Marxist Animalism
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I take it you don’t recognise inter-species friendships?
And what is the point of you sending the Guardian piece on chickens? That they must not be allowed any raison d’etre than to be our food, because they are despicable?
How many millions of years were they here, waiting impatiently for us to eat them, so they would have a purpose?
The word “commodity” was a poor choice, but I meant to say that you see fellow animals as food or as slaves, here to serve humans, full-stop. And I would assume that, as oxen and horses will be more and more supplanted by machines, they’ll just become food too.
The notion that all on Earth are resources for humans comes from the Bible, and is deep in the psychology of the west, where capitalism developed and from whence it colonised the Earth. Marxists have hitherto reproduced this psychology. That’s why you are unable to discuss other animals except as resources: as objects of use and production. You don’t seem able to depart from this theme or see other animals in any other light. (Which is why you trivialise any talk of other animals beyond the field of “resources” (“This is like Blue Peter” etc.) Don’t worry. It’s always been a limitation of the majority of Marxists. What they have always had in common with bourgeois progressivists.
I take it you don’t recognise inter-species friendships?
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It is not about me. It is not a big deal for me. I don’t wet my knickers over it. You take and assume, too much about me and other comrades. I go about apololgising to rabbits and birds when I startle them on my mobiliy scooter. I know the names of all the dogs and cats in my street. I am more pleased to meet them than some of their minders.
The notion that all on Earth are resources for humans comes from the Bible, and is deep in the psychology of the west, where capitalism developed and from whence it colonised the Earth. Marxists have hitherto reproduced this psychology. That’s why you are unable to discuss other animals except as resources: as objects of use and production.
I am not unable to do so.
You don’t seem able to depart from this theme or see other animals in any other light.
I am able to do so.
(Which is why you trivialise any talk of other animals beyond the field of “resources” (“This is like Blue Peter” etc.)
No I’m reacting to your disparaging, moralising, contributions.
Even the piece you link to makes the following conclusion. I do not have a problem with this conclusion below.
“And yet, the pamphlet conceded that while the advent of socialism would mean positive change for animals, it would not necessarily mean the overall abolition of their use. “Disagreements would continue even in the society that would emerge as the communist movement developed to a stage where capitalism was in the process of being abolished across large parts of the world,” the text stated. “Communism is not the application of a universal moral code, or the creation of a uniform society, and there would be no state or similar mechanism to impose, say, veganism, even if many people thought it desirable. The question of how to live with animals might be resolved in different ways in different times and places. The animal liberation movement would form one pole of the debate.”
And what is the point of you sending the Guardian piece on chickens? That they must not be allowed any raison d’etre than to be our food, because they are despicable?
A bit of light relief. Chickens fight back. The return of Bantam-weights.
How many millions of years were they here, waiting impatiently for us to eat them, so they would have a purpose?
Off you go again moralising platitudes.They are mini dinosaurs.
They don’t have a purpose other than that ascribed to them, any more than we do. They are just there.
Well, I agree with this latest series of messages from you. 🙂
Let us try and concentrate on where we all agree.
Socialism will be about a flexitarian diet for the overwhelming majority of people across the world.
The meat element will for various reasons but primarily one of ecological sustainability be very much reduced and the types of meat available will be different, subject to local geography and culture.
Change in production and consumption will also equally apply to non-livestock food such as grain, fruit and veg. Farming methods will be modified. Land-use will alter.
This will happen because there will be a shift in who owns and controls our food system. Only socialism will create this sort of change. This will be the challenge for those living in a future socialism, to re-think food itself, how we produce it and the systems we use to process, distribute and deliver it and to create diets and foods for the future that are safe, healthy, nutritious and ecologically sound for the planet. That will be their responsibility and I am sure the correct choices will be made. The beauty of socialism is that it will possess new technology and the question will be how to apply it and which model to follow?
Perhaps not overnight but in due course. As with the State, religion some things will not be abolished but will wither away as their functions disappear or the need for them disappears and vanish. At the beginning of the transformation and transition, the existing FAO could achieve its full potential as a key organisation for collaboration and co-ordination and at last achieve real results. Devolved agricultural committees could be set up in every country and these could be further de-centralised through regional and district committees. At every level throughout this structure, the FAO could provide skilled staff able to draw on its store of world data and technical information to advise and assist the work. This network could be extended to local farms with an ability to adapt to every local condition. The information technology exists for implementation. (I am minded of the experience of how Britain adapted farming in WW2)
So I repeat and let us be clear, the choice on how we produce our food in the coming new society will not be made by this forum or the Socialist Party but will be a decision for the generation that have the task of implementing sustainable ways of growing food in socialism. Whatever chosen will be fit for purpose.
