever. I just hope recent events radicalize people further. Some cowards will run away and some already have. But for those who truly believe in principles behind socialism and have basic humanity this isn't a challenge... it just fuels the fire.
Language is fucking us all up. I've thought a lot about this, I've talked about socialism to all sorts of people, and I think the things we are striving for are much more popular than we think but people just don't communicate well. Especially when we have been so misinformed by imperialist propaganda.
and about 92% of them are NATO leftists who hate every AES country and think people like Vaush sound intelligent.
I think you're cutting yourself off at the knees if you assume that. Obviously I doubt the majority are theory-hardened communists, but this obviously represents a popular swell of public opinion despite our inability to act so far on anything as "the left" in the US
I wonder how many of the revolutionary proletarians during the rise of communism knew their shit. Not many I guess, but they had people they followed that did, like Lenin, even if they didn't completely understand the theory or fully agreed with it.
Then again people back then didn't have a century of propaganda to deal with..
It's pretty obvious almost none of them. The Chinese civil war picked up millions of conrades along the way and there is absolutely 0 chance most, or even a significant portion of them spent weeks or months cramming a bunch of theory in their free time while working for their feudal/war lords before defecting
A lot of them just heard that the communists were promising them their own land, guaranteed nourishment for their entire family, and how much better their followers were being treated
I love talking politics with people and I have talked to A LOT of libs. Most agree that we need to tax the corporations more, the capitalists have gotten too greedy, we should spend more of the defense budget on healthcare, infrastructure etc.
Not a single one of them thinks that revolution should be anywhere on the table. And when some of them finally admit that China is doing something good, it’s only because China is not socialist, it is a capitalist country! That’s why it is able to raise the living standards of its people because they have adopted some of our capitalist policies! But unlike us, they’re totalitarians!
They're not dedicated communists, but neither are they dedicated radlibs. If streamers are your yardstick, Vaush has 240k followers on twitter. Hasan has 1.4 million.
Political americans, especially those of us who get more than our recommended daily intake of internet, have trouble understanding this, but most people do not care about politics as such.
"Actually existing socialism," countries where socialism is the dominant mode of production, such as Cuba.
Actual existing socialism, usually a reference for states that were or are ran by a communist party that was or is attempting to build towards a socialist society with historical and material proof of that.
Hmmm, after spending their formative years with the boomer generation constantly rubbing their lucky breaks in our faces. Smug corpos laughing at us for being arbitrarily told we're unemployable....it truly is a mystery where the resentment comes from...
The lack of trust in the capitalist system is Harvard Business School’s biggest challenge, according to Dean Nitin Nohria[5]. The Business School has always been closely associated with broader trends in the business world, and it must work toward reassuring society that businesses and the capitalist system are productive. The school has taken several actions in an effort to answer that question, including introducing more courses focused on ideas about economic structure. The school is trying to find ways to engage students in conversations about capitalism and its flaws. The school has a second-year course called ‘Reimagining Capitalism’ that has become one of its most successful second-year electives. The school is also trying to bring that material back into the first year of its MBA curriculum.
Lol of course.
Only a business school grad could think the people who sign up to go to business school are the ones you need to sell capitalism to
In this course we will describe a nicer, safer, fuzzier capitalism that we will all pretend can be done, and then choose not to, even if we could
But conservatives told me that Harvard was a hotbed of communist propaganda? Why would they be trying to brainwash their youth into capitalist dogma? 
Oh, well, since we live in a democracy that should be the end of the matter, then, shouldn't it? Shouldn't it?
I remember in school when we had US history for the sixth time for social studies class, they taught us again about the early debates in the Federalist Papers on how the baby democracy might turn into a monster by allowing the majority to win votes somehow
Obviously it's better to have a tyranny of the minority than the tyranny of the majority, some dead guy in a wig said so
So, if democracy is bad....then why not adopt technocracy and not let those rubes anywhere near a position of power?
The American Medical Association, after extensive research, has found that me being trans is not a sign there's anything wrong with me. Who cares if 99% of this shithole wants me dead? Experts say I'm fine and that's all that matters. Not my fault most people are unthinking morons.
