1. It may be that faced with overwhelming bourgois societal pressures including the culture of personal capital accumultation and a liberal/fascist education system both formal (schooling) and informal (media; news and entertainment) bends one’s personal worldviews towards a certain arc. Personal material wealth can of course be a factor here but one only needs to look in the west the perspective of some older poor folks and how reactionary they can be despite their experiences. Their experiences are real but they fail to understand the contradictions of their environment.

2. However, it is objectively not universally true especially when you consider the bulk of MLs in the west and global south come from backgrounds of bourgois indoctrination.

3. I suspect a significant amount of us MLs are labour aristocrats.

4. There are many older folks who are leftist educators including more famous ones whose books and articles we have read / reading, whose interviews and videos we listen and watch (I am going to include non-ML here as well because the perspective was people become more conservative as they grow older, this proves that it is certainly not the case)

5. “You can’t resist for very long a truth you discover for yourself.” ― Nikolai Chernyshevsky (via Roderic Day)

/edits for clarity

Do you know any literature you could recommend please - if possible - that explores what you said? (Well before I came across ML I have long thought the flipside of the coin you are mentioning; that capitalism brings out the worst in society, the most sociopathic and malignant characteristics of what we consider the human condition is what is amplified, promoted and successful. However, I do not have a background in philosophy and I feel I have only scratched the surface of dialectics and materialism)