I prefer to post only very current articles, but this one really contributed toward a profound historical perspective on radical change and youth as its main vehicle.
In my own youth I became aware of the strong tendency for people to become conservative as they aged. I couldn't understand this: if supporting causes that were just and right in one's youth, why shouldn't this also happen when one grows older? I was determined that this would not happen to me. I have since learned the enormous price one pays to remain committed to social justice in a social system committed to injustice in terms of material rewards, having the means to support a family, growth in a career, social status, etc.
The problem is that profound social revolutions rarely succeed. Class based systems make use of hierarchical methods to maintain dominance by a ruling class over the rest of society. Such social systems which are ultimately based on the use, or the threat, of violence are extremely durable. And, in those rare instances of success, what we have seen is merely a change of one dominant class replaced by another. Should we lose hope? I think not, as this author reminds us:
History takes these unfortunate and difficult detours. But they are never permanent. Marx once noted that revolution was like an old mole, capable of burrowing deep underground in unpropitious times. Youth is like that as well. It can retreat in the face of repression, and appear silenced and staid. But this is not likely to remain its nature for long.As I see it, we have now arrived at an historical period in which radical transformation to an classless, egalitarian organized societies is not just desirable, but is imperative in order to save the human race from extinction.
