By Joe Langabeer, Young Labour member, Lincoln
Steven Threadgold’s book Youth, Class and Everyday Struggles, reported on research conducted into the challenges faced by youth and their perceptions of social class. The book mainly concerns itself with terms like ‘hipsters’ and ‘bogans’, the former being relatively middle-class, who are seen as interested in semi-socio-political views and have no real understanding of the practical necessities of the world, and the latter being working-class “thugs” who have no appreciation of the aesthetic pleasures around them.
The book sets out to study both these supposed factions and to discredit the claims about broad sections of working-class youth. Reading the book leads to the question of how have socialists have analysed the class shift that has happened in recent years, due to the effects of neo-liberalism and the decline of traditional industries. Have these, and anti-union laws, made it impossible for younger workers to organise?
The analysis, unfortunately, is relatively weak. Of course, sectarian groups proudly boast that they are the “voice of the youth” but they have failed to grasp a fundamental shifts within the class system as the inequality gap has grown wider and wider between youth and older workers, particularly in the last ten years. But we need to examine these changing boundaries to understand the growing sense of radicalism within youth and provide an framework for future struggle.
The 2008 Financial Crash
When the 2008 financial crash came, unemployment shot through the roof with youth being hit hardest of all. Many young people were thrown into the gig economy, with decreased pay and less fewer hours as capitalist companies struggled to keep to their demands of profitabiliy. A study conducted by The Institute of Fiscal Studies found that the average wage in the UK had dropped to around £23,300 since the economic crisis. This is now the usual level of income you would earn if you entered a graduate job scheme or entry-level placement.
Young people are often obliged to turn to internships after graduating, with little permanent contracts because of the dominance of the gig-economy. Employers try to provide ‘incentives’, but that ends up with commission depending on a will be matched with a sixty-hour working week. This was even commented on in The Guardian in 2015, in an article entitled Are young people working too hard.
The total amount of rent paid by tenants has risen to more than £50 billion in 2017. With the number of people renting having doubled in the past two decades, nearly two thirds of 18-24 year olds rent. Wages are being reduced, while living costs have been increasing. An ‘average’ home, which cost £150,000 in 2008, now costs £256,000. But in London and most city areas, this price might will give you a poorly-maintained flat with only a bed and a sink.
Millenials worst to suffer
A study by the Resolution Foundation showed that wages of the over-50s have recovered from a decade ago. The typical salary of a worker in their 30s was 7% below its pre-crisis peak last year. Millennials were the worst to suffer from this, where their wages were not able to keep up with inflation and fell in real terms by 11% from 2009-2014 before recovering some ground afterwards. The study concluded that the effects would be “scarring”.
Another study by Merrill Edge in 2017 noted that 80% of millennials believed that they will see another recession in their lifetime, with 73% suggesting that their definition of ‘success’ is to just being able to provide for their family. With the retirement age constantly rising and the persistent worry of a financial meltdown from capitalism in crisis, this data really only partly represents the bleak future that young people might have to face in capitalist system in steady decline.
The Conditions of Capitalism’s gig economy
Whilst Tory governments in the recent past have bragged about their unemployment rates falling, a growing problem faced, especially among young people is in-work poverty. A 2018 article in the Irish Times estimated that “Some 78 per cent of British 18-21-year olds earn less than the living wage – a mere £8.75 per hour. The national minimum wage in the UK is £7.50 per hour. The £1.25 difference between it and the living wage is the difference between a young worker skipping meals to pay rent on time, and not”.
A government research publication in 2018 from concluded that the gig economy was still a ‘viable’ way for an economy to run. However, even they had to concede that “The majority of respondents felt that although it was not ideal that they felt they were not entitled to sick pay, holiday pay, maternity pay and pension cover, they did not expect to have these rights as they were not working for an employer”.
Interestingly, it concluded, “There was frequent mention of the trade-off between employment rights and the flexibility of gig economy working, with many feeling that, on balance, the flexibility outweighed the downside in terms of employment rights”.
Gig economy goes one step further
That would seem to imply that the gig economy has a lot to offer, but the truth is that no capitalist economy takes into consideration workers rights. In fact, the gig economy goes one step further, creating a higher degree of insecurity than ever before.
