Governments set economic policy that directly supports and props up capitalism.

Use your brain Norman.

I never know if this is a meme or if this is actually who Earnhardt was.

What’s the article at the center of this? I’d like to read it.

Can’t be everything to everyone I guess!

Our state was allowing students to enter into kindergarten at age 4 in January as long as they were age 5 by September but that’s now a hard requirement of 5 years old in January. I think every other state does 5 as the minimum. It’s impacting something like 11,000 kids going into the 24 school year, and impacting every daycare center in the state since they only have training and curriculum for students up to age 4.

As for having kids and Marxism, I will say this: You, as a parent, want to leave your kids in a world better than the one you grew up in. You hope that the struggles you endured are ones they never have to. For a long time, I didn’t know how to build a better future, but through reading Marx and listening to other Marxist thinkers, and understanding that all of the things I enjoy today were built on the backs of the struggles of the past, struggles endured by working-class families who ALSO were looking to leave their children in a better world than they had, the HOW became more clear. Marxism is like a north star, pointing me toward safe harbors, toward a better world not just for me and my kids, but for all of us, and all of our kids. It’s a whole other thing to plan for the future of your kids, you start to look at the world over a longer timeline, and you have to anticipate where things might be and hope that what you’re doing now will offer your kids a springboard into a fulfilling and successful life. Reading Marx and planning for the future came up in parallel to each other, but without Marx, I think that planning would have led to fear and pessimism. Marxism provided me with a framework for which to make those plans, or at least, provide my kids the tools they need to critically navigate the world so that they can be better about planning their own pathways.

I don’t know that I would have gotten to this place in my world view with out my kids, because they force me to look beyond the horizon I can see and off to the horizon they can see.

♥ Thanks for the kind words comrade! Honestly, a lot of this information lives in my head rent-free. As a family with a comfortable dual income, we’re still treading water because of childcare costs. Where we live the age to enter kindergarten has been pushed up (for sound academic and social-emotional reasons) without any measures to ease the burden on working families who understand the objective reality that public education is also a form of free child care and had been budgeting against that reality.

Being a parent is hard work, and the systems we live under only make it more challenging. This is a perspective I didn’t have until I had kids of my own. If anything, having kids has been the strongest radicalizing force in my life, and is the reason I consider myself a Marxist.

I never knew how to engage with kids once I no longer considered myself one, but now that I have kids, it’s like they have wiped that from my brain and I can’t imagine what it’s like to not want to engage with kids. I think that it’s a mixed bag in terms of “Are kids treated like humans”. There are a lot of people who are still holding onto the notions they were subjected to growing up:

• Kids should be seen and not heard.
• Kids should have respect for adults. (which is almost always code for obedience, not respect)
• “My house, My Rules” aka Authoritarian Centered Parenting.
• Illogical or disproportionate punishment for breach of “the rules”.

It seems to me that these “traditional” values in regard to parenting lead to a deficit in trust between parent and child, the child becomes more adept at subterfuge as they attempt to skirt the more illogical rules, and instills a kind of adversarial relationship between the parent and child. Rules like “Don’t wear your hat at a restaurant” followed up with “Because I said so” or “Because I’m your Parent and what I say goes” are just the codification of preferences both personal and learned into arbitrary rules. Naturally, when you point out how nonsensical it is, you’re met with “That’s how my parents were and I turned out fine!”. Are_You_Sure_About_That.mp4

Kids are wiser than you think, and if you explain to them why you’re asking them to do something, they’ll usually get it. Obviously, that depends on their age. One thing I’ve learned from experience with my toddler is that, if you talk too fast or repeat yourself too quickly or expect them to respond instantly to a question or demand, you’re going to have a bad time. They need time to process what you’re saying because they’re still learning how to process language. Usually, if something is pressing or they’re just not listening, you can just redirect them. I’ve never had this become a huge fight so far. Usually I ask twice, and if that doesn’t work, I guide them to the thing we’re doing now, and that kind of direction they seem to just get. Do I get the odd tantrum, sure, but that’s to be expected. I tend to make sure to loop back after the tantrum and try to empathize and explain what the request was and why. Sometimes, the tantrum is just illogical and you have to just accept that.

