Why America’s Youth Are Embracing A System History Has Proven Cannot Work, And How Our Education System Helped Create The Shift

Sunday, November 23, 2025, 12:45 P.M. ET. 6 Minute Read, Opinion Editorial, By Jennifer Hodges: Englebrook Independent News,

WASHINGTON, DC.- A striking and consequential generational divide is reshaping America: millions of younger Americans now express a preference for communism, socialism, or heavy state-controlled systems, despite more than a century of global evidence showing these systems have produced economic collapse, political repression, humanitarian disasters, and the loss of individual freedom everywhere they have been fully implemented.

     Polling shows that more than one-third of Americans aged 18–29 now view socialism favorably, and nearly 30% say they prefer communism to capitalism, a dramatic surge from roughly 10% only a decade ago. This shift has shocked older generations who witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of Eastern Europe, the starvation under Mao, and the economic destruction in Cuba and Venezuela.

     But this change did not happen in a vacuum.

     For at least three decades, the American education system has increasingly de-emphasized, minimized, or outright omitted the catastrophic history of communism, leaving many younger Americans unaware of the real-world outcomes of these systems. And earlier still, beginning in the late 1960s and 1970s, the United States saw the rise of intellectual movements, most notably the Cloward-Piven strategy, that sought to expand welfare dependency and introduce more government-centric models into American social and political thought.

     These long-term ideological shifts have shaped generations of students who were taught to view socialism through an idealized lens while viewing capitalism through a critical one.

     This educational gap helps explain why some young Americans, facing housing costs, inflation, and student debt, are now turning to collectivist systems without understanding the full consequences those systems have imposed elsewhere.

     But history tells a clear and irrefutable story: communism has failed in every nation that has tried it. And the world’s most successful societies, those with the highest standards of living, longest life expectancies, most innovation, and strongest human rights protections, are overwhelmingly capitalist.

The Education Gap: How Three Decades Of Classroom Shifts Shaped Today’s Youth;

     Beginning in the early 1990s, American public education underwent a gradual but profound shift. History curricula increasingly emphasized social movements, identity issues, and critiques of capitalism, while coverage of communist systems became more superficial, generalized, or, in some cases, removed entirely.

The result?
     Millions of students never learned about:

• The tens of millions killed under Mao’s Great Leap Forward.
• The starvation and brutality of Stalin’s forced collectivization.
• The repressive nature of East Germany’s Stasi state.
• Cuba’s six decades of shortages, imprisonment of dissidents, and ration books.
• North Korea’s prison camps and centrally planned famine cycles.
• Venezuela’s total collapse after adopting Marxist economic policies.

     Instead, many received only vague summaries, often framed through the lens that communism was a “well-intentioned idea that went wrong,” rather than a system that failed precisely because of its structure.

     At the same time, discussions of capitalism increasingly focused on inequality, corporate power, and environmental concerns, subjects worthy of debate, but rarely balanced with capitalism’s unparalleled record of poverty reduction, innovation, and global prosperity.

Cloward And Piven: The Beginning Of A Long Intellectual Shift;

     The ideological shift traces back partly to the late 1960s and early 1970s, when sociologists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven argued for dramatically expanding public welfare rolls to pressure the government into creating an extensive, guaranteed-income system.

     Their theory, popular on campuses in the 1970s, did not explicitly promote communism, but it encouraged dependence on the state and influenced broader academic discourse around the “welfare state,” centralized redistribution, and government-managed social structures.

     These ideas became deeply embedded in certain university departments, shaping generations of educators who later taught in public schools.

Over time, the results were visible:

• Reduced teaching of communism’s failures.
• Increased sympathetic portrayals of collectivist economic ideas.
• Greater focus on government solutions rather than market incentives.
• Minimal emphasis on how capitalism lifted 1.2 billion people out of extreme poverty since 1990.

     This decades-long intellectual evolution helped set the stage for today’s youth attitudes.

Communism’s Global Record: A Century Of Failure;

     Communism promised equality, security, and shared prosperity. Instead, it delivered misery.

The Soviet Union: Collapse of the World’s Largest Central Planning Experiment;

The USSR’s command economy resulted in:

• Decades of shortages.
• Low productivity.
• Forced collectivization.
• Political purges that imprisoned or killed millions.
• Economic collapse by the late 1980s

     The Soviet Union imploded because central planning cannot replicate market dynamism or individual initiative.

China Under Mao: History’s Deadliest Catastrophe;

China’s Great Leap Forward (1958–1962), a radical collectivist campaign, caused:

• Nationwide famine.
• Industrial failure.
• The deaths of 30–45 million people.

China achieved prosperity only after embracing market reforms, not because of communism.

Cuba: Sixty-Four Years of Shortages;

Since 1959, Cuba has endured:

• Crumbling infrastructure.
• Food ration books.
• Political imprisonment.
• Mass emigration.

Its economic failures stem directly from state control over every major sector.

North Korea: Communism Without Reform;

North Korea is a closed, fully centralized system marked by:

• Chronic famine.
• Prison camps.
• No private enterprise.
• Severe isolation.

It is perhaps the most vivid example of pure communism still in existence.

Venezuela: A Modern Socialist Collapse;

Once one of Latin America’s wealthiest nations, Venezuela adopted a Marxist economic model and soon faced:

• Hyperinflation exceeding 1,000,000%
• Mass migration of more than 7 million people.
• System-wide shortages of food and medicine.
• A complete collapse of state-run industries.

This was not accidental. It was the predictable outcome of eliminating market mechanisms.

Why Communism Always Fails;

Communism fails because:

• It destroys incentives.
• It concentrates power in the state.
• It replaces competition with coercion.
• It suppresses dissent.
• It assumes planners can manage what only markets can coordinate.

     Shortages, repression, and economic stagnation are not accidental; they are built into the system.

Capitalism’s Imperfections, And Its Extraordinary Success;

     Capitalism is not perfect. It requires regulation, moral responsibility, and ongoing reform. But it remains the world’s greatest engine of prosperity.

It has:

• Lifted 1.2 billion people out of extreme poverty.
• Produced the world’s most innovative technologies.
• Raised life expectancy globally.
• Enabled upward mobility and consumer choice.
• Protected freedom of speech and economic liberty.

     Every nation with sustained prosperity is built on market foundations, not state control.

A Path Forward, Learning From History, Not Repeating It;

     Younger Americans are justified in wanting fairness, dignity, opportunity, and security. But communism, wherever tried, has taken those values away, not delivered them.

     The challenge for America is not to embrace communism, but to:

• Strengthen capitalism.
• Expand economic opportunity.
• Improve education.
• Teach the full historical truth about communism.
• Address inequality without destroying market incentives.
• Ensure young people understand both the successes and failures of every system.

     If America fails to teach the real history of the last century, the next century may be forced to relearn it.

Editor’s Note:

This op-ed is based on all verified historical data, educational research, public polling, and documented outcomes from nations that implemented collectivist or market-based systems. It reflects the author’s analysis of long-term global economic and political patterns, including the evolution of U.S. educational approaches since the late 20th century. Written and edited by Jennifer Hodges, Political Editor for Englebrook Independent News.