Rethinking Revolution: Animal Liberation,
Human Liberation, and the Future of the Left
“Animal liberation may sound more like a parody of other
liberation movements than a serious objective.” Peter Singer
“Animal liberation is the ultimate freedom movement, the
`final frontier.’” Robin Webb, British ALF Press Officer
Introduction: Framing the Unframed Issue
It seems lost on mostof the global anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist
Left that there is a new liberation movement on the planet –
animal liberation – that is of immense ethical and political
significance. But because animal liberation challenges the anthropocentric,
speciesist, and humanist dogmas that are so deeply entrenched
in socialist and anarchist thinking and traditions, Leftists are
more likely to mock than engage it.
For the last three decades, the animal liberation movement (ALM)
has been one of the most dynamic and important political forces
on the planet. Where “new social movements” such as
Black Liberation, Native American, feminism, chicano/a, and various
forms of Green and identity politics have laid dormant or become
co-opted, the animal liberation movement has kept radical resistance
alive and has steadily grown in numbers and strength.
Unlike animal welfare approaches that lobby for the amelioration
of animal suffering, the ALM demands the total abolition of all
forms of animal exploitation. Seeking empty cages not bigger cages,
the ALM is the major anti-slavery and abolitionist movement of
the present day, one with strong parallels to its 19th century
predecessor struggling to end the slavery of African-Americans
in the US. As a major expression of the worldwide ALM, the Animal
Liberation Front (ALF) has cost exploitation industries hundreds
of millions of dollars in property damage and has decommissioned
numerous animal exploiters through raids and sabotage. The FBI
has demonized the ALF (along with the Earth Liberation Front [ELF])
as the top “domestic terrorist” group in the US, and
the ALM in general is a principle target of draconian “anti-terrorist”
legislation in US and the UK.
Operating on a global level -- from the UK, US, and Germany to
France, Norway, and Russia – the ALM attacks not only the
ideologies of capitalism that promote growth, profit, and commodification,
but the property system itself with hammers and Molotov cocktails.
Fully aware of the realities of the corporate-state complex, the
ALM breaks with the fictions of representative democracy to undertake
illegal direct action for animals held captive in fur farms, factory
farms, experimental laboratories, and other gruesome hell holes
where billions of animals die each year.
Since the fates of all species on this planet are intricately
interrelated, the exploitation of animals cannot but have a major
impact on the human world itself.[1] When human beings exterminate
animals, they devastate habitats and ecosystems necessary for
their own lives. When they butcher farmed animals by the billions,
they ravage rainforests, turn grasslands into deserts, exacerbate
global warming, and spew toxic wastes into the environment. When
they construct a global system of factory farming that requires
prodigious amounts of land, water, energy, and crops, they squander
vital resources and aggravate the problem of world hunger. When
humans are violent toward animals, they often are violent toward
one another, a tragic truism validated time and time again by
serial killers who grow up abusing animals and violent men who
beat the women, children, and animals of their home. The connections
go far deeper, as evident if one examines the scholarship on the
conceptual and technological relations between the domestication
of animals at the dawn of agricultural society and the emergence
of patriarchy, state power, slavery, and hierarchy and domination
of all kinds.
In countless ways, the exploitation of animals rebounds to create
crises within the human world itself. The vicious circle of violence
and destruction can end only if and when the human species learns
to form harmonious relations – non-hierarchical and non-exploitative
-- with other animal species and the natural world. Human, animal,
and earth liberation are interrelated projects that must be fought
for as one.
This essay asserts the need for more expansive visions and politics
on both sides of the human/animal liberation equation, as it calls
for new forms of dialogue, learning, and strategic alliances.
Each movement has much to learn from the other. In addition to
gaining new insights into the dynamics of hierarchy, domination,
and environmental destruction from animal rights perspectives,
Leftists should grasp the gross inconsistency of advocating values
such as peace, non-violence, compassion, justice, and equality
while exploiting animals in their everyday lives, promoting speciesist
ideologies, and ignoring the ongoing holocaust against other species
that gravely threatens the entire planet. Conversely, the animal
rights community generally (apart from the ALM) is politically
naive, single-issue oriented, and devoid of a systemic anti-capitalist
theory and politics necessary for the true illumination and elimination
of animal exploitation, areas where it can profit great from discussions
with the Left.
Thus, I attempt to demonstrate the importance of rethinking human
and animal liberation movements in light of each other, suggesting
ways this might proceed. The domination of humans, animals, and
the earth stem from the same power pathology of hierarchy and
instrumentalism, such as can only be fully revealed and transformed
by a multiperspectival theory and alliance politics broader and
deeper than anything yet created. I begin with some basic historical
and sociological background of the AAM, and show how the Left
traditionally has responded to animal advocacy issues. I then
engage the views of Takis Fotopoulos, the founder of Inclusive
Democracy, and conclude with a call for mutual dialogue and learning
among animal and human liberationists.
The Diversity of the Animal Advocacy Movement
The ALM is only part, by far still the smallest part, of a growing
social movement for the protection of animals I call the animal
advocacy movement (AAM). The AAM has three major different (and
sharply conflicting) tendencies: animal welfare, animal rights,
and animal liberation. The AAM movement had humble welfarist beginnings
in the early 19th century with the founding of the Royal Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) in Britain and
the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
(ASPCA) in the US.[2] Welfare organizations thereafter spread
widely throughout these and other Western countries, addressing
virtually every form of animal abuse. The goal of welfare organizations,
however, has never been eliminating the institutions that exploit
animals – be they research laboratories, factory farms,
slaughterhouses, fur farms, or circuses and rodeos – but
rather reducing or ameliorating animal suffering within such violent
and repressive structures. Welfarists acknowledge that animals
have interests, but they believe these can be legitimately sacrificed
or traded away if there is some overridingly compelling human
interest at stake (which invariably is never too trivial to defend
against substantive animal interests). Welfarists simply believe
that animals should not be caused “unnecessary” pain,
and hold that any harm or death inflicted on them must be done
“humanely.”[3]
In bold contrast, animal rights advocates reject the utilitarian
premises of welfarism that allows the happiness, freedom, and
lives of animals to be sacrificed to some alleged greater human
need or purpose. The philosophy of animal rights did not emerge
in significant form until the publication of Tom Regan’s
seminal work, The Case for Animal Rights (1983). According to
Regan and other animal rights theorists, a basic moral equality
exists among human and nonhuman animals in that they are sentient,
and therefore have significant interests and preferences (such
as not to feel pain) that should be protected and respected. Moreover,
Regan argues, many animal species (chimpanzees, dolphins, cats,
dogs, etc.) are akin to humans by having the type of cognitive
characteristics that make them “subjects of a life,”
whereby they have complex mental abilities that include memory,
self-consciousness, and the ability to conceive of a future. Arguments
that only humans have rights because they are the only animals
that have reason and language, besides being factually wrong,
are completely irrelevant as sentience is a necessary and sufficient
condition for having rights.
Sharply opposed to the welfarist philosophies of the mainstream
AAM and utilitarian philosophers like Peter Singer, proponents
of animal rights argue that the intrinsic value and basic rights
of animals cannot be trumped by any appeal to an alleged greater
(human) good. Animals’ interests cannot be sacrificed no
matter what good consequence may result (such as an alleged advance
in medical knowledge). Just as most people believe that it is
immoral to sacrifice a human individual to a “greater good”
if it improves the overall social welfare, so animal rights proponents
persuasively apply the same reasoning to animals. If animals have
rights, it is no more valid to use them in medical experimentation
than it is to use human beings; for the scientific cause can just
as well – in truth, far better – be advanced through
human experimentation, but ethics and human rights forbids it.
The position of animal rights is an abolitionist position that
demands the end to all instances and institutions of animal exploitation,
not merely reducing suffering; like its 19th century predecessor,
it demands the eradication of slavery, not better treatment of
the slaves. Yet, although opposed to welfarism in its embrace
of egalitarianism, rights, and abolitionism, most animal rights
advocates are one with welfarists in advocating strictly legal
forms of change through education and legislation. Like welfarists,
animal rights advocates typically accept the legitimacy of capitalist
economic, political, and legal institutions, and rarely possess
the larger social/political/economic context required to understand
the inherently exploitative logic of capital and the structural
relationship between market and state.
