Bad news: a majority of them also hold negative views on “”“authoritarian”“” socialism
Yeah, people have been propagandized up to their ears against effective ways of overthrowing capitalism. So, there’s still a ton of work to be done there.
“Negative” views of capitalism isn’t inherently anti-capitalism, and anti-capitalism isn’t inherently socialist. It feels like some people just flat out can’t understand this, so they read headlines like this and just kinda auto-assume it means a majority of America’s youths are pro-socialist. When, in fact, a large percent are left-liberals who would rather reform the existing system than tear it down. And the vocal minority who speak about tearing down the system to rebuild a new one are… well… a minority who get laughed at or ostracized outside of the internet and leftist circles.
American youths can talk all they want about how bad the system of capitalism is, but the moment anyone suggests realistic alternatives, out comes the liberal propaganda and the western “leftism”… and this is a problem that needs to be handled before we’ll have revolutionary potential.
The way I look at it is that negative views of capitalism make people more open to be educated on the subject. It is the job of socialists and communists to engage these people and to teach them theory so that they can develop a better understanding of the problem. We’re still in early stages right now, but people ultimately can’t ignore their own lived experience. Only way forward is through education, building grassroots networks, and mass organization.
Or they call themselves socialist but say the Nordic countries are true socialism. To be fair, I used to be one of those people. It takes a strong anti-capitalist mindset for people to look into socialism, then witness the failure of the electoral system to slide into communism/Marxism-Leninism. So while I would still regard this is good news, even if most of them aren’t comrades yet.
