Marxist Animalism
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Certainly some clearances was to remove people for sheep particularly in Scotland but wasn’t one other purpose of the Enclosures was to dispossess the peasant of his small piece of land and the degree of self-sufficiency it brought so that they could become a slum dweller in the new cities and fodder for the factory.
Or was that only a side-benefit and incidental?
The Scottish government is going to court to defend the practice of sending live baby calves to Europe…live exports form a large source of income for Scottish farmers, and Holyrood is fighting back, trying to get the case dropped.
Great, Dave. I bow to this logic. A great article. Thanks.
Alan, I don’t think the King, who authorized the land seizures by the sycophantic minions of his court from 1535 onwards, had any thought of such social developments. Wool was the Tudor commodity par excellence. The first enclosures, and certainly for the rest of the century, bedevilled the state with the vagrancy problem, and hence the ever more punitive measures of Edward VI and Elizabeth.
Dispossession from the land was practically complete by the dawn of the industrial revolution in the 18th century. The Highlanders were not evicted so they could work, but merely to die. The chiefs, lounging in their London clubs, were motivated again by wool and its profits. (Prebble).
I think the “benefits” of mass eviction for the industrial bourgeoisie came after the fact.
Not so in the case of the 20th century late arrivals, such as Stalin’s Russia, where the purpose of mass dispossession was to speedily industrialise and come up to par internationally. A completely different case.
Great cartoon, Matt.
😀
Animals and the origin of the factory system.
Capitalism tries to squeeze the last drop of life out of human beings, intensifying the work process to eliminate all non-productive movements. It seeks the ‘eradication of any uncontrolled movement of the hand, any unproductive glance of the eyes, any unwanted wandering of the mind’ (Collectivities). Similarly with animals, the aim is to eliminate everything that does not contribute to the final product, to turn them into machines for the conversion of feed into meat or other commodities.
With animals as with humans, the factory system aims to restrict the movement of the body to maximise profits. Factory farming was already established by Roman times; Plutarch writes that ‘it is a common practice to stitch up the eyes of cranes and swans and shut them up in dark places to fatten’. In seventeenth century England pigs, poultry and lambs were fattened by being confined indoors in darkness; ‘Geese were thought to put on weight if the webs of their feet were nailed to the floor’ (Thomas). Then as now, the movement of animals was restricted because it burned up calories and therefore slowed down weight gain.
The same basic techniques are still in use in modern factory farming, with the addition of new methods of confinement such as individual cages for chickens and piglets.It seems highly likely that the development of the factory for humans in the modern period was influenced by this long history of factory farming. The aim of the factory system was to concentrate human bodies in one place to increase control over their movements.
The main difference from factory farms is that humans are only confined for part of the day; capitalism needs their bodies to last longer in order to maximise the labour it can extract from them. With animals, the aim is to fatten them for slaughter in the minimum time – broiler chickens, with a natural lifespan of seven years, are killed when they are seven weeks old.
The origins of assembly line production are to be found in the US beef packing yards of the late 19th century: ‘The packing houses were the first American industry to create assembly lines, unable to cope with the constant stream of cattle coming in every day the packinghouse giants hit on a way of streamlining the slaughter process – they invented the conveyor belt’ (Rifkin).
A 1942 publication, financed by a meat-packing company, says: ‘The slaughtered animals, suspended head downwards from a moving chain, or conveyor, pass from worker to worker, each of whom performs some particular step in the process¼ So efficient has this procedure proved to be that it has been adopted by many other industries, as for example in the assembling of automobiles’. Henry Ford acknowledged that the idea for the automobile assembly line ‘came in a general way from the overhead trolley that the Chicago packers used in dressing beef’ (Adams).As Carol Adams observes it is appropriate that the slaughterhouse has been used ‘as trope for treatment of the worker in a modern capitalist society’ in works like Upton Sinclair’s ‘the Jungle’ and Bertolt Brecht’s ‘Saint Joan of the Stockyards’. Aside from the historic link, both the animal and the assembly line worker are treated as ‘an inert, unthinking object, whose creative, bodily, emotional needs are ignored’, while the dismemberment of the animal’s body is echoed by the ‘fragmentation of the individual’s work’ on the assembly line (Adams).