The adherence to bourgeois ideology that justice can be achieved
by working through the pre-approved channels of the state, which
is utterly corrupt and dominated by corporate interests, separates
animal liberationists from rights and welfare proponents.[4] Sometimes
grounding their positions in rights philosophy, and sometimes
rejecting or avoiding philosophical foundations for emphases on
practical action, the ALM nonetheless seeks total liberation of
animals through direct attacks on animal exploiters. Unique in
its broad, critical vision, the ALM rejects capitalism, imperialism,
and oppression and hierarchy of all kinds. Unlike the single-issue
focus of the welfare and rights camps, the ALM supports all human
struggles for liberation and sees the oppression of humans, animals,
and earth as stemming from the same core causes and dynamics.
The ALM is predominantly anarchist in ideology, temperament, and
organization. Believing that the state is a tool of corporate
interests and that the law is the opiate of the people, the ALM
seeks empowerment and results through illegal direct action, such
as rescue raids, break-ins, and sabotage. One major form of the
ALM is the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), which emerged in England
in 1976, spread to the US by 1980, and therefore became a global
movement active in over 20 countries. Whereas some elements of
the ALM advocate violence against animal exploiters, the ALF adopts
a non-violent credo that attacks the property but never causes
injury to human life.[5]
Thus, the main division within the AAM is not between welfare
and rights, as commonly argued, but rather between statist and
non-statist approaches. Only the radical elements in the ALM challenge
the myths of representative democracy, as they explore direct
action and live in anarchist cultures. Clearly, the ALM is closest
to the concerns of ID and other radical Left approaches, although
it too has significant political limitations (see below).
But the pluralism of the AAM movement is not only a matter of
competing welfare, rights, and liberation perspectives. Its social
composition cuts across lines of class, gender, religion, age,
and politics. Republicans, democrats, Leftists, anarchists, feminists,
anti-humanists, anarcho-primitivists, Greens, Christians, Buddhists,
Hindus, and others comprise the complexity and diversity of the
AAM. Unlike the issue of class struggle and labor justice, one
can advocate compassion for animals from any political position,
such as is clear from the influential books and articles of Matthew
Scully, former speechwriter for George W. Bush.[6] However repugnant
one might find Scully’s past or current political stands,
his work has had a significant influence on wide range of people,
such as republican elites, who otherwise would never had been
sensitized to the wide spectrum of appalling cruelties to animals.
Such political diversity is both a virtue and vice. While it
maximizes the influence of the AAM within the public realm, and
thereby creates new legislative opportunities for animal welfare
policies, there is nevertheless a lack of philosophical and political
coherence, splintering the “movement” into competing
and conflicting fragments. Overwhelmingly reformist and single-issue
oriented (in addition to being largely white and middle/upper
class), the AAM lacks a systemic social critique that grasps capital
logic as a key determining force of animal exploitation and recognizes
the state as a corporate-dominated structure resistant to significant
social change. While there is no “animal advocacy movement”
in the singular that one can build bridges with in the struggle
against capitalism, there are nonetheless progressive elements
within the ALM camp that understand the nature of capitalism and
the state and are open to, and often experienced in, radical alliance
politics. The ALM, thereby, is a potentially important force of
social change, not only in relation to its struggle against animal
exploitation and capitalist industries but also as an element
of and catalyst to human and earth liberation struggles.
Toward A Sociology of the ALM
“We’re very dangerous philosophically. Part of the
danger is that we don’t buy into the illusion that property
is worth more than life … we bring that insane priority
into the light, which is something the system cannot survive.”
David Barbarash, former spokesman for the ALF
“We’re a new breed of activism. We’re not your
parents’ Humane Society. We’re not Friends of Animals.
We’re not Earthsave. We’re not Greenpeace. We come
with a new philosophy. We hold the radical line. We will not compromise.
We will not apologize, and we will not relent.” Kevin Jonas,
founder of SHAC USA
Despite a large volume of literature on animal rights and animal
liberation, and its growing political prominence, humanist and
Left scholars have ignored the sociological meaning and import
of animal rights/liberation struggles.[7] In this section, I seek
to rectify this speciesist oversight and gross omission with a
broad sociological contextualization of the animal rights/liberation
struggles of the last three decades.
In the context of recent social history, one might see the ALM,
first, as a “new social movement” with roots in the
struggles of the 1960s and 1970s. Often described as “post-class”
and “post-materialist,” new social movements seek
not higher wages but rather the end of hierarchies and new relations
with the natural world. Once the labor movement was co-opted and
contained after World War II, the dynamics of social struggle
shifted from the capital-labor relation to broader issues of justice,
freedom, and identity politics. People of color, students, feminists,
gays and lesbians, peace and anti-nuclear activists, and environmentalists
fought for new kinds of issues. The contemporary animal rights/liberation
movements were born in the social milieu generated by the movements
of the 1960s and 1970s, and form an important part of movements
for progressive change. This is a consequence of their critique
of hierarchy, instrumentalism, and the domination of nature in
the form of nonhuman species, their contribution to environmentalism,
and their role in advancing the ethic of nonviolence.
New social movements play out in a postindustrial capitalist
society where the primary economic dynamics no longer involve
processing of physical materials but rather consumerism, entertainment,
mass media, and information. Transnational corporations such as
Microsoft, Monsanto, and Novartis demonstrate the importance of
science and research for the postindustrial economy. Although
not recognized as such, a second way of viewing the ALM is to
recognize that it is part of the contemporary anti-capitalist
and anti/alter-globalization movement that attacks the corporate-dominated
“globalization form above” from democratic visions
manifest in the struggle for “globalization from below.”[8]
To the extent that postindustrial capital is anchored in a global
science/knowledge complex, and this is driven by animal experimentation,
animal liberation challenges global capitalism, in the form of
what I will call the Global Vivisection Complex (GVC). More specifically,
I will identify this new oppositional force the direct action
anti-vivisection movement (DAAVM). This movement has emerged as
a serious threat to biomedical research industries. In the UK,
for example, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical research
industries are the third largest contributor to the economy; an
attack on this science complex is an attack on the UK state and
global capital in general. To date, the ALM in the UK and US has
shut down numerous animal breeders, stopped construction of a
number of major research centers, and forced HLS off the New York
Stock Exchange. Clearly, the ALM is a major social force and political
force. If the Left does not yet recognize this, transnational
research capital and the UK and US governments certainly do, for
they have demonized the ALM as a top domestic terrorist threat
and are constructing police states to wage war against it.
The GVC is a matrix of power-knowledge reflecting the centrality
of science in postindustrial society. It is comprised of pharmaceutical
industries, biotechnology industries, medical research industries,
universities, and testing laboratories. All these institutions
use animals to test and market their drugs; animals are the gas
and oil without which corporate science machines cannot function.
As corporations like Huntingdon Life Sciences and Chiron are global
in scope and have clients throughout the world, animal liberation
groups such as the ALF and Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty (SHAC)
are also global in their resistance. A seemingly local group like
Stop Newchurch Guinea Pigs (NSGP), which waged aggressive war
in an English village against a family who breed guinea pigs for
research in England, is also part of the anti-globalization movement
because the family they attacked – and ultimately shut down
-- supplied animals to the GVC. Whatever the political views of
anti-vivisectionists -- whether libertarian, free market, socialist,
or anarchist – they are monkeywrenching globalization from
above. The DAAVM disrupts corporate supply chains, thwarts their
laboratory procedures, and liberates their captive slaves.
Besides the economic threat of the DAAVM, it also poses a strong
philosophical and ideological threat by attacking the ideological
legitimacy of animal-based “science.” The powerful,
fact-based assault on the legitimacy of vivisection mounted by
the DAAVM and animal rights movements is an assault on the authority
of Science itself, an attack on the modern Church of Reason. The
anti-vivisection movement exposes the fallacies of vivisection
and reveals how science serves the interests of corporations such
that objectivity is something to be bought and sold (e.g., junk
science and falsified data to dispute global warming was funded
by energy corporations such as Exxon-Mobil).
Like the Christian church in its hey day, the popes and priests
of Science are compelled to defend their authority and power by
attacking and discrediting their opponents (in academia and elsewhere).
Science exerts a strong influence over government and has the
power to create new laws and enforce its interests. Thus, due
to intense pressure from Science, the DAAVM in the UK and US has
come under fierce attack by the corporate-state complex. Both
UK and US governments have placed severe limitations on free speech
rights and, ultimately, have criminalized dissent, such as evident
in UK laws against “glorification of terrorism” and
the repressive measures if the USA PATRIOT Act. Both states have
applied draconian “anti-terrorist” laws against animal
liberationists and imposed harsh jail sentences for “harassment”
or sabotage actions.
