Eyal, I started this thread six months ago, and I've changed my mind about it since then, as you very well know, partly due to this thread. I mostly agree with your criticism, though I really don't see why anyone should encourage revol's style of discourse in any way.
Sep 18 2007 16:44
Sep 18 2007 18:02
tojiah wrote:
though I really don't see why anyone should encourage revol's style of discourse in any way.
as a nice antidote to wimpering shite.
Seriously i think you got off lightly considering you suggested we have more in common with Oxen than Chinese people. Still i'm glad this thread was revived it's reminded me exactly why i treat you with utter contempt.
Sep 18 2007 18:42
Quote:
Also, I generally tend to think that class solidarity shouldn't be based, psychologically on compassion, and certainly not on pity, but rather on solidarity, and the perceived unity and/or harmony of interests.
Like I said before, compassion is largely misunderstood in western thought as a sort of altruism rooted in self-sacrifice. This characterization misrepresents the meaning 'compassion' held for those individuals and movements who based their organization and activities around it.
Active compassion is generally forwarded as a sociopolitical and/or spiritual principle because it is in one's self-interest to build up a network of solidaristic relationships and this network of relationships can itself form the basis for a new society.
Sep 19 2007 17:15
revol68 wrote:
tojiah wrote:
though I really don't see why anyone should encourage revol's style of discourse in any way.as a nice antidote to wimpering shite.
Seriously i think you got off lightly considering you suggested we have more in common with Oxen than Chinese people. Still i'm glad this thread was revived it's reminded me exactly why i treat you with utter contempt.
So your contempt to me results from the fact that I started coming here when I hadn't yet shaken my Israeli mainstream activist high, which I have since then, as a result of this thread, among other things? Your contempt for me results from me not coming to these forums picture-perfect, class analysis glasses firmly in place?
Oh, right, I make grand sweeping statements, too, without having the proper academic credentials. Well, yeah, but I nuance them and finally retract them as soon as I realize that they're stupid. And occasionally not everyone thinks that they're stupid. I have made mistakes, and will continue to make mistakes. At least my mistakes haven't betrayed the working class to the Stalinists, the social democrats and the fascists, like those of anarcho-syndicalism, that fully theoretically solid political ideology you're so fond of. This is how I'm going to learn, and your bullying is not going to dissuade me from bringing up my various "brain farts", as you so eloquently call them, and seeing whether or not they smell like sunshine and rainbows.
By the way, if I ever stop talking rationally to you or about you and start just swearing at you and disregarding you, it won't have anything to do with your relative lack of paper credentials in the exact sciences, or relative lack of coursework in that field, or relative lack of familiarity with terms and conditions, or even stupid statements you've made in the past; it will have everything to do with you repeatedly sabotaging intellectual discussions on this website and being needlessly abusive towards people, as opposed to the theories or ideas they present, which are fair game as far as I'm concerned. Especially mine, otherwise I'd just find a clique of yes-men and talk to them all day, which is what most leftists end up doing, one way or another.
By the way, I love how you clearly demonstrate your psychopathic tendencies by actually claiming that you're abusing me for my own good:
on tree's lame early morning brain fart thread, revol68 wrote:
afterall ToJ's arguments could not be taken seriously by anyone with half a brain, to indulge them by approaching them in a serious manner not only makes you look like a fool but displays a certain contempt for ToJ, to not rip on hom for this shite is kind of implying he shouldn't be held to a higher standard, that he's trying his best, afterall one doesn't mock the paintings of a 6 year old.
Sep 19 2007 17:58
This comment has been moved <a href="<em>http://libcom.org/forums/history/cnt-anarcho-communism-anarcho-syndicalism-22092007#comment-229381</em>">here</a>.
Sep 19 2007 18:48
This comment has been moved <a href="<em>http://libcom.org/forums/history/cnt-anarcho-communism-anarcho-syndicalism-22092007#comment-229382</em>">here</a>.
Sep 19 2007 18:49
he means the CNT leadership in the May Days, it's a simplistic way of putting things but I get his point, however he also seems to miss the fact that it was done as a betrayal of anarcho syndicalism and was resisted by, guess who, yes other anarcho syndicalists.
