“Stealing things just makes everything very cheap,” says Jeremy, the wastrel flatmate of strait-laced bank worker Mark, in the 2000s cult sitcom Peep Show. The pair are being held in the backroom of a corner shop after Jeremy gets caught shoplifting a chocolate bar. “Plus, you know how I feel about capitalism.” “Yes!” replies Mark, exasperated. “Confused!” An amusing scene in a sitcom has, in the intervening 20-odd years, turned into something of a political pandemic. It seems everyone is confused about capitalism.
On the left, what was once a perennial coming-of-age flirtation has turned into a permanent mental dysfunction. As Kristian Niemietz showed in a report for the Institute of Economic Affairs in 2021, socialist ideas have taken hold of millennials and increasingly Generation Z too, but instead of this being a phase that they shrug off once they get mugged by the reality of jobs, bills, taxes and home ownership, they have clung onto them. Socialist ideas remain as popular among people in their 40s as among those in