Thus, the DAAVM is facing the wrath of the secular church; just
as Galileo said that the earth moves around the sun, so anti-vivisectionists
say that research performed on one species does not apply to research
performed on another, and the ALM as a whole assert that humans
belong to the earth, and the earth does not belong to them. As
the peace movements exposed the madness of the military-industrial
complex, the anti-nuclear movement emphasized the destructive
potential of nuclear power; and the environmental movement showed
the ecological consequences of a growth economy, so the ARM brings
to light the barbarism of enlightenment and fallacies of biomedical
research.
If the ALM can be seen as a new social movement, and as an anti-capitalist
and alter- globalization movement, it can also be viewed in a
third way I have emphasized, namely that it is a contemporary
anti-slavery and abolitionist movement.[9] Just as nineteenth
century abolitionists sought to awaken people to the greatest
moral issue of the day involving the slavery of millions of people
in a society created around the notion of universal rights, so
the new abolitionists of the 21st century endeavor to enlighten
people about the enormity and importance of animal suffering and
oppression. As black slavery earlier raised fundamental questions
about the meaning of American “democracy” and modern
values, so current discussion regarding animal slavery provokes
critical examination into a human psyche damaged by violence,
arrogance, and alienation, and the urgent need for a new ethics
and sensibility rooted in respect for all life.
Animals in experimental laboratories, factory farms, fur farms,
leather factories, zoos, circuses, rodeos, and other exploitative
institutions are the major slave and proletariat force of contemporary
capitalist society. Each year, throughout the globe, they are
confined, exploited, and killed – “murdered”
is not an inappropriate term – by the billions. The raw
materials of the human economy (a far greater and more general
domination system than capitalism), animals are exploited for
their fur, flesh, and bodily fluids. Stolen from the wild, bred
and raised in captivity, held in cages and chains against their
will and without their consent, animals literally are slaves,
and thereby integral elements of the contemporary capitalist slave
economy (which in its starkest form also includes human sweatshops
and sex trades).
Abolitionists often view welfarism as a dangerous ruse and roadblock
to moral progress, and often ground their position in the philosophy
of rights. 19th century abolitionists were not addressing the
slave master’s “obligation” to be kind to the
slaves, to feed and clothe them well, or to work them with adequate
rest. Rather, they demanded the total and unqualified eradication
of the master-slave relation, the freeing of the slave from all
forms of bondage. Similarly, the new abolitionists reject reforms
of the institutions and practices of animal slavery as grossly
inadequate and they pursue the complete emancipation of animals
from all forms of human exploitation, subjugation, and domination.
Animal Liberation and the Left
"Auschwitz begins whenever someone looks at a slaughterhouse
and thinks: they're only animals." Theodor Adorno
“In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis; for the
animals it is an eternal Treblinka.” Isaac Bashevis Singer
Animal liberation is the next necessary and logical development
in moral evolution and political struggle. Animal liberation builds
on the most progressive ethical and political advances human beings
have made in the last 200 years and carries them to their logical
conclusions. It takes the struggle for rights, equality, and nonviolence
to the next level, beyond the artificial moral and legal boundaries
of humanism, in order to challenge all prejudices and hierarchies
including speciesism. Martin Luther King’s paradigmatic
humanist vision of a “worldhouse” devoid of violence
and divisions, however laudable, remains a blood-soaked slaughterhouse
until the values of peace and equality are extended to all animal
species.
Animal liberation requires that the Left transcend the comfortable
boundaries of humanism in order to make a qualitative leap in
ethical consideration, thereby moving the moral bar from reason
and language to sentience and subjectivity. Just as the Left once
had to confront ecology, and emerged a far superior theory and
politics, so it now has to engage animal rights. As the confrontation
with ecology infinitely deepened and enriched Leftist theory and
politics, so should the encounter with animal rights and liberation.
Speciesism is the belief that nonhuman species exist to serve
the needs of the human species, that animals are in various senses
inferior to human beings, and therefore that one can favor human
over nonhuman interests according to species status alone.7 Like
racism or sexism, speciesism creates a false dualistic division
between one group and another in order to arrange the differences
hierarchically and justify the domination of the “superior”
over the “inferior.” Just as society has discerned
that it is prejudiced, illogical, and unacceptable for whites
to devalue people of color and for men to diminish women, so it
is beginning to learn how utterly arbitrary and irrational it
is for human animals to position themselves over nonhuman animals
because of species differences. Among animals who are all sentient
subjects of a life, these differences—humanity’s false
and arrogant claim to be the sole bearer of reason and language—are
no more ethically relevant than differences of gender or skin
color, yet in the unevolved psychology of the human primate they
have decisive bearing. The theory—speciesism—informs
the practice—unspeakably cruel forms of domination, violence,
and killing.
The prejudice and discriminatory attitude of speciesism is as
much a part of the Left as the general population and its most
regressive elements, calling into question the “radical,”
“oppositional,” or “progressive” nature
of Left positions and politics. While condemning violence and
professing rights for all, the Left fails to take into account
the weighty needs and interests of billions of oppressed animals.
Although priding themselves on holistic and systemic critiques
of global capitalism, Leftists fail to grasp the profound interconnections
among human, animal, and earth liberation struggles and the need
to conceived and fight for all as one struggle against domination,
exploitation, and hierarchy.
From the perspective of ecology and animal rights, Marxists
and other social “radicals” have been extremely reactionary
forces. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels lumped animal
welfarists into the same petite-bourgeoisie or reactionary category
with charity organizers, temperance fanatics, and naïve reformists,
failing to see that the animal welfare movement in the US, for
instance, was a key politicizing cause for women whose struggle
to reduce cruelty to animals was inseparable from their struggle
against male violence and the exploitation of children.[10] In
works such as his 1844 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, Karl
Marx advanced a naturalistic theory of human life, but like the
dominant Western tradition he posited a sharp dualism between
human and nonhuman animals, arguing that only human beings have
consciousness and a complex social world. Denying to animals the
emotional, social, and psychological complexity of their actual
lives, Marx argued that whereas animals have an immediate and
merely instinctual relation to productive activity the earth,
human labor is mediated by free will and intelligence. If Marxism
and other Left traditions have proudly grounded their theories
in science, social radicals need to realize that science –
specifically, the discipline of “cognitive ethology”
which studies the complexity of animal emotions, thought, and
communications – has completely eclipsed their fallacious,
regressive, speciesist concepts of nonhuman animals as devoid
of complex forms of consciousness and social life.[11]
While there is lively debate over whether or not Marx had an
environmental consciousness, there is no question he was a speciesist
and the product of an obsolete anthropocentric/dominionist paradigm
that continues to mar progressive social theory and politics.
The spectacle of Left speciesism is evident in the lack of articles
– often due to a blatant refusal to consider animal rights
issues -- on animal exploitation in progressive journals, magazines,
and online sites. In one case, for example, The Nation wrote a
scathing essay that condemned the treatment of workers at a factory
farm, but amazingly said nothing about the exploitation of thousands
of chickens imprisoned in the hell of battery cages. In bold contrast,
Gale Eisnitz’s powerful work, Slaughterhouse, documents
the exploitation of animals and humans alike on the killing floors
of slaughterhouses, as she shows the dehumanization of humans
in and through routinized violence to animals.[12]
As symptomatic of the prejudice, ignorance, provincialism, and
non-holistic theorizing that is rife through the Left, consider
the case of Michael Albert, a noted Marxist theorist and co-founder
of Z Magazine and Z Net. In a recent interview with the animal
rights and environmental magazine Satya, Albert confessed: “When
I talk about social movements to make the world better, animal
rights does not come into my mind. I honestly don’t see
animal rights in anything like the way I see women’s movements,
Latino movements, youth movements, and so on … a large-scale
discussion of animal rights and ensuing action is probably more
than needed … but it just honestly doesn’t strike
me as being remotely as urgent as preventing war in Iraq or winning
a 30-hour work week.”
While I do not expect a human supremacist like Albert to see
animal and human suffering as even roughly comparable, I cannot
fathom privileging a work reduction for humans who live relatively
comfortable lives to ameliorating the obscene suffering of tens
of billion of animals who are confined, tortured, and killed each
year in the most unspeakable ways. But human and animal rights
and liberation causes are not a zero-sum game, such that gains
for animals require losses for humans. Like most within the Left,
Albert lacks the holistic vision to grasp the profound connections
between animal abuse and human suffering.
The problem with such myopic Leftism stems not only from Karl
Marx himself, but the traditions that spawned him – modern
humanism, mechanistic science, industrialism, and the Enlightenment.