ToJ it's not just a simple matter of you learning or some lack of academic creditenials (you went to post grad school so i'm guessing you have a better degree than i do) , it's the simple fact that anyone who suggests we have mroe in common with Oxen than Chinese people, who suggests that those who work odd hours and don't get overtime are defacto unproletarian and who throws these kind of idiotic thoughts around as if they are profound new insights leading the way out of prior aporia's.
Sep 19 2007 19:28
revol68 wrote:
he means the CNT leadership in the May Days, it's a simplistic way of putting things but I get his point, however he also seems to miss the fact that it was done as a betrayal of anarcho syndicalism and was resisted by, guess who, yes other anarcho syndicalists.
Yes, and when I make mistakes I am very quick to admonish myself for them, and openly ridicule myself for them, that's what development by criticism is all about. If you think my positions six months ago were daft, you should have tried me a few years before than, when I was a fucking Zionist for crying out loud! Jesus.
revol68 wrote:
ToJ it's not just a simple matter of you learning or some lack of academic creditenials (you went to post grad school so i'm guessing you have a better degree than i do)
I don't have credentials in philosophy or political economy. I've also only been seriously thinking of philosophy and political economy for two or three years, in spite of my academic studies, not in any way through them.
revol68 wrote:
it's the simple fact that anyone who suggests we have mroe in common with Oxen than Chinese people
You see, this is something you have to work on. You reinterpreted stuff that I said to make it look ludicrous, and then proceeded with it as if that were the fact. What I said originally was:
tojiah wrote:
daniel wrote:
With animals its different. I pity them when they're being hurt - they're passive. I think it's too bad, all that unnecessary suffering. But I share no experiences, no interests, no nothing with them - we're different species, right?You have a different skin-color and probably physiognomy than working-class Chinese. They probably express their suffering in a different way than you. Why are they closer in experience to you than oxen pulling a plow?
I did not say that we were closer in experience to oxen than to working-class Chinese. I was just positing that we may not be that much further away from oxen than we are from w-c Chinese, that the lack of identification shouldn't be an excuse. Which is bullshit, in hindsight, for a variety of reasons, at the very least the fact that with someone Chinese there is usually at most a contingent lack of communications, while with an ox it's an inherent block, but it's not the bullshit you put in my mouth. And yet you go on and on about it as if that's fact, building up your spite for me and the justification for abuse that follows.
revol68 wrote:
who suggests that those who work odd hours and don't get overtime are defacto unproletarian
And the minute you pointed out to me what the fuck I was saying, did I not make the closest textual equivalent to bashing my head at the wall while repeatedly saying "stupid stupid stupid"? Like I said, I had a hunch that had to do with a similar language in certain contracts and certain parts of Israeli labor law, that part was really contingent and irrelevant, though I think I was onto something (not about cops not being proles due to lack of overtime, obviously, 
, but, say, about what it means when someone doesn't struggle to get that 8-hour day). Anyway, sorry for sharing, but what can I say? People around me were being too supportive of this stance, so I wanted it criticised (not abused). That's why I share my "brain farts" with people on this website, at its worst it's still better than any Israeli forum I'm familiar with.
tojiah wrote:
and who throws these kind of idiotic thoughts around as if they are profound new insights leading the way out of prior aporia's.
Well, a lot of things seem profound when they're nagging at your addled brain at 6 O'Clock in the morning after you haven't had enough sleep. I should probably lose the bombastic style. I should also possibly review initial posts more clearly. I completely forgot having written some of the more pretentious parts of it on waking from the sleep I got afterwards, but had you quoted them to me to begin with, telling me "tree, you're being all pretentious like you're shitting gold again," I'd be able to make something of it, rather than just feeling hurt.
Sep 19 2007 20:58
Look,
If you make ridiculous statements you are going to be ridiculed...it's the internet.
I have to say, the arguments you make do not make much sense to me and seem to resemble more the online equivelant of thinking out loud, as you yourself admit that many positions you take up you let go of after a rebuttal or attack. This does show that you are willing to stay open minded which is good, but it might be more useful if you really thought things out and came to the boards with more solid lines of thought. That might lead to more productive discussion.