The AMA is run by insurance companies and hospitals, most physicians have never belonged to it
Designing the optimal governing system is idealist, but I do admit I am interested in the topic. My picks are sociocracy and liquid democracy, which might be described like a crossover between direct democracy and technocratic representation
In the end though, it's dependent on material conditions how we should organize ourselves
I'm amazed that 49% support it.
In 1960 US minimum wage was $1.00/hour and the cost of the average house was $11,000.00* A high school grad could move out and be self supporting instantly.
*Unless you're ready to prove that inflation is the reason houses today are larger and have things like air conditioning, don't tell me that modern houses are 'better.'
A lot of older houses also had better passive cooling and more design consideration towards the environment (facing where prevailing winds come from, having wind funnels, chimneys that expel heat from the house, large cool basements that people would move into during the summer, not chopping down all trees within 3 miles)
I’m sure to some extent this is also survivorship bias but having lived in homes and apartments both 10-30 years old and 80-100+ years old, the old ones have all been way better.
I'm in a town where basic shelter is unaffordable and constantly features puff pieces about the plights of our landlords, and the local subreddit has the majority of locals calling landlords parasites. All that's missing is a vanguard that can organize and guide this sentiment.
the local subreddit has the majority of locals calling landlords parasites.
That's pretty rare. Most local subreddits are inhabited by landlords and landlord sympathizers.
why not start a tenant union? we founded one last year in my city from nothing, one guy organised a public meeting and advertised it on facebook/eventbrite and a few ppl came along, now we're a year old and growing fast.
This is cool but there's still a big leap to be taken between disliking capitalism and actually advocating for communism. A year or two ago a friend of mine admitted that capitalism is fucked, but he couldn't bring himself to support communism because he thinks that communism basically means universal concentration camps. "You get a concentration camp! And you get a concentration camp!" It's common enough for people to admit that things are fucked up, but their solution usually revolves around electing good capitalist puppets to replace the bad capitalist puppets, and/or to do some kind of genocide against minorities who have nothing to do with societal problems. Plenty of these respondents probably believe that something like "crony capitalism" is at fault and that we need to go back to the good old days when a man could get ahead if he worked hard (i.e., during the enclosures).
There is a particular irony about the proletarian from the country with the highest prisoner population per capita (probably of all time) thinking that 'communism' means 'concentration camps'.
It seems like anarchism is the trendy replacement for capitalism these days. It fits better with the Western ideal of individualism. And I get it, it would be great if we could all just do whatever we want and not have anyone tell us what to do, but it's not practical. Like government is gonna be around for the foreseeable future and insisting on anarchism kinda prevents working on a better government
'All do whatever and no one tell us what to do,' there is a lot more to anarchism than that though. You can work on a better government currently while still striving for the ultimate removal of the state.
yeah, I know there is more to it, but doesn't it still ultimately boil down to that? even if "we" is small communities rather than individuals
I just wanna see a poll going over the percentage of outright communists someday (although tbh it would probably also have a selection for fascist that would have twice the percentage 
)
No offense, but have you been talking to people? My friends who think they’re socialists think this means paying more taxes for public infrastructure, or taxing the corporations more to pay for it.
At the same time, they hate communism, which they think is trying to give people free stuff without having to work and make everyone receive the same salary. I have a friend, self-proclaimed socialist, thinks Andrew Yang is a communist because he wants to give people universal basic income.
These are the “socialists” you’re dealing with.
Yeah I'd like to know how many of those people can define socialism and which historical societies they consider to be genuine attempts at socialist-construction.
The cynic in me reads this as ~48% of youths want more libraries, but would still froth as hard as any boomer if you suggest union busting is wrong, or something cool like we should nationalize Amazon
This is very sad to me but I can see how it would be reassuring to people who were politically-conscious like 20 years ago or something
Why's it sad for you? As a zoomer, this is amazing news that gives me so much hope. A better world is right around the corner 
Edit: read the rest of the comments in this thread 