To be sure, the move from a God-centered to a human-centered world,
from the crusades of a bloodthirsty Christianity to the critical
thinking and autonomy ethos of the Enlightenment, were massive
historical gains, and animal rights builds on them. But modern
social theory and science perpetuated one of worst aspects of
Christianity (in the standard interpretation that understands
dominion as domination), namely the view that animals are mere
resources for human use. Indeed, the situation for animals worsened
considerably under the impact of modern sciences and technologies
that spawned vivisection, genetic engineering, cloning, factory
farms, and slaughterhouses. Darwinism was an important influence
on Marx and subsequent radical thought, but no one retained Darwin’s
emphasis on the intelligence of animal life, the evolutionary
continuity from nonhuman to human life, and the basic equality
among all species.
Social ecologists and “eco-humanists” such as Murray
Bookchin condemn the industrialization of animal abuse and killing
but never challenge the alleged right to use animals for human
purposes. Oblivious to scientific studies that document reason,
language, culture, and technology among various animal species,
Bookchin rehearses the Cartesian-Marxist mechanistic view of animals
as dumb creatures devoid of reason and language. Animals therefore
belong to “first nature,” rather than the effervescently
creative “second nature” world of human culture. Like
the Left in general, social ecologists fail to theorize the impact
of animal exploitation on the environment and human society and
psychology. They ultimately espouse the same welfarist views that
permit and sanctify some of the most unspeakable forms of violence
against animals within current capitalist social relations, speaking
in the same language of “humane treatment” of animal
slaves used by vivisectors, managers of factory farms and slaughterhouses
operators, fur farmers, and bosses of rodeos and circuses.
The Left traditionally has been behind the curve in its ability
to understand and address forms of oppression not directly related
to economics. It took decades for the Left to recognize racism,
sexism, nationalism, religion, culture and everyday life, ideology
and media, ecology, and other issues into its anti-capitalist
framework, and did so only under the pressure of various liberation
movements. The tendency of the Marxist Left, in particular, has
been to relegate issues such as gender, race, and culture to “questions”
to be addressed, if at all, only after the goals of the class
struggle are achieved. Such exclusionist and reductionist politics
prompted Rosa Luxemburg, for one, to defend the importance of
culture and everyday life by exclaiming, “If I can’t
dance, I don’t want to be a part of your revolution!”
Neo-Marxists, such as Frankfurt School theorists, grasped the
importance of politics, culture, and ideology as important issues
related but not reducible to economics and class, and after the
1960s Leftists finally understood ecology as more than a “bourgeois
issue” or “diversion” from social struggles.
In The Dialectic of Enlightenment, Max Horkheimer and Theodor
Adorno developed important insights into the relationship between
the domination of humans over nature and over one another, and
sometimes sympathetically evoked images of animals in captivity
as important symbols of human arrogance and alienation from nature.
Most notably, Herbert Marcuse emphasized the importance of a “new
sensibility” grounded in non-exploitative attitudes and
relations toward the natural world.
Although since the 1970s the Left has begun to seriously address
the “nature question,” they have universally failed
to grasp that the “animal question” that lies at the
core of social and ecological issues.[13] To make the point about
the interrelationships here in a simple but crucial way, consider
that no society can achieve ecological sustainability if its dominant
mode of food production is factory farming. The industrialized
system of confining and fattening animals for human food consumption,
pioneered in the US after World War II and exported globally,
is a main cause of water pollution (due to fertilizers, chemicals,
and massive amounts of animal waste) and a key contributor to
rainforest destruction, desertification, global warming, in addition
to being a highly inefficient use of water, land, and crops.[14]
Critiques of human arrogance over and alienation from nature,
calls for a “re-harmonization” of society with ecology,
and emphases on a “new ethics” that focus solely on
the physical world apart from the millions of animal species it
contains are speciesist, myopic, and inadequate. It’s as
if everyone can get on board with respecting rivers and mountains
but still want to eat, experiment on, wear, and be entertained
by animals. Left ecological concerns stem not from any kind of
deep respect for the natural world, but rather from a position
of “enlightened anthropocentrism” (a clear oxymoron)
that understands how important a sustainable environment is for
human existence. It is a more difficult matter to understand the
crucial role animals play in sustaining ecosystems and how animal
exploitation often has dramatic environmental consequences, let
alone more complex issues such as relationships between violence
toward animals and violence to other human beings. Moreover, it
is far easier to “respect nature” through recycling,
planting trees, or driving hybrid cars than it is to respect animals
by becoming a vegan who stops eating and wearing animal bodies
and products. Much more so than a shift in how one views the inorganic
world, it is far more difficult, complex, and profound -- for
both philosophical and practical reasons -- to revolutionize one’s
views toward animals and adopt ethical veganism.
In short, the modern “radical” tradition –
whether, Marxist, socialist, anarchist, or other “Left”
positions that include anti-racism and feminism -- stands in continuity
with the entire Western heritage of anthropocentrism, and in no
way can be seen as a liberating philosophy from the standpoint
of the environment and other species on this planet. Current Left
thought is merely Stalinism toward animals.
A truly revolutionary social theory and movement will not just
emancipate members of one species, but rather all species and
the earth itself. A future revolutionary movement worthy of its
name will grasp the ancient conceptual roots of hierarchy and
domination, such as emerge in the animal husbandry practices of
the first agricultural societies, and incorporate a new ethics
of nature – environmental ethics and animal rights –
that overcomes instrumentalism and hierarchical thinking in every
pernicious form.[15]
ID and Animal Liberation
“As Long as Men Massacre Animals, They will Kill Each Other.”
Pythagoras
“Many activists do not understand the revolutionary nature
of this movement. We are fighting a major war, defending animals
and our very planet from human greed and destruction.” David
Barbarash, former ALF Press Officer
As the AAM is not a monolithic entity, but rather has statist
and non-statist branches, conservative and radical dimensions,
Left critiques must not be overly general but rather specific
to different tendencies. The issue of animal rights/liberation
is important for ID and other radical orientations in that it:
(1) advances a provocative critique of humanism and speciesism
which are core components of Left ideology; (2) demands a broader
thinking of “ecology” and “the nature question”;
and (3) allows a richer and more holistic analysis of the origins
and dynamics of hierarchy and domination.
As I have pointed out, the animal welfare and rights camps seek
change in and through the pre-approved channels of the political
and legal system, and do so from an unshakeable conviction that
representative democracy works and ultimately responds to he voices
of reason, compassion, and justice over the roar of vested interests,
large corporations, and (even they recognize it) the structural
demands of economic growth and profit. These legalist orientations,
which comprise the vast bulk of animal advocacy organizations
(many of them huge bureaucracies and money making machines), often
win gains and “victories” for animals, yet they also
legitimate and strengthen statist myths of “democracy.”[16]
Welfare and rights legalists have reduced animal suffering in
a myriad of ways, ranging from adopting cats and dogs to good
homes and running animal sanctuaries to ameliorating the misery
of factory farmed animals. The plight of animals in factory farms
and slaughterhouses, in truth, is so severe, that any reduction
in the hell they endure is laudable and worthy of support. While
irrelevant to an abolitionist purist or a social revolutionary
movement, the increase of a battery cage size by a few inches
means a lot to the half dozen chickens confined within a torturously
small wire prison. At the same time, however, welfare tactics
do not challenge the property and commodity status of animals,
and enable factory farms and slaughterhouses to put a “humane
farming” stamp of approval on their murdered victims. They
thereby legitimate animal laughter and alleviate consumer guilt,
perhaps even enabling more confinement and killing in the long
run.
Welfare and rights approaches in the AAM are largely apolitical
beyond their own causes, although ideological orientations can
fall anywhere on the scale from far right to far left. In most
cases, legalists (1) do not have a grasp of social movement history
(with which one can contextualize the significance of animal advocacy);
(2) lack critiques of the logic and dynamics of global capitalism
and neoliberalism; and (3) fail to see the relation between capitalism
and animal exploitation. They thereby proceed without a systemic
vision and political critique of the society and global system
that exploits animals through industrialized systems of mass production
and death.
Holistic and structural critiques of capitalism as an irrational
growth system driven to exploitation and environmental destruction
are a hallmark of approaches such as social ecology and Inclusive
Democracy, and are crucial for the theoretical growth of the AAM.