And I think your charges against anarchist syndicalism are way off just for the record. Any movement does have it's slips but I think the red anarchists have done way better than any other tendancy on the left, and certainly more than any type of green anarchist or vegan, ever.
Sep 19 2007 21:35
Anarcho-syndicalism and anarcho-communism are not the same thing. Anyway, I was mocking revol for a different thread, he got it, and that's all that matters.
As for saying that the arguments I make do not make sense, do you mean in this thread, in this thread and the other one, in all threads, in every argument I have ever engaged in on this website, in every argument I have ever engaged with at all?..
Sep 19 2007 21:44
Quote:
Anarcho-syndicalism and anarcho-communism are not the same thing.
This should gove me more jollies, what's the difference? I'm an anarcho syndicalist and an anarcho communist, it was anarcho syndicalism that has got the closest to anarcho communism or libertarian communism as they tended to call it.
p.s. you aren't mocking me, you're only making a fuckwit of yourself.
Sep 19 2007 22:11
I don't know what the difference is. There have been a few threads about that, don't think any of them amounted to any kind of conclusion. There is a difference, though, and I was definitely not poking fun at every anarcho-communist ever.
PS: Honestly, like there's anything anyone could say that you couldn't find a justification for mocking, if you put your mind to it.
Sep 19 2007 22:25
You seem to enjoy making retarded criticisms of anarcho syndicalism yet you clearly know nothing, i wouldn't mind so much if your online personality didn't grate with me anyway. If you don't the difference how are you so sure there is one?
Anyway why are you soo unable to accept the fact that i just don't like you, have some dignity and tell me to fuck off, just stop this whingey 'oh what have i done, why are you so mean to me?' bullshit.
and as redboots said, if you're going to make ridiculous ill thought out posts on the internet expect to get ridiculed, most of us learnt to keep our mouths shut until we've thought about things abit more, well atleast before anouncing we've developed a whole new profound analysis never thought of by anyone before and then using that to argue that doctors, nurses, firefighters, teachers and anyone on a salary exodis from their jobs and rush into jobs that pay by the hour.
Sep 20 2007 10:03
In the thread you're referring to the only problem that came out of it is your inability to answer simple questions about your own pet ideology. I'll defer anything further to when I've finally had the chance to read Rocker's Anarcho-Syndicalism, only now you'll tell me that it's not the right text to read at all, it should have been obvious to me that that's actually an evil social-democratic perversion of the ideology, and I'm a fucking moron for not getting that, etc. etc.
I wouldn't mind you not liking me at all, if it weren't for the fact that you took it to where you're consistently abusing me on this website, then hiding behind the political high ground.
Actually, I was going to say on the Canadian carpenters` strike thread how we shouldn't be worried about those damned Chinese migrant workers who were killed, because they weren't paid overtime, leaving them out of the proletariat and out of our concern, but then I got a fucking clue.
Sep 21 2007 07:34
tojiah wrote:
Eyal, I started this thread six months ago, and I've changed my mind about it since then, as you very well know, partly due to this thread
Sorry, I didn't notice the 'six months ago' part since somehow this thread was brought up again to the list of 'recently posted to' when I checked a while ago.
Sep 22 2007 04:41
redboots wrote:
Personally I am a Vegan and certainly understand the arguments for animal liberation on an emotional level.But I have come to believe that there is absolutely no way in which this liberation can be carried out.
I just don't believe there will ever be a Vegan world, and I see veganism as largely connected to lifestylism and the middle class. I do think there is value in the continuation of social movements to argue for vegetarianism/veganism and I would hope that an anarchist society would inherently include less cruelty and certainly more sustainable farming practices, but I just dont believe that it would not include some animal products. And I do not think there can be unity built around this idea.
In addition I have to say that my views on the matter have gotten less extreme over the years, and I do see what others would call a speciest hierarchy in nature. Like others have said, pigs and cows can not organize and rise up. It's just the way it is . And right now we need to focus on human liberation, anything else seems like wishful thinking.
