Is there anything that can be learned from cases like Buttigeg and Harris where at least one of their parents was ostensibly a proponent of Marx? Have any of you known or had communist parents?
I'm trying to avoid my own kids becoming reactionary and the only thing I know to do to avoid that is show them internal consistency with my own views(valuing consent, consistency, openness, compassion, reason, creativity, and an unbreakable will), educate them on class conflict and historical materialism, and give them opportunities to reinforce the innate kindness within them while also introducing them to various other groups so that they grow up to feel a human connection to anyone regardless of differences in age, gender, nationality, etc.
I'll be closely involved in their school work to help counter imperialist propaganda in their public school education.
I'll be involving them in programs like 4H so they don't become alienated from the means of production and their environment.
I'll be insisting they get part time service industry jobs when they're old enough to help radicalize them against the inhumanities of capitalist exploitation
Additionally, the only communities I can think to raise them as a part of are SRA, and UU. If y'all have any suggestions I would love to hear them.
I honestly think that that is, in the end, beyond our control, and not accepting that could lead to the opposite of the desired effect. Instead of some grand plan, I think we should just be there for our children, try to have the kind of relationship where you can openly talk about these kinds of things, and gently nudge things in the right direction.
I would still watch their internet activities, though.
I would still watch their internet activities, though.
The alt-right playbook series should be required teaching in schools
I think it's important to note with the Harris and Buttigeg examples that both dads were incredibly successful, high level academics. This might be a bit of a generalization but you don't get to that level of academic accomplishment without making tremendous personal sacrifices i.e. you probably won't spend much time with your kids. No different from your high-level investment bankers or marketing managers. I know a fair number of successful academics and all but one, quite frankly, is a shit parent. Because at that level, pursuit of knowledge and/or success is an almost obsessive drive. I'm guessing Harris and Buttigeg's dad probably spent very little time actually parenting them, which would explain a lot.
increddibly successful, high level academics
what are the class interests of the PMC? https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/11/the-characterless-opportunism-of-the-managerial-class/
I started a thread about this awhile back if you want to peruse: https://hexbear.net/post/67602
Something I've learned since then comes from Todd McGowan on the Why Theory podcast. I think he has teenage twins so he talks about parenting now and then. He basically said that we always have to consider subjective factors. Basically, if you have two communist parents, and their kids grow up to be communists, you'll say it's because of the parents. In another situation, if you have two communist parents, and their kids grow up into libs, you'll also say it's because of their parents.
Off the top of my head, I'm honestly having trouble thinking of communist parents whose kids grew up into communists. In general it would seem like noteworthy communists dedicate themselves to the movement at the expense of their families, with predictable results. But I could be wrong.
McGowan has also said—and I don't necessarily agree here—that if you raise your kids too well, they basically grow up into...lazy nobodies? Like I guess that means that all the movers and shakers in history were ultimately just trying to prove something to their parents, who neglected or abused them. I don't know.
I have young-ish kids. We talk all the time. I'm not a perfect parent, but I'm definitely there for them. I'm working now on not bossing them around all the time, on letting them do their own thing, and also letting them know that I believe in them. I'm reading "Inside the Battle of Algiers," and the author, a revolutionary, constantly talks about how her dad (who was not a revolutionary) nonetheless told her, over and over again, that he had complete confidence in her. I don't think my parents did a terrible job with me, but they never said anything like that—not once—and even today act like it's a surprise if I can tie my own shoes.
Anyway, my kids' radicalism honestly makes me feel like a liberal sometimes. I have to occasionally remind them to make sure—contrary to Mao's wishes—to censor themselves around normies, although if some political incident ever comes up between my kids and their school (for instance), I will support my kids. I've observed them generally keeping their mouths shut regarding politics around people. And I mean, they're also kids, with all that term implies.
My wife is an anti-communist Social Democrat. She thinks like a Marxist all the time (money = power), but gets angry if I call her ideas Marxism. (She doesn't give a fuck about Biden or the Democrats, supports unions, is anti-imperialist, supports imprisoning most elected leaders in "democratic" countries, and has attended protests with me, so she's pretty cool most of the the time.) She doesn't want our kids to be little commies though. Sometimes she'll talk with them and just basically be like: communism bad, capitalism good. Thus far her approach has had, if anything, the opposite of the intended effect. I think it's obvious, but soft power is an incredibly powerful weapon. The fact that Hollywood, for instance, churns out so many movies and TV shows which just pretend that this fucked up world of ours in the imperial core is normal and nothing can be done about it probably makes far more of a difference than all the cops in the USA.
