Much of Mannheim’s focus fell on the importance of “youth” in the analysis of generations. In stable communities (such as the European peasantry of the Middle Ages), youth is a simple biological distinction — the quality of being not yet old. But in times of social instability, youth becomes a source of difficulty, a problem. Mannheim was thinking of revolutionary eras, such as the early 19th century, when the movement from countryside to city was accelerating, and the status society of the restored monarchies was buffeted by a nascent bourgeoisie. It was a classic moment when the young people of a certain period became (in Mannheim’s terminology) an “actual generation”: “We shall therefore speak of a generation as an actuality only when a concrete bond is created between members of a generation by their being exposed to the social and intellectual symptoms of a process of dynamic de-stabilization.” Generations tend to get made by the people in them and by the times they live in when a span of time is felt by a biological cohort as one of crisis.

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This self-fulfilling prophecy has turned out to be tremendously useful to ruling classes who find the remaining institutions of the welfare state frustrating. Because, after all, it’s not just executives who dislike the strictures of seniority and job security, they can explain—it’s also the millennials, who crave freedom and flexibility. An incomplete and accordingly corrosive image of society has developed out of this analysis, in which a class conflict gets portrayed as a war between the generations: everywhere the image of the autonomous, free-spirited millennial is being deployed against the geriatric, self-protective boomer. If teachers’ unions’ work protects seniority, this is said to hamper the desire of young teachers to flit in and out of jobs; meanwhile, it licenses charter school expansion. If older Greek or Italian workers protect job security, this is said to hamper the ability of the young to find work—and therefore justifies the expansion of contract and part-time work. Across Europe and the US today, the benefits fought for by older workers — especially in the public sector — have been represented as “unfair” to the youth, and the young are being mobilized against labor protections that they themselves have been taught not to hope for. What is taking place is a great expropriation of the futures of young and old, the roots of which are deeper and older than we are permitted to believe. Calling it a generation gap only swells the chasm opening up beneath our feet.