Explaining Socialism to Kids

This series of articles will explain socialism in plain terms for children about ten years of age or older. It's written from a Socialist point of view, and meant as a guide for parents when the question is raised.

Refuting Arguments Against Socialism

Brian K. Noe · January 17, 2019 ·

This essay began as another in the series of articles meant to explain socialism to kids. I intended to draft it as best I could, and then rework it with simpler language for the younger audience. I may still do that, but decided to publish it here, as is, for adults. Questions and constructive feedback are welcome, as always, in the comments.

Common Arguments Against Socialism

Over the years since people first began talking about socialism, there have been many arguments made against it. Here are the three most common arguments made against socialism today, and some responses from a socialist’s point of view.

Capitalism is already the best imaginable system.

Folks sometimes argue that, for all of its faults, our current system is the best that could ever possibly be imagined. They say that the “free markets” under capitalism create the most wealth and freedom possible. They say that the system rewards hard work and genius, and gives us all of these marvelous products that make our lives better. Medical breakthroughs, iPhones, interesting foods – anything that we can dream, we can have – quicker, better and cheaper than ever before. Under capitalism, they say, the common working person lives like a king, and things just keep getting better and better. The “hidden hand of the market” is wise, and if we just let it do its work without interfering, everyone will be happier, healthier and more fulfilled than at any other time in human history. They will also often cite examples of people who grew up in extreme poverty and rose to great heights of wealth and power under capitalism, and then tell us that this would not be possible under any other system. If they can make it, we can too!

It is true that many people, especially people in the United States and other “developed” countries, seem to be doing pretty well. We have enough to eat, homes, cars, gadgets, and plenty of free time to enjoy them. So for a lot of us, this argument rings true. But when you step back and look at the facts, you see a very different story.

Half of the world’s children, 1.1 billion kids, live in poverty. 736 million people around the globe live in what is defined as “extreme poverty,” surviving on less than $1.90 a day. Even in the United States, a relatively wealthy nation, almost 50 million people, including 16.2 million children, live in households that lack the means to get enough nutritious food on a regular basis. One out of every five children in America go to bed hungry at some point each year.

Under capitalism, competition for access to natural resources, especially fossil fuels, has led to war after war for more than a century. Seizing Iraq’s oilfields was one of the main objectives of the British during World War I. The oilfields of Indonesia were a major motivation for Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, prompting the U.S. to enter World War II. Over the last five decades, as many as half of all the wars between nations have been linked to oil, and oil-producing nations are also more likely to face civil wars over control of the oil field profits.

Beyond the wars (and terrorist acts) linked to oil, we also know what the addiction to fossil fuels is doing to the climate on our planet. It is not unreasonable to say that the human race could be facing near-term extinction due to climate change, and the capitalist system is directly responsible. According to the Climate Accountability Institute, just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global greenhouse gas emissions which are driving the disastrous warming of our climate.

Poverty, war, terrorism and climate disaster are just a few examples of things that make socialists doubt that capitalism is “the best system anyone can imagine.” In fact, we dare to imagine a better one. Socialists dare to imagine a world where no one ever has to go to bed hungry. Socialists dare to imagine a world where the profits of a few dozen companies don’t threaten the very existence of life on the Earth.

Okay, capitalism has its problems, but under socialism, nobody would do anything and we’d all starve.

Another common criticism of socialism is that if everyone’s basic needs were met, nobody would work, and the whole society would break down. There would be no punishment for laziness, and no reward for working hard or being smart. The system would basically take things away from hardworking people who deserve them, and give those things to lazy people who don’t deserve them.

This criticism says more about life under capitalism than it does about socialism. Under capitalism, we are conditioned to compete with each other. The idea is that if we work harder than other people, or are smarter than they are, or more creative, that we’ll get a reward. We’ll get the reward because we deserve it. So, by definition, people who don’t get the rewards are lazy and stupid and lack imagination. So, naturally, we think that a system set up to meet human needs can’t work, because people are naturally lazy and stupid and if someone isn’t cracking a whip over them all the time, they won’t do anything, because “that’s just human nature.”

There are a lot of things wrong with this argument, but I’ll point out three of the major flaws.

First, it’s just not true that under capitalism the people who work hardest or are smartest or otherwise most deserving get the rewards. Some of the smartest, most creative, most conscientious, most hard working people in the world have barely enough to survive and to take care of their families. And some of the laziest, dumbest, most good-for-nothing slackers on the planet have all the wealth you can imagine. Go say hello to anyone working in a warehouse or at a fast food restaurant, and you’ll see an example of hard work that isn’t properly rewarded. Turn on your television, especially when our President is speaking, and you’ll see an example of the opposite.

