Is this why adults are rarely revolutionaries?

[dbzfanl]

Adults have grown up to realize what's real and what's fantasy. They therefore make it habitual to follow what's real (because they do not have to power to change anything anymore) and they become conservative. It's why you can't change people's personality after they turn approximately six years old- they grow too habitually close to what they know.

Youths have the power to change things. They are the next generation that are always capable of change....that's why there's changes in each generation. I read on another post that some youths grow into liberal adults; this is true but rare. Even more rare is trying to find someone who is active. (That's a fault that you can blame on the evolution of Franklin's ideal capitalist.)

Feedback?

[Forward Union]

Originally posted by [email protected] 14, 2007 04:51 pm
Adults have grown up to realize what's real and what's fantasy.
So you're suggesting that class tensions in the workplace, and in the wider community don't exist!? Do you honestly think that class tensions are, in your own words, 'fantasy'?

Please, tell that to my local postal staff who are all facing redundancy - Or perhaps the Rover factory workers that got their jobs moved to India, or perhaps even the working class people in Oaxaca and Atenco, who have been murdered and raped for trying to run their own lives. Unionisation, struggle against the state and the bosses, such issues are very much 'real' and very much relevent to the working class of today!

I think the reality is that they're not relevent to you, because you're probably a well-off student of some sort, who considers communism some ideal fantasy.

In fact, a vast majority of our global movement is adult, so your entire premise, is wrong.


Youths have the power to change things.

To some extent, but it's limited. Adults often have more literal power, because they are more likely to be employed, I mean, students can't take over and run the factories, they don't know how and don't work in them. Granted, in some cases, children are workers, the defining issue is employment. Not age.

Youths are less credible, less physicaly capable (in most instances) and don't normally have jobs. So are alltogether less capable of social change than adults.

But they do have their revolutionary part.

[JazzRemington]

I think a quote from Free Range Egghead, a character from the fantastic Wild Cat comics, can best sum up the answer to your question: "young people find anarchist ideas easier to grasp than old people, probably because they have heard less government propaganda." (Wild Cat, ABC of Bosses, 2004 reprint, pg. 30)

I think its because they've grown up hearing capitalist and statist rhetoric and not anything else; however, if pushed enough, adults do get mad. For example, in I think some town in Michegan, a water company started charging high rates for water access. People couldn't pay, so the company began shutting off access. In response, some adults went around turning back on access via the taps located around the neighborhood.

I know defying the water company isn't too revolutionary, but you haev to understand that I think it takes a LOT to push adults into declaring revolution.

[RNK]

The problem is that after years of being subjected to all of the horrors of exploitation and abuse in the capitalist system, most people get to the point that simply surviving, and desperately holding on to the tiny amount of well-being they've managed to scrape out of the capitalist system, is more important. It's almost like brainwashing -- many are so completely and utterly consumed by the need to simply work, work, work, live, earn, gain as repeated over and over and over again by capitalist propaganda, that they feel that to change it would be far too high a risk. It may also be why people in 3rd world countries are far more willing to go to extremes than we in the west -- because they have far less to lose. Atleast here in the west we've been able to claw some manner of existence out of capitalism. But out there, in the rest of the world, when you have nothing to show for, then you have nothing to lose by trying to change the system.

[dbzfanl]

Originally posted by Love Underground+ March 14, 2007 05:07 pm--> (Love Underground @ March 14, 2007 05:07 pm)
[email protected] 14, 2007 04:51 pm
Adults have grown up to realize what's real and what's fantasy.
So you're suggesting that class tensions in the workplace, and in the wider community don't exist!? Do you honestly think that class tensions are, in your own words, 'fantasy'?[/b]

Where did you pull that out of? I'm talking about the fact that they live in a capitalist-dominant society which sends out constant propaganda about itself. (Thanks Jazz for a little bit of elaboration for finishing my sentences. I have issues with writing.) I'm talking about how kids live in fantasy for a good amount of their child development, such as (ie) Tom Sawyer. They grow up to observe the world in action, not to live in their own. I honestly don't know how the heck you got class tensions out of that sentence. I don't know how to proceed hearing that. (No offense there)

And you were right about the power being in the adults- maybe that should change too. It's sort of elitist....but it makes a little sense. I am adjusting mmy first post to say youths have the potential to become liberal and leftist thinkers. It all lies in the psychological and mental growth.

Also, for clarification: by youth, I mean mid teens to mid 20s, possibly later.

[Fawkes]

I think it could possibly be due to the fact that many adults become fed up when they get older at what they see as little progress from the things that they worked so hard for when they were younger. If you look at the last century, at least in America, you'll see that each generation is more radical than their predecessors because they grew up in an even more liberal environment than their parents did and as a result are even more radical. But I definitely think that the prime reason that people feel this way is because as they grow older they become fed up with what they perceive to be the little change that they have accomplished.

[Concept]

every person i've talked to about revolutionary ideas says that either we can't overthrow the government or that this is the way society is, u need poor people

i say that's bullshit
it almost sounds like they have no faith in us as a human race or they are so caught up in the struggle to survive, which in some cases is buying a $50k+ car just to look good (which makes me sick)
people lack the sense of community due to the individualist viewpoint pushed by capitalism...we need mad solidarity!!!!!!

[Organic Revolution]

I think the reason that you think there isnt 'adult' revolutionaries is that they dont come to little internet forums and gripe all day, they are out fighting for there cause. Most radicals are adults, because they have seen how the world works and realize that it is only made for the rich.

[Marukusu]

Adults, even most of those who where revolutionaries as youths, tend to become desillusionized in their cause after a while, perhaps because the lack of progress and/or lack of belief in the revolution in the first place (joining some revolutionaries because of the comradeship, "the chicks" or whatever). They often become conformistic and downright lazy, they don't care about politics at all and many feel that they have a lot of "other things to do" than trying to overthrow the capitalist system, which they say is impossible (much because of capitalist propaganda and probably out of fear for something new).

There are however exceptions, people who becomes revolutionary in their youths and are loyal to their cause until they die in old age.

[Pilar]

Most all revolutionaries have come from the middle classes, and often the upper middle class at that. Hardly any revolutionary was ever poor or broke. There are many sociologists who have written about classes and how they contribute to society.

Personally, I believe anyone waiting for the youth to lead anything shouldn't hold their breath. Young people are highly conservative, and moreso than any other generation in the west to date. Nearly all of their entertainment and status results from VERY LARGE amounts of cash.

And they're more likely to demand their M-TV or latest cell phone or clothes than they are to protest against capitalism.

There are ga-jillions of kids who aren't capitalist, but merely consumers. They couldn't tell you a thing about Karl Marx, or Adam Smith. They just know you need money to get stuff. Case closed.

[bolshevik butcher]

Depends what you mean by revolutionary. To me most revolutionaries, the people that make up the international socailist movement, the rank and file, the people that dedicate much of their time to fighting against capitalism and for a better world for the working class are working class people ironically enough. Usually adults as well.....

Of course most socialists are adults, love underground has hit this on the head, most workers area audlts so therefore most of the socialist movement also is. Of course youths have a part to play but part of their job is acutally to galvanise the wider workers movement, the class example being in France 1968.