Daily headlines and news feeds continue to pour out new details on the economic crisis, but they rarely discuss the roots of the crisis – the economic revolution brought about through labor- replacing technology. This economic revolution has led to a new class of workers who are no longer necessary for production and are thus being thrown out of the system.

Young people coming of age today are a large and growing part of that new class, and they have a large and increasingly important role to play. These workers coming of age have only known the crisis caused by the economic revolution and its many symptoms of social destruction: deteriorating infrastructure, nothing but temporary work or no work at all, the stingiest of social services, a deteriorating education system, the growth in prisons and policing, and military recruiters hawking bloody lies in high schools and colleges.

All generations must join together and help build a new world in which the abundance made available by new technology is distributed to the many and not just the few.

What's different about recent generations

Many within the new class of workers once had a connection to steady work, but have been thrown out by an economic system that does not need them any more. But many younger workers who are just entering, or who have been struggling to get a foot in the workforce were born thrown out of the system. Many under 35 have never been part of it, and have not known any prosperity under capitalism, nor any job security, and in growing numbers, not even a stable home.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment among workers between the ages of 16-19 is approaching 30%, nearly triple the overall unemployment rate of 10%. 20% of workers between 16 and 24 are unemployed, and 11% of those between 25-35 are unemployed. Over 50% of all black youth between the ages of 16-24 are unemployed, and it is estimated that only 14 out of every 100 young black men have jobs. These are important years for younger workers to gain experience and build their employment skills, but younger workers are being displaced from even entry level jobs. There also has been a drop in the hiring of college graduates, as even a college education serves less and less to fend off a bleak future.

What recent generations face

What has the last 20 or so years meant to those growing up in this social and economic chaos? Low paying temp jobs or no jobs, the end of welfare, police brutality, drugs, military recruiters, years of war, the border fence, free trade, chronic unemployment, underemployment, and an educational system under attack in the form of cuts to school budgets, larger class sizes, more testing, tuition increases, less financial aid, to name a few.

While there has been mobility for some, the conditions for the mass of working class blacks, Latinos and whites continued to worsen, especially for young adults. Two examples of this are the employment outlook for young people and the impact of the growth in prisons and policing.

As jobs have been automated or hustled around the world, the last few decades have seen a U.S. labor market being restructured from industrial to service sector jobs – and this trend continues to intensify. The November 2009 Monthly Labor Review report predicts that job creation over the next ten years will be in the employment areas that pay less, are typically non-union and less secure, such as customer service reps, personal and home care aides, retail sales people, security guards, and teacher assistants. But automation does not stop with industry. In fact the leading robotics yearly publication World Robotics has moved from several dozen pages on service robots to an entirely separate volume. The technology exists today to fill even these jobs (or reduce the number of workers necessary) with robots and automated machines.

While there are fewer jobs, the prison population continues to grow. In 1970 the prison population was 200,000. Today it is over 2.3 million with 7 million in jail or prison or on probation or parole. Over half of those behind bars are under 35 and incarceration rates for those between 20 and 35 are much higher than for other age groups.

Author Christian Parenti argues in his book, Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis, that massive growth in the numbers incarcerated is a ruling class solution to lessen the chances of “social dynamite,” first as a response to the uprisings of the 1960s and early 70s and second, as a response to the economic transformation that began in the early 1980s. Likewise, in her book Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore argues that the growth of prisons is a way of dealing with surplus populations rendered unnecessary by changes in productivity. The growth of prisons, policing and surveillance are having devastating affects on communities as potential young leaders are being shipped out to spend years and decades in prison.

Young revolutionaries

Those of us born between 1975 and 1995 are called Generation X and Generation Y (or next), or the hip-hop generation and post-hip-hop generation. Workers in recent generations were born into a world of social and economic disruption and have grown up as dispossession was becoming normalized as part of the very fabric of U.S. society. Many don’t trust or like capitalism, and might be called disaffected, that is, alienated, discontented, or disloyal toward authority, as many have never been allowed to enter the system in any meaningful way in the first place. Youth are an important segment of today's emerging revolutionaries.

Some consider themselves part of the hip-hop generation, including urban minority youth, but also white urban youth, suburban youth, and rural youth. Others have found other subcultures to belong to, including the hard-core music scene and various forms of gangs, among others. Though there is a diversity of thought within the younger generations, more tolerance for differences and suspicion of sectarianism, there is also some lack of historical knowledge of struggle, as well as a lack of a class analysis.

At the same time, these generations on the whole have a much better sense of politics and economics than given credit. A lingering depoliticized and distracted sensibility was shaken off as people, especially new generations, began to ask deeper questions in the wake of 9/11. This had begun in the 1990s with gang truces, cop watching, and the anti-corporate and anti-sweatshop movements built on the fights against NAFTA and the anti-globalization struggles.

Many are especially eager to look to other struggles to see what is possible, such as the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, the work of the Zapatistas, the anti-neoliberal movement in Bolivia, and the factory takeovers in Argentina, to name a few.

Many in the younger generations generally mistrust corporations and government, but also have a tendency toward cynicism and irony, which can lead us to apathy or worse. Questioning authority comes almost instinctually, but with this there is a reticence to join organizations.

There is a fire in the bellies of younger folk today and young revolutionaries are burning up with energy, but for many there is a feeling that the only revolutionary leadership that can be looked to are those forms of the past period. (Such as the Black Panthers, the Brown Berets and SDS, among others).

The League of Revolutionaries for a New America has many generations of revolutionary leadership, and decades of experience that can join with the new and emerging leaders from younger generations.

Future of revolutionary struggle and role youth can play

The new generations, like those that have preceded it, contain revolutionaries who are responding to transformations in society, but like every generation they have a particular relationship to these transformations based on their own experience and changing conditions. It is clear that a significant segment of the younger generations want to act, want to do things and need to be directly involved. Those with long experience in the revolutionary movement must join with the new generations through education, action and involvement and learn of the ideas and experiences of younger generations. To those among the newest generation of revolutionaries, deep knowledge lies with elders.

All generations must unite and take seriously our responsibility and authority as the future of revolutionary struggle is in our hands.

 

September.2010.Vol20.Ed5
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