Generation Left

by Keir Milburn

Increasingly age appears to be the key dividing line in contemporary politics. Young people across the globe are embracing left-wing ideas and supporting figures such as Corbyn and Sanders. Where has this ‘Generation Left’ come from? How can it change the world? This compelling book by Keir Milburn traces the story of Generation Left. Emerging in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash, it has now entered the electoral arena and found itself vying for dominance with ageing right-leaning voters and a ‘Third Way’ political elite unable to accept the new realities. By offering a new concept of political generations, Milburn unveils the ideas, attitudes and direction of Generation Left and explains how the age gap can be bridged by reinventing youth and adulthood. This book is essential reading for anyone, young or old, who is interested in addressing the multiple crises of our time.

Genres: Politics, The United States Of America, Nonfiction

140 pages, Paperback

Published May 6, 2019

Reviews

[Lucy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly astute, pithy, full of ‘nail on the head’ moments. Delicious. Optimistic. Incisive.

[Don · Rating 5 out of 5]

The entry of people of the millennial generation into political life can be dated to the protests waves which took place in 2011. In the UK these took the form of a mobilisation against student debt involving marches and occupations and, at one point, an invasion of the Tory party headquarters in central London.

Right wing cynics spout the theory of a ‘snowflake’ generation which was rejecting the call to start behaving like responsible adults. Outside this country, seen in actions like the occupation of Zuccotti Park in New York and the ‘Indignados’ who took control of Puerto del Sol in Madrid, appeared as a delayed reaction to the financial crisis of 2008 and its long aftermath. The young in the prosperous, developed nations of the world seemed to be declaring a generational war on their parents, blaming them for bringing the promise of comfortable, middle class lives to a crashing end.

But is generational war the right way to characterise the conflict? In this stimulating extended essay on what he calls Generation Left, Keir Milburn offers a sophisticated alternative interpretation. Hinging on the concept of ‘class composition’, he sets out an analysis which presents capitalism as a system which periodically has to review and change the social processes that bring the working class it needs into existence.

The system’s move to financialised forms of accumulation in the late 20th century made the extraction of value in the form of rent more central, requiring a working class willing to shoulder a greater burden of personal indebtedness to sustain its standard of living. Wage growth had been checked back in the 1980s by the state’s successful assault on trade unions; but for a few decades at least the income flows that made it possible to service credit card bills and overdrafts came from the increased value of the homes which working class people were now acquiring through the right-to-buy scheme.

By the turn of the millennium this mechanism was no longer performing. The glut on new home building severely restricted access for millennials to the asset which their parents had depended on to support their comparatively affluent lifestyles. Young people coming into adulthood faced the prospect of being racked not just by the debts loaded onto their credit cards, but also exorbitant property rents and the lifetime of repayment needed to service loans taken out as students.

Milburn argues that debt had been one of the most important means to maintain order among the subjects of capital during the post-Thatcher decades, requiring the values of the neoliberal world order to be internalised by each individual citizen. This might have gone on indefinitely but for the stupendous effects of the credit crisis that hit the world in 2007-08. The austerity that followed allowed a rupture with the ‘common-sense’ that sustained the ‘realism’ of the capitalist system.

The essay traces the evolution of the new awareness of exploitation that established itself in minds of millennials. The protest movements started to look for ways in which this emerging class consciousness could engage with politics, evolving through the forms of ‘Occupy’ and the personal testimony offered the general assemblies being promoted as alternatives to conventional representative democracy.

These were all processes to be worked through before the idea took hold that a long-established, though minority current already in the political mainstream could be seized and made into the means for expressing power. This was the Corbyn current that came to have its unexpected day at the helm of the Labour Party. The energies of Occupy and general assembly politics poured into initiatives like Momentum and The World Transformed.

This is an exhilarating account of the new forces in contemporary politics. It does not stop at recounting history but points to the challenges of the current moment, when Generation Left will have to find the way to mend the breaches with older supporters of versions of left wing politics. These failed to renew the commitment to the change they had once advocated. A continued engagement on the part of Generation Left with the mainstream, probing its obvious weaknesses and coming up with strategies for the alliances that will be needed for the revitalisation of democratic socialism is looked forward to as the conclusion of this important essay.

[Mauberley]

An important new look at the formation of recent demographic groupings (i.e., 'generations') as well as the economic behaviours and constraints in which they find themselves forced to live. Perhaps surprisingly, Milburn draws heavily on an essay by Karl Mannheim ('The Problem of Genrations" from a collection entitled 'Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge') published in 1952. Mannheim argues that events rather than calendar dates are the primary factors in forming generations so that the birth years of the so-called 'Millennials' (1981 - 2000) are far less significant than the Great Recession of 2008-09. I finished the book just as the world wide reaction to Covid-19 was exploding and one wonders how the Millennials and the generation that is following will be shaped by this particular disaster.

[Peter Harrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic short book which covers quite a lot of ground. Milburn sets out what we mean when we talk about a political generation, and the events that create them (a term used in a specific sense in the philosophy of writers such Alain Badiou). He then assesses the impact of the 2008 financial crisis on the generation that has grown to political maturity since, something which has driven them towards the politics of the left, and what this means for British politics. It's a convincing assessment, written before the 2019 election and Covid, but which feels relevant to the current position of British politics with the slow implosion of the Conservative government. Milburn's book fits neatly alongside Phil Burton-Cartledge's Falling Down with it's analysis of the Tory party for a clear analysis of the likely course of British politics in the near future.

[I Read, Therefore I Blog · Rating 2 out of 5]

Keir Milburn is Lecturer in Political Economy and Organisation at Leicester University. This book has some interesting ideas about rethinking how we view generations, but fails to take into account different issues in different countries, heavily relies on sweeping assertions about generations and their opinions, makes some rather crass observations and ultimately reads like a left-wing fantasy that fails to consider how power is actually won.

[prav · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

[Seven Pesos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Need to re-read. Don't know when I will.

[Joel Dagostino · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’d heard Keir Milburn allude to the ideas in this short book in many episodes of the podcast he hosts (ACFM). As I read, I made many notes that seemed to chime with my experience of a debt-laden university education and the expectations in the current political environment. For an academic text, I found this refreshingly accessible, with many interesting ideas and a bibliography I want to dig into.