My kid is just about to start school. I’m currently living in California where the state-mandated curriculum is… not terrible in terms of historical and political education. But I’m also in a fairly reactionary part of California.

Given how expensive it is to live here and the relative geographic freedom my job has, I’ve been contemplating if we should stay here. Doing my best to set my kids up to be leftists is pretty much #1 on my list.

So where do you all think is a good place to raise your kids to help them grow up to be leftists - both generally or specifically?

Fwiw this is one area where I do think it’s better to be around “liberals” than reactionaries. At least with liberals you tend to not have history lessons about how slavery was good actually and your kids feel social pressure to go to the evangelical mega church that all their friends go to.

Or maybe literally none of this matters, everywhere in the US is basically the same and I should just be where I feel I can be the best parent?

Edit: I should mention, I’m white and my kid is white so I think being in a diverse place is important too, admittedly California is pretty decent in that regard.

Well over $100k in the higher cost of living states, too. And as the article states, that’s typically about double what the median salary is for a single person in most states.

I’d like to point out that AES states - while maybe they didn’t have all the same quality or quantity of consumer goods - were able to able to to provide a comfortable life for everyone without all the predatory that US workers currently have. And don’t take my word for it, take it from the neoliberal queen herself, Angela Merkel. When asked about life in the former GDR, she described it as “almost comfortable”. Now before you mention that “almost” is an important qualifier, note that the context of her quote was her trying to criticize the former GDR but she grudgingly conceded the comment above.

I’m white. My daughter is also white. She’s 3 years old, almost 4.

Up to this age, my approach to teaching her about race has been to focus exclusively on skin color. Meaning, we talk about how people can have all different colors and tones to their skin. Talking about skin color on a spectrum. But always emphasizing that people are all the same and that everyone should be treated the same.

In isolation, this all sounds lib. I of course want to get all into structural and institutional racism et al. But… she’s 3. Up until a few months ago she was still pooping and pissing in a diaper. My thinking is that emphasizing this more lib understanding of race is more age-appropriate now, and we can get into the real stuff a little later on when she has the mental and emotional maturity to handle it (that said, I have told her that the cops aren’t very nice to people who don’t look like us. Whatever, the daycare has pigs come over and talk to the kids even at her age, so fuck em I’m gonna counter that shit now).

Is this the right approach? Is there more I should be doing? If you all have any age-appropriate books on this topic you can recommend, definitely let me know.

(Specifying “post-NEP” since think the war communism economy and the NEP should be viewed as it’s own thing)

Trying to get into the real fine details regarding the Soviet economy - either the total period from Stalin to Gorbachev, or segments of that period. Really want to understand what went wrong, and what went right.

The problem I’m having is when I go to the bourgeois economic historians, they unsurprisingly shit on the economy under Stalin (or rather, emphasize the unsustainability of it long term) and praise Khrushchev and Gorbachev. Obviously that’s a biased route I’m not interested in going down.

However, whenever I go in the opposite direction, I feel like I’m reading sources that are maybe a bit too uncritical of the Stalin era economic policies. And you know what, maybe Stalin did actually get everything about the economy right. I’m open to that possibility. Obviously the track record is there. But idk, I haven’t found one source yet who has sufficiently shown their work on that (that I’m sure is due to me not finding the right sources yet). Like, when it comes to economic history, I don’t feel an overwhelming need to defend Stalin or criticize Khrushchev and Brezhnev, just trying to find a sober analysis from a Marxian source. I have a background in econ so I would feel comfortable handling something that’s a bit more technical, if such a resource exists.

Any suggestions welcome!

https://nitter.cz/HarrisonHSmith/status/1750309689114436087#m

Death to America and viva la revolucion!

Was just thinking about this since I’m wearing my Cuba WBC cap around town (from the most recent WBC when Cuba was actually “allowed” to be in charge of their own team).

I don’t have any myself, but thought you all might know some.

I’m not a native German speaker obviously, but doesn’t “Das Kapital” translate to “THE Capital”?

Also, English-speakers should call it just “Capital”. Calling it “Das Kapital” is just propaganda to make the title sound more menacing than it is.

Liberals will point to how improvements in quality of life have occurred in capitalist countries in recent centuries (debatable, and certainly not true for the entire world, but let’s assume they are correct for now). What is usually implied is that it’s all thanks to capitalism that we have the quality of life that we do, thus capitalism should be allowed to continue.

The thought I had was, do most of the quality of life improvements come down mostly to how agriculture and medicine developed? Meaning, famines were a harsh reality of life for much of human history, and modern agriculture has allowed us to now be in a position where globally, we can produce more than enough food consistently for the whole planet.

Likewise in regards to medicine… in the past just getting sick could be a death sentence. People had to live with incredibly painful conditions their whole life that we now have cures for. Honestly modern medicine is the one reason why I would rather live in 2023 than any other time.

What I’m getting at is… though these advances did occur under capitalism, I don’t think I would give capitalism the “credit” for them. Obviously socialism was not possible 200 years ago. I’m not denying standard Marxist historical progression. What I am doing though, is trying to attack the liberal narrative of treating capitalism as some god who has bestowed his mercy on us - that everything good we have is from Him, and thus we must give Him our praise and continue on His economic system into eternity.

The Soviet Union and China were/are both able to be incredibly productive in agriculture and ended their historic, periodic famines. The Soviet Union (and Cuba!) were/are renowned for their advances in medicine.

I think the only things you can give capitalism “credit” for is developing the productive forces, allowing for high levels of commodity production, and increasing levels of wealth (though not equally shared).

This is shaping up to be the thing right wing nuts get outraged about this upcoming week. I feel like this is a good litmus test… anyone who gets angry about this is probably way more of a white nationalist than they are letting on. You think these same people who be angry about a blue/white/orange tricolor, saying it’s too close to the Dutch flag?

This looks kinda fun. The trailer kind of assumes you’re familiar with the “magical negro” trope, but I’m sure the movie fleshes it out.

Of course, white folks are getting in a tizzy over it, lots of comments about “well I don’t ask any black folks to make ME feel comfortable!!!” and “this is divisive!”, entirely oblivious to both the trope and broad social implication: that in 2023, black folks are not allowed to bring up historical injustices (much less they look for them to be remedied), be angry about anything, express displeasure with the current state of this, etc lest the white folks be made to feel uncomfortable.

Wherever he is, I hope he’s doing good. I don’t remember if he was an open communist when he was in the Virginia legislature but probably the least lib politician in America in a generation. Seemed like a pretty genuine dude, too. Feels like he dropped out of politics and has been pretty quiet since.