Extinction Rebellion
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But the end of these animals is.
I’ve seen wild elephants, I have seen working elephants, I have seen tourist elephants, I have seen temple elephants. But I have never seen an elephant with happy eyes.
Where I live there is an annual elephant festival, hundreds of elephnts. I never go. I have no interest in seeing elephants play football or baby elephants separated from their mums so locals and tourists can take selfies.
It’s the “Marx” in Socialism, isn’t it? that made Socialists in the 20th century traditionally indifferent to nonhuman animals, viewing them as “resources” and nothing in themselves.
Prior to Marx, Socialism as it was included fellow animals as living beings (Shelley etc.) Then Marxists derided such concern as “bourgeois – or rather bourgeoise – sentimentalism.”
This indifference self- excluded Marxian socialists from awareness of the advances made in ethology and natural science since the later 20th century and kept them hooked on the old ladder view of evolution, which has long been admirably shattered by S.J. Gould and other modern Darwinians. Maybe now, Marxian Socialists are beginning to remove the eye-patch.A sweeping generalisation indeed.
“This indifference self- excluded Marxian socialists from awareness of the advances made in ethology and natural science since the later 20th century”
Surely the enquiring and scientific mindset of Marxian socialists makes them only too aware of some of those developments that are worth a monkeys, but is tempered by the realisation that nothing can or will be done, save what is expedient to capitalism, without the overthrow of capitalism.
True. But socialists are not exempt from human prejudices rooted in their history.
Good for those who comprehend this and are not fossilized!
You said we were subject to indifference and that is a nonsense. We are not exempt from compassion for other creatures, even as we may devour them, hard as that may be to a vegan to be willing to comprehend.
Survival has been through natural omnivorous means and reacting to challenges upon this, is not necessarily prejudice.
You are making prejudiced assumptions yourself to make a general point.
One of the problems with the debating method I think.
What is one to think, reading old socialist internal memos stating that there is nothing of interest left to evolve on Earth and that therefore humans are evolution’s ultimate goal (ultimate goal? How scientific! Evolution isn’t a task force. It has no ultimate goal!)
Lafargue’s attack on antivivisectionists as bourgeois sentimentalists is understandable in the 19th century, as starving workers die around these beplumed bourgeois dames, but a socialist who sides today with the authorities against working class antivivisectionists paying with their liberty for their indignation at unimaginable horrors, because that socialist takes his cue from Lafargue, would be a sorry individual.
Battersea workers recognised more than the Marxists of that borough when they rose in the name of the tortured brown dog in 1903. The workers recognised in the animals the dog represented fellow beings and fellow victims of plutocratic exploitation. They instinctively recognised that the exploitation that is capital affects all, and they did not trivialise the matter, as I have heard many doing who claim to champion a saner, better world.
I have seen a change for the better since I returned to the party after 16 years. Other, non-SPGB, “Marxists” are still ignorantly dismissive of our kinship with other animals, as are certain Anarchists.
University students, many calling themselves “Marxists”, desensitized, mock and pull faces at “animal activists” who are equally confused re: why society is like it is.
We owe it to ourselves to distance ourselves from such reactionary ridicule of universal kinship with other beings.I am glad to see that at last we are.
AN UNNATURAL ORDER by Jim Mason:http://www.amazon.co.uk/Unnatural-Order-Primal-Animals-Nature/dp/1590560817/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421320943&sr=1-1&keywords=an+unnatural+order%2C+jim+masonContains what is perhaps the most chilling quote by a human supremacist Marxist ever written.
“”…wipe out the jungles, turn deserts and swamps into arable land, terrace barren mountains, regulate rivers, eradicate all pests, control the weather and make the whole land mass a fit habitation for man.”
Hoffer, in other words, would totally destroy nature in order to make the world more comfortable for human beings. The view is so dominionist, alienated, and ruthless that it would have made even Aquinas and Descartes wince.”Jim Mason.
“… The exploitation of the globe, of external nature, becomes henceforth the sole end of man’s physical activity.”
Saint-Simon.
“… humanity is nature’s highest product.”
Maurice Cornforth.
In Queensland Australia XR are being targeted by the state’s government as “extremists”. How long before they are classified as “terrorists”
Police would be given new powers to search anyone suspected of carrying “locking on” devices, which delay the removal of protesters during acts of civil disobedience. The intent of “locking on” actions is to remain in place for as long as possible, and activists do use tactics to prevent their removal. These can include mixing cement with metal, which slows down attempts to cut through devices and extricate them.
State premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, has been accused of “fabricating” claims about climate activists setting booby traps cylinders containing glass fragments and gas containers “so that anyone trying to cut a protester free will be injured or worse”.
Police have never charged a climate protester in Queensland with an offence alleging they had set a trap or intended to cause injury to others. Police told Guardian Australia in a statement that the placing of items into a locking-on device was “designed to delay the attempts of police to extricate protesters in a timely manner”.
Extinction Rebellion, said the government had misrepresented peaceful actions.
“These proposed laws are based on entirely unfounded allegations. There is no evidence of booby trapping lock on devices, and to do so would go against Extinction Rebellion’s principles and strategy of non-violence.
“The state has the monopoly on violence, which Extinction Rebellion wants no part in. We are interested in a safe and peaceful planet, the path to which must be non-violent.What do they expect? That even 3.5% of the population can take on the state and win? As the song says (sort of), they fight the state and the state wins.
What’s interesting is that in Cardiff when ER held a four day protest no arrests were made. So defeating and deflating the tactic of overwhelming the justice system!
Brian, ALB,
I hope we are not endeavouring to undermine their commitment to peaceful methods of non-violent civil disobedience just so that they get more protesters arrested.
Their tactics so far have been fairly successful in accomplishing publicity for themselves and drawing attention to the urgency of taking action to tackle climate change.
One reason that the police is handling the demonstrators with kid-gloves is that they do have the sympathy of much of the public despite the disruption caused. Something the miners did not. But i’m sure things will be very different when the problem is not a few delays for commuters but the close-down of an airport, for instance.
The 3.5% may be suffice for certain political revolutions which was the basis of the claim but not for the social revolution that we advocate.
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