Show notes
How to fight back against Gen-Z socialism
The me-first doctrine is a threat to prosperity
Jun 4th 2026|5 min read
Something new is stirring on the left. A fresh crop of socialists want to remake the economy with price controls,** hefty **wealth taxes and a spree of nationalisations. Supercharged by fury over Gaza, they are winning voters at a formidable pace. Many rose to prominence only recently, like Zack Polanski, who leads the Green Party in Britain, or Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York. Others are long-standing political fixtures: the septuagenarian Jean-Luc Mélenchon is on his fourth swing at the French presidency, but thumping support from the 20-somethings of “Generation Z” has put the Elysée back in his sights again.
Call it Gen-Z socialism. Not because all its adherents are young—or because it is new for young people to lean leftward—but because it is the brand of leftism, made for the TikTok era, that today’s young revolutionaries support.
Forget weighty collectivist ideals or seizing the means of production. Gen-Z socialism is a me-first doctrine. Climate change and race, preoccupations of the 2010s and early 2020s, are now much more peripheral concerns. So are social issues, barring Gaza. Angst about inflation, housing and artificial intelligence have replaced all that with something cruder. “This country is awash in wealth,” says Avi Lewis, freshly elected leader of the New Democratic Party in Canada, a country where productivity has been all but flat for a decade. “We can have nice things.” Saying that prices should be capped to keep your bills down while someone else pays for your public services is a seductive, shareable message.
Plenty of the grievances that animate Gen-Z socialists do stem from real issues. Inflation has been too high, rent in big cities is now often unaffordable and AI could upend the labour market. Dismissing these worries would be foolish. Yet Gen-Z socialism is wrong about how to fix the problems of capitalism. It must be resisted, because it is a profound threat to prosperity.
No country’s Gen-Z socialists are quite alike. The realities of power have forced some, like Mr Mamdani, to become more moderate. But they broadly agree on three core principles. First, that growth does little to help ordinary people. Theirs is a zero-sum mindset, where a better outcome comes not from creating but from taking—as they fear ai barons will soon do on a vast scale. Second, that spending can be paid for by the richest. Once the left wanted higher taxes for everyone; Gen-Z socialists demand handouts funded by billionaires. The third tenet is a remarkable hostility to private enterprise. Gen-Z socialists are uninterested in letting the market rip and redistributing the proceeds. They would have chunks of everyday life, from housing to groceries, governed by state diktat.
Politics has always had zany fringes. The far right is no less barmy—and more dangerous. But what is so worrying about the Gen-Z socialists is how deeply their ideas are bleeding into the centre-left. Desperate to compete, even mainstream Democrats in America now propose mad schemes like exempting over half of tax filers from federal income tax. In Britain the Labour Party, having won power on a centrist platform, has been spooked by the Greens and is rekindling its zeal for higher taxes and state control. Increasingly, the ideas of the Gen-Z socialists can win even when their candidates lose.
That is bad news. Rent controls would worsen housing shortages by crushing the incentive to build. The profit margins of big supermarket chains, demonised by Gen-Z socialists, are already wafer-thin after years of ruthless competition—a miracle of modern capitalism. Wealth taxes would become confiscatory and deter innovation. Do not assume that the failure of these policies, if implemented, would bring about an automatic course correction. Europe has struggled for decades to escape the low-growth funk left by its own over-regulation; the rise of statist “Peronists” in Argentina helps explain its century of relative decline.
Resisting Gen-Z socialism is therefore an urgent task. The first step 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. Yes, people aren’t always rational, as behavioural economics shows. True, inequality matters and growth is better when broad-based. Free trade and globalisation create losers as well as winners. But this is the best time in human history to be born, given record real incomes, high life expectancy and low rates of extreme poverty. A punchier defence of capitalism would work better in the social-media age than hand-wringing by uncharismatic centrists like Sir Keir Starmer.
Centrist governments must also solve the problems driving popular discontent. “Abundance” liberals are right to want to build cheap and plentiful housing and infrastructure. Politicians must stop saddling the young with the burden of funding excessive pensions. The tax system must ensure that meritocracy prevails over inheritocracy: broader-based inheritance taxes and levies on property would help. The hardest challenge will be the disruption caused by advances in AI. The Gen-Z leftists have set out their stall with calls for a moratorium on data centres and a government jobs guarantee. Liberals must be more positive and imaginative in their own prescriptions, using a mixture of taxes, distributed capital ownership and support for workers to make sure that the upsides of labour-market disruption are widely shared.