I have to see what happens when my kids become teenagers and adults. I assume that they'll think everything I say and do at that point is unbearable. As others have said here, you only have so much control.
I think that, sooner or later, another uprising will begin in the USA. Maybe it will achieve more than 2020. At that point, my kids will probably be teenagers or young adults. I suspect that they will want to take risks for the cause. I obviously don't want them risking imprisonment, violence, or death, but isn't that also an example of my own liberalism? Why should other people's kids have to take all the dangerous risks? Bringing down capitalism in the USA is a truly massive, epochal undertaking. All of us are going to have to work together and not all of us are going to make it. But then this also sounds like insanity—like I'm pushing my kids into some kind of death cult.
So yeah. There are twists and turns everywhere and we are not fully in control.
If you check out Reich's The Mass Psychology of Fascism, one of his many theories there is that people's attitude toward the state or the status quo comes from their attitude toward their parents. That, basically, having abusive parents and growing up rural, middle class, and as a member of the majority ethnic group almost guarantees that you will be a fascist (although again, there are subjective factors). Reich basically advocates the kind of sexual freedom we are working toward in the USA right now: let consenting adults enjoy having sex however they want to have it, because if they suppress their sexual urges it fucks them up in all kinds of ways. You can see how this plays out, for instance, in case after notorious case of fervent homophobic priests who are discovered to be fucking male sex workers like crazy. It's obviously not ridiculous to pay attention to the sexual element when considering people's political beliefs.
I'm thinking now of when I was hanging out at a playground a couple of years ago with some normies, and hearing one of the mothers, a fellow millennial, tell her daughter to act "ladylike." I couldn't believe I was hearing this word from someone my age. This woman is honestly pretty nice, but is like, textbook case of petite bourgeois in danger of proletarianization, and man the guys she hung around with—her ex-husband and her new boyfriend—were really, really not good people. (The ex-husband was the dangerous kid you never let yourself be alone with back in elementary school; the new boyfriend hung a fucking Gadsden flag outside of their house.) Nice as such people can be on a personal level, we all know that being a normie means you are either a fascist or highly at risk of becoming one, and I think looking into the sexual pathology here would just yield mountains of evidence.
Anyway, my kids’ radicalism honestly makes me feel like a liberal sometimes.
what do they say/do?
Frequently saying fuck the police, fuck America, fuck this shithole country, and how they want to burn all the American flags on display around here. They're obviously getting it from me, but to hear these things spoken by children can be pretty striking. I'm also their dad, so I don't want them getting into trouble.
What's funny though is that they're all talk, at the moment, anyway. I try to do a little praxis every day, and this has taken the form of occasional shitty anti-capitalist graffiti. One of my kids was with me when—after making sure the coast was clear—I changed the selection of a local book club from some boring novel to The Communist Manifesto. My little dude was freaking out the whole time and telling me to stop, even though this definitely was not a big deal. (I was writing on a paper.) It's pretty remarkable to see the contradictions play out like that, like how much influence I have with them: being unafraid to say "fuck America" with your dad, but being terrified of writing some pretty harmless and shitty graffiti in the real world.
We also didn't get caught and the book club took down the paper within a few days, which I also found pretty funny. I was hoping that a bunch of old millionaire white ladies would show up to their meeting with half of them clutching a copy of Marx.
But what if the imperative to fuck everything that moves is just the authoritarian mindset in another form? Are not incels driven to fascism by the shame of not meeting the mark?
You’re fucked if you do, fucked if you don’t.
I don’t think we need to fuck everything that moves, just like we don’t need to eat everything that moves. We must find a rational middle ground :pete:
I’m reading “Inside the Battle of Algiers,”
Oh this reminded me, I think it's a great idea to have books like The People's History of the United States, David Graeber's Debt book, or other physical books that are relatively easy for a say a younger teen to grasp on your bookshelf. I think if your kid is a reader, they will naturally have an interest in reading the books you read. I know I did with my dad.
My dad never read a book in his life. We never had a bookshelf. Hahaha. And look how great I turned out! Good thing there were political screed in the liner notes of the punk CDs I bought.
My wife is an anti-communist Social Democrat.
*moderate fascist
She thinks like a Marxist all the time (money = power)
please read Marx
Sorry, ownership of the means of production = power.
I am surrounded by libs who believe that people are guided by ideals of liberty and that the average homeless person has the same amount of power as Jeff Bezos so this is honestly a step up in my opinion.