The 13 biggest dairy companies in the world have the same combined greenhouse gas emissions as the UK, the sixth biggest economy in the world, according to a new report.
I’ve mentioned the desirability of agriculture to change its model to a more sustainable one such as agroecology. This article describes its benefits and suggests the reasons why it is not as prevalent as it should be.
“…agroecology has the potential to build resilience and sustainability at all levels, by reducing vulnerability to future supply shocks and trade disruptions, reconnecting people with local food production, and making fresh, nutritious food accessible and affordable to all. This, according to the scientists, will reduce the diet-related health conditions that make people susceptible to diseases, and provide fair wages and secure conditions to food and farm workers, thereby reducing their vulnerability to economic shocks and their risks of contracting and spreading illnesses. However, the findings show that very little agricultural research funding in Africa is being used to transform such food and farming systems. The scientists found that only 3 percent of Gates Foundation projects in Africa support sustainable, regenerative approaches or agroecology. “
“a new study by researchers from Biovision, International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) and the United Kingdom-based Institute of Development Studies shows that such sustainable and regenerative farming techniques have either been neglected, ignored or disregarded by major donors…most governments, both in developing and developed countries, still favour “green revolution” approaches, with the belief that chemical-intensive, large-scale industrial agriculture is the only way to produce sufficient food.
“These approaches have failed,” said Herren, winner of the 1995 World Food Prize and 2013 Right Livelihood Award. “They have failed ecosystems, farming communities, and an entire continent,” he said ……Dr Lusike Wasilwa, a senior research scientist at the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation (KALRO), believes that donors are investing more money in industrial agriculture not because it is the magic bullet for Kenya and other African countries, but because they have an agenda.
“Kenya needs to wake up and find its position in production of crops such as avocado and macadamia nuts, which are largely grown using sustainable and largely environment-friendly methods,” Wasilwa, who is also the director of Crops Systems at KALRO, told IPS. “No donor is willing to support such crops that could easily make Africa rich,” she said.
“It’s clear that in Africa as elsewhere, vested interests are propping up agricultural practices based on an obsession with technological fixes that is damaging soils and livelihoods, and creating a dependency on the world’s biggest agri-businesses. Agroecology offers a way out of that vicious cycle,” Olivia Yambi, co-chair of IPES-Food said in a statement.
On now: Polish serial killer obsessed by slaughterhouses. Every serial killer I have seen a documentary on began by committing atrocities on fellow animals.
Healthy children feel kinship with and love for fellow animals.
Yeah, that’s why children are in danger of getting snake bit, savaged by dogs or picking up parasites that make them blind – really healthy. All this is so much romantic twaddle.
To become a serial killer, it is a series of escalating steps and it does appear that cruelty to animals is one of the early stages and child psychologists recognise the risk and can intervene to stop the progression. I’m sure Bijou is better qualified to explain it.
Affinity to pets is a human trait, visits to the zoo a childhood adventure. That animals can be dangerous, that some carry diseases is all part of life. We also know other children can be bullies, can be the transmitters of infectious diseases, the purveyors of tall stories, exert peer pressure and prejudice yet the benefits of socialisation and friendships outweigh the negative aspects.
But we know romanticism can unduly influence our view of the world – such as the early “noble savage” studies of other cultures.
I’m not talking romanticism, but fact. Wez obviously feels no affinity with other animals. Dismissing the extension of the circle of kinship as “romantic twaddle” is the same blindness to the inter-connectedness of life that we see in every speciesist.
I suggest a reading of Carl Sagan’s Forgotten Ancestors.
Healthy children do not torture and kill fellow animals.
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