Children occupy a paradoxical position within capitalist societies — they are at once future workers who will replenish the labor force, as well as creatures who draw the adults caring for them away from profit-generating work. “Our most precious resource,” then, are problems to be solved in even the most progressive capitalist societies. Across the world, a range of solutions exist. Scandinavian countries are renowned for their lengthy parental leave, child allowances, and government-subsidized childcare. Other societies, like the United States, have relied on unwaged and low-cost labor from women in order to keep the burdens of child-rearing private and individual. Still, other countries funnel children into the workforce at young ages, harvesting what labor power they can from young people.

Whether we relate to them on an individual level as parents, aunts and uncles, neighbors, or fellow travelers enduring their wails on airplanes, as socialists, we have a responsibility to take children seriously. Children are among the most easily oppressed members of our communities. The contradictory nature of children as future workers and impediments to immediate profit accounts for the gulf between the rhetoric used to discuss children and their actual treatment. On the Left, we want people to thrive at every stage of life, and this goal should be our guiding principle in developing policies that enfranchise the youngest among us.

The iconic images of the child laborer, the child soldier, the child refugee, and the child torn from her mother at the border have provoked mass protest, as they should. “How often, when you think of war, do you picture a child brandishing an AK-47 assault rifle?” asks one nonprofit organization. It’s the job of NGOs to dramatize the exploitation of innocence while soliciting donations for “needy kids,” but it’s the job of socialists to insist that assault rifles don’t belong in anyone’s hands; that humans, no matter who they are, should not live in cages; that we all have the right to freedom and care.