If living through 2021 taught me anything, it’s the following:
- People will do anything to deny an unpleasant truth, even if they’re currently living it. But when they do accept it, the changes that take place can be quite profound.
- “Socialist” and “communist” are great insults to people who don’t understand what those words mean.
- People get pretty pissed off if they think you’re “indoctrinating” their kids.
Bini Adamczak’s book Communism for Kids manages to creatively play off all these truths. They give us a powerful understanding of a big idea in a very little package. This book was small enough for me to carry it in my back pocket. I took my child to the dentist and almost forgot iwho are trying to solve a very important problemt was there. Even so, it manages to linger with me and impress me. It isn’t perfect – particularly when it comes to the questions it leaves unanswered in its epilogue. Still, it punches well above its own weight.
The author centers her story on a society of people trying to solve a very big problem. They’re drawn as big-eyed children but with all the responsibilities of working folk. Their problem is capitalism, and the alternative they attempt to institute is communism. Adamczak explains that “communism means getting rid of all the evils people suffer under capitalism.” Thus “the best kind of communism is the one that can get rid of the most evils”. Showing us these “evils”, and the methods these people to get rid of those evils, makes up the bulk of the book.
The language here is very, very readable and accessible. It’s not literally written as a book “for kids” but uses the tone and setup of a children’s tale as a framing device. This helps to democratize the content. In many ways it does read easily enough to be a set of fables to teach a youngster about economics. That is, assuming you’re the kind of parent who wants to have that conversation with your ten year-old. The briefest explanation of capitalism given in the book is summed up as: people don’t rule. Things do.
The story rolls through the history of feudalism, capitalism and all the princesses and factories Adamczak uses to represent the forces at play. “Movie tickets” become a metaphor for the luxuries workers can buy with their wages. There’s also lots of sheep. The basics of Marxist economics and its understanding of how capitalism does – and doesn’t – work are laid out clearly. I read this after several introductory texts on Marxism. Then I tackled half a dozen works by Marx and Engels themselves. I was shocked by how little depth is lost in translation to this format. Yet how unassuming and unpretentious this telling is! I can see how some might find the device of a children’s story to be reductive or simplistic. But I tend to think, it’s no more reductive or simplistic than the story of capitalism that I received in public schools.
The society in this short book decides that capitalism’s burdens are too much for them. They’re tired of being exploited at work and being governed by the desire to create more things rather than better their lives. They decide to give communism a go. But what form of communism are they going to institute? This section breaks down into a series of “trials”. In these trials, the workers use different methods of organizing their post capitalist society. They try pooling all the money their businesses make into a centralized “big pot”. Then, they dole out the funds in that “big pot” based on need instead of chasing profit. It solves some of the “evils” they sought to end. Still, it leaves work as unfulfilling as it was before under capitalism. And so the next trial begins. We get experiments in centralized Soviet decision-making, worker self-governance, fully automated luxury communism. There’s even a sort of burn-it-all-down furious outburst. The frustrated citizens break their machines and start from scratch. These trials each get their chance to shine, then fizzle out. “No, no, this is not communism”, the citizens say.
The end result – the one that leads to “true” communism and happiness – is fuzzier than I expected it would be. The epilogue Adamczak writes gives some clarity as to why. She’s trying to make clear that she knows previous attempts at building communism failed. Often, they failed by wracking up a great deal of suffering and a horrifying body count. This is the case even though capitalism manages to do much the same, in only somewhat different ways. Still, while capitalists claim to have “ended history.” They say this is more or less the end of the road. That’s why it’s important and difficult to imagine a communism that inspires desire in working people.
The faults of capitalism have become clearer in the post-Soviet period. The system at times seems ready to fall apart. Imagining this future after capitalism, though, is tough. Adamczak seems more sure that we need to keep imagining it than she is sure of what exactly it would entail. This is a frustrating and disappointing place to land after our engaging story and its trials. To be fair, Marx wasn’t super clear about what that end period would look like, either. He was better at describing the problems of capitalism itself. He only sketched out interim measures to undertake once a revolution was victorious.
Still, Bini Adamczak does outline some principles in which she, , sees great promise. Her vision of a successful communist society focuses on connectivity and dialogue. It emphasizes a variety of perspectives and values experience. She suggests a sort of e-democracy where working people communicate constantly. They meet, either virtually or in person, to decide every aspect of the production process. They assemble among themselves rather than receiving dictates from bosses or letting the demands of the market rule them. They allowing people to try their hand at many different tasks, and building many different skills. This is an alternative to getting stale and disillusioned by the “efficient” division of labor in our workplaces now.
Whatever communism becomes, Adamczak argues, it has to emphasize our ability to develop our own potential, and allow us to make decisions tWhatever communism becomes, Adamczak argues, it has to emphasize our ability to develop our own potential. It must allow us to make decisions together, democratically, rather than passing that baton to someone set above us. Consider the building blocks and metrics of capitalist life. I’m talking about wages, divisions of labor, even the notion of “abstract”, scheduled time itself. All this should be up for reinvention, redefinition, or abolition if it is the will of the people. Communism, as Adamczak sees it, is the opportunity to decide our own future rather than letting other people or things decide it for us. Capitalism gives us the productive tools to make that life possible. But only by moving past capitalism can we imagine that future and realize it.
Maybe it won’t be so simple – it hasn’t been in the past. But Adamczak’s Communism for Kids does a fantastic job of providing some clarity on our past and present. At its best, it ignites a childlike spark for imagining our future.
Communism for Kids
Possibly the simplest, most effective and endearing attempt to explain how capitalism works and how people have imagined communism as an alternative.
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