Young people say capitalism has failed them. They’re right.
We must change the system to save it
It would be easy to attack the London spin-off of the Occupy Wall Street protests, which manifested itself in the form of a 300-tent encampment outside St Paul’s last weekend. Their political agenda? The same, meaningless, Dave Spartesque gobbledegook which has been a feature of anti-capitalist demos for the past decade and a half, such as the demand for ‘Structural change towards authentic global equality’ and ‘an end to the activities of those causing oppression’. Look for leadership and what do you see? The usual old suspects: Billy Bragg, Julian Assange and assorted vegans, unilateral disarmers and other hangers-on.
We know where this sort of protest leads: to the shattering of windows in one or two branches of McDonald’s, a police van rocked from side to side, kettling, accusations of police overreaction caught on camera-phones, before the exhausted Dave and Deidres are finally dekettled and allowed to slope off back to their squats — and not a few Rupert and Lucindas back to their trust-fund flats.
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