What class do children belong to?

[Jake_the_communist]

One thing that was never really clear to me was what class children(1-7 or so years old) belong to. They don't own the means of production, but neither are they dependent on selling their labor to survive. Would their class be whatever their parents class is? Or something else?

[Faust Arp]

They belong to the class that their parents (or anyone else who finances and takes care of them) belong to, since their material existence entirely depends on their guardians' position in class society. In case that the parents/guardians belong to different classes, the kid belongs to the class to which the parent/guardian who contributes more to the kid's material welfare also belongs to.

There are some theorists who claim that children by themselves present a separate, oppressed class, but I definitely think that's a big watering down of Marxist class analysis.

[Thirsty Crow]

None. It makes no sense to talk about the class position of children (implied by the verb form of "belong to X") as the life conditions of kids are determined by being entangled in specific aspects of the general social reproduction, from patterns of social care (the family, hired caregivers and tutors, preschool etc) to schooling as the process of getting ready to assume a class position in the future.

It makes sense, however, to talk about class background, and that indeed is determined by the life and work conditions of the immediate caregivers. As for class analysis, children are "declassed" or non-classifiable.

[Luís Henrique]

Children belong to the same class as their parents.

A proletarian is someone who lives on wages - even if those are not their own wages. A bourgeois is someone who lives on surplus value - even if it is surplus value extorted by a third party.

Children who live on wages of their parents are proletarians.

Children who live on surplus value extorted by their parents bourgeois.

Luís Henrique

[Faust Arp]

A proletarian is someone who lives on wages - even if those are not their own wages. A bourgeois is someone who lives on surplus value - even if it is surplus value extorted by a third party.


It's not as clear-cut, though - people who live strictly off welfare also live on surplus value, but they belong to the lumpenproletariat. Cops, managers etc live on their wages and their own work and are workers in a sense, but couldn't be called a part of the working class. Apart from the strictly economic criterium, we also need to consider the role that various layers of society possess in the larger social structure, from a functionalist rather than economic perspective, in order to more accurately determine the class which they belong to.

But otherwise I completely agree - a millionaire's teenage son who uses cash earned through exploitation of workers in order to ride around in a luxury sportscar, do tons of cocaine and fuck high-class prostitutes is no less of an exploiter than his father is - there's absolutely nothing distinguishing the two from a worker's perspective apart from an unimportant legalistic fact that the company which exploits them is bound to the father's name.

[StromboliFucker666]

Technically, they are de-classed but I think it's better to identify them with whoever their primary caretaker is. For example, if your caretaker is bourgeois, you will live as if you are bourgeois. If your care taker is lumpenproletariat, then that is the life you will lead until you are old enough to go out on your own.


That said, It's really useless to try to classify children. There really isn't a point.

[MarxSchmarx]

For what it's worth, the problem is not unique to children and frankly depends on one's definition of class and an individual's relationship to it.

For example, a similar question can be asked about women at different points in history - "The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World", by GEM de Ste Croix, for instance, famously goes into some depth about how women formed a distinct class, in part due to their flexible relationship to the means of production. I'm not sure I altogether buy these sorts of arguments, but they follow logically from one's definition of individuals constituting a class.

[Troika]

Emotional, generally unfamiliar with all of the horrors life has to offer, stinky, and lives off of the labor of others?

Must be bourgeoisie.

[flaming bolshevik]

They don't sell their labor or exploit it so i would say neither. But if they're born into a bourgeois family then odds are, they grow up to be bourgeois. Same with working class children until they're old enough to go their own way.

[Црвена]

Emotional, generally unfamiliar with all of the horrors life has to offer, stinky, and lives off of the labor of others?

Must be bourgeoisie.


#NotAllChildren

[Luís Henrique]

but they follow logically from one's definition of individuals constituting a class.

If an absurd conclusion logically follows from your premises, then you have a problem with your premises.

Luís Henrique

[Dialectical_Materialist]

Lumpen proletariat?

[Armchair Partisan]

School class, obviously.