The reports are damning, but the conclusion is inevitable.
Maude C. | Red Phoenix correspondent | Ohio–
Across the United States, child labor violations have risen fivefold in a decade. Over 5,000 minors were illegally employed last year alone. Yet instead of strengthening protections, Republican and Democrat lawmakers, the faithful servants of American capital, are systematically erasing them. They are slashing minimum wages for teenagers, eliminating safety databases, and legalizing hazardous work for children.
Let us not mince words: this is not a policy failure. It is the logic of capitalism made manifest.
Capitalism treats human beings as commodities. Its sole motive is profit. When employers can pay a child less for the same work as an adult, they will. When they can evade oversight, they do. According to Marx, capital is “dead labor, which, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labor.” Today, that vampire has set its sights on our children. The elimination of work permits in Indiana, the sub-minimum “training wage” in Nebraska, the removal of hazardous occupation lists in West Virginia. These are not isolated mistakes. They are a coordinated class offensive designed to create a cheaper, more vulnerable workforce.
The defenders of this system claim it is about “opportunity.” But as Lenin understood, “Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners.” This is freedom for corporations to exploit, freedom for slaughterhouses to hire children, freedom for fast-food chains to work ten-year-olds past midnight.
The Biden administration’s meager enforcement efforts were met with a 97% decline in wage and hour cases under the subsequent administration. The state, regardless of which faction holds office, ultimately serves the interests of capital. When those interested require the exploitation of youth, the state clears the path.
We must not stop our struggle after achieving vital reforms. We need to continue to raise our demands until we establish a system that places human need above private profit. We need socialism.
The working class must call to action the following:
- The immediate repeal of all state-level rollbacks to child labor protections and the establishment of a uniform, higher federal minimum wage with no sub-minimum “training” exceptions.
- The codification of federal standards that supersede these regressive state laws, ensuring that no child in any state can be legally employed in hazardous conditions or for exploitative wages.
Under socialism, the labor of every person, young or old, would be valued not by its cost to an employer, but by its contribution to society. As Stalin stated, “In capitalist society, labor is a burden. In socialist society, labor is a matter of honor, a matter of glory, a matter of valor and heroism” (Report of the Central Committee to the 16th Congress of the Communist Party, 1930). We do not need “training wages” that teach young workers their labor is worth less. We need education, dignified work, and the guarantee that no child is forced into a factory to support a family.
The fight against child labor exploitation is inseparable from the fight against capitalism itself. Every hour that a teenager works for sub-minimum wage is an hour that weakens the wages of all workers. For every hazardous job a child is forced to take, more poor kids will be driven into the meat-grinder of capitalism to take menial positions that are dangerous, just as they did in the early 20th century.
But a challenge against the capitalist state is only a plea. True protection will not come from the same legislature that passes these bills. It will come from us, from the organized power of the working class. As Dolores Huerta so clearly stated, “People have the power to solve problems in their own communities. People shouldn’t wait for the power to try and help them.”
The fight against the exploitation of children is a fight for the entire working class. It is a fight against the principle that profit is more important than life. Let the ruling class hear our response. We will not accept a society that treats our children as commodities. We will organize. We will resist. And we will build a movement capable of not just restoring these protections, but of establishing a system where the labor of every person, young or old, is valued for its contribution to human need, not its price on the open market.
The time for half-measures is over. The safety of our youth demands a full-scale defense of the working class. We must be prepared to wage that struggle, not with appeals to the better nature of our exploiters, but with the unshakeable unity of the oppressed.