For my part, I will continue to post on how food supply can be improved and expose how the real de-humanising of individuals takes place – the conversion of compassionate humans into cold-blooded slaughters at the price of their mental well-being.
Capitalism declares wars are necessary and socialists say they are inevitable under capitalism, but we do not condone the training, the drilling and the discipline that turns civilians into frequently unfeeling killing machines. I will continue to condemn the meat industry on those humanist grounds.
I agree. And as people shake off long habits of thought which were part and parcel of class society, and when socialism has taken in hand pressing needs of production and distribution, I see new developments in how we relate to other species, beyond seeing them as “resources.”
So the mass debate continues. I am sure, Alan, you will continue to relay information about conditions in slaughterhouses but what’s the point? Nobody here is defending them or imagines that they could continue into socialism. And of course the Party campaigns only for socialism and so does not take part in campaigns to reform or stop them under capitalism.
But there are plenty of other products of daily use that are also produced under appalling conditions or with appalling effects. Some of the lithium that goes into mobile phones (child slave labour), palm oil products (destruction of orangutans’ habitat), etc.
Nobody here defends any of this but we still use the products. Are we to be told that we only do so because we rationalise away these conditions to soothe our consciences and that, unless we do, our morally-superior, condescending and judgemental mutual friend won’t deign to speak to us? (Not that that would be a too much of a loss since most of the time he seems to be operating from an animal rights boiler room)
Let’s use this forum to put over the case for socialism and not to try to convert existing socialists to something some seem to consider a higher priority.
“Some of the lithium that goes into mobile phones (child slave labour)”
I already covered that, ALB
Message #203620
“We can widen such a debate into a broader context. We are happy to use the technology you and I are using depends upon the pain and suffering of child workers. As you say everything is connected. Ye without sin, cast the first stone…as scripture says”
As you say, there are plenty of non-meat farming methods that are deserving of criticism and when critiques of cash-crop/plantation monoculture agriculture comes up highlight it. Again not necessary because of the effects on Nature or wild-life but the way it contributes to the small farmer being dispossessed by corporations, leading to depopulation of rural regions, increased migration and urbanisation – human centred. But not ignoring how that type of industrialised farming exerts unsustainable pressure on eco-systems.
“Whats the point”
We can join the dots about capitalist conditions and how there is an alternative way of producing and distributing resources other than the capitalist way, even if it does mean we are sometimes engaging in some speculation and some provocative suggestions and scenarios.
We have to justify socialism as a better society, as a more rational system, a world planned for the benefit of all of us. I don’t think presenting probabilities undermines the case for socialism. It adds meat to the bone (pun intended)
We aren’t writing the menu of the cook-shop but we should be explaining what type of cook-shop it might be.
This is both unfair and mistaken.
I said I would not speak to those who countenance the “stressed meat” industry, not those who are just meat-eaters. (I hope and believe, knowing you, ALB, that you, a meat-eater, would REFUSE to eat dog, knowing that they are, prior to death, deliberately blow-torched, hung, clubbed until their bones break, electrocuted, hoisted, and tied with their front legs tied behind their backs, before being boiled alive. I know you would refuse. Otherwise, then yes, I would not debate with you about anything, but shun you as you yourself would shun such as countenance that.)*
I am not for “rights”, but for socialism, and for socialists not being closed to new awareness and new discoveries, such as the wealth of new discoveries in regard to our fellow animals. I am for socialists not clinging to outdated attitudes just because former socialists – men of their generation – evinced them. I am for socialists being open to new knowledge being reached now, if only by a minority of ethologists and non-exploitative workers among fellow animals, instead of being bound by the old anthropocentrist notion of humans on one side, “resources” on the other.
People who claim to want a new society should be prepared to drop prejudices that the old society has riddled them with. After all, you eagerly (to my mind, ALB, over-eagerly) embrace some new aspects (the internet) of change, but not others (extending the circle of kinship beyond one’s own mammalian species, but regarding other species merely as “resources” for human exploitation). This is why you trivialise the issue, although much less so now than you used to, and much less so now than the Bolsheviks and some Anarchists still do. I call this progress, and am happy about it. On other forums I would be abusively ridiculed until I left, as I was twenty years ago on our previous one, but no longer.
*Twenty years ago, some wag would have answered that by saying he had no problem with it.
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