Wow, another vegan that feels the same way I do - I was beginning to think that maybe I was all alone in that...
On that note, here's something I wrote a couple of months ago:
Quote:
Against veganism as individual boycottFor most of those supportive of animal liberation, veganism is the norm. The idea that animals are not ours to eat, torture or abuse, but rather should be able to live their own lives, fits well with the vegan philosophy of not eating, wearing or using animals or animal products.
How we see our veganism, however, differs from person to person. For many, perhaps most vegans, it is the idea that by being vegan, one is not responsible for the death of millions of broiler hens, factory farmed pigs or skinned minks each year, or the torture of millions of dairy cows & battery hens in fields & sheds all over the world. This idea rests on a similar basis to that of other individualised “consumer” boycotts, such as not buying sweatshop made clothes, or not eating/drinking Nestle products.
The supporter of individualised consumer boycotts believes that, if only enough people “saw the light” and joined them, these industries would collapse upon themselves. While perhaps true in a limited fashion, this analysis sorely misses the basis of the capitalist society we live in today.
Individualised boycott is intimately linked in with that concept that liberals seem so adept at gifting themselves, guilt. Those who boycott so-called “bad capitalists” feel that by not directly supporting these corporates, they are removing any blame from themselves and can thus live a guilt free life, the only thing that is seemingly important to them. Likewise, by engaging in the occasional ritualistic A-B march and/or writing a letter to the local newspaper or MP, they are “showing their opposition” to the latest war/trade agreement/other bad thing. To the liberal, showing your opposition often seems more important than actually opposing anything in any meaningful way.
The liberal concept of showing opposition is remarkably similar to the (“radical”) Christian practice of “bearing witness”. In both, it is the display which takes importance over the action, with the ultimate goal of leaving the liberal/Christian able to live their own lives with the self-important knowledge that they spoke out, and if the powers-that-be didn’t listen, well, it can hardly be the liberal/Christian’s fault, can it?
Supporters of boycott often point to apartheid South Africa as an example of how boycotts can work. They fail, however, to note the massive difference between that example and whatever they are engaging in on any given day. The boycott of South Africa was just one part of a huge campaign, it was a mass collective boycott (not a small-scale individualised one), and, of course, within South Africa there was also a huge movement pushing for societal change. Today’s boycott campaigns, without exception, are nothing like this.
My veganism does not hurt the meat, dairy, egg, leather or fur industries. Their level of production did not change one iota when, around 18 months ago, I decided to go vegan, and nor did I ever expect it to. My veganism is simply a personal choice, albeit one with a political logic, similar to my choice not to vote, which most certainly will not hurt the state in and of itself in any way.
To be continued…
Sep 22 2007 06:48
revol68 wrote:
he means the CNT leadership in the May Days, it's a simplistic way of putting things but I get his point, however he also seems to miss the fact that it was done as a betrayal of anarcho syndicalism and was resisted by, guess who, yes other anarcho syndicalists.
That's not so far off the "tragic mistakes" schtick of the ICC in regards to the Bolsheviks though is it?
Now I'm not claiming that it's exactly the same argument, but simply because some people in an organisation resist the leaders of that organisation isn't an excuse. Otherwise we could excuse not only the Bolsheviks, but the unions "it was done as a betrayal of trade unionism and was resisted by who, yes other trade unionists", the list goes on.
You also conveniently failed to mention the massive rank and file vote in the CNT for the popular front. Did they all betray anarcho-syndicalism when they did that as well then?
Sep 22 2007 07:04
revol68 wrote:
This should gove me more jollies, what's the difference? I'm an anarcho syndicalist and an anarcho communist, it was anarcho syndicalism that has got the closest to anarcho communism or libertarian communism as they tended to call it.
Not all anarcho-syndicalists are communists. Not all anarcho-communists are syndicalists. Does the fact the Japanese anarchist movement (of tens of thousands) split down the middle along these lines escape you? Not to mention the various other splits and disagreements around that time.