Second, people already do things all of the time out of a sense of duty, or obligation, or love, or joy, without any thought about monetary reward. Every time that someone in your household cooks a meal for you, or cleans house, or folds laundry, or takes a dog for a walk, that’s an example. Some of the most meaningful and important work that people do every day is not motivated by the prospect of a paycheck or the threat of starvation.

Third, we know from history that there were societies based on cooperation and meeting everyone’s needs. Life may have been hard sometimes for these “primitive communist” societies, and they had their problems like everyone else, but they managed to survive and be happy without the need to coerce people to get them to work. People worked hard, and worked together, because it was their way of life, not because of threats or incentives.

So the notion that once our basic human needs are met that we would all just put our feet up on the couch and watch Netflix all day has no basis in fact, except for the cruel facts of life under capitalism. We dare to imagine a better world.

But socialism never works. It always ends up with people standing in line for hours just to get a loaf of bread. And it also always ends up with horrible monster dictators like Stalin and Mao, and they kill millions of people. Nobody is ever free under socialism.

Attempts at establishing socialist societies have definitely failed. And some of the boldest and most promising experiments have turned out the worst. But this does not mean that all attempts at socialism are doomed. The failures of the past have had their roots in the conditions of a particular time and place. There’s nothing baked in to socialism that makes it more vulnerable to social problems or murderous tyrants than other systems.

We shouldn’t dismiss the criticisms or make excuses for failures and atrocities, but we also shouldn’t allow the dream of socialism to be defined by those failures and atrocities. Early attempts at difficult and complicated things often fail. We can learn from those mistakes and begin again.

When someone brings up the issue of “freedom” under socialism, there are several questions that should be asked. Freedom for who? For everybody? Is everybody really free under capitalism? Are people free to leave a job that they hate? A job that stresses them out? I suppose so, at least in theory. And they are free to starve too. In theory we’re free, but in reality not so much.

Under socialism the goal would be a society where people are truly free to develop themselves to the limits of their potential. Is that even possible? Frankly, we don’t know, but we do dare to imagine a world where, in the words of the Communist Manifesto “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”

The goal of developing a truly democratic global socialist society is daunting, there is no doubt. Karl Marx believed that it is through the process of struggle, the process of revolution, that we will become “fit to rule.”

So let us begin.

Daddy, are we working class?

Brian K. Noe · May 25, 2016 ·

In this second article in our series explaining socialism to kids, we take a look at a key concept for many socialists, particularly Marxists. What is “the working class?”

You’ve probably heard the words “working class” being used on the news lately. Especially during an election year, people will talk a lot about “working class voters.” Or sometimes you’ll hear them say something about a “working class neighborhood.”

Here in the United States, people think of the working class as folks who do factory work. Or sometimes they mean someone who works in a job that doesn’t pay very much, or one that doesn’t require a lot of education, or maybe one that involves a lot of hard physical work.

There’s another meaning of “working class” though, that’s really important to socialists. Socialists believe that this special classification of people are the ones who can transform society and lead the world to freedom and equality.

Who is the working class?

In order to make the things that we need for our lives, two things are required. They are labor power and the “means of production.” Labor power is the ability of a worker to do something. It could be making a sandwich or driving a school bus or writing computer code, or anything else that workers do. The “means of production” is everything the worker needs in order to do the job. In a sandwich shop, means of production would be things like the building, the ingredients, the cash register, tables and chairs – everything needed in order to prepare and sell and serve the meal so the customer can eat it.

Under our capitalist economic system, a pretty small percentage of people own these means of production. They are called owners, or bosses or “the ruling class.” All of the rest of us, who don’t own the means of production and must sell our labor power to the bosses so we can earn money to live, are in the working class.

It doesn’t matter what type of work a person does, or how much money she makes. If she doesn’t control the means of production, she is part of the working class.

Why is the working class important to socialists?

Working class people can have it pretty rough. We have to show up when the owners want us to show up. We have to do what we’re told. If we don’t, we might be fired from the job and not have money to buy the things we need in order to live. For a lot of workers, it’s a struggle every day to keep our jobs and earn enough to survive. It’s especially hard for people with limited education and skills, for single parents, or for anyone with extra challenges in their lives. Lots of times people have to choose between taking care of important things at home, and doing what they have to do to keep their jobs.

