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THE SPECTRE OF GEN Z SOCIALISM IS HAUNTING THE WORLD…ACCORDING TO
THE ECONOMIST  
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Norman Solomon
June 9, 2026
The Guardian
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_ A spectre is haunting Europe and America – the spectre of gen Z
socialism. That’s the urgent warning from the Economist in a new
cover-story editorial, How to fight back against gen Z socialism.
Alarmed by a youthful threat to the established order, _

‘In the United States, the Feeding America organization reports,
one in five children “don’t have enough to eat”.’ (Photograph
of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., at the Munich Security
Conference in Munich, Germany, on Friday, Feb. 13, 2026);, Photograph:
Sven Hoppe/AP

 

The magazine is calling for heightened vigilance from defenders of
private enterprise.

“Gen-Z socialism is a me-first doctrine,” says the editorial,
unlike the selfless doctrine of capitalism. The young socialists have
succumbed to “a zero-sum mindset, where a better outcome comes not
from creating but from taking”.

Taking, we are to understand, is frowned upon in the capitalist
system. And what better way to instill wisdom in gen Z than to set a
good example by creating without taking?

Those with stakes in the Economist itself are cases in point.

The investment company Exor, controlled by one family with $38bn
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in net assets, has the biggest stake in the magazine. Meanwhile, the
investor with more than a quarter interest in the Economist, the
Canadian businessperson Stephen Smith
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has a personal net worth of $6.9bn
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Of course, young socialist hotheads might carp that in the UK, where
the Economist is based, the overall poverty rate
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is 21%, while among children it’s 31%. But cooler heads prevail
among the Economist’s editorial writers, who lambast the idea that
“spending can be paid for by the richest”. They opt for stability
by not getting carried away with fanciful notions.

Some realities are, of course, unfortunate. As the BBC reported
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by the charity Trussell Trust “found more than 14 million people in
the UK faced the prospect of going hungry last year due to lack of
money. This marks an increase from the trust’s last survey in 2022
when that number was 11.6 million people.” One-third of children
under age five “are living in UK homes where there is not enough
access to healthy and nutritious food”. In the United States, the
Feeding America organization reports
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one in five children “don’t have enough to eat”.

But with the free-enterprise system, it can be said that those
children have the opportunity to put any hunger behind them when they
grow up. As the Economist’s editorial notes, an economy flourishes
not when rewards are guaranteed but when opportunities are available,
giving everyone a chance of success. 

The Economist warns that all too many digital natives have been
enticed into a kind of honey trap of desire for a welfare state:
“Saying that prices should be capped to keep your bills down while
someone else pays for your public services is a seductive, shareable
message.” A new generation of socialists is swooning for
affordability.

“Gen-Z socialists demand handouts funded by billionaires” and
harbor “a remarkable hostility to private enterprise”, the
Economist observes, at the same time that those young socialists
“are uninterested in letting the market rip and redistributing the
proceeds”.

The logic is compelling, even impeccable, for rich people who don’t
want to part with their money. After all, they know full well from
first-hand experience that the ripping market can effectively
redistribute capital.

“A robust defence of the ideas that have brought unprecedented
riches has barely been tried,” the Economist explains. However,
“what is so worrying about the Gen-Z socialists is how deeply their
ideas are bleeding into the centre-left”.

And so, the magazine concludes: “Resisting Gen-Z socialism is
therefore an urgent task.”

That urgency must outweigh any urgency of feeding hungry people. The
machinery of a system that offers so much prosperity to some must push
back against leftists trying to throw a spanner into what works with
such efficiency.

“The first step,” the Economist urges, “is for free-market
liberals to stop apologising. A series of popular criticisms of
capitalism, each containing a grain of truth, has in aggregate
obscured the fundamental wisdom that private enterprise is at the root
of human prosperity.”

So come on, you free-market liberals. Recognize the danger that the
youngest adult generation on both sides of the Atlantic is being
swayed by the siren songs of socialism just because they don’t like
vast income inequality and all the human suffering that comes with it.
The Economist has sounded the alarm. Now it’s up to you to rescue us
from the clear and present threat of social equity.

_[NORMAN SOLOMON is the director of RootsAction and executive director
of the Institute for Public Accuracy.]_

* socialism
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* capitalism
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* 21st Century Socialism
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* gen z
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* Gen Zers
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* youth
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* poverty
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* hunger
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* economic inequality
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* free-enterprise system
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* social equity
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