Younger people, especially young adults still in school, are noticeably agitated by the current state of our government. The 2016 election has the country hopelessly polarized, and people are more mobilized than in the recent past. Perhaps this explains the recent explosion in communist and socialist memes shared by frustrated young adults. People feel deeply ironic nostalgia for the “good old days” of the Soviet Union, a regime they didn’t even live through. While the longing for an actual Soviet style communist regime is ironic, the frustration with American capitalism is not. Most students, even ones at more affordable public schools, struggle financially throughout college and have significant debt afterwards. This is particularly difficult because a college degree doesn’t even guarantee a living past the average middle class existence. While Marx may have lumped the middle class with the bourgeoisie, most people (who haven’t actually read the Communist Manifesto or studied Marx at all) feel as repressed by capitalism as the proletariat should.
The generation coming of age now has the right to be angry about the current state of the economy. While stocks might be up, and the unemployment rate might be low, like most recent grads, the United States is carrying around significant debt. The generations before us (the ones that now call millennials and Gen Z “entitled” now) created this debt by demanding not only low taxes, but expansion of government funded programs such as social security and medicare. YOU CAN’T HAVE BOTH, PEOPLE. YOU HAVE TO CHOOSE UNLESS YOU WANT THE NATIONAL DEBT TO GO WAY UP. I digress. This, along with leaders (*cough* Reagan *cough*) who were willing to give in, and others (*cough* Bush *cough*) starting unnecessary wars has forced the United States to have to worry about and factor in the debt to most policy decisions in a way previous generations didn’t. This doesn’t only makes decision making more difficult. If the debt is to be decreased, then people will have to suffer through higher taxes but less government funded programs. And don’t even get me started on the how they ruined the environment.
As if that weren’t enough, over the past several decades the concentration of wealth in the United States has left something to be desired. The concern over this is largely where Bernie Sanders drew his support from during his 2016 presidential campaign. Frustration over this also lead to the 2011 Occupy Wallstreet movement. If I had to guess, these same national issues also sparked the sharing and creation of a lot more communism themed memes and jokes. Humor is a coping mechanism for many. These sorts of memes allow people to cope with their worries over the shrinking middle class and express their desire for greater economic equality simultaneously.
From my perspective, the love of communism and admiration for the Soviet Union is (usually) ironic, but it also seems like a desperate cry for help from a generation inheriting a messy world. Older generations seem to mistake people sharing communist memes as a misunderstanding of what the USSR was actually like, and ignorance of the problems with past communist regimes. No one actually wants to wait in bread lines, but they also don’t want to work their butts off in college only to make significantly less than someone who paid their way into an Ivy League and spent their summers doing unpaid internships as they were supported by their wealthy parents. When young people say “I’d die in the People’s Revolution” what they really mean is “I wish life was more certain and stable and I’d pretty much do anything to ensure I won’t be living in utter squalor once I get out of school”.
Lucky for us young people, there is something we can do: vote. Seriously. If you believe that the values reflected in the government seem kind of old fashioned, that may because senior citizens vote at a much higher rate than young people. No matter your party affiliation, the only way your views are going to be reflected in policy is if you actually vote for people who share your views and values.
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