The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation’s annual survey of Americans’ opinion of communism shows that most millennials still like socialism, but their views are slowly moving to the right.
The survey, which was conducted online from Sept. 28 to Oct. 5, revealed that 7 in 10 millennials don’t believe that high-income earners pay their fair share in taxes. To remedy the situation, half of that group favors increasing taxes and nearly 4 in 10 believe the U.S. should completely change its economic system.
So, what kind of government system do they prefer?
More millennials, between 44 to 42 percent, would rather live in a socialist country than a capitalist country. The survey notes that this is likely due in part to the 53 percent who believe that the U.S. economy is working against them.
The antipathy that many millennials feel toward capitalism comes from their lack of education about capitalism. When given the definition of an “economic system based on free markets and the rule of law with legal protections for private ownership,” ten percent confused it with socialism, and 27 percent said flatly that they didn’t know what that kind of system it was.
Brett Stephens, writing for the New York Times, asks “Why is Marxism still taken seriously on college campuses and in the progressive press? […] These aren’t original questions. But they’re worth asking because so many of today’s progressives remain in a permanent and dangerous state of semi-denial about the legacy of communism a century after its birth in Russia.”
Millennials’ affinity for a system that murdered millions may look depressing on face value, but VCMF’s survey indicates that Americans’ view of socialism may have already peaked, and is now declining. To this end, millennials’ favorability toward communist dictators and violent revolutionaries remains high but has gone down since 2016.
23 percent have a favorable view of Vladimir Lenin, down from a quarter last year. 22 percent hold a favorable view of Karl Marx, also down 2 percent. Che Guevara and Joseph Stalin have both fallen 6 percent in millennial favorability since 2016, with Guevara now at 31 percent and Stalin at 6 percent. Only Mao Zedong’s favorability has risen, up 1 point, to 19 percent. Furthermore, 65 percent of millennials believe that communism was (and is still) a problem – up a full 10 percent from 2016.
Generation Z tends to align more with baby boomers than their millennial counterparts when it comes to views on capitalism and communism. Generation Z also holds a more optimistic economic outlook, with 66 percent saying the U.S. economic system works for them, compared with only 47 percent of millennials. While further research will need to be done to fully gauge this coming generation’s political beliefs, these findings hint at a pendulum swing. Members of Generation Z are still in their teens and only make up 9 percent of the 2,300 that VCMF surveyed.
Millennials are by far the most collectivist generation in American history. Academia, the Great Recession, and the idealism of the Obama wave helped contribute to this. Yet, since the 2016 election, millennials are showing signs of moving to the right, even if it’s a slow and steady shift.
Jacob Grandstaff is a graduate student at the University of North Alabama and a journalist who enjoys writing about institutional and governmental policies that affect millennials.
