On the other hand, though I’m not exactly approaching pension age, people of Laurie’s age will have a whole set of cultural references I don’t get. And while the fundamental concerns will stay the same, the specifics change. So no, youth-specific groupings aren’t redundant, as long as they don’t fall into an “old men of thirty” mindset that there’s nothing of value they can learn from what went before. Reinventing the wheel is just a waste of energy.

Possibly because I’m the child of a Jew and a lapsed Catholic, I don’t believe that guilt serves any useful purpose. But anger can be a powerful political tool, as long as its primary aim is not simply to engender guilt.

More on this later, and thanks again. L.xxxx (p.s feel free to email if you want to talk about this in private, laurie dot penny at gmail)

http://www.labourwave.com/2009/10/when-youre-not-in-business-of-telling.html

Mil @1: I agree that the Left for too long has been almost anaesthetized by the idea that capitalism will, as a result of one of its cyclical crises, simply fall apart of its own accord. This crisis has shown that the opposite is in fact the case – that the opportunity of crisis is seized to make capitalism even more robust, albeit with a somewhat changed form with starker repression. Symbolic of this process is the way, for example, in which the rating agencies have used the fact that they were so very ‘wrong’ (in our terms) about the risk in financial product packages (CDOs etc) as a rationale now to come down like a ton of bricks on sovereign debt in a way that would not have happened twenty years ago, and thereby restore their reputations.

But what my post was really meant to be about was that inter-generational angst appears a) to be a widespread aspect of modern life under capitalism (and a factor in capitalism’s unfettered continuation); b) becoming more pronounced, and more readily felt by newer generation, the more modern consumer capitalism develops.

That is, the kind of angst you feel is a product of capitalism, and useful to it, and that attacking other generations as the source of that angst and unhappiness is simply to misdirect that the attack.

And that is supposed to relieve you (and Laurie) of all angsty feelings. Didn’t work, clearly.

As an aside, I think an interesting aspect of all this is the way in which modern consumer capitalism has even appropriated the terms of what a generation actually is. When my parents were teenagers, there was effectively no such thing as a teenager – no youth culture. When I was a teenager, I was a teenager, but I stopped being a teenager when I was no longer teenage. It was my time to be an adult. Now, it seems from Laurie’s demarcation, that a young person is young until they are 30. Convincing a whole ten years’ worth of people that they have different interests from other older people is a very useful way of ridding society of solidarity.

Dave/Richard – gotta go. Will reply later.

On one level, I find myself compelled to look to other generations because I find so little worthy in my own.

Yet this is only in a Labour context. In that same context I resent the quiescence of the majority of those remaining from two generations before mine, even though most of them disagree with what’s going on in the world.

The generation immediately prior to mine is what sustains a lot of Left politics, though softer than the previous lot. And my generation are born-again careerist wasters, so earnest in protestation, so bureaucratic and unprincipled in action.

On this level, I think it’s vital to stress that there are people my age who are active, who are out there and who haven’t been wooed by establishment politics. If that’s what this Radical Future thing does, then I’m for it, however confused the politics turn out to be – and they sound very confused.

However, as I said, it’s relative. Outside the Labour Party, it is my generation alone which carries Left politics. There are branches of socialist groups around the country where the majority of members are under thirty.

The mirror image to this is in the sharply declining participation of young people in the political system generally, and specifically in their allegiance to Labour.

With this in mind, it’s also important to stress the continuity of political struggle between the generations. Many of the political visions of yesterday are still what inspire thousands in the UK today. Many of the realities of today make the need for those previous visions all the more acute.

In this sense, I’d like to see more done by two generations ago to detail, in accessible form, what politics was like for them. Not just in general, but specifically. How long was spent in union meetings and to what end? How long was spent at party branch meetings and to what end? What was political activism in those days and why did it fail?

Here is the potential scope for projects like we tried to pursue in the present with Left New Media, and which Kate Belgrave pursues in alternative forms with her interviews. If they’re setting out to stress the role of my generation, i.e. the under 30, then we can rebalance the field and provide the political context which renders the role of my generation so important.

We can do it by drawing on such ‘institutional memory’ as remains in the workers’ movement.

Generational angst is now hitting me most painfully, in so many ways. I can’t explain the music that makes my world go round, can’t explain why it’s as good as what my children prefer to listen to. I can’t communicate the need to keep a distance on the seductive nature of consumer capitalism. I can’t communicate the need to understand the importance of study and long-term planning. I can’t explain why – in my life and as a result of those terrible experiences which struck me down six years ago – I cannot climb the greasy pole of promotion and so provide them with a better material existence.

I am at a loss in both the personal and the political. All I see is ever-increasing circles. I would love to enjoy my life without the anxiety of a generational incomprehension because I truly believe it is not a question of blame to be apported. I do not blame my parents for their inadequacies because I recognise my own.

Where I do realise the importance of defining generational markers in the sand is in that protection of eagerness and enthusiasm which delineates youth. Thus it is that older people need younger people even as younger people do *not* need the older. And so it is that I begin to feel a little superfluous.

But hey, ho – isn’t that what life is about? Realising, essentially, how little one is. Even – in this world of youthful empowered consumers – in the personal.