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By Marina Cameron

Ask any young person today what they think of society and their future and you will more than likely get a dissatisfied response. In 1995, a national survey found that the majority of young Australians expect a poorer quality of life in 2010 than now and predict the 21st century to be a "bad time of crisis and trouble" rather than "a new age of peace and prosperity".

A brief look at the sorts of problems and conditions that young people face in everyday life reveals why.

• Funding cuts to public schools are continuing, producing bigger classes and decreasing resources. Schools are not only the site of repressive rules and straight-jacketed education, but also enormous pressure on young people to perform. The stresses of Year 12 exams result in numerous suicides each year.
  
  • The jobless rate for people aged 15-19 is 27.8%. Only a third of those with jobs are working full-time. Young people increasingly work in part-time or casual jobs with low pay and little job security.
    
    • TAFE colleges are being cut. Legislation proposed by the Howard government would mean apprentices are no longer paid for "unproductive" work spent in training, causing wage cuts of up to 50%. Apprentices and trainees are paid slave wages and used by employers to plug gaps in their work force with no guarantee of permanent work at the end.
      
      • Young people on the dole will suffer increased harassment if government proposals to hand CES and DSS functions over to the private sector and increase no-payment periods as a penalty for particular breaches go through the Senate. Given the paucity of job opportunities and the crappy jobs that young people are forced into, many young people will end up with no assistance. Many of the already inadequate labour market programs are also being cut.
        
        • Within the supposed "haven" of the family young people face pressure to conform to authority and frequent physical and emotional abuse. There is a direct link between growing unemployment and child abuse and, in turn, youth homelessness. The Howard government further cut the young homeless allowance this year and is proposing that all income support for young people be paid to their parents until the age of 18.
          
          • For those lucky enough to get into university, Austudy barely covers their costs. The government is proposing to more tightly means-test income support, making young people more dependent on parents. Already many students are forced to take out the Austudy loan and 70% of those in full-time education have a part-time jobs. Increased HECS charges and fees are restricting access to education. A proposed lower threshold for HECS repayment amounts to a real wage cut for 94% of those who subsequently find full-time work. Graduate unemployment hovers around 30%.
            
            • Pressures on young people through the media and the drive of cosmetics, clothes and music companies for profits results in 40% of teenage girls wanting to be thinner and 29% resorting to vomiting to lose weight.
              
              • Youth suicide levels are growing, particularly in rural areas, and 25% of young people suffer a major bout of depression before they turn 18.

              What future?

              An increasing number of young people have a decreasing number of life options. And meanwhile, environmental destruction, the gap between rich and poor, crime and violence, discrimination and prejudice continue to grow. It is little wonder capitalism is having trouble convincing young people that this system looks after their interests.

              The promise made to their parents during the long post-war boom that if you worked hard you'd get somewhere does not have much legitimacy left. Since the economic downturn in the '70s each major recession has meant further cuts in living standards and jobs, and each upturn has produced a "recovery" in business profits but little returned to ordinary people. Austerity is the order of the day and there is no sign of the attacks, or their severity, decreasing. Faith in governments and parties is declining, with 93% of young people in a recent survey saying that they had no trust in politicians. More people are querying the future of system that cannot provide for its younger generation and threatens the survival of the whole planet.

              The crisis of youth under capitalism goes hand in hand with the crisis of the system itself. Capitalism has always been marked by shameful exploitation of young people — from the industrial revolution and the use of child labour to their exclusion from paid work when they were forced into another regulatory system, the school.

              After World War 2 the demands of all societies were becoming more complex. Better educated youth were needed. Secondary schooling was made compulsory and higher education expanded vastly. The structure of schooling (primary, secondary, tertiary) emphasised the common ground shared by young people of the same age, leading to a shared identity. The development of pop culture during the '60s was capitalism's attempt to coopt and profit from the new youth identity. The radical edge of this youth culture and identity nevertheless flowed over into action and widespread radicalisation.

              Youth radicalisation

              It became apparent in the '60s radicalisation that the expanded tertiary education sector contained an explosive social force in students who were grouped together and allowed more time and freedom to think, and who were led to expect a less alienating and more creative social system; aspirations which clashed violently with reality. University students were often the first to campaign against the Vietnam war, for women's and black rights, sparking others into action. In the revolutionary upsurge in Paris during May and June of 1968, it was students linking up with young workers that led to strikes involving 10 million people, bringing France to a standstill. High school students also played a major role in mobilisations during the '60s and '70s, proving that young people are dangerous to the system when they think for themselves and rebel.

              The '60s radicalisation raised the expectations of young people that the world could and should be better. This heightened consciousness was reinforced by movements during the '70s and '80s including the anti-nuclear movement, solidarity campaigns against apartheid and in support of the Nicaraguan revolution, and the environment movement. The role of each new generation of young people in these campaigns and movements has been central.

              Today, dissatisfaction amongst young people is fairly guaranteed. That they will respond to the social crisis by turning left, however, is not. Individualised expressions of alienation in drugs, crime and violence is common. There is also the potential, if not yet realised in Australia, for young people to turn to the ideas of the extreme right.

              The two major political currents that previously purported to lead movements for social change — the old Communist parties in the advanced capitalist countries and the social democratic parties such as the ALP — have led or participated in implementing the attacks on ordinary people and have little legitimacy left among youth. These "respectable" left parties are no longer able to help capitalism win young people to the system and dissipate dissent.

              As well, the collapse of the USSR and the removal of this distorted form of socialism has meant that less and less young people identify "socialism" with Stalinism. This creates more openness to the ideas of fundamental social change and a new democratic, anti-racist, feminist and environmentally sustainable socialist society.

              Youth activism

              The capitalist austerity drive in Australia has been cranked up another notch with the election of a Liberal government determined to wind back even further the past gains made of the trade unions and social movements. Jobs are being cut, education privatised, racism and sexism reasserted. Now, more than ever, there is a need for a left fight back, strengthened by young people coming into struggle.

              The fragmentation, demobilisation and demoralisation that resulted from the subordination of the trade unions and social movements to the ALP in government during the '80s, however, still has an impact. Labor's cooption strategy was very successful; movement leaderships were given a "privileged bargaining position" which they worked to maintain at all costs, and lobbying and "consultation" took precedence over actually campaigning against Labor's cutbacks and attacks.

              The ALP's success in beating down living and working conditions has laid fertile ground for an even more rampant Liberal economic "rationalism". Under Labor there was a decline in the willingness of people to struggle and an erosion of left traditions to the point that in some movements even basic skills like organising a picket or a demonstration have been lost.

              During recent campaigns against the Howard government, young people have been the most receptive and eager to participate. However, in the last few years, youth radicalisation has tended to express itself around single-issues (against woodchipping and nuclear-testing in the Pacific, for example), or around specific aspects of government cuts. While this focus on single issues indicates that young people directly experience or understand many of the problems created by capitalism and are prepared to take action around them, it also indicates that they don't necessarily see the need to fight the system as a whole, see that the long list of things that they are justifiably angry about are linked together by the capitalist system's drive for profits.

              That young people do make the connection and are impelled to become part of leading and organising campaigns that challenge the foundations of exploitation, oppression and environmental destruction is essential if real change is to be won. The anger amongst young people who know the system sux, and who are not yet forced by job and family responsibilities to compromise with that system, is a unique and powerful progressive force. That the radical mantle so often ascribed to young people is taken on is the challenge for young people themselves.
              If not here, then where?
              If not now, then when?
              If not us, then who?
              Get active!