The Guardian’s recent concern over a supposed “kissing recession” among young people is more than just a shallow cultural critique. It exposes bourgeois demoralisation—the ruling class sensing the social order’s breakdown but unable to confront its causes without self-accusation. The article’s approach, tone, and findings are deliberate and serve ideological purposes. They aestheticise, psychologise, and ultimately depoliticise the crisis, turning it into a psychological or aesthetic issue rather than a political one. What seems to be a compassionate portrayal of youth anxiety is actually a political move designed to prevent a deep analysis of the social factors that caused this crisis. The Guardian’s approach is to evade such examination.
The Liberal Method: Personalisation as Political
Containment
Contemporary liberal journalism often replaces historical
and economic analysis with personal biography and psychological language. The
Guardian’s article exemplifies this shift, showcasing a selective collection of
anxious youth, each depicted as a psychological issue: “risk-averse,”
“traumatised,” “lacking confidence.” Readers are encouraged to empathise and
feel a vague sadness, but not to grasp underlying causes. This is not merely a
stylistic choice; it reflects a class-based approach.
By focusing on individual psychology, solutions like
therapy, self-care, and resilience-building become the only options. Structural
issues—such as austerity, precarity, the erosion of community, and the
atomization caused by decades of neoliberal policies—are ignored. The
therapeutic language doesn't enhance social analysis; it replaces it, serving
as an ideological tool for the bourgeoisie to avoid facing the outcomes of
their policies. The Guardian's role seems to be to prevent readers from recognising
that the crisis of intimacy is fundamentally a crisis of capitalism.
The Guardian’s article mentions “social atrophy” but does
not specify its tangible causes. The elimination of “third spaces”—such as
youth centres, libraries, community halls, parks, and informal gathering
spots—was not merely cultural change. It was a targeted class policy. As
documented by the WSWS, UK local government spending on youth services was cut
by over a third from 2011 to 2016, removing more than £60 million, closing over
350 youth centres, and cutting 41,000 youth service positions. The Tory-Liberal
Democrat coalition enacted these reductions, set in motion by previous Labour
governments, serving the interests of finance capital while councils favoured
developer tax breaks and corporate subsidies.
What was lost wasn't just physical "places to hang
out" but also the infrastructure supporting unsupervised, face-to-face
social interactions—essential for developing social skills that enable
intimacy. The capacity to meet, flirt, argue, reconcile, and form relationships
outside market logic was systematically dismantled. In this void, dating apps
emerged: algorithm-driven platforms that profit from the loneliness capitalism
engenders. Ironically, capitalism erodes the free social spaces where people
meet, then monetises the resulting loneliness by selling digital profiles based
on data, attention, and advertising. This process transforms alienation into a
profitable commodity.
The Guardian portrays the pandemic as a natural event that 'interrupted'
youth development, but this is misleading. In reality, the response to the
pandemic was driven by class interests. Governments globally directed trillions
of dollars to corporations and financial markets via measures like the CARES
Act, while neglecting young people, leaving them to face isolation,
unemployment, and mental health crises. The WSWS had already reported a sharp
increase in youth mental health issues well before COVID-19, noting that
suicide rates among Americans aged 10–24 rose by 56 per cent from 2007 to
2017—an era marked by austerity, job insecurity, and the disintegration of
community life. The pandemic hastened existing trends driven by capitalist
restructuring. Schools reopened not primarily for children’s well-being but to
sustain economic productivity. Young people were pressured to give up their
education, friendships, and social growth—all to safeguard asset prices and
corporate profits. Viewing this solely as an individual misfortune instead of a
class-based injustice is an act of ideological violence.
What the Guardian Cannot Name: Alienation
The Guardian’s social theorist
mentions “social atrophy” but avoids naming it, as doing so would require
addressing its root cause. The actual term is alienation—the process in which
humans become estranged from each other and their social essence, stemming from
a mode of production that turns every human relationship into a relation
between objects. Alienation isn’t a simple mood; it’s the fundamental condition
of life under capitalism: human abilities are turned into commodities, survival
needs shape personality, intimacy becomes a gamble, and social interactions are
influenced by money and algorithms.
The “kissing recession” isn't
just a cultural phenomenon; it reflects a society where the market infiltrates
every aspect of life. However, Marx’s insight—distinguishing Marxism from
Frankfurt School pessimism—is that alienation breeds its own opposition. The
same generation that reports loneliness and anxiety also supports socialism,
led teachers’ strikes, formed the core of UAW and UPS actions, and is entering
politics under conditions blocking reform. Alienation isn't inevitable; it is
the foundation for revolutionary awareness.
The Guardian’s Despair Is the Bourgeoisie’s Despair
The Guardian’s article does not diagnose youth; instead, it
reveals a bourgeois sense of helplessness. It admits something is wrong, yet
its approach prevents action. It is a resignation wrapped in empathy. The
ruling class feels the social order is crumbling. It cannot explain the crisis
without admitting fault, nor describe suffering without risking revolutionary
ideas. Acknowledging structural causes would threaten its legitimacy.
Therefore, it resorts to biography, psychology, and therapeutic clichés — akin
to hiding behind a curtain.
Marxists aim to restore the social wholeness that liberal
journalism suppresses, illustrating how the crisis of intimacy stems from
capitalism, and identifying the class most harmed by this system as the one
capable of overthrowing it. The breakdown of communal life was intentionally
engineered, not inevitable, and since it was engineered, it can be dismantled.
Abolishing private property in the means of production isn't just a slogan;
it's essential for restoring genuine intimacy, solidarity, and collective life.
Only a socialist restructuring can recreate the spaces, time, and social
relations necessary for humans to meet as equals. Capitalism has commodified
even the kiss, and it falls to the working class to reclaim a world where
genuine connection is possible again.