Lacking a sophisticated social and historical analysis, much of
the AAM is guilty of all charges leveled above. It is well-deserving
of the ID critique that it is a reformist, single issue movement
whose demands – which potentially are radical to the extent
that animal rights demands and affects an economy rooted to a
significant degree in animal slavery – are easily contained
within a totalizing global system that exploits all life and the
earth for imperatives of profit, accumulation, growth, and domination.
In bold contrast to the limitations of the AAM and all other
reformist causes, Takis Fotopoulos advances a broad view of human
dynamics and social institutions, their impact on the earth, and
the resulting consequences for society itself. Combining anti-capitalist,
radical democracy, and ecological concerns in the concept of “ecological
democracy,” Fotopoulos defines this notion as “the
institutional framework which aims at the elimination of any human
attempt to dominate the natural world, in other words, as the
system which aims to reintegrate humans and nature. This implies
transcending the present ‘instrumentalist’ view of
Nature, in which Nature is seen as an instrument for growth, within
a process of endless concentration of power.”[17]
Fotopoulos and other ID theorists offer an important analysis
and critique of global capitalism and the triumph over social
democracy and other political systems other than neoliberalism.
As true of social ecology and Left theory in general, however,
the dynamics and consequences of human exploitation of animals
throughout history is entirely missing from the ID theory of nature
and ecology and critique of instrumentalism.
Where the ID critique can take easy aim at the statist orientation
of the AAM, the framework has to shift in its approach to the
ALM, for here there are some important commonalities. First, the
rhetoric and direct action tactics of the ALM show that, like
ID, it understands that the state is a political extension of
the capitalist economy and therefore “representative democracy”
is a myth and smokescreen whereby capitalism mollifies and co-opts
its opposition. Bypassing appeals to politicians in the pocket
of animal exploitation industries, and disregarding both the pragmatic
efficacy and ethical legitimacy of existing laws, the ALM applies
direct pressure against animal exploiters to undermine or end
their operations and free as many animals as possible. Thus, second,
from writings and communiqués, it is clear that the ALM,
like ID, is anti-capitalist and has a systematic (or at least
holistic) analysis of hierarchy and oppression. Third, the ALM
rejects single-issue politics in favor of supporting and often
forming alliances with human and environmental movements. Fourth,
the anti-capitalist ideology of the ALM is, specifically, anarchist
in nature. Not only are animal liberationists anarchist in their
social and political outlook, they are also anarchist in their
organization and tactics. The small cells that ALF activists,
for example, build with one another -- such that one cell is unknown
to all others and thereby resistant to police penetration -- are
akin to anarchist affinity groups in their mutual aid, solidarity,
and consciousness building.
The project to emancipate animals is integrally related to the
struggle to emancipate humans and the battle for a viable natural
world. To the extent that animal liberationists grasp the big
picture that links animal and human rights struggles as one, and
seeks to uncover the roots of oppression and tyranny of the Earth,
they can be viewed as a profound new liberation movement that
has a crucial place in the planetary struggles against injustice,
oppression, exploitation, war, violence, capitalist neo-liberalism,
and the destruction of the natural world and biodiversity.[18]
Radical animal rights/liberation activists are also active in
online learning communities and information sites, such as Infoshop
and Indymedia, whereby radical cultures are forming on a global
level. The communities envisioned by Fotopoulos and other past
and present anarchists is today largely unfolding online, as well
as in events such as the protests communicated to and attended
by global communities and “Liberation Fests” that
feature militant speakers such as Black panthers, Native Americans,
and animal and earth liberation proponents, as well as hard core
music that acts as a energizing, unifying, and politicizing force.
Many animal liberationists are knowledgeable of social issues,
involved in human liberation struggles, politically radical and
astute, and supportive of alliance politics. Crucial and novel
forms of thinking, struggle, and alliances are unfolding, all
without notice of much of the Left.[19]
In conditions where other social movements are institutionalized,
disempowered, reformist, or co-opted, animal liberationists are
key contemporary forces of resistance. They defy corporate power,
state domination, and ideological hegemony. They resist the normalization
and roboticization of citizens through disinformation systems
(from FOX News to MSNBC), media-induced passivity, and cultural
narcotics in weapons of mass distraction and endless forms of
spectacle and entertainment. They literally attack institutions
of domination and exploitation -- not just their ideologies or
concepts -- with bricks, sledge hammers, and Molotov cocktails.
Their militancy and courage deserves recognition, respect, and
support. It is worth pointing out that where today’s radicals
are mostly engaged in theory and philosophizing, the ALM is taking
action against capitalism and in defense of life, often at great
risk of their own personal freedom should they be caught for illegal
raids or sabotage strikes.
Yet, for whatever parallels we can identify between the ALM and
ID, Fotopoulos is critical of the ALM to the degree that it lacks
a detailed and concrete systemic critique of global capitalism
and its various hierarchical systems of power, and positive and
workable strategies for radical social transformation that dismantles
the state and market system in favor of direct democracy. As Fotopoulos
remarks on the limitations of the ALM from his standpoint, “The
development of an alternative consciousness towards animals could
only be part of an antisystemic consciousness which has to become
hegemonic (at the local/ regional/ national/ transnational level)
before new institutions implementing an ecological democracy,
as part of an ID, begins to be built. In other words, the strategy
for an ecological democracy should be part of the transitional
ID strategy in which direct action, although it does play a more
significant role than the traditional tactics of the Left (demonstrations,
etc.), still it is also in effect a defensive tactics. What we
need most, in contrast, is an aggressive tactics of building alternative
institutions within the present system (which would include institutions
of ecological democracy) that would make the antisystemic consciousness
hegemonic.”
Fotopoulos’ statement possibly devalues the importance
of single issue causes such as saving species such as whales and
chimpanzees from extinction, of defending the earth and struggling
to preserve various land and sea animals from total extinction.
Whether connected or not, it is important that radical struggles
for social justice, animal rights, and ecology all unfold in as
many forms as possible in this ominous era of global warming,
species extinction, rainforest destruction, and rapid ecological
disintegration, all results of increasingly authoritarian and
exploitative social systems. Fotopoulos is entirely correct, however,
in his main point. Sabotage actions -- while important and rare
forms of bold resistance today, saving countless thousands of
animal lives and shutting down numerous exploitative operations
-- are rearguard, defensive, and incapable of stopping the larger
juggernaut of capitalist domination and omnicide. Many of the
ALM would admit as much. Positive visions for radical change,
along with the concrete struggles and transitional social forms
to put them in place, are urgently needed, although some theorists
and activists within the ALM are contributing to this project
in notable ways.
Moreover, the general thrust of Fotopoulos’ critique of
the reformist tendencies dominating the AAM, such that animal
friendly neocons like Matthew Scully are hailed as heroes, is
correct: “Unless an antisystemic animal liberation current
develops out of the present broad movement soon, the entire movement
could easily end up as a kind of “painless” (for the
elites) lobby that could even condemn direct action in the future,
so that it could gain some “respectability” among
the middle classes.” Unfortunately, these words already
ring true in the pathetic spectacle of mainstream groups like
the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) applauding the
FBI witchhunt on the ALM and expressing its hope to see “the
end of the ALF and ELF forever,” so that the flames of radicalism
are extinguished within the vacuum of reformist, compromising,
single-issue, touchy-feely, puppy-hugging politics.[20]
But, as I have been arguing, the insights, learning, and changes
need to come from both sides, and the animal standpoint can be
highly productive for radical social politics. The animal perspective
can deepen the ecological component of ID, as well as its understanding
of the profound interconnections between domination of animals
and domination of humans. The goal of ecological democracy cannot
be achieved without working to eliminate the worst forms of animal
exploitation such as occur in the global operations of factory
farming. It cannot be realized without a profound critique and
transformation of instrumentalism, such as which emerged as form
of power over animals than over humans.
The best approach to theorizing hierarchy in its origins, development,
and multifaceted, overlapping forms is through a multiperspectival,
non-reductionist approach that sees what is unique to and common
among various modes of domination. There are a plurality of modes
and mechanisms of power that have evolved throughout history,
and different accounts provide different insights into the workings
of power and domination. According to feminist standpoint theory,
each oppressed group has an important perspective or insight into
the nature of society.[21] People of color, for instance, can
illuminate colonialism and the pathology of racism, while women
can reveal the logic of patriarchy that has buttressed so many
different modes of social power throughout history. While animals
cannot speak about their sufferings, it is only from the animal
standpoint -- the standpoint of animal exploitation -- that one
can grasp the nature of speciesism, glean key facets of the pathology
of human violence, and illuminate important aspects of misothery
(hatred of nature) and the social and environmental crisis society
now faces.
