The society that was built by boomer individualism never had any chance of lasting, because it was premised on lack of regard for the future. When I say “boomer individualism,” I refer not to how I view an entire generation, but to the narcissistic pattern of thinking and behavior that became so prominent in the post-World War II era. I also want to make it clear that when I criticize these behaviors, I don’t seek to send a message of myopic resentment towards one’s parents; a major problem within modern communist spaces is for people to get radicalized not on the basis of class, but because they want to repudiate their parental figures.
This trend is another example of the myopic individualism that’s afflicted our culture for so long, and as a Marxist I seek to bring my community away from it. The message I’m conveying is that if we within Gen Z want to escape the bleak conditions which boomer individualism let our ruling class create for us, we will need to give up all vestiges of this cultural ill, and commit to a struggle for rectifying the American nation.
I describe this task in these terms because though our generation’s crises are also afflicting the other countries throughout the “collective west,” it was the United States which exported the bleakness to its imperialist satellite states. These crises are particular to the countries within this geopolitical sphere, in that they include an element not just of economic decline but of social collapse. There’s a reason why the Global South is in many ways on the rise right now, despite its centuries of being subjected to extreme exploitation, while the imperialist benefactor countries are only becoming more destabilized and societally atomized. It’s because the countries that have been victimized by the imperial system are working to escape this condition by building themselves up; while the societies at the top of the extractive global order are increasingly eating themselves as the system declines.
The outcome is that in the rich countries, the younger generations are finding themselves unable to reach what had been the bare minimum for the young people of just one or two generations ago. The generational divide in opportunities is probably even more stark than that; to find the most recent and significant moment when traditional life paths became closed off to the bulk of the youth, you only need to look to the Covid pandemic. We have millions and millions of people who didn’t get to go through the most basic formative experiences, all because their governments mismanaged the health crisis that started in 2020.
When I say that millions of people have been left behind in this way, I’m largely talking about men in their twenties, who statistics show are now single by the large majority of over sixty percent. And it’s this reality that today’s most opportunistic actors are trying to exploit, often at the direct behest of our ruling class. The efforts to divert the “involuntary celebate” population towards the gender wars, or towards Hitlerite ideology, or towards post-ironic nihilism, are part of how our elites seek to manage the civilizational collapse we’re seeing unfold.
The elites wish that the U.S. and its imperial partner states weren’t collapsing; but because a breakdown is inevitable as long as capitalism remains undefeated, capital’s best option is to prevent this collapse from turning into a workers revolution. So through their intelligence agencies, those in power are cultivating online spaces designed to feed people’s illnesses; with their destructive policies and their psychological warfare operations, they have created a massive number of social outcasts who can easily be groomed into committing mass shootings, like was the case for this August’s Minnesota shooter. The role of these suicidal attackers is to terrorize the masses into apathy and demoralization, preventing the rise of a collective organizational force that can thwart the schemes of the elites. And they wouldn’t have become available candidates for manipulation if they hadn’t been thrust into today’s grim environment, where much of the youth can’t access the economic or relationship opportunities that were available so recently.
I emphasize the role of boomer individualism in bringing us to this state because we can draw a very clear connection between the emergence of this cultural condition, and the fall of the working-class politics which could have saved us from such an outcome. I’m talking about when a particular subset of boomer individualism’s original adherents inserted themselves into mid-20th century radical politics, and thereby grievously undermined our popular movements. This subset was not the right-wing boomers, who would largely become the generation’s default during the Reagan era; the element that killed American communism was instead left-wing boomers, who unintentionally pushed the bulk of their peers into going reactionary.
There are plenty of notable and heroic exceptions among left-wing boomers, but due to how much post-war society was shaped by individualism and idealism, even many of the boomers who desired to defeat capitalism were taken in by what was effectively leftist anti-communism. By Timothy Leary’s drug culture psyop, by Jerry Rubin’s infantile “kill your parents” punk rock gospel, and ultimately by the anti-Soviet leftism that Zbigniew Brzeziński propagated. The communist movement gave up on winning over the masses, because its new leadership and ranks viewed the masses as enemies who didn’t understand the righteous journey that they’d individually gone down. So the working masses had no reason to be open to communism, because the supposed communists were no longer friends of the working class.
For those who seek to build a new workers movement, especially those of us who are in the younger generation, it’s essential that we both learn this history and take away the right lessons from it. The story of how boomer individualism destroyed American communism reveals a critical context behind why our society has become so hollowed out, and why so many of the youth have been left behind. It shows that when you discard every aspect of what those before you have built, directing your wrath towards all which already exists, either you’ll be left with nothing or your children will be.
The boomers who embraced Rubin’s post-ironic nihilism could be shielded from the blowback, but within just a few decades the collapse materialized, and now there is no going back. The astroturf Zionist right-wing is trying to present Trump 2.0 as a return to the pre-collapse era, but Trump 2.0 is really only working well for the ruling class. For everyone else, the breakdown has just begun, and it’s going to keep accelerating.
When we have the historical insights which let this bleak reality make sense, we can gain the direction on how to rescue the American nation. These insights teach us that for the workers movement to be rebuilt, and for America to complete its national formation, we will have to wage a popular struggle which incorporates all of the positive aspects from what’s been established. We’ll need to draw from the revolutionary contributions that were made by past generations of Americans, including the boomers.
We’ll also need to fight for the interests of America’s working families, who are where Gen Z-ers like myself came from and are therefore inseparable from us. We have been seeing great consciousness shifts among these working families, with millions of people embracing antiwar and anti-Zionist beliefs that genuinely threaten the ruling class. This pro-Palestine, anti-imperialist trend has occurred not just within Gen Z, but also in great part among Gen Z’s parents. Even with all of the ways that boomer individualism has impacted the subsequent generations, a revolutionary counter-current towards it is emerging.
The post-ironic nihilist ideology says that we should hate these working families which we’re part of, as if the right response towards being screwed over is to turn against the ones who are still trying to help you. The correct response is to strengthen the bonds we have, build new bonds, and use these connections to mount a resistance against the elites who seek to make things even worse. To overcome the hyper-individualism that still greatly afflicts even the youngest Americans, we will need to undergo a collective struggle, one where we sacrifice for the sake of the future. This is the only path forward. No matter what comes our way next, we must keep our focus on waging that struggle, not letting this discipline be compromised by any individual motives. We’ve been shown the lessons about what comes from prioritizing the individual; if we apply these lessons, we’ll bring the progress which our elites have long held back.
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