WHY LEFTIST IDEOLOGY APPEALS TO THE YOUTH ... 1

WHY LEFTIST IDEOLOGY APPEALS TO THE YOUTH ... 1

Young people easily get attracted to leftist idealism because of the corrupt capitalism with all its repulsive consumerism that pervades society today. College campuses and university arena where young minds interact intellectually and professors with leftist leanings influence the way they think are full of this leftist ideology. Marx has provided the foundational texts, the theory with all its detailed analyses and trappings thereof for young minds to find food for their youthful idealism. The romanticism of revolution to bring about a just world order is far more appealing to the youth of substance than the crass commercial culture that lesser minds fall for. The call for justice being fundamental to the evolving human species, it holds the youth in its grip till middle-age experience dispels these early notions as they settle into the comfort zones of their respective lives. Those that fail to make their mark remain bitter about life and persist with their leftist allegiance out of conditioned conservatism in this line of thinking or become cynics of no consequence. But Marx and his ilk catch fresh recruits as the sub-generations that follow fall prey to the same line of youthful idealistic thinking and go through the same experience. Marx motivates them in youth but fails to provide an alternative way of effective transformation of society. So, ideology notwithstanding the leftists compromise themselves with the capitalist order, money, comfort, luxury et al, all the while harbouring distant hopes of the Marxist millennium which keep their ego in pampered fine shape even as their lives roll on with all the amenities at their disposal which academic attainments can buy. Many of these youths mature with Marxist thinking amd keep shaping their next generation in like thinking, passing the baton, as they say, from generation to generation, their nursery ever being college campuses and university arena.

Written by Sugata Bose