But the vast amount of work that must be done to get today's workers back to work the next day and to nurture the workforce of tomorrow is carried out in the family home. Domestic work is done at no cost to capitalism. And in the isolation of separate families, the ideology of discipline and obedience is instilled in the future generation. Young people are prevented from living where they want, they are paid less than other workers, are stopped from going out at night in order to reinforce their subordination to the family wage, the family regime and the family's care. But oppression produces the spirit of rebellion.
Young people are often to the fore in movements of resistance.
The Bolshevik party itself was made up predominantly of teenagers and young workers when it took power in 1917. Today, from the streets of Northern Ireland to the townships of South Africa and the refugee camps of Lebanon and the West Bank, young people everywhere are in the vanguard of revolutionary struggles against racism, oppression and imperialism. The reason for this lies not only in the weight of oppression that young people face. Their relative lack of conservatism is because they have not experienced the full weight of bourgeois ideology or the accumulated defeats that can demoralise and exhaust older generations. The youth are by nature directly concerned with the future.