This is very reassuring since I'm in a somewhat similar situation where my partner agrees with every point I make regarding food, housing, healthcare, education, acab, anti-colonialism, anti -imperialism, systemic racism, environmentalism and the problem that comes from having a society where a working class does not own the means of production, BUT only if I call all that shit socialism, not communism because communism bad, and they're also pretty anti gun but at least they consistent and don't think cops should have guns either. They want to be rich though, because they'd rather escape oppression by having enough wealth to not have to sell their labor anymore. So, kinda sus but not at all interested in teaching our kids political philosophy nor in interfering with my education plans for them so mostly benign parenting-wise from my perspective and potentially a useful foil considering the kids already don't like them.
I'm glad to hear a similar situation works out for you. I will definitely take what you have shared and use it to improve my own parenting.
Yeah, I once asked my wife, who currently benefits a great deal from belonging to a union, if she would support the formation of a union at her workplace, like assuming none had ever been formed there before. Would she support the workers, or the bosses? She said of course she would support the workers. Then I was like, okay, what about just like one big union for the whole world? That's basically what communism is. (Yes, I know it's not exactly that.) She just rolled her eyes and the conversation was over.
I want to believe that as things generally get more fucked up, that more people will be converted to anti-capitalism, but the ability people have to blame individual bad actors when the socioeconomic system they favor is at fault is pretty impressive. I think my wife's anti-communism also comes not only from childhood abuse, which she suffered a great deal of, but also the political environment she spent most of her life experiencing in South Korea. Anti-communism is a thing, there, where it is actually illegal to be a communist (although I don't think the government has prosecuted anyone for quite some time), while in America, for most of my life, communism was almost never discussed at all. Until 2015, it was just something occasionally mentioned in the background, an uninteresting failure.
It sounds like our partners have a lot in common, ideologically. I don't know. Things are working out for the time being, but who the hell knows what's in store for all of us?
My dad essentially gave the "communism means no food, lazy workers" spiel.
I'm a parent and this is definitely a fear for me.
Part of parenting is teaching (mostly by example and some guidance) and then allowing them to be their own person and take their own journey. Child autonomy is incredibly important, and trying to make sure they turn out the way you want is destined to not only fail, but to hurt them and destroy your relationship.
I think teaching some basic understanding of the world, and how it actually functions, as well as having real experiences in the world that allows them to experience it firsthand without your direct meddling is what I'm trying to do. A year of working at Wal Mart taught my son more about capitalism than all of the lectures I've ever given on it.
Also, try to involve them in your organizing, especially stuff like Food Not Bombs, Tenant Unions, and things like that that give them direct experience not only organizing but getting to know a diverse community personally.
Just be a good parent who actually spends time parenting and loving your kids. Teach them theory gently but clearly, even just by osmosis - questioning media narratives, saying all people serve x, y, z, pointing out class consciousness.
It's hard to reach generalizations about leftist parents per them generally having leftist kids. For every Buttigieg you could list a Marx. Hard to think of someone more dedicated to the cause and theory than Marx, but he raised a bunch of commies.
Maybe he was like Euclid, who had a zillion kids, who'd sit on his lap while he worked on maths. That is, he was a doting father who loved his kids while also being a prolific math guy. Marx seemed like he spent time with his kids, at least so maybe it is the 'spend time with your kids' thing?
I'd rather my kids grow up Quaker than Unitarian Universalist, having grown up UU!
That said, my guess is that having a good relationship with your kids is essential. Listen to their feelings, talk to them, let them know you respect and admire them. Don't hit, yell at or punish them. Reason with them, redirect them, compromise with them. Set them up to behave with clear expectations and routines. That's the best chance you'll have of them listening to anything you have to say, but know that you're one small part of their world, and you can't control what they believe.
That's a great point, I am by far their favorite parent and I think that is in large part due to how I listen to them and place great importance on their consent.
I haven't had a direct connection to the UU church, I just read a lot about them and had a UU friend who was very well adjusted. I live in California so idk of there's a quaker community out here. Is there anything about UU you think I should know?
Teach them the stuff we all know we wished we were taught in school. You got some good early childhood advice already, so teach them about the cool radical stuff as you feel they are ready for it. The militant labor movements and unions that attained the few rights as workers they still enjoy today, the unwhitewashed version of the civil rights movement, the real badasses of history and the cool stuff that gets omitted. So much of what they will be taught by schools and their peers will not only be wrong but not nearly as cool as real history.
Kids love to feel like they're being let in on a secret or some forbidden knowledge.
Teach them the stuff we all know we wished we were taught in school.
You know I keep that mf-ing thang on me (Zinn's People's History, Dunbar-Ortiz' Indigenous Peoples' History, etc) I'd love any recommendations you have for essential reading/viewing though.
Kids love to feel like they’re being let in on a secret or some forbidden knowledge.
