From Brexit to the US presidential election and beyond, prepare for the clash of generations
Niall Ferguson says it’s no wonder youths in many developed societies want change, having been forced to inherit a world burdened by debt and liabilities – but don’t blame capitalism
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” Marx and Engels famously declared in their Communist Manifesto. A century and a half later, with communism seemingly buried under the rubble of the Soviet Union, Samuel Huntington predicted a clash of civilisations.
But what if the great struggle of our time turns out to be between the generations? Writing in 2001, in a book called The Cash Nexus, I warned of a coming conflict of economic interests between the young and the old. The only question in my mind was when this conflict would surface politically. Well, now it has.