My Socialism Includes Kids. . . .

After a lifetime of observation and thought, it increasingly seems to me that failures on the left are often not a result of leftists being too radical, but of them not being radical enough. That is to say, leftist who are supposed to oppose the arbitrary uses of power that are infused in society, all too often abandon one set of power structures for another. Now, this is historically obvious in the disastrous cases of many large-scale socialist projects like the Soviet Union. I think that most people on the left who are appropriately reflective understand that power (whether institutional or personal) tends to be self-replicating and that it gets out of hand easily and with often terrible consequences. We didn’t necessarily need Michel Foucault to point this out, there has been a solid tradition of leftists who have grappled with the issues of power, doubted parts of the Marxist or socialist traditions because of their (all too often) failure to make liberation a central part of their creed. But these liberatory threads of leftist thought were mostly marginalized by the mainstream socialist tradition that (for reasons that I could never fathom) hitched themselves to the wagon of Leninist (or even Stalinist) Marxism.

Unfortunately, we on the left are still paying for this colossal historical/intellectual error, and we still haven’t properly begun to reformulate (at least in the public mind) the real case for a liberatory socialism. So it goes.

Even more unfortunate is, I believe, that you don’t really have to look too far to see why leftism continues to be self-crippling. Leftist, as much as anyone else on the political spectrum continually fall victim to romanticizing the past. All too often, leftist, like those on the right, reason by nostalgia. The depth of this romanticism struck me recently while watching an exchange between Fran Leibowitz and Bill Maher. Both of these public figures (who are ostensibly considered to be left – at least in American terms) are so quick to hop on the band wagon of “good ol’ days” thinking that it is little wonder we are ideologically stuck. Leibowitz and Maher have fallen into the all too prevalent belief that one of the primary problems with today’s society is that we are too easy on kids. You hear this kind of talk all the time from people on every part of the political spectrum. “We are too soft with kids nowadays.” “In my day kids learned from the life of hard knocks, and it if was good enough for me it is good enough for them.” Leibowitz actually said that “we don’t punish kids enough” any more!

It is interesting to me that people who otherwise criticize the arbitrary exercise of power over people, are suddenly “all in” when it comes to parenting. I have heard many leftists who claim that punishment and negative reinforcement is counterproductive with adults, and then turn around and believe that it is the very best way to handle children. As though we can be harsh with children, treat them as though we are wardens governing over little prisoners, and then expect them to be soft, forgiving, equity-seeking, non-aggressive adults! The very idea seems patently absurd to me, and its falsity shockingly obvious.

There are a number of things to unpack about these kinds of beliefs. The first is to question whether they even true? Are children actually being treated more “indulgently” than in the past, say, sixty years? The second thing to ask ourselves is, if we do treat children significantly differently, is that demonstrably something that leads to undesirable behaviors now or later on?

Now, at one level, it is obvious that kids are treated differently than in the past. If you go back past the 1960s (at least in North America), schools and home-life was very different for the majority of kids. Children and young people often couldn’t express themselves in many ways. If they spoke up in classrooms or to their parents about what they thought, they could be treated shockingly harshly. But I have help to raise four kids and I don’t think much has changed since the 1960s. I don’t think kids are significantly more “indulged” than they were when I was growing up, and in many cases I am shocked to see the parents of my kids’ friends considerably stricter than the parents of my friends were.

 There is a widespread perception that things have changed radically in the past 30 or 40 years and I just don’t believe that is true. But again, as people age, they seem to inflate the changes that have taken place in their lifetimes and bemoan the perceived changes as progress run amok. Thus you will hear older people say, “In my day we didn’t talk back to our parents” as though having the capacity and/or right to say what you think is a bad thing. Furthermore, such a claim is mostly bollocks. In my day kids spoke back to their parents all the time. They might have got smacked for it, but they did it. And for those who think that hitting kids is totally fine, my simple question is “How did that work out for us?” You know, besides the World Wars the constantly lynchings, and the abundance of systemic violence everywhere? When I was young teachers could still hit kids in school in parts of North America. And let’s just observe that as it has become unacceptable to hit children the crime rates have consistently dropped.

So, while I will admit that some changes have taken place over the past 75 years concerning how we treat children, these changes haven’t gone nearly far enough, and rather than being a problem, such changes are actually one of the things that is driving us toward a more tolerant and equitable society. How is that any leftists let themselves fall into an idealization of our past treatment of children?? Particularly when it is the leftists who have always said that it is in our treatment of the most vulnerable, those without much of a voice, that we will be judged? Surely it is partially nostalgia, and partially the fact that many leftists simply aren’t (and never have been) actually committed to the principles of liberation. They only want a tidy revolution, they only want changes where it enhances their status and power.

As I said, I have helped to raise four kids, and if I have learned anything as a socialist it is that schools continue to be prison-houses for kids, plying them with competitive, power-driven ideologies. If kids speak up and say “fuck this,” I will do nothing but cheer them on. And if a young person wants me to call them by another pronoun, I will happily oblige. And if a child is grieved by some kind of loss (anything from a perceived academic failure to a loss in little league), I will be glad to commiserate with them. And if a child thinks that they should be able to wear what they want, I would not only allow it, I would encourage it, even I think (in my fuddy-duddy years) that it is a little wacky! And if kids want to be heard I will give them a bullhorn to be heard louder. And I will do these things for kids because I would do them for anyone! That’s not indulgence, that’s liberation.

Some nostalgic folks say that kids aren’t learning to deal with failure nowadays. I can’t think of a bigger load of nonsense. If you even vaguely observe a child today you know that they continue to deal with failure everyday; they struggle to be accepted by their peers, despite not being “thin enough” or “cool” enough. They continue to be pushed into activities by their parents that they don’t really want to do, and they struggle and often “underperform.” They struggle to get good grades in school because “success” is more than ever determined by your long-term career prospects. We are not indulging kids too much. If anything, we aren’t indulging them enough, we aren’t being honest enough about our own shortcomings and failures, and (certainly in the case of girls) we aren’t encouraging them enough to speak their minds and be who they really want to be.

The socialist project will move forward when we actually embrace tolerance, inclusion, and liberatory attitudes. And what better place to start than with kids? Let’s not bemoan the idea that kids have too much space to be themselves, let’s encourage it.