Hell that's like all I ever wanna talk about! They're 2 now but I can't wait to tell them about all this shit.
Currently still trying to finish reading Du Bois' Black Reconstruction and I would highly recommend the Marx Madness podcast if you need some supplemental commentary and contemporary reference to go along with reading some of those older texts. So far they've done full readings of Capital, State and Revolution, Imperialism, Wretched of The Earth, and are almost finished with Black Reconstruction.
Most UUs are ime perfect liberals. I once watched one storm out of a racial justice seminar. They're all woke and tolerant until you test it at all.
It's a religion. Unitarianism was a European tradition that believed that Jesus was just a prophet and not God himself.
Universalism was an American protestant tradition that believed all people were destined for heaven.
They were syncretized with tramscedentalisn which is like, protestant nature worship. Think Thoreau.
Both were involved in abolitionist and anti mexican war movement, albeit in some truly do nothing ways.
During the 60s they combined into a single church, despite their diverging views on the trinity.
Rather than have a dogma, they believe that each person has to find their own spiritual truth, and so a lot of them end up atheists lol.
Now it's just sort of church for white liberal atheists. They have a joke that "diversity at a UU congregation is 5 different colors of Subaru in the parking lot."
PMCs produce hellspawn because material conditions matter more than stated ideological conviction!!!!
True Leftists forgo having children.
Checkmate, lib.
(As a dad I worry about this shit all the time)
Just don’t be a punk ass PMC who gets paid to be the brains of the capitalist mega-machine and you should be fine. Class position ruined these hellspawn
I mean, it was kinda a joke, but there is a definite anarchist to lib pipeline.
Look at the number of cringe anti-china tweets from otherwise respectable anarchists.
There is a fundamental respect for liberal values in some strains of anarchism and that can lead to unfortunate outcomes.
Oh for sure, but mostly I see that sort of stuff online, and in person I've had an unbroken record of convincing people why even if they do think china is bad, they can hold that position while also acknowledging there is literally nothing they can do about it without supporting interventionist foreign policy and that their energy is better focused on domestic issues.
But like. Somebody has to know those people in real life you know?
I have mostly anarchist friends and they're some of the best people I know. Fuck off with that
Quit hogging the good ones. I don't think I have met a anarchist in the wild. Normies as far as the eye can see in my area.
Once again the riddle of history is solved by material analysis. You put your finger right on it.
Where did the children of those middle class type academics grow up? Comfortable suburbs surrounded by other comfortable middle call folks. Little wonder they absorbed the norms of thsir environment.
The most recent research I can recall is that a child's attitudes best correlate to the attitudes of their peers. So in most cases that is the answer right there
My mom was staunchly anti-communist, so probably a similar situation caused the break of sorts. I figure a bad relationship with the said parent was a major contributor, the whole adaptation to one's environment thing. Harvey's pretty lib but he was on point saying children are naturally dialectical.
Harvey’s pretty lib but he was on point saying children are naturally dialectical.
can you expand on that , sounds interesting
They adapt to their conditions and realize the change and motion of said conditions/life, not so much in a material framework though. It tends to be more in the line of OG Hegelian over simplified tricohomy of thesis-antithesis-synthesis (parents say no, grandparents say yes, ask grandparents for candy) but you do see more of the standard in complex cases like language learning or moves for example.
I heard somewhere that Harris' communist parent was not the one that raised her. That could explain it. Imo, Buttiges is someone who learnt from his father and understood Marxism yet due to his priviliged position attempted and succeeded to rather reap the benefits of capitalism rather than try to eliminate it.
One thing I'm considering is getting my kids involved in our local theologically liberal Methodist church. This is actually pretty difficult for me because I still have leftover trauma I'm dealing with from my fundamentalist evangelical upbringing (long story short, the doctrine of eternal torment nearly broke my brain) and I'm very much an atheist now. However, this church is pretty good at community involvement and definitely doesn't share the views of my evangelical upbringing. I think my kids could really learn good things about accepting others and empathy towards everyone.
Also, I want to add that I had very good, loving parents that I still have a good relationship with today, as do my siblings for the most part. They are politically conservative evangelicals, and yet their kids range from commie (me) to mostly good intentioned radlibs (my siblings); and we're all atheist or agnostic. My siblings and I have discussed this at length before, and the best we can determine is that despite their theological and political views, our parents were kind and loving and taught us to be kind and empathetic towards others. They also never pushed their views on us and they generally valued learning (we were told we had to go to college despite my parents not really going themselves). And weirdly, we also listened to a ton of non-political news radio in the car. All of us do attribute some of our knowledge and concern about the broader world from that.