The animal perspective offers crucial insights into the nature
of power and domination. Any theory such as social ecology or
ID that claims to understand the origin, development, and dynamics
of hierarchy profits considerably from taking into account the
wide body of literature revealing deep connections between the
domination of humans over animals and the domination of humans
over one another. Any critique of “instrumentalism”
as a profound psychological root of hierarchy, domination, and
violence must analyze the roots of this in the domination of animals
that begins in the transition from hunting and gathering cultures
to agricultural society. Instrumentalism emerges as speciesism
and forms a key part of anthropocentrism more generally.
In many cases, technological, ideological, and social forms of
hierarchy and oppression of human over human began with the domestication,
domination, and enslavement of humans over animals. In her compelling
book, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery, Marjorie
Spiegel shows that the exploitation of animals provided a model,
metaphors, and technologies and practices for the dehumanization
and enslavement of blacks.[22] From castration and chaining to
branding and ear cropping, whites drew on a long history of subjugating
animals to oppress blacks. Once perceived as beasts, blacks were
treated accordingly. In addition, by denigrating people of color
as “beasts of burden,” an animal metaphor and exploitative
tradition facilitated and legitimated the institution of slavery.
The denigration of any people as a type of animal is a prelude
to violence and genocide. Many anthropologists believe that the
cruel forms of domesticating animals at the dawn of agricultural
society ten thousand years ago created the conceptual model for
hierarchy, statism, and the exploitation treatment of other human
beings, as they implanted violence into the heart of human culture.
From this perspective, slavery and the sexual subjugation of women
is but the extension of animal domestication to humans. James
Patterson, author of Eternal Treblinka Our Treatment of Animals
and the Holocaust, reveals the common roots of Nazi genocide and
the industrialized enslavement and slaughter on non-human animals.”
Patterson, Jim Mason, and numerous other writers concur that the
exploitation of animals is central to understanding the cause
and solution to the crisis haunting the human community and its
troubled relationship to the natural world.
The Need for Animal Rights Against Left Welfarist Politics
“The assumption that animals are without rights, and the
illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance,
is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity.
Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.”
Arthur Shopenhauer
One clear difference between animal rights and ID is that that
ID theorists view rights discourse as reformist, statist, and
incompatible with ecological democracy. As argued in his article,
“Towards a Democratic Liberatory Ethics,” Fotopoulos
holds that all rights (human or animal) are derived from institutions
of power antithetical to decentralized democracy. Rights are mostly
rights against the state, and have meaning only in social forms
where political and economic power is concentrated in the hands
of elites. In direct contrast, a non-statist society or inclusive
democracy abolishes hierarchies in favor of the equal sharing
of power; in such social settings, rights – capitalist,
individualist, protective, and largely negative in nature -- become
meaningless.
To put it another way, the issue of rights should not arise at
all in the case of a non-statist society like that of ID; it is
a superfluous vestige of bourgeois institutions and ideologies.
To overcome the present ethics of heteronomy, Fotopoulos argues,
we need an ethics of autonomy, which can only become articulated
along with a politics of autonomy. “There still remains
the problem of what are the appropriate institutions and the corresponding
values which would lead to the reintegration of society to nature—part
of which is the problem of animal liberation. So, for ID, the
problem is one of ecological democracy, which is a crucial component
of an inclusive democracy … many of the deplorable forms
of animal exploitation described by animal advocates are simply
the necessary symptoms of a growth economy, seen as the inevitable
outcome of the dynamics of the system of the market economy.”
I have no quarrels whatsoever with the position that “rights”
are a bourgeois construction appropriate to capitalist market
relations and state institutions where rights first and foremost
are rights to acquire and accumulate property, where property
is more sacred than life and is protected with the full force
of the state – such as demonstrated once again in the recent
conviction of the “SHAC7.” Rights, in short, are created
by the capitalist elite for the capitalist elite. Nonetheless,
in the current context, where property relations and state power
grow stronger and more repressive every day, and where liberation,
emancipation, revolution, democracy, ecology, and autonomy are
remote hopes (yet still worth struggling for), at a time when
global warming and biological meltdown are rapidly unfolding before
our eyes, it would be a strategic error of the highest order to
abandon the discourse of rights as a critical tool for animal
liberation, as it has ably served the cause of all past human
liberation struggles.
Whatever philosophical reservations one can voice against rights
– and there are many expressed from the quarters of Marxism,
feminism, communitarianism, feminism, ID, and elsewhere –
the concept of rights continues to inflame rebellion and the political
imagination, continues to provide a critical leverage and internal
critique against capitalist exploitation. Rights discourse is
embedded in the popular imagination in a way that allows people
to identify with and understand the concept of animal rights,
whatever straw man arguments and fallacious objections they might
mount against it and are cleared up fairly easily.
The concept of rights, moveover, by insisting on the intrinsic
value of animal life and providing a firm bulwark against welfarism
and utilitarianism, is unambiguously abolitionist in its meaning
and implications, thereby providing a conceptual, political, and
legal foundation for animal liberation, as currently fought for
in the context of advanced global capitalist domination and ecological
decline. In a non-statist society, rights can “wither away,”
but they are necessary for the animal liberation struggle in the
current moment.
To put it simply, in an exploitative society such as ours, rights
serve the important function of throwing up a “no trespassing”
sign around an individual, prohibiting the use of someone as an
unwilling means for another’s ends. Cutting through the
deceptive webs spun by speciesist philosophers over centuries
of time, rights apply to any being that is sentient, that has
preferences and interests, regardless of any rational or linguistic
properties speciesists use to circumscribe the meaning of rights
with arbitrary conditions. While animals do not require human
values such as the right to vote, they do need the same basic
protective conditions rights assign for humans, namely the right
to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The concept of animal rights prohibits any and all forms of
exploitation, including confining and killing animals as sources
of food, clothing, and entertainment. It equally prohibits using
animals in experiments, however “humane” and useful
to human, such that experimenting on animals against their will
is no more ethically legitimate than experimenting on humans.
Fotopoulos falls back on welfarist arguments that have failed
miserably to reduce animal suffering, let alone bring about animal
liberation. Fotopoulos writes, for example, “I would agree
with a society respecting animal liberation provided that it means
a new ethics will be upheld where any kind of exploitation of
animals per se is ruled out. This applies in particular with respect
to the use of animals for entertainment purposes, hunting, or
even medical research purposes—unless it is `proven’
that no alternative means of research on a particular serious
medical problem is available” (my emphasis)..
From the perspective of animal liberation, and in relation to
the dogmatic humanism of the Left, this is a promising start for
common ground on the wrongs of speciesism and animal exploitation.
Fotopoulos recognizes the lack of justification for major forms
of animal exploitation (although meat and dairy consumption go
unmentioned) and includes animal liberation as part of the “new
ethics” required for ecological democracy. Yet, the glaring
problem here is that within the impenetrable walls of scientific
dogma, researchers always insist that there are no alternatives,
which becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy if they never seek or
use them. Fotopoulos therefore fails to break with speciesist
ideology that justifies extreme injury and death to animals for
“medical research” purposes if it potentially serves
the dominant and most important species, human beings. Fotopoulos
will have to dig deeper to tell us why the same violent procedures
used on animals are not equally legitimate if used on human beings.
If he appeals to the standard criterion of advanced intelligence,
he will have to say why we should not experiment on 4-5 year old
children rather than chimpanzees, as such primates as more intelligent
than young children. It is precisely this kind of utilitarian
exploitation of one being for the interests of another than the
concept of rights is intended to block, hence its importance is
demonstrated in this very passage by someone who sees it as untenable.
From a promising but problematic start, Fotopoulos then back
peddles to support the trivial palette preferences of humans over
the substantial interests to life and freedom from confinement
and suffering of animals. As he writes, “However, all these
issues in a democratic society are decided by the general assemblies
and although I could envisage that simple majorities will be sufficient
to decide many of the issues similar to the ones I mentioned,
this would clearly not be the case with regards to the use of
animals for food purposes. Clearly, this could only be left to
the individual to decide whether s/he would like to be a vegetarian
or not, if we do not wish to end up with a new kind of totalitarian
society. Still, even in that case, the rules of rearing animals
in accordance with the new ethics should be decided by simple
majority rule and it is hoped that paedeia will play a crucial
role in turning a new ecological ethics, which would be consistent
with an inclusive democracy hegemonic.”