The world is ruled by little else
Populists have the wind in their sails; it can sometimes seem as though market liberalism is doomed to political failure. *The Economist *disagrees. A robust defence of the ideas that have brought unprecedented riches has barely been tried. Many of the problems that animate Gen-Z socialists, like high rents, are the result of markets that are insufficiently free, not excessively so. There is time yet for liberalism to once again produce results—and to win the argument. ■
如何反擊 Z 世代社會主義
「自我優先」的教條是對繁榮的威脅
2026年6月4日 | 5分鐘閱讀時間
左翼陣營中正在醞釀一些新的東西。新一批的社會主義者想要透過價格管制、高額財富稅以及一連串的國有化來重塑經濟。在對加薩局勢的憤怒催化下，他們正以驚人的速度贏得選民支持。許多人直到最近才嶄露頭角，例如領導英國綠黨的柴克·波蘭斯基，或是紐約市市長佐蘭·馬姆達尼。其他人則是政壇的常客：年屆七旬的尚-盧·梅蘭雄正第四次角逐法國總統寶座，而來自「Z 世代」20多歲年輕人的巨大支持，讓他再次將目光投向了愛麗舍宮。
姑且稱之為「Z 世代社會主義」。
這並非因為其所有信徒都很年輕——也不是因為年輕人傾向左翼是什麼新鮮事——而是因為這種左翼主義的品牌是為 TikTok 時代量身打造的，且深受當今全體年輕革命家支持。
忘掉沉重的集體主義理想或奪取生產工具吧。Z 世代社會主義是一種「自我優先」的教條。氣候變遷和種族問題曾是 2010 年代和 2020 年代初期人們關注的焦點，如今已退居到極其邊緣的位置。除了加薩問題之外，社會議題也是如此。
對通貨膨脹、住房和人工智慧的焦慮已經取代了這一切，取而代之的是更粗糙的東西。「這個國家充斥著財富，」加拿大新民主黨新當選的領導人艾維·路易斯說，而該國的生產力在過去十年中幾乎停滯不前。「我們可以擁有美好的事物。」宣稱應該限制價格以降低你的帳單，同時讓別人來為你的公共服務買單，這是一個極具誘惑力且易於分享的訊息。
許多激發 Z 世代社會主義者不滿的情緒，確實源於真實存在的問題。通貨膨脹一直過高，大城市的房租現在往往令人無法負擔，而且人工智慧可能會顛覆勞動力市場。
對這些擔憂不屑一顧將是愚蠢的。然而，Z 世代社會主義在如何解決資本主義問題上是錯誤的。它必須受到抵制，因為它是對繁榮的深刻威脅。
沒有哪個國家的 Z 世代社會主義者是完全相同的。權力的現實已經迫使像馬姆達尼先生這樣的一些人變得更加溫和。但他們大致上認同三個核心原則。
第一，經濟成長對幫助普通人微乎其微。他們抱持的是一種零和思維，認為更好的結果不是來自創造，而是來自掠奪——正如他們擔心人工智慧巨頭很快就會大規模所做的那樣。
第二，政府支出可以由最富有的人來支付。過去的左翼希望對每個人提高稅收；而 Z 世代社會主義者則要求由億萬富翁出資提供福利津貼。
第三，是對私營企業顯著的敵意。Z 世代社會主義者對放任市場自由發展並重新分配收益不感興趣。他們希望日常生活的各個層面，從住房到雜貨，都由國家的強硬命令來管轄。
政治圈一直都有荒誕的邊緣群體。極右翼也同樣瘋狂——而且更加危險。但是，Z 世代社會主義者之所以如此令人擔憂，是因為他們的思想正極深地滲透到中左翼陣營中。為了拼命競爭，甚至連美國主流的民主黨人現在也提出了瘋狂的方案，例如免除超過一半申報者的聯邦個人所得稅。在英國，以中間派政綱贏得政權的工黨已被綠黨嚇壞，正在重新燃起對提高稅收和國家控制的熱情。越來越多情況是，即使 Z 世代社會主義者的候選人落選，他們的思想依然能取得勝利。
這是個壞消息。租金管制會摧毀建造房屋的誘因，從而加劇住房短缺。被 Z 世代社會主義者妖魔化的大型連鎖超市，其利潤率在經歷多年的殘酷競爭後已經薄如蟬翼——這是現代資本主義的奇蹟。財富稅會演變成變相沒收，並阻礙創新。不要假設這些政策一旦實施並遭遇失敗後，會帶來自動的路線修正。歐洲數十年來一直難以擺脫自身過度監管所帶來的低成長泥淖；阿根廷擁護國家主義的「庇隆主義者」崛起，有助於解釋該國經歷長達一世紀的相對衰落。
因此，抵制 Z 世代社會主義是一項迫切的任務。第一步是自由市場自由主義者要停止道歉。一系列對資本主義的普遍批評，雖然每一項都包含著一絲道理，但總體而言，卻掩蓋了「私營企業是人類繁榮的根本基石」這一核心智慧。
誠然，正如行為經濟學所顯示的，人們並不總是理性的。沒錯，不平等確實至關重要，而且當經濟成長基礎廣泛時效果會更好。自由貿易和全球化在創造贏家的同時，也製造了輸家。但是，鑑於創紀錄的實質收入、高預期壽命和極低的極端貧困率，這是人類歷史上最適合出生的時代。在社群媒體時代，對資本主義進行更有力的辯護，會比像施凱爾·斯塔摩爵士這樣缺乏魅力的中間派人士在那裡焦慮束手無策更有效。
中間派政府也必須解決引發民眾不滿的問題。追求「豐裕」的自由主義者渴望建造廉價且充足的住房和基礎設施，這毫無疑問是正確的。政治家們必須停止將資助過高養老金的負擔強加在年輕人身上。稅收制度必須確保唯才主義凌駕於世襲主義之上：更廣泛基礎的遺產稅和房產徵稅將會有所幫助。
最艱巨的挑戰將是人工智慧的進步所帶來的顛覆性衝擊。Z 世代左翼分子(主張社會平等、社會福利與改革進步的人士)已經表明了他們的立場，呼籲暫緩建設數據中心並由政府提供就業保障。自由主義者在他們自己的處方中必須更加積極且富有想像力，透過結合稅收、分散資本所有權以及對勞工的支援，來確保勞動力市場顛覆所帶來的正面效益能被廣泛分享。
世界幾乎不被其他東西所統治。民粹主義者正順風順水；有時這看起來就像是市場自由主義注定要在政治上失敗。《經濟學人》對此持反對意見。對於那些帶來前所未有財富的思想進行堅定辯護，目前還幾乎沒有人嘗試過。許多激勵 Z 世代社會主義者的問題，例如高昂的租金，其實是市場「不夠自由」的結果，而不是「過度自由」所致。自由主義依然有時間再次創造出成果——並在這場辯論中贏得勝利。
--
Hosting provided by SoundOn