My therapist made a comment about how China is a failed socialist experiment because they have 2-3 year olds working in factories. I responded “So we’ve been told.” She looks at me like I’m crazy. (Not a great look for a therapist) “I’ve not seen any evidence of that.”
“Because they’re such a closed country!”
“Which means you have no evidence to your point either?”
“Well, missionaries… anyway!”
“A 3 year old? Really? You believe that 3 year olds who can’t put the blocks in the right holes have the dexterity and mental capacity to be useful factory workers? Is that really what you believe?”
New type of guy: Abolish child labour because I don’t trust kids to do good work.
Related to the “do you have any idea how expensive slaves were?” Type of guy
youre joking, but that was indeed a line of argumentation used by child labor opponents in britain during the XIXth century.
Abolish child
laborFake news. All the blocks go in the square hole
Idk about 3 year olds in China, but in Capital Marx does describe 4 year old factory workers in England so tbh “common sense” isnt a good argument here imo
Back then you could use children for things like filling bags and boxes with screws and nuts or whatever, but I very much doubt any of that sort of stuff isn’t being made in huge automated factories in China at this point.
Someone else has made a point re: object permanence not kicking it i find more convincing
Regarding this point, in marxs time it was less “fill bags and boxes” and more “run stuff back and forth” or “squeeze into the machine and see if you can see whats jamming it”, “sort these products into groups” or “push this button every time X happens”