Another important factor in the mix is the damage done to young people’s finances by student debt. Student loans, let us recall, were introduced by New Labour, under Tony Blair. Whilst this issue has been raised and many protests about the weight of the debt have been made, there is no respite and the total debt – now well over £100bn is crippling the future of young people.
They are in a Catch-22 situation where if they are reasonably well paid, they have deductions to pay the debt and they are relieved of payments only if they are on miserably low wages. In fact, the Sutton Trust charity have estimated that 81% of students would not pay back their loans in full, largely because of low pay throughout their young life.
And then came Covid
Covid-19 is providing the biggest crisis to youth in living memory. With the struggles and inequality created by the capitalist system, the future of the youth looks bleaker than ever. The International Labour Organisation reported on the impact of Covid on the youth ‘labour market’ across the globe, noting that it was struggling even before the pandemic had hit. It noted that among 16-24-year olds, they were three times as likely to be unemployed, compared to people aged 25 or over.
The ongong economic crisis within the system means that there will be a huge shortage of vacancies, at least in decent jobs, when students leave secondary education, or university. Where there should be opportunities for young people, there is a void. More young people than ever before are leaving secondary education and hoping to secure a place at a university, because of the lack of other opportunities.
The study also reports that young workers are the most vulnerable in the private sector, where three in five have seen a reduction in their paid hours. More worrying, 64% of private-sector youth workers have reported a reduction of income, compared to 23% in the public sector. These statistics show how capitalism is failing an entire generation of young people. With rising unemployment and a wave of redundancies in the pipeline after the furlough, the capitalist system will have nothing to offer now or the future.
Socialism offers hope
With these grim statistics, the future of the youth seems bleak. Nevertheless, they have not taken it lying down. The student protests of 2010 were an encouraging start, followed by the ‘Occupy’ movement which was mainly led by young people. The stream of the organised opposition to the system has moved to an extent onto climate change, into backing Jeremy Corbyn from 2015-17. We see it more recently in university rent strikes and the University of Manchester protest where the authorities tried to box them into halls of residence like prisoners.
There are also movements on essential issues like as gender and race, like the transgender rights marches and the Black Lives Matter protests, following the movement triggered in the United States. Young people are becoming more radical by the day, but a lack of political education and inexperience in organisation have made some of these protests fleeting. What is needed is the political involvement of young people in socialist organisations, to involve them towards deeper, more insightful, political engagement and an orientation towards the workers’ movement .
Meetings are too ‘organisational’
The Labour Party do not offer anything in the way of political development by discussion and debate. More often than not their meetings are of an organisational nature that are completely uninspiring and add nothing to understanding political theory or labour history. The socialists movement needs to pursue the type of political activity that developes political knowledge for those who may not have experienced or who may not understand the struggles and traditions of the labour movement.
Another challenge to long-term youth engagement are sectarian groups who sometimes draw in young members, on the promise of a “revolution” just on the horizon. As socialists, we should always be constructing our arguments for socialism and for social revolution, on the concret conditions we face. We need to be rooted in the working class and not floating in the clouds.
Concrete, political struggles on youth issues
It is a crime to persuade young people to join a sectarian group on the promise of early ‘revolution’, because it leads inevitably to disillusionment, when it appears that the working class seem unresponsive at the moment, and unprepared for the ‘revolution’. One way of cutting through to the current generation of the political or half-political youth is through concrete, practical struggles on behalf of young people. It should not be about pandering, to the inexperience of youth, but neither should it should be patronising.
We need to offer real solutions, like the cancellation of student debt for all current and past students. We need to fight for better working conditions for all young workers and a nationwide nationalisation program to create secure jobs in a planned and organised use of national resources. We should also not be afraid of discussing gender or race issues, but instead make it clear that we fight for their rights of all oppressed and disadvantaged groups. Their struggle is part of the struggle of the working-class. Where the capitalis media has used this issue to divide the movement, we must strive to unite it. These types of policies can offer genuine security and a future for young people. Through fighting for these kind of ideas, we can offer a real vision of hope for youth.
November 20, 2020