It seems like the bosses sort of have us in a bad situation. Since they own the means of production, they can order us around and we pretty much have to do what they say. Some owners (or the managers they hire) are nice people, and try to treat their workers with kindness and respect. Still, the worker always knows that he has to do what the boss says or he might lose the job.

So, how can a group of people like the working class, who seem so powerless, be the ones to transform society? If we have to do what the bosses say, how can we possibly lead anyone to a better world? It’s because the working class has a secret super power. The power is called solidarity.

Although an individual worker may be powerless to defy the owners, when workers stand together in solidarity, they can change the world. The ruling (owning) class is so small, that they can’t possibly do the work themselves. Without the workers, no work gets done.

When workers decide together to stay off the job until their demands are met, it’s called “going on strike.”

Think of your favorite sandwich shop. If all of the workers decided not to show up to work, there would be nobody there to make the meals, to clean the tables, or to take the orders.

Or think about an owner of a bus company. She would be sitting alone in a parking lot full of empty busses if the drivers decided not to come to work. Without the working class, everything in society stops.

So when workers stand together in solidarity, they can show the bosses that it’s really the workers who have all the power – in the workplace and in society. But it’s only when they stand together as one that this becomes the truth.

What can solidarity do?

When workers join unions, and stand in solidarity together to make demands, they can get the bosses to pay attention and give in. In fact, before the struggles of unions in the early 1900s, people sometimes had to work fourteen hours a day or more, six or seven days a week. Workers formed unions and went on strike to demand an eight-hour work day. Later, they demanded higher wages, and benefits, such as vacations and health insurance and days off when they’re sick. These things that so many of us enjoy and take for granted today were not given by the owners simply because they wanted to be nice. They were won by the workers who stuck together and demanded them.

Workers can demand and win things like better hours, better working conditions and higher wages for their own jobs. But they can also work in solidarity to make a better society for everyone. Unions have fought for things like an end to child labor, laws regulating workplace safety, a minimum wage for all workers (even ones not in unions), Social Security benefits for retired workers, and so much more.

Working Class Solidarity for a Better World

For socialists, the goal is a society where we do away with the ruling class owners altogether. In a socialist society, the workers would control the means of production, and would share in all the decisions about what to produce and how the work should be done. There wouldn’t be an owner to boss people around. We would rule ourselves in fairness and equality. We would do this because we’re all in the same boat. In the words of the Wobblies (a union that started more than a hundred years ago) “an injury to one is an injury to all.” We would all stand up together in solidarity for a just and equal share of society’s bounty and an equal say in society’s decisions.

So yes, my dear. We are a working class family, and proud of it. It’s up to us to always show our solidarity with other workers, and to fight together with them for a better life for all of us.

In the words of the famous socialist and philosopher Karl Marx “Workers of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains!”

Daddy, What’s Socialism?

Brian K. Noe · October 6, 2015 ·

My ten-year-old daughter asked me this question over breakfast one morning in Chicago. We were in the city for Independence Day weekend. I was attending the Socialism 2015 conference, and she and her mom came along to enjoy some sights, do a little shopping and see a show in town.

In our household, political subjects come up often in casual conversation. Our daughter has been no stranger to discussions about social justice, war and peace, union advocacy, and more. When she takes an interest, we try to answer her questions as directly and honestly as we can. Oddly, this simple question had never come up. Even more oddly, I found myself at something of a loss for a simple answer.

Being in a hotel filled with Socialists (along with no small number of Deadheads, in town for the last concerts at Soldier Field), we went looking for resources. We visited the Haymarket Books room, a decent sized hall that had been set up as a temporary radical book store for the weekend. Although there was an entire table of children’s books, none of them really addressed the question directly and succinctly. The folks staffing the room were kind and attentive, and seemed a bit puzzled themselves that “Socialism 101 For Kids” wasn’t among their offerings.

This series of articles is my attempt to answer our daughter’s question. I hope that it will spark some discussion, and perhaps lead us, and other parents, to additional resources that we may have overlooked.

We’ll eventually get to a discussion of the history of Socialist thought and struggle, the distinctions between terms like Socialism, Marxism, Anarchism and Communism, and also some of the most common criticisms of Socialism. For this article, though, I’ll stick to a fairly brief and straightforward answer to the main question, written from a Socialist point-of-view.

So, what is Socialism?

Socialism means that we all work together to take care of each other, so that everyone has what they need.

In a Socialist world, everyone would have a decent place to live, enough food to eat, clean water to drink, clean air to breathe, medical attention when they need it, warm clothes for the cold weather, a good education, and the ability to develop to their fullest potential. Under Socialism, everyone would be free and equal regardless of gender, race, nationality or religion. Everyone would be safe from oppression (being kept down or treated unfairly), exploitation (being taken advantage of) and war. This is the Socialist ideal.

