OK, hands up. I took the money. And brought in the Johnson government. And left the electric lights blazing. I know it was selfish and I’m sorry. OK?

As if the signs of a third wave of coronavirus weren’t enough, we appear to be entering another wave of blaming old people for the state of the world. 

According to Attila the Stockbroker (M Star March 20 2021), whose comments I often enjoy, now we’re responsible for the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which had its second reading in the House of Commons last week. 

The reason for this is that, far from being an actual thing, the Police Bill was just a pre-local-election ploy to reassure us that the Tories were still committed to protecting us frail old biddies from rampaging youth. 

It makes electoral sense: we could easily have got the wrong idea after they’ve spent the last year killing us.

The Bill should now be at the committee stage but, almost certainly because of the outcry at the police violence against the women holding a vigil for Sarah Everard, this has been delayed “until later in the year.” 

So it looks as though we “tabloid-brainwashed” oldies will have to put up with having our afternoon naps disturbed by the din of protesters chucking statues into the sea for a while yet, before it becomes law.

Attributing blame for the state of the world on the basis of biological characteristics — whether real (like age), invented (like “race”), or contested (like sex) — has, until recently, been the preserve of the right, particularly the far right and fascism. 

With good reason. Judging people on the basis of attributes they are born with or have no control over, rather than for their actions, ideas or potential, is the perfect vehicle for disempowering and dividing us in order to establish dictatorships. 

The veneration of youth is a pillar of capitalism for obvious reasons. Young people work. Old people are both redundant and expensive. Pitting them against each other, though, is a characteristic of fascism. 

Everyone who has seen the film Cabaret can recall the dawning realisation of the threat posed by young people whipped up against those in categories designated worthless, embodied in the chilling performance by the treasured youth of “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.”

Socialists generally take a different stance. One example is an initiative in the London Borough of Hackney, founded on an understanding that mocking and demonising old people leaves old people, and especially older women and those from black and ethnic minority groups, open to multiple forms of discrimination. 

Hackney’s Ageing Well Strategy is based on research across the generations. 

Councillor Yvonne Maxwell says that their “starting point is what older people bring to the table.” 

Not only did those older people say that they wanted to mix with younger people as well as with their own age groups, but “a consultation undertaken with 10- to 25-year-olds … also demanded a more intergenerational approach.” (Labour List, March 19 2021)

This real attempt to improve real lives is in striking contrast to the aggression so casually and frequently directed at old people on social media. 

Instead they are doing what socialists are supposed to do: find ways to bridge divisions, reduce inequality, redistribute resources and enable old and young people to challenge the stereotypes that poison the relationships between them.

This is not a zero-sum generation game in which old people are hermetically sealed into a comfortable, secure world, surrounded by the spoils of their war with subsequent generations. 

The equation of “old” with “rich” is clearly wrong. But even those who are rich (if we define “rich” as owning a home that has acquired a vastly distorted cash value) have children, grandchildren, neighbours and friends whose lives are enmeshed with theirs, socially, culturally, politically and economically. 

I wasn’t at the vigil for Sarah Everard at Clapham Common. Like a lot of (but by no means all) people in my age group, I am worried about our vulnerability to the virus. 

Many of us with long experience of radical campaigning put our efforts into interacting with people of all ages, learning from each other, challenging the status quo on social media or in meetings. 

We shouldn’t need to prove ourselves to those who venerate youth uber alles by risking our lives getting on buses and Tubes to go to demonstrations, being kettled or not being able to run away from police violence. 

Call me old-fashioned, but I find class a much more useful category for analysing what’s going wrong with the world. 

Unlike biological classifications of human beings, class describes a complex, changeable network of relationships. 

Colluding with the way our corrupt and contorted society stratifies and pits us against each other is not a way to challenge the status quo or to create a world based on equality and social justice. 

It is cod-Marxism which presents simple, fixed, singular answers to explain inequality, oppression, discrimination and the acquisition of political views and actions. Actual Marxism is dynamic; replete with possibilities for everyone.