To be clear. I’m only synthesizing my own experiences along with the experiences of other parents either personally or online. Some people take their childhood as a blueprint for their parenthood, and others have reflected on their childhood and make attempts to have it not be the blueprint for their parenthood. I want to be as communicative and empathetic with my kids as I can, and to actually hear them when they express how they feel. I know that was something I needed growing up, and I know they’ll need it too.

In terms of our social systems and structures surrounding kids, definitely not Humans by any stretch. America is the only nation in the UN that has signed but not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. While the US played an active role in drafting this bill of child rights, they still have not ratified it. Doing so would require them to completely unearth and rebuild child welfare within their legal system. The primary opponents of these rights are, unsurprisingly, political and religious conservatives such as The Heritage Foundation and the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). The Heritage Foundation believes that “a civil society in which moral authority is exercised by religious congregations, family, and other private associations is fundamental to the American order” while the HSLDA argues that ratifying these rights would threaten homeschooling in America.

In the majority of US States Corporal Punishment is legal under statues making exceptions to the states law regarding crimes of assault, criminal battery, domestic violence, sexual assault, sexual abuse or child abuse. Exceptions to these laws make it nearly impossible to charge a legal guardian of a child with a crime when certain actions are applied to that child. This extends into the public school system, where 17 states still allow for Corporal Punishment as a form of discipline within their public school systems. The practice was deemed “constitutional” by the Supreme Court in 1977. The Court held that the “cruel and unusual punishments” clause of the Eighth Amendment only applied to the treatment of prisoners convicted of a crime. Which, naturally we understand to be pure hypocrisy when you consider how often solitary confinement is used in the American prison system, and how universally accepted it is that solitary confinement is a horrific, life altering, inhumane experience.

You can read all the articles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child here: https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-rights-child

There are countless examples of children being objected to utterly horrific state violence, from the cartoonishly evil such as being arrested for not using the potty, to the systematically evil conditions within the foster care system: “According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in 2018, 62% of children placed in foster care were removed from their homes due to abusive neglect, totaling over 160,000 children.”. Then consider that states are actively fighting against universal free lunch programs in schools, and that the federal government failed to make permanent the temporary expansion of the child tax credit during covid which brought food insecurity in households with children to a two decade low.

For as much as the reactionaries talk about family values in America, it’s clear through their policies and actions that they have no intention of treating kids as anything other than property.

I love how the Spector seems to imply an evil in the heads of most Normans. I see it in my friends group and I will admit I had heard the line in the past and thought the same. Then I decided to actually read instead of parrot and realized it’s a Spector in the same literary sense as the Spectors from A Christmas Carol that haunt Ebenezer Scrooge.

The Spector of Communism exposes the world to the material realities of it’s past and present, which lay the stones that lead to the grim shadows of a future yet to come. Shadows, dear reader, that we might change by leading an altered life.

Oh god it looks like it’s just a top post cross post bot from reddit? Yuck.

Won’t someone please think of the roughnecks 😢

I agree with the symbolism but I’ve never seen a cog in a design that I like.

Reddit loves hating communists. Don’t tell them where Bernie gets his ideas from!

I think this is a good idea. I don’t think I’m the right person to gather that data since much of these are new to me too 😅. If people want to reply to this comment with that info for the ones they know I’ll update the post.

Take a step back and understand that you are having that argument right now, with yourself. I do this when I’m becoming anxious over something too. It’s like a rehearsal of sorts, but often for a show that never airs. If anything this thread will have armed you with information and points of view that can aid you on having that conversation if it comes around. Also remember you are not alone in your situation. Undoubtedly you’ll find others in a similar state and it drove them to action and advocacy too.

✌️♥️

👍

Dude, your baby isn’t a group of nazi’s what are you on?

I mean, .ml domains are free: http://www.point.ml/en/index.html?lang=en that’s the reason it was used.

That’s a great idea! I was having issues finding a list like this there too.

Others might have a better answer, so I’ll allow them to make suggestions. My commentary stems from holding similar views on Communism/Socialism, until I decided to actually dive into the theory. I’ve listened to the communist manifesto, and working on listening to Capital currently. I’d like to eventually read Black Shirts and Reds by Parenti. Having a good foundational understanding will help you evaluate our current place and time through the lense of these political ideologies and help avoid simply barking shibboleths at the moon.