Socialism is different from our current society mainly because of two basic ideas. First, Socialism is about cooperation instead of competition. We call our current economic system Capitalism. Under Capitalism, people compete for almost everything. Individuals compete for jobs, for the best education, for housing, even for the basic necessities of life. Companies compete for funding and material resources, for customers, for new ideas and products. Whether you’re a worker or a business owner, you’re always competing, because under Capitalism there are winners and losers, and one of the worst names you can call someone in our society is “loser.” Being a loser in our society can mean that your family won’t have enough to eat.

Under Socialism, instead of everyone fighting for a bigger and bigger share all the time, we would all be working together to see that everyone has at least enough.

That’s the second idea that makes Socialism different from our current society. Under Socialism, the basic human needs of all people would come first. Right now, the richest eighty people in the world own as much as the poorest 3.5 billion (half of the Earth’s population) combined. Our current economic and political system puts the property of the wealthy few, and the profits of their corporations, first. So some people have everything that money can buy, and so much money left over that they could never spend it all in an entire lifetime. Yet they are encouraged to accumulate even more wealth, while 300 million children in the world go to bed hungry every night.

Under Socialism, the needs of the hungry children for food would be more important than the profits and bank accounts of the wealthy.

You might wonder, if Socialism is so great, why we don’t already have it. There are many reasons for this, but the main one is that the wealthy and powerful people in the world don’t want things to change. They enjoy their lives just the way things are, and our governments and laws have been set up to protect their wealth and power. So to change things it takes a lot of people, working and struggling together for a long time. The history of the past few centuries has been the history of these struggles.

Socialism is a word that frightens a lot of people, especially people in America. We’ve been taught to think of Socialism as something foreign and treacherous, and to think of Socialists as people who want to do away with all of the good things about our country. Because of this fear, in the past, Socialists in America have been arrested, deported and even executed for their beliefs.

Socialists do want to change things in America, and around the world. We want an America that is more fair. We want an America where people are truly free – free from fear, free from hunger, free to speak their minds and free to believe and live their lives as they see fit. We want an America where we all have a say in the way our economy runs, in decisions about how we work and what we produce, and in how we treat the resources of the Earth. We want an America where all of us, not just a few of us, own and control the means of producing what we need to live, and where we all share in the wealth that is created by our work. We want an America and a world that is at peace. We want an America that lives up to the words of the Pledge of Allegiance (which, by the way, was written by a Socialist) “with liberty and justice for all.”

You’ve probably heard the word “democracy.” The idea is simple, but powerful. It’s the idea that the people – all the people – should have the power to decide how society is run. Under democracy, the important decisions that affect people’s lives are decided by the people themselves. Our government is considered to be a representative democracy, meaning that we vote to elect representatives who then make those decisions for us, and are supposed to represent our wishes when they do. In reality, though, many of the most basic and important decisions that affect our lives are completely beyond the control of most of us. We are powerless to do anything about some of the biggest problems we face – problems such as poverty, unemployment, violence, war, climate change. The list goes on and on.

What Socialists want is a true democracy, where we directly control the things that matter most in our local communities, and where we’re all active in making decisions about the larger society together.

How all of this will come about, and how all of it will work, are still open questions. Socialists and others have been thinking about this, writing about it and discussing it for nearly 200 years now. The truth is that nobody has a specific step-by-step plan for putting the Socialist ideal into practice. Experiments aimed at creating a Socialist society have given us some ideas on what might work, and also on what can go wrong. We can learn from the mistakes of the past, and be inspired by the successes, but the task of creating a Socialist world is something we’ll have to work out for ourselves as we go along.

Though it will be a difficult goal to achieve, many of us believe that Socialism is the only solution to the most significant and urgent problems that face us in the world today. We believe that making minor changes to the current system won’t be enough to save us as a species from the ravages of hunger, global environmental disaster and war. This is why Socialists organize and agitate and speak out and read and discuss and work and struggle together. We believe that it’s only through “all of us, working together to take care of each other” – through Socialism – that the human race will survive.

✭✭✭

A Note From Brian: I welcome comments on this article, particularly from Socialists, educators, kids and parents. I tried to keep the language as simple as I could, but I suspect that the reading level may still be somewhat too advanced for the average 5th grader, which is the primary intended audience. Ideas or suggestions for improvement will be much appreciated, as will ideas for future articles in the series.