The graduate uprising

In the interactive society, fanaticism for easy ideologies is fashionable. Some defend outdated ideas that they do not practice and persecute those who do not share them. They preach Tridentine monogamy but have no traditional family; They are flat earthers or they fight against vaccinations. They are excessive and have no knowledge of history and science.

In the United States, new leaders Trump and Mamdani have a lot in common. Both had more support among men and young people and similar racial demographics. Trump has confronted the Republican party apparatus and Mamdani has confronted the Democrat, as well as outsiders from other countries who are at odds with the establishment.

It is interesting to analyze Mamdani’s active support among young graduates. It is the anti-capitalist revolution of an educated elite to which he belongs, and not that of the proletariat. It is similar to Milei’s anarchism and the positions of other outsiders.

These graduates in both the United States and Latin America say they oppose “capitalism,” the economic system imposed on the world in 1990 because it was more efficient than the communist one. Real socialism collapsed because it drove its countries into poverty. For example, Maoist China amassed the largest number of poor people in history, while capitalist China banished poverty.

The rise of graduates

The number of graduates has increased everywhere. They were raised with the desire to achieve a better position in society than their parents, who were sometimes humble workers. There are now many postgraduate graduates (this didn’t exist before) and they have bigger ambitions.

While the number of college graduates has multiplied, the number of workers in both industry and rural areas has declined significantly.

The frustration of the educated elite

At present, it is not the workers who anger “capitalism” the most, but this entitled petty bourgeoisie, raised for a world that no longer exists. They dreamed of being promoted through their efforts, but society was not creating the quality jobs they expected.

One of Mamdani’s key supporters were these young people who benefited from government loans to finance their studies and are angry at a country that is not giving them the opportunities they expected. When they say they are against “capitalism,” they are neither defending socialism nor wanting to emigrate to Cuba; In reality they want to have a good position in capitalism.

Something similar is happening in Latin America. Anger against the system is fueled by the frustration of these graduates, who are the driving force of new uprisings expressed in the negativity of the networks and the support of anti-system candidates.

The crisis of expectations

We live no worse than before. We have access to goods and services that were not even imaginable in the 1970s. The majority of today’s poor have a better standard of living than the middle class back then. As a general rule, poverty, understood as a lack of food or basic living conditions, is rare. In fact, all variables that measure quality of life have improved over these fifty years. In Argentina, people are protesting because they buy second-hand brands, not because they have nothing to eat.

With the information provided by the Internet, poverty as André Gorz understood it has grown: the distance I perceive between what I have and what the richest have. Internet information reinforces this deficiency. As someone on the network said: “How is it possible that Musk has millions to buy Twitter, and at the end of the year the state cannot give me a new car.”

Most Latin Americans used to know that there were rich people in other countries, but nothing more. Today they see their villas, their lifestyle, compare themselves with them and feel poor. Many young graduates who wanted to play an important role in society feel disinherited. Hence their anger against this “capitalism” that discriminates against them to favor the “corrupt” and their rejection of the system. It is a crisis of disappointed expectations, not of food shortages.

To make matters worse, the fourth industrial revolution is wiping out many occupations and new jobs require skills that college doesn’t teach. There are many traditional professionals and few artificial intelligence experts. We must open our minds to face a new world that is already among us. As robots replace workers and put those who perform repetitive tasks out of work, we are not preparing to find our place in the new society.