Marx on Ageism

  1. marxistcritic
    What did Marx say about ageism? In the Communist Manifesto, although he does not use the word ageism, he explains that the the cause of ageism is the existence of a family, and thinks that we should abolish the family, with ageism being one of the reasons. If freedom from ageism means abolishing the family, then I will be willing to make that sacrifice. What is your opinion on this issue, and what are some other examples of Marx's oposition to ageism.
  2. Weezer
    Weezer
    I didn't know that Marx had opposition to ageism, but he did however hate child labor. I've always noticed that ageism is the one form of discrimination Revolutionary Leftists seem to forget to mention, and thus don't usually support youth rights either.
  3. marxistcritic
    I've always noticed that ageism is the one form of discrimination Revolutionary Leftists seem to forget to mention, and thus don't usually support youth rights either.[/quote]
    We should change that.
  4. Weezer
    Weezer
    I've always noticed that ageism is the one form of discrimination Revolutionary Leftists seem to forget to mention, and thus don't usually support youth rights either.
    We should change that.[/quote]

    I agree wholeheartedly.
  5. marxistcritic
    How to do it, though??
  6. Weezer
    Weezer
    Spread the word of youth rights, yo.
  7. ZeroNowhere
    Well, he did once say, "The most cowardly, unresisting people become implacable as soon as they can exercise their absolute parental authority. The abuse of this authority is, as it were, a crude compensation for all the submissiveness and dependence to which they abase themselves willy-nilly in bourgeois society." [Italics in original]
    On the other hand, I don't recall him opposing the schooling structure and such.

    Edit: Engels in his pre-socialist days did write this, however: "But that age is no more; we are put in prisons called schools, where instead of striking out around us we are made with cruel irony to conjugate the verb “to strike” in Greek in all moods and tenses, and when we are released from that discipline we fall into the hands of the goddess of the century, the police. Police for thinking, police for speaking, police for walking, riding and driving, passports, residence permits, and customs documents — the devil strike these giants and dragons dead!"

    Also Marx: "Further information on this point will be found in Senior’s speech at the Social Science Congress at Edinburgh in 1863. He there shows, amongst other things, how the monotonous and uselessly long school hours of the children of the upper and middle classes, uselessly add to the labour of the teacher, “while he not only fruitlessly but absolutely injuriously, wastes the time, health, and energy of the children.” From the Factory system budded, as Robert Owen has shown us in detail, the germ of the education of the future, an education that will, in the case of every child over a given age, combine productive labour with instruction and gymnastics, not only as one of the methods of adding to the efficiency of production, but as the only method of producing fully developed human beings." Hm, I suppose it's time to read Owen, then.

    Also, from the Manifesto:
    "Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.

    But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.

    And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class."
  8. CHEtheLIBERATOR
    It really is a puzzle trying to solve the problem of ageism
  9. marxistcritic
    True.
  10. Cosmonaut
    It really is a puzzle trying to solve the problem of ageism
    Family, it is purely family. I would have no problem getting rid of my family, I hate my family. My suggestion to all kids that hate being oppressed, leave your family! Rebel!
  11. Guardia Rossa
    Family, it is purely family. I would have no problem getting rid of my family, I hate my family. My suggestion to all kids that hate being oppressed, leave your family! Rebel!
    Become a beggar!
  12. Guardia Rossa
    Family, it is purely family. I would have no problem getting rid of my family, I hate my family. My suggestion to all kids that hate being oppressed, leave your family! Rebel!
    Become a beggar!