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I understand better why socialism and communism don’t work. The human element is always the corrupting factor. And I’ll explain how, and hopefully you’ll get a chance to see how it’s happening here in the United States. But first, just so we have our definitions clear…
Many people today are identifying as socialists, Marxists, and communists, particularly among the young. This isn’t a terrible surprise. For my generation, we were raised in a society that valued consumption, where our parents tried, often at great expense, to provide for the material things that we not just needed, but also wanted. We were taught in school that the process of critical thinking wasn’t as important as standardized testing, that learning consisted only of remembering enough to get past the current project, and then subsequently learning new things to replace the old things, without the need to remember them long term. We were programmed to follow a schedule, to do repetitive work, and to regurgitate facts rather than diving deeper into meaning or theme. We were taught that the teacher’s word was law, and that we had to mold ourselves to their will and answers since they were the ones to create the learning plans and curriculums. And we were sold a bill of goods when we were taught for years that going to college was the best, if not the only, way to succeed in life, that a college degree would help you earn more money in your lifetime, and that someone with a college degree would earn over a million dollars more in their lives than someone without one. And culturally, my generation was the participation trophy generation. We were taught that your outcome didn’t matter, and that you would still get recognition for simply trying.
Life isn’t as forgiving, and millennials aren’t succeeding like our parents and grandparents. Business Insider reports that millennials are financially behind. Having to enter the job market amid the Great Recession, with fewer job prospects, companies closing, and fewer resources available for them to draw on to start their own businesses, many flocked to schools. According to Business Insider, “Adjusted for inflation, the annual salary of a millennial today is an estimated 20% lower than the average salary for a baby boomer at the same age, according to a SmartAsset study that analyzed data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for millennials who were ages 16 to 34 in 2015.”
Combine this with a general skepticism of financial institutions, and Millennials are either not qualifying for, or not seeking larger investments like houses on a macro scale. Thomson Reuters noted that Millennials “are considerably less attracted to debt than the preceding generations.” The unintended consequence of all of these behaviors and external forces is that Millennials have a harder time “getting ahead,” by which I mean to be living independently, owning a home, and starting a family, several of the common milestones that previous generations have met. More and more it feels like the game is rigged, favoring older generations, and leaving Millennials as the sacrificial generation, unable to rise to their parents’ levels of success, wealth, or standards of living.
I don’t blame my parents, or older generations, as many Millennials do. The older generations experienced success, and wealth, many of them having gone to college, and conflated the two. They saw successful people emerging with college degrees, and discounted other things, like a strong work/study ethic, individual drive and perseverance, and sacrificing for the future, as the causes of their success. Certainly, having a degree, particularly from certain colleges, helped open doors, but even then it may have been the networking and camaraderie that comes with knowing a fellow alumni, than the actual degree itself. With the best of intentions, they told their children, my generation, that having a college degree would mean success, and Millennials, being children, took them at their word. We found out that pursuing a degree, and taking on the debt load that came with it, did not mean success. With so many graduating college with five to six figure debt loads at interest rates that are predatory, Millennials are finding themselves trapped in a debt spiral, unable to escape. Like the serfs of the middle ages, Millennials are finding more and more that their labor is fated to belong to someone else.
The Hill reported in 2019 that “Seventy percent of millennials in a new poll say that they are somewhat or extremely like to vote for a socialist candidate.” To me, knowing the death toll of Communism and its forerunner Socialism, that is both a scary and unsurprising statistic. And this notion is of course seen by those in power currently. Millennials represent a chance for the corporate neo-progressives to seize power. A generation of mostly programmable voters, addicted to their technology, longing for the standard of living of their youth, sold a false bill of goods, are given promises of “free college,” “canceled college tuition,” “free healthcare,” and “universal basic income,” which would relieve them of the responsibilities for repaying the debts that have to this point held them back.
