'From Generation Left to Population Left: The Myth of Age-Based Conservatism' - Michael Doolan

'From Generation Left to Population Left: The Myth of Age-Based Conservatism' - Michael Doolan

“You’ll be a conservative by the time you’re 30,” my grandmother said to me on my recent visit. This is a common idea in British politics. The optimism of socialism is said to be reserved for the young. With age comes rationality, a realism about the world, and a personal investment in the performance of the market. It’s undeniable that the Conservatives currently have a monopoly on the older population, with 67% of over 70-year-old voters voting Conservative in the 2019 general election. And the narratives of people turning right with age is not helped by the fact that centrist icons such as Peter Mandelson and Alistair Darling spent their youth supporting the Young Communist League and the International Marxist Group. However, has it always been the case that people become more right-wing as they get older? Or, perhaps a more appropriate question – are people becoming more conservative with age today?

The revival of left-wing politics emerging across the West in the last few years has brought huge amounts of survey data on the public opinion of socialism. For socialists, the results were overall very positive. The Thatcherite think-tank, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), found that 67% of people aged between 18 and 40 would like to live in a socialist economy. The same survey found that socialism was also most commonly associated with words like “workers”, “equal”, and “fair” by the public, and that very few people associated it with “failure”. Capitalism, however, was most commonly associated with words like “rich”, “exploitative”, and “unfair”. A similar poll concluded that 40% of people under 40 have a positive opinion of socialism, with a similar number agreeing with the statement “communism could have worked if it was executed properly”.

The surveys did not reveal a complete victory for the left in the battle of ideas. When presented with a definition of socialism and a definition of capitalism, only half the respondents could correctly define socialism. This would imply support for socialism is relatively depthless: people like the ideas of socialism more than they know the practicalities of it. However, the young almost unanimously identify capitalism as a cause of the climate crisis and British housing crisis (with over 75% of people agreeing with both these statements). And 71% agree with the notion it fuels racism. In short, even though many may not know what socialism is, they know what it stands in opposition to, and they agree.

When the IEA conducted their analysis on public opinion of socialism the results gave them “cause for concern”. They found no detectable difference in opinion between those aged 18 and those in their early 40s when it came to economic policy: opposition to the free market shows no sign of declining. The argument that by the time people reach their late twenties and thirties, when they have children and buy a home, they become invested in the performance of the market and hence more rational, no longer holds true. “It is no longer true that people ‘grow out’ of socialist ideas as they get older”, the author resentfully exclaims.

Considering that the young are feeling the consequences of inflated house prices, the effects of the \climate crisis, and have been persistently characterised as ‘overly-sensitive’, ‘idol’, and ‘idealistic’ by the right, it is not shocking they haven’t grown out of their left-wing tendencies. Denigrating the under 40s may help unify a coalition of older voters; but attacking one’s future voting base is a high-risk strategy.

It is not that all young people have a copy of Das Kapital on their bookshelf or are well versed in the events of the Bolshevik revolution. On the contrary, I would argue mainstream ideas of socialism today exist in a different conceptual realm to the socialism of the Soviet Union or Venezuela (only 4% of young people in the UK associate socialism with Venezuela when given the option). For better or for worse, there has been an undeniably successful campaign by the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to market her ‘democratic socialism’ as distinct to the socialism of the twentieth century. If you’re an ardent socialist, this may be a cause for concern: once again, bad faith political actors are co-opting left-wing rhetoric to win elections. It does, however, also hold benefit in that the young, whose secondary school history education focused heavily on the failure of the Soviet state and the poverty of Southeast Asia, differentiate between the socialism of Corbyn and Sanders, and the socialism of the past. The primary critiques of socialism from the right, where socialism is ‘authoritarian’, ‘bad economics’, or has ‘never worked’, are completely ineffective at convincing a youth who imagine their socialism to be different.

The message of this article is not that the left can be complacent and that, if we wait our turn, we’ll soon see a socialist government. Complacency never got us this far. After the disaster of 2019, however, it is easy for the hope in socialism or any progressive politics to wane. Despite the chaos of left-wing politics within the UK, it would appear these spikes in support for radical policies are different to spikes seen in the 1930s and 1960s. People believe in socialism for longer than they previously have done. I am sure my grandmother will be shocked to hear those in their early forties remain as radical as they were back in their youth. Given that the median age in the UK is 40: how long before Generation Left become Population Left?

[Michael Doolan is a Masters student in Sociology at Blackfriars College]