The mission of Issues in Perspective is to provide thoughtful, historical and biblically-centered perspectives on current ethical and cultural issues.

Within Western Civilization a disturbing trend is raising its ugly head:  The Economist calls it “Gen-Z Socialism”—”A fresh crop of socialists want to remake the economy with price controls, hefty wealth taxes and a spree of nationalizations. Supercharged by fury over Gaza, they are winning voters at a formidable pace. Many rose to prominence only recently, like Zack Polanski, who leads the Green Party in Britain, or Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York. Others are long-standing political fixtures: the septuagenarian Jean-Luc Mélenchon is on his fourth swing at the French presidency . . . Forget weighty collectivist ideals or seizing the means of production. Gen-Z socialism is a me-first doctrine. Climate change and race, preoccupations of the 2010s and early 2020s, are now much more peripheral concerns. So are social issues, barring Gaza. Angst about inflation, housing and artificial intelligence have replaced all that with something cruder. ‘This country is awash in wealth,’ says Avi Lewis, freshly elected leader of the New Democratic Party in Canada, a country where productivity has been all but flat for a decade. ‘We can have nice things.’”

Furthermore, The Economist captures both the diversity but also the core principles of this movement with Western Civilization:  “No country’s Gen-Z socialists are quite alike. The realities of power have forced some, like Mr. Mamdani, to become more moderate. But they broadly agree on three core principles.

• First, that growth does little to help ordinary people. Theirs is a zero-sum mindset, where a better outcome comes not from creating but from taking—as they fear ai barons will soon do on a vast scale.
• Second, that spending can be paid for by the richest. Once the left wanted higher taxes for everyone; Gen-Z socialists demand handouts funded by billionaires.
• The third tenet is a remarkable hostility to private enterprise. Gen-Z socialists are uninterested in letting the market rip and redistributing the proceeds. They would have chunks of everyday life, from housing to groceries, governed by state diktat.”

Mark Penn and Andrew Stein in the Wall Street Journal capture the impact of Gen-Z Socialism in America:  “[June’s] election results in New York, Colorado, Pennsylvania and elsewhere are a 911 call for the Democratic Party and America. The advancement of Democratic Socialists of America members to Congress, state legislatures and local offices, often by beating Democratic incumbents, shows how broken the primary system is and how alienated young educated white voters in urban areas have become . . . This ‘revolution’ is driven not by the working class but by the urban professional class that is willing to support candidates who celebrate 9/11, cheer at the massacre of 1,000 Israeli and American kids, would defund the police, abolish prisons, end private property and open the borders.” [New York’s Rep. Adriano Espaillat, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, lost his seat.]

Greg Ip, also of the Wall Street Journal, sounds the alert about Gen-Z Socialism in Britian: “[T]he real breakthrough is in Britain, where Andy Burnham, the socialist former mayor of Greater Manchester, is poised to become prime minister and Labour Party leader after Keir Starmer said Monday he would resign. To Gen Z, socialism might be a euphemism for a kinder market and bigger welfare state. Burnham’s socialism is the real deal. He wants the state to control more of the means of production. As mayor, he brought the bus transit system in Greater Manchester under public control. For the country, he advocates public ownership of water, housing, energy and transportation. Burnham’s ascendance is the latest sign that the stigma that once surrounded state ownership of the economy is fading. From Indonesia to Belgium, nationalization is in vogue.” He further adds:

• Cornell University historian Nicholas Mulder, author of the coming book “The Age of Confiscation: Making and Taking Property in the Creation of the Modern World,” calls this the fourth wave of nationalization in the past century. Previous waves in the 1930s, 1940s and 1970s were driven by a desire to preserve employment or a belief in the efficiency of public ownership and government-directed economic planning, Mulder said in an interview. This one is driven more by inflation (publicly provided services are claimed to be more affordable) and geopolitics, he said.
• Britain is something of a nationalization bellwether. In the aftermath of World War II, its Labour government nationalized the Bank of England, airlines, coal, telecommunications, railways, electricity, gas, iron and steel. A second wave in the 1970s followed. Then, beginning with the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, Britain led the way on privatization, ultimately disposing of industrial companies, utilities, railways, public housing and even the post office. Mulder points to British Steel as the poster child: nationalized by Labour in 1951, privatized by Conservatives in 1953, renationalized by Labour in 1967 and reprivatized by Thatcher in 1987.  Starmer, who took office in 2024, began renationalizing railways and British Steel.
• Ip adds an important insight on the politics of the US during the Trump era:  “This latest wave is also not confined to the left. There is little practical difference between the socialism advocated by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and the state capitalism practiced by President Trump. For example, both want the federal government to take a stake in major artificial-intelligence companies. In Britain, the right-wing populist Reform UK until recently supported nationalizing 50% of utilities. The left-wing Green Party advocates nationalization of utilities and strategic sectors such as steel. And, of course, all are emulating China, where the lines between the state and private sector have all but disappeared.”