Socialism represents hope to many Millennials, either as a chance to finally get out from under the crushing debts that they carry, or as a means of revenge against previous generations that sacrificed them for their own wealth and prosperity. I have told people before that Millennials will be responsible for trying to solve the world’s problems, but the scary reality will be that so few of us will understand how we go about that. And the shifting attitudes of Millennials toward socialism combined with my generation’s limited understanding of the dark side of socialism and communism will bring about another wave of mass death and suffering, like every attempt at socialism before.
Socialism in and of itself is actually a pretty neat system in theory. Means of production is owned by the people. The people vote democratically on how those means are meant to be used. Public ownership of things like schools, manufacturing, etc… A large public safety net to ensure that people get the help that they need in order to prevent them from being destitute, starving, or injured. Publicly funded healthcare, education, work training to help new generations acquire the skills they need to succeed in life, and to provide a basic layer of protection in the event that things go wrong. It’s a pretty idyllic picture.
Unfortunately, the folks seeking power and revenge often win out. The very systems that allow “people” to control the means of production fall into the hands of an oligarchy, creating two classes. In socialist/communist countries, these are usually members of the controlling party and non-members of the controlling party. The means of production is then turned against those the party is afraid of, and the “people” becomes the “party.” The illusion of free stuff evaporates, and the people that the non-party members now work for is no longer a corporation, but the government itself. The idea that you cannot work and still earn things also collapses as either the currency is devalued, or the government forces you to work. Compulsion and corruption becomes normalized, initiative becomes demoralization, and the entire socialist experiment collapses into communism, leaving death, destruction, and long, long roads to restoring even a modicum of “freedom” in its wake.
We haven’t reached that point yet, but the longer the cycle goes on of racking up debt, promising free stuff, and not teaching our generations about the values of hard-work and personal responsibility, the closer we find ourselves at falling into the gaping maw of socialism.
A Place 4Politics 
Here’s part of the answer in simplicity: 1) “They” (Communist and Socialist Influences, internal and external) have been working to enter our institutions, more so, perhaps, during and after WWII, but I think it’s been all along when we consider some of our socialist presidents. 2) Getting into our institutions (medical, educational, corporations, psychology, publishing, and more…: anywhere they felt influential, most notably the media and Hollywood.). 3) From our institutions, they rewrote laws, worked to destroy the economy and families, separated children from their parents (more so, if the parents were conservative and clear thinking), and destroyed what education could have been, both in lower and higher arenas. 4) Throughout all of this and more, they worked hard to demoralize everyone, and in this way, people won’t stand up for what’s right. 5) By destroying the fabric of true American society, following a wonderful Constitution, they step in amidst all the chaos, creating more chaos, so that over time, we’re easier and easier to control while they remake this country in their ideal: communism.
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Yes, I believe you’re correct. And this is a long game with the communists. They are true believers in their ideals, which makes it so much more difficult to counter. They tend to have a dogmatic approach to these things, and are often the ones coming from the bourgeoise backgrounds that end up at the top of the heap, and therefore reap the benefits when a communist society re-organizes. It is also possible that they become the very revolutionaries that the leadership disposes of once the capture of power has been completed. You don’t want revolutionaries around starting another revolution. The academics are in for a rude awakening if that were to ever realistically happen, for the teachers, and the journalists are often the first ones silenced.
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But one never gives up. This country became in probably the most improbable of ways, but many believed, prayed, and sacrificed. During the Revolutionary War, there were many times when we should have lost everything, but fortune smiled time and again, though many suffered and died along the way, but believing. **I think, if one is patient, observes and listens, with time, they’ll better understand how people become so easily duped, propagandized, and led, so then, the people who do understand and see clearly are able to speak and word things without seeming like a conspiracy junky. It’s just common sense. I encourage people to read Andrei Sakharov’s memoires if they have the time, or Nate Shiransky’s “Fear No Evil,” if you don’t have a lot of time. And if you have a lot of time, War and Peace. People will better understand how propaganda and human nature go together to destroy nations, but there are always those who are awake, or wake up, and must learn determination with patience, for the struggle for true freedom is always ongoing. Each person does the best they can, communicating, as we’re doing here.
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