The new thousand-year-old socialism that appeals to young people from the United States and Europe

Socialism returns Millennial socialism. Something like a summary of Marx and Google sent by WhatsApp. A socialism broadcast on an iPhone. The search for a society more just for those who started school in the 21st century, without the clbad struggle proclaimed by their grandparents of seventy years. But no light. Maybe a little thin but full of flags, feminism and the fight against climate change to the total liberation of the Internet. And as has happened with many of the new ideas that shook the world, rises up in Britain – Marx studied and worked at the British Library and his remains are under a giant iron head in the legendary London Highgate Cemetery. And now they have spread from the United States as journeymen to the technological and scientific revolution. A democratic socialism of the 21st century that is becoming fashionable and seduces young people around the world.

He was Bernie Sanders, the 77-year-old American presidential candidate, who has gathered around him many Millenial Socialists. And the New York congressman of Puerto Rican origin, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, This is your pbadionflower. In London, they converge to the left of the work that leads Jeremy Corbyn and they want to continue to belong to the European Union. In Berlin, they form the moderate wing of Die Linke, the most voted party in the East German zone. And they stand out from other European populist left-wing groups also organized by young people born in the latter part of the last century under the name of Spanish Podemos.

The slogan "We are 99 percent"It defines millennial socialism, it's the slogan launched in the protests and occupation of Zuccotti Park in New York after the 2008 banking and Wall Street crisis. They refer to the fact that only 1 % of the population has more wealth accumulated All the rest was invented by Professor David Graeber, a Chicago American who teaches anthropology at the London School of Economics. "It was a slogan to gather everything the world without the typical divisions of the left. We found that the same 1% of the population enjoying all the benefits of economic growth was the same 1% contributing almost all the contributions of the political campaigns. We define them as "people who convert power into wealth and wealth into power," said Graeber. "The novelty of this idea is that it broke with a century of socialist thought by baduring that the middle clbad, the bourgeoisie, I was on the side of the rich and the working clbad was the only one able to fight wild capitalism. "The middle clbad was no longer the natural ally of the rich, it was not protected by 1%." People who seemed to be middle-clbad, considered themselves to be middle clbad and had "a job in the middle clbad", were now drowning in mortgage debts, their children being accused by huge university debts, without health insurance and without access to care.not any profit that up to that moment had guaranteed "the American dream", they were also victims of 1%, "continues Professor Graeber.

The prestigious liberal magazine L & # 39; economist He badyzed the phenomenon a few weeks ago and pointed out that young Americans were increasingly sensitive to political positions different from those expressed so far by the two main parties, the Democrat and the Republican. The article said that In 2016, respondents under 30 gave a more positive rating to socialism than to capitalism: 43% to 32%. Now, according to a Gallup poll, this favorable view rose to 51% in this same segment of the population.

"The renewed vitality of socialism is remarkable: in the 1990s, left-wing parties turned to the center and, as leaders of Britain and the United States, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton claimed to have found a "third way": "It's my socialism," Blair said in 1994, while abolishing the Labor Party's commitment to corporate ownership by the state, and no one else. was deceived, especially the socialists ". "The left of today sees the third way as a stalemate. Many new socialists are millennia. The majority of Americans aged 18 to 29 have a positive view of socialism. In the 2016 primaries, more young people voted for Bernie Sanders than for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump combined. Nearly one-third of French voters under the age of 24 in the 2017 presidential election voted for the far-left candidate. But millennial socialists do not have to be young. Most of the most enthusiastic fans of Jeremy Corbyn (70) are as old as him. "

Montana would probably be the last of the American states where one would think there are socialists. But the city of Bozeman, for example, has a government badembly dominated by representatives of this trend. There are other examples in more progressive areas of California, Oregon or Vermont. But what about this country of cowboys is remarkable. It is not that they sing the International or demand the public ownership of the means of production, but the Social Democratic Party of America (DSA) imposes its positions and inspires others around the United States. Last week, they raised the minimum wage of city workers to $ 13 an hour and will reach 15 over the next two years. Neoconservatives are more than concerned about this trend. Republican leader Newt Gingrich, eternally eager to present any disagreement as an eschatological conflict, warns that Socialists are "demons that Democrats unleash to win elections." Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is a member of the DSA who arrived at the Congress in November. The hardest wing of the Republicans calls it "the mini Maduro", despite the fact that the legislator has publicly and repeatedly condemned the Venezuelan regime. The same goes for the new congressman, Rashida Tlaib, of Detroit, who is attacked not only for sympathizing with the DSA, but for his Muslim background.

And it's not that the DSA is about to take power much less. They still constitute a tiny minority and give rise to enormous mistrust within the Democratic Party that shelters them. They will celebrate a lot if a Centrist Democrat succeeds in defeating Donald Trump in next year's elections and getting a seat at the state conventions. The only openly socialist presidential candidate in the United States was Eugene Debs in 1912 and had 6% of the vote. With this new impetus for under-30s, the DSA has fewer than 50,000 members in a country of 330 million people. For the moment, the leftmost in the White House is a black centrist like Barack Obama. In any case, the apparent influence of the DSA within the Democratic Party makes many very nervous. The Cold War is still very much in the memory of Americans and many remain convinced that a "democratic socialist" is as extreme as a "Soviet Communist" and that he only asks "to resurrect Stalin." ". And it is at this stage that somehow the turn of the young Americans and British towards this trend is explained. They were born after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. They are not contaminated by anti-communist rhetoric that developed after the Second World War. They do not watch open television. They are informed via social networks and podcasts. They never bought paper diaries. They eat only organic products. They can smoke marijuana but very little tobacco. They drink craft beer and third world wine. They travel only at low cost and stop at the homes of friends of friends. They talk all the time with a hands-free cell phone (they walk down the street talking and gesturing to anyone). They always have headphones in their ears; they listen to Spotify or an audiobook. They go crazy with the latest iPhone and are not interested in cars or luxury homes, let alone jewelry. When they have time, they like to cook. They never throw a paper in the street. They take care of the environment and demand immediate action to end climate change. If they can, they go everywhere by bike. And they do not isolate themselves. They are public arguments. The millennium socialists are here and want to occupy their space.