The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC) has released its fourth Annual Report on US Attitudes Toward Socialism, Communism, and Collectivism. And the survey, conducted by YouGov, confirms the trend we have seen across the world for some decades: young people – the millennials and Generation Z – feel positive about socialism and have much less confidence in capitalism that their elders from Generation X and older.
Half of young Americans have an unfavourable view of capitalism, and more than two thirds would vote for an outright socialist candidate in an election. Asked if the American Declaration of Independence is a better guarantor of freedom and equality than the Communist Manifesto, only 57% of millennials agree.
What’s to blame? Three reasons seem obvious.
Firstly, politicians have long since stopped making a passionate case for small government. While free markets capitalism sometimes get lip service (British PM Boris Johnson did so recently in his speech to the Conservative Party conference) policy discussions are generally firmly grounded on the left: progressive taxation, public services, government paternalism, climate change – on the big issues both sides compete over who can spend most taxpayer money and enforce most government power. This cowardice must end; if we are to fight the socialist scourge, we must proudly make the case for capitalism and follow it with free-market and small government policy.
The second problem is that public education has shamefully failed in educating our young on the horrors of socialism and communism. Crimes like the Holodomor, the Gulags and the failed Bolshevik land reforms are all but forgotten by generations who are too young to remember when the Iron Curtain divided Europe and have been brought up by a generally left-wing education system.
Finally, it is perhaps not surprising that generations who have no access to capital are sceptical about capitalism. The housing crisis, a phenomenon which is prevalent across the western world, has disenfranchised millennials and Gen Zers who feel the capitalist system simply isn’t working for them. They are right about the symptom: being 30 years old and sleeping on your mother couch, despite working full time, is not the embodiment of the American Dream. But they are wrong about the diagnosis. The reason for their misfortune isn’t that capitalism doesn’t work, but, as we have said so many times before, that is isn’t being allowed to work: ultra-low interest rate policies pursued by central banks have enriched those who bought assets (properties in particular) before the turn of the millennium, and left a generation which is in fact richer than any previous generation feeling disenfranchised; easy prey for politicians who offer capitalism as a scape goat for their misfortune.
How do we deal with the problem? It’s on us. We can appeal to public figures to make a bold case for free market capitalism. We can teach the young about the horrors of socialism ourselves even if our schools negate their responsibility to do so. We can explain the folly of central banking and fiat money. What we can’t do is sit back and hope the young will somehow see sense on their own. History shows that they won’t.