Would it not be as totalitarian to ban racism, genocide, sweatshops,
and sexual exploitation of children? Or does an ID society allow
the majority vote to legitimate violence, confinement, slavery,
and murder if it is so unenlightened? Would Fotopoulos leave it
up to individuals to decide if they want to rape and murder, just
as they decide what foods to put on their plate and the conditions
necessary for animals to meet their death in order to be their
object of consumption? If everyone decides they wish to be carnivores,
this decision by millions of people in any nation almost requires
the conditions of factory farming to meet such high levels of
consumer demand, The “rules of rearing animals” will
be predetermined by the logic of mass carnivore consumption, despite
whatever “humane” impulses they might acquire by means
of paedeia and their new enlightenment?
Fotopoulos invokes a standard argument against vegans and AR
advocates – that it is somehow totalitarian to tell people
how they ought to live, as if the personal is not ethical and
political. First, the approach used by the vegetarian/vegan movement
is one of persuasive education, not enforcing ethics or dogmas
on others, however strongly scientifically and ethically grounded
the arguments are. Second, is it any less “totalitarian”
to enforce prohibitions against killing human beings? Why would
it be any different for proscribing all forms of animal exploitation,
quaint (largely modernized and simulated) “subsistence cultures”
aside? Why is the worry here focused on potential “totalitarian”
control of consumers – which I interpret as simple conditions
of ethics applied universally and without prejudice and arbitrary
limitations – while nothing is said of the totalitarian
domination of animals required by the carnivorous tastes of millions
or billions of flesh-eaters? Despite current myths such as exemplified
by in McDonald’s images of “hamburger patches,”
animals do not willingly go the factory farm and slaughterhouse
to satisfy socially-conditioned human palette preferences. There
is no respect for autonomy where there is coercion of complex
sentient forms of life, compelling their bodies to deliver fluids
and flesh for no good or rational purposes -- so that human can
dies prematurely of a host of diseases induced by consumption
of animal protein, so that rainforests can fall, the ozone layer
thin, and rivers become choked with waste.
This is a strangely relativistic argument from a theorist who
argues for objectivity. Herbert Marcuse condemned this kind of
“repressive tolerance” that entrenched itself in relativist
positions and refused to condemn and prohibit exploitation and
violence. Any future society worth fighting for will be based
on principles of universal democracy that forbids any form of
exploitation, regardless of the species. The democratic paedeia
project needs to be articulated with humane education programs
that teach connectedness with and respect for the earth and all
forms of life. If children receive such instruction early in life,
there is a good chance that the will of the majority will be enlightened
enough to advocate ethical veganism and the philosophy of non-violence
to all life.
Fotopoulos mounts another false barrier to animal liberation
is his vision of a future non-statist society, ironically conflating
the differences between human and nonhuman animals he otherwise
is concerned to construct and protect: “I think it is incompatible
with democracy itself to talk about an inclusive democracy that
would be `representative’ of all sentient species. This
is because democracy is inconceivable if it includes the “representative”
element. Democracy is the direct expression of the political will
of its participants and in this sense it is obviously impossible
for non-human species to qualify as citizens, as they cannot directly
express their political will. All that is possible in a genuine
democracy is delegation-- but not representation-- of will, so
that individual and social autonomy could be secured and I cannot
see how this fundamental condition for democracy could be met
with respect to non-human species.”
Whatever the political form of future societies, enlightened
human beings will always, in some general and metaphorical sense,
“represent” the interests of nonhuman species who
lack a voice to communicate their needs – needs that in
most cases require nothing beyond empathy and common sense to
decipher. Animals cannot participate in direct democracy in any
direct way of physical presence and communication, and so advocates
of animal rights unavoidably will advocate on their behalf. Thus,
whereas humans can construct direct democracy to advocate their
needs and interests to one another, this scenario is not possible
for animals. This does not imply human superiority, just different
and unique natures whereby on a planet dominated by Homo sapiens,
animals require humans to speak on their behalf.
Whatever language we use to describe it, enlightened humans
must speak for the animals. This is not a totalitarian project
as if one human group were to speak for another who can speak
for themselves. In a way, in their expressed preferences and cries
of pain, the animals do express their voice, wants, needs, and
preferences. We only need to listen and pay attention. But since
animals are in a different ontological category of not having
the capacities of human speech and reason (as we lack many of
their fine qualities), we must in some sense “represent”
them or serve as delegates, guardians, or ambassadors of their
existence of this planet. It is irrelevant whether or not animals
can meet our social contract conditions for democracy –
be they those of Locke or of ID. We must acknowledge and respect
their fundamental difference form us (along with our evolutionary
continuities and similarities). To impose our will on them because
they cannot meet our unique conditions of social life –
in an incredibly arrogant, question-begging, and circular attempt
to decide which beings have rights and full moral worth -- is
arbitrary and imperialist.
Beyond Humanism: Toward Post-Speciesist Identities and a Broader
Liberation Movement
“The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than
the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected
with the fate of men.” Emile Zola
“Until he extends the circle of compassion to all living
things, Man will not himself find peace.” Dr. Albert Schweitzer
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be
judged by the way its animals are treated.” Mohandas Gandhi
The basic goal of ID is ecological democracy and reintegration
of society into nature. Although it is a key theoretical, ethical,
and political deficit in ID, clearly a huge part of this problem
demands engagement of animal rights/liberation. The challenge
of animal rights to ID and other Left movements that decry exploitation,
inequality, and injustice; promote ecological sustainability;
and advocate holistic models of social analysis is to recognize
the deep interrelations between human and animal liberation. The
emancipation of one species on the backs of others not only flouts
all ethical principles of a liberation movement, it contradicts
it in practice. Frameworks that attempt to analyze relationships
between society and nature, democracy and ecology, will unavoidably
be severely limited to the extent that their concept of “nature”
focuses on physical environments and ecosystems without mention
of animals. Such views not only set up arbitrary ethical boundaries
and moral limitations, they fail on their own grounds which seek
to understand ecology. Their ecological lapses are twofold: (1)
they fail to understand how factory farming and animal agriculture
in general are implicated in the major environmental problems
of our time, not the least of which are rainforest destruction
and global warming; (2) they do not see that physical ecosystems
are not self-maintained independent of organic life, but rather
are dependent upon a wide range of animal species.
From the perspective of ID, one could support animal liberation
as a dynamic social movement that challenges large sectors of
the capitalist growth economy by attacking food and medical research
sectors. The ALM is perhaps today the most vocal critic of capitalist
logic and economies, drawing strong connections between the pursuit
of profit and destruction of the social and natural worlds. It
is a leading global, anti-capitalist force. If the ALM could gain
wider public support, it could provoke a capitalist monetary crisis,
as it works to bring about improved human health and medical care.
Most generally, the ALM has the potential to affect a cultural
paradigm shift, one that broadens ethical horizons to include
nonhuman animals and leads human species identity away from the
dominator paradigm so directly implicated in the ecological crisis.
One could argue that animal liberation makes its strongest contributions
to the extent that it rejects single-issue politics and becomes
part of a broader anti-capitalist movement. This is certainly
not the present case for the overall AAM, which might be viewed
as a kind of “popular front” organization that seeks
unity around basic values on which people from all political orientations
-- from apolitical, conservative, and liberal persuasions to radical
anarchists -- could agree. “But, to my mind,” argues
Takis Fotopoulous, “this is exactly its fundamental weakness
which might make the development of an antisystemic consciousness
out of a philosophy of “rights,” etc. almost impossible.”
Animal liberation is by no means a sufficient condition for democracy
and ecology, but it is for many reasons a necessary condition
of economic, social, cultural, and psychological change. Animal
welfare/rights people promote compassionate relations toward animals,
but their general politics and worldview can otherwise be capitalist,
exploitative, sexist, racist, or captive to any other psychological
fallacy. Uncritical of the capitalist economy and state, they
hardly promote the broader kinds of critical consciousness that
needs to take root far and wide. Just as Leftists rarely acknowledge
their own speciesism, so many animal advocates reproduce capitalist
and statist ideologies.
It seems clear, however, that all aspects of the AAM –
welfare, rights, and liberationist – are contributing to
a profound sea-change in human thought and culture, in the countless
ways that animal interests are now protected or respected. Just
as the civil rights struggles sparked moral progress and moved
vast numbers of people to overcome the prejudices and discrimination
of racism, so for decades the AAM is persuading increasing numbers
of people to transcend the fallacies of speciesism and discard
prejudices toward animals. Given the profound relation between
the human domination of animals and the crisis – social,
ethical, and environmental – in the human world and its
relation to the natural world, groups such as the ALF is in a
unique position to articulate the importance of new relations
between human and human, human and animal, and human and nature.