Is this Gen-Z Socialism real? Is it a genuine threat to America? Bret Stephens of the New York Times makes this wise observation: “What mainstream Republicans like me missed . . .  is what I fear mainstream Democrats miss now: that ideas older voters know have long been discredited (‘America first’ among conservatives; socialism among progressives) can seem fresh and appealing to younger voters; that even middle-of-the-road voters still often prefer the most extreme or uncouth candidate on their side to the most moderate candidate on the other; and that policy positions ultimately count for less than sheer charisma, the aura of being a ‘fighter,’ even if you accomplish little of substance. All this is especially true when the more ideologically extreme candidates are energetic, unstuffy, authentic, and able to stir up an audience. Zohran Mamdani, the New York mayor, is emblematic of the type; so was Graham Platner, the Maine Democrat, at least until allegations about his past behavior finally caught up with him.”

Stephens reaches this conclusion:  “What all this means for mainstream Democrats is that they resemble a national army under attack from an insurgency: They offer order and predictability when they need to be shocking and surprising; they seek to win by delivering incremental victories while their guerrilla opponents promise political transcendence. Unless something changes, those dynamics tend to set the army up for disaster. What could change the dynamics?

• It would help if a Democratic leader stood up to make the case that democratic socialists are neither liberals nor progressives, at least in any honest sense of those words. They are atavists, blasts from a discredited and discarded past.
• Socialism as a political program was born in the 19th century and died in the 20th (including in Sweden). Democracy requires a clearly defined citizenry, an idea that becomes meaningless if a country pursues a lax or open-border policy of the kind advocated by democratic socialists. The brainstorms of the far left, like the billionaire surtax on the ballot in California, have failed repeatedly wherever they’ve been tried (including in France). And “justice for Palestine” surely can’t mean taking sides with the killers and rapists of Hamas while insisting that the only nation-state on earth with no right to exist is the Jewish one. The word for that is antisemitism, the politics of the double standard toward Jews, which is yet another terrible idea from a terrible past.
• Is there a rising Democrat who will give this speech—the one that says that Democrats stand for freedom and fairness, not radicalism and self-righteousness; the one that never disdains tradition even if it seeks to improve it; the one that knows that utopianism is no substitute for pragmatism, and that purity is not superior to compromise?

A biblical and theological perspective on Gen-Z Socialism:  The 8th commandment as an ethical absolute establishes the sanctity of private property (“You shall not steal,” Exodus 20:15).  The Old Testament affirms this in the Levitical code (see Lev. 25:10).  Neither the government nor society owns property; individuals do.  The Mosaic covenant was based on laws that defined punishment for stealing and the restitution for damage to another person’s animals, fields, etc.  Deuteronomy 19:14 even affirmed the importance of boundaries for privately owned land.  This ethical standard is also affirmed in the New Testament (e.g., Romans 13:9; 1 Corinthians 6:10; Ephesians 4:28, etc.).  The New Testament also states that individuals had the right of ownership of money, possessions and are to use them wisely, as a stewardship from God (e.g., Romans 12:8; 1 Corinthians 16:2; 2 Corinthians 9:7; Ephesians 4:28, etc.).

In the modern era, the emergence of communism (and socialism) was an attack on the sanctity of private property.  Karl Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto:  “The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence:  abolition of private property.”  Wayne Grudem comments that “an abolition of private property as occurs under communism is horribly dehumanizing because it greatly minimizes people’s freedom to make wise choices regarding the stewardship of their resources and prevents human economic and cultural flourishing as God intended it to occur.”

Grudem also offers instructive application of the 8th commandment:  “It protects property and possessions.  By implication, we are right to think it also protects another person’s time, talents, and opportunities—everything over which people have been given stewardship.  We are not to steal someone else’s property, time, talents, or opportunities.”

1. Private Property as Stewardship: God entrusts to us our time, talents, property, possessions and opportunities as a stewardship.  He expects us to manage these well and to be wise and thankful for what He has entrusted to us.  This proposition has several implications for us as Christians:

• We are accountable to God for how we use our property (see 1 Corinthians 4:2).
• God dispenses different levels of stewardship responsibility when it comes to property.   Thus, everyone is responsible for being faithful with what they have received from God.  Those who receive much are held to a higher standard of expectation (see Luke 12:48).
• There are no expectations in Scripture that God will bring about complete equality of stewardship or equality of possessions among His people either in this life or the age to come.

1. The Blessings of Private Ownership of Property: Our personal possessions are not to be a source of guilt or of feelings of superiority over others.  They can be a source of blessing.

• Humanity’s dominion authority over God’s world brings glory to Him (Genesis 1:28; 1 Corinthians 10:31)
• Since God richly “provides us with everything to enjoy” (1 Timothy 6:17), personal possessions should promote a spirit of thankfulness in our lives (see Psalm 103:2; 136:1).
• Since God richly “provides us with everything to enjoy (1 Timothy 6:17), personal possessions should promote a spirit of joy in our lives.
• The private ownership of property is an ongoing test of our faithfulness and devotion to God (see Psalm 62:1; 73:25-26; 1 John 3:17).

In conclusion, Wayne Grudem writes:  The 8th commandment “gives (1) the opportunity for human achievement (by entrusting property to us), (2) the expectation of human achievement (by making us accountable stewards), and (3) the expectation of human enjoyment of products made from the earth, with thanksgiving to God.”

See Greg Ip in the Wall Street Journal (26 June 2026); Mark Penn and Andrew Stein in the Wall Street Journal (3 July 2026); The Economist (6 June 2026), p. 7; Bret Stephens in the New York Times (8 July 2026); and Wayne Grudem, Christian Ethics, pp. 895-916.