The fight for animal liberation demands radical transformations
in the habits, practices, values, and mindset of all human beings
as it also entails a fundamental restructuring of social institutions
and economic systems predicated on exploitative practices. The
goal of ecological democracy is inconceivable so long as billions
of animals remain under the grip of despotic human beings. The
philosophy of animal liberation assaults the identities and worldviews
that portray humans as conquering Lords and Masters of nature,
and it requires entirely new ways of relating to animals and the
earth. Animal liberation is a direct attack on the power human
beings—whether in pre-modern or modern, non-Western or Western
societies— have claimed over animals since Homo sapiens
began hunting them over two million years ago and which grew into
a pathology of domination with the emergence of agricultural society.
The new struggle seeking freedom for other species has the potential
to advance rights, democratic consciousness, psychological growth,
and awareness of biological interconnectedness to higher levels
than previously achieved in history.
The next great step in moral evolution is to abolish the last
acceptable form of slavery that subjugates the vast majority of
species on this planet to the violent whim of one. Moral advance
today involves sending human supremacy to the same refuse bin
that society earlier discarded much male supremacy and white supremacy.
Animal liberation requires that people transcend the complacent
boundaries of humanism in order to make a qualitative leap in
ethical consideration, thereby moving the moral bar from reason
and language to sentience and subjectivity.
Animal liberation is the culmination of a vast historical learning
process whereby human beings gradually realize that arguments
justifying hierarchy, inequality, and discrimination of any kind
are arbitrary, baseless, and fallacious. Moral progress occurs
in the process of demystifying and deconstructing all myths --
from ancient patriarchy and the divine right of kings to Social
Darwinism and speciesism -- that attempt to legitimate the domination
of one group over another. Moral progress advances through the
dynamic of replacing hierarchical visions with egalitarian visions
and developing a broader and more inclusive ethical community.
Having recognized the illogical and unjustifiable rationales
used to oppress blacks, women, and other disadvantaged groups,
society is beginning to grasp that speciesism is another unsubstantiated
form of oppression and discrimination. The gross inconsistency
of Leftists who champion democracy and rights while supporting
a system that enslaves billions of other sentient and intelligent
life forms is on par with the hypocrisy of American colonists
protesting British tyranny while enslaving millions of blacks.
The commonalities of oppression help us to narrativize the history
of human moral consciousness, and to map the emergence of moral
progress in our culture. This trajectory can be traced through
the gradual universalization of rights. By grasping the similarities
of experience and oppression, we gain insight into the nature
of power, we discern the expansive boundaries of the moral community,
and we acquire a new vision of progress and civilization, one
based upon ecological and non-speciesist principles and universal
justice.
Articulating connections among human, animal, and earth liberation
movements no doubt will be incredibly difficult, but it is a major
task that needs to be undertaken from all sides. Just as Left
humanists may never overcome speciesism, grasp the validity and
significance of animal liberation, or become ethical vegans, so
the animal rights movement at large may never situate the struggle
for animal liberation in the larger context of global capitalism.
The human/animal liberation movements have much to learn from
one another, although will be profound differences. Just as those
in the Inclusive Democracy camp have much to teach many in the
animal liberation movement about capital logic and global capitalism
domination, so they have much to learn from animal liberation
ethics and politics. Whereas Left radicals can help temper antihumanist
elements in the ALM, so the ALM can help the Left overcome speciesist
prejudices and move toward a more compassionate, cruelty-free,
and environmentally sound mode of living. One common ground and
point of department can be the critique of instrumentalism and
relation between the domination of humans over animals –
as an integral part of the domination of nature in general –
and the domination of humans over one another. Such a conversation,
dialogue, or new politics of alliance, of course, is dependent
upon the Left overcoming the shackles of humanism, moving from
an attitude of ridicule to a position of respect, and grasping
the significance of animal rights/liberation.
[1] For a trenchant analysis of how the exploitation of animals
rebounds to trouble the human world in innumerable ways, see Jeremy
Rifkin, Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture (New
York: Dutton, 1993); John Robbins, The Food Revolution: How Your
Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World (Newburyport MA: Conari
Press, 2001); Charles Patterson, Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment
of Animals and the Holocaust (New York: Lantern Books 2003); and
Jim Mason, An Unnatural Order: Uncovering the Roots of Our Domination
of Nature and Each Other (New York: Lantern Books, 2005).+
[2] For histories of the origins and development of the AAM in
the UK and US, see James M. Jasper and Dorothy Nelkin, The Animal
Rights Crusade: The Growth of a Moral Protest (New York: The Free
Press, 1992), and Kelly Wand (ed.), The Animal Rights Movement
(San Diego: Thomson-Gale, 2003).
[3] Peter Singer’s groundbreaking 1975 book, Animal Liberation,
actually is titled deceptively as it espouses utilitarian-informed
welfarist not abolitionist positions.
[4] Not all self-professed “animal liberationists”
reject capitalist structures and political ideologies, however,
as is evident in the case of Joan Dunayer’s book, Speciesism
(Derwood: Maryland: Ryce Publishing, 2004). For my critique of
the naïve and bourgeois dimensions of this form of “abolitionism,”
see “Beyond Welfarism, Speciesism, and Legalism: Review
essay of Joan Dunyaer’s Speciesism, “ in Organization
and Environment, 19:2, June 2006.
[5] For the ALF credo, see http://www.animalliberationfront.com/ALFront/alf_credo.htm.
[6] See Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering
of Animals, and the Call to Mercy (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2002).Note also the difference between an ethics of justice
and liberation, and ethic of “mercy.”
[7] The most important exception to this rule has been efforts
by numerous feminists to engage the relationship between speciesism
and patriarchy. See, for instance, Carol Adams, The Sexual Politics
of Meat (New York: Continuum, 1990), Carol Adams and Josephine
Donovan (eds.), Beyond Animal Rights: A Feminist Caring Ethic
for the Treatment of Animals (New York: Continuum, 1996); and
pattrice jones, “Mothers with Monkeywrenches: Feminist Imperatives
and the ALF“ in Steven Best and Anthony J. Nocella II (eds.),
Terrorists or Freedom Fighters? Reflections on the Liberation
of Animals (New York: Lantern Books, 2004), pp. 137-156
[8] On the theme of the direct action anti-vivisection movement
as an anti-capitalist movement, see Steven Best and Richard Kahn,
“Trial By Fire: The SHAC7 and the Future of Democracy”.
[9] For more details of my analysis of the ALM as an abolitionist
movement, see “The New Abolitionism: Capitalism, Slavery,
and Animal Liberation”.
[10] See Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “The Communist
Manifesto,” in Robert C. Tucker (ed.), The Marx-Engels Reader
(New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1978), p. 496.
[11] The body of literature comprising the field of cognitive
ethology is incredibly rich and vast. Donald R. Griffin was a
pioneer of the scientific study of animal life and intelligence,
and wrote important works such as Animal Minds (Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 1992). For more contemporary approaches, see
the excellent work of Marc Bekoff, including Minding Animals:
Awareness, Emotions, and Heart (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2003). :
[12] Gail Eiznitz, Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed,
Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry
(New York: Prometheus Books, 1997).
[13] On the “animal question” as central to the “nature
question” and social change in general, see Mason, An Unnatural
Order.
[14] On the environmental impact of factory farming, see Rifkin,
Beyond Beef, and Robbins, The Food Revolution.
[15] For an analysis of the affinities between animal and human
liberation, see Ted Benton, Natural Relations: Ecology, Animal
Rights, and Social Justice (London: Verso, 1993).
[16] For more details of my critique of reformist policies in
the AAM, see my article, “The Iron Cage of Movement Bureaucracy”.
[17] All quotes from Takis Fotopoulos are cited with permission
from personal correspondence with the author in December 2005.
[18] For an analysis of new alliance politics movements including
animal liberation, see my article, “Common Natures, Shared
Fates: Toward an Interspecies Alliance Politics”.
[19] On new forms of alliance politics, see Steven Best and Anthony
J. Nocella II (eds.) Igniting a Revolution” Voices in Defense
of Mother Earth (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2006).
[20] For a critique of HSUS’ repugnant sycophancy to the
FBI, see my article, “HSUS Crosses the Line”.
[21] On the concept of “standpoint theory,” see Sandra
Harding, and my review of her book at--
[22] Marjorie Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal
Slavery (New York: Mirror Books, 1996).
Back to Essays page
|