And anarcho-syndicalism didn't get the closest to communism - there's you giving it agency again - the working class in Spain did. Would you say that Bolshevism got the closest to communism before Spain then? Or collapse Hungary '56 into Nagyism?
No, we recognise that ideologies and organisations have their own dynamic that's seperate from the working class, and collapsing them into each other is what's produced the worst errors and betrayals.
Sep 22 2007 13:30
Mike Harman wrote:
revol68 wrote:
This should gove me more jollies, what's the difference? I'm an anarcho syndicalist and an anarcho communist, it was anarcho syndicalism that has got the closest to anarcho communism or libertarian communism as they tended to call it.Not all anarcho-syndicalists are communists. Not all anarcho-communists are syndicalists. Does the fact the Japanese anarchist movement (of tens of thousands) split down the middle along these lines escape you? Not to mention the various other splits and disagreements around that time.
And anarcho-syndicalism didn't get the closest to communism - there's you giving it agency again - the working class in Spain did. Would you say that Bolshevism got the closest to communism before Spain then? Or collapse Hungary '56 into Nagyism?
No, we recognise that ideologies and organisations have their own dynamic that's seperate from the working class, and collapsing them into each other is what's produced the worst errors and betrayals.
Loving this pseudo Hegelian bullshit idea of the working class that keeps always keeps itself pure from the distortions and corruptions of ideologies and organisations. Oh wait you actually mean a working class you already understand from an ideological viewpoint, a working class that has to abolish capitalism with the 'real movement of communism', a Platonic working class that's real movement towards communism happens in the field of forms, well away from the corruption of this world and history, a working class that never make mistakes or atleast can never be held accountable for them.
Sep 22 2007 13:55
You know that's not my argument so I don't know why you're trying this on.
Do you think the anarcho-syndicalism can be collapsed into the Spanish working class of 1936? What about those in the UGT, or the Poum? Certainly rank and file members of the UGT were involved in the collectives, worked alongside CNT members etc. - I'm some would've been more principled than Garcia Oliver et al. Do you think everyone in the CNT was an anarcho-syndicalist? If the answer to these questions is no, then we have to ask why you insist on conflating them together, because it's the same logic that Trots use when they say the "working class" was in power in Russia.
Oh and are you seriously going to claim there's no historical or theoretical differences between anarcho-syndicalism and anarcho-communism or were you just trying to catch ToJ out?
Sep 22 2007 14:13
OK I've split the anarcho-communism/ anarcho-syndicalism/CNT discussion to here: http://libcom.org/forums/history/cnt-anarcho-communism-anarcho-syndicalism-22092007
Dec 9 2007 21:06
...From the Communist Manifesto. Oh, Karl, how little things have changed.
2. CONSERVATIVE OR BOURGEOIS SOCIALISM
A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society.
To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, organizers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every imaginable kind. This form of socialism has, moreover, been worked out into complete systems.
We may cite Proudhon's Philosophy of Poverty as an example of this form.
The socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or less complete systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, and thereby to march straightaway into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires in reality that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie.
A second, and more practical, but less systematic, form of this socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in the eyes of the working class by showing that no mere political reform, but only a change in the material conditions of existence, in economical relations, could be of any advantage to them. By changes in the material conditions of existence, this form of socialism, however, by no means understands abolition of the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition that can be affected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms, based on the continued existence of these relations; reforms, therefore, that in no respect affect the relations between capital and labor, but, at the best, lessen the cost, and simplify the administrative work of bourgeois government.
Bourgeois socialism attains adequate expression when, and only when, it becomes a mere figure of speech.
Free trade: for the benefit of the working class. Protective duties: for the benefit of the working class. Prison reform: for the benefit of the working class. This is the last word and the only seriously meant word of bourgeois socialism.
It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois -- for the benefit of the working class.
Dec 9 2007 21:19
Veganism is ridiculous. The vegans I know are openly hostile to the working class, often racist, and always priveledged and white. Vegetarianism is the norm all over the world. Many poor people and people of color are vegetarians all over the world out of necessity, some out of choice (religion, personal preferences). Though I agree that food ought to be made in better conditions, and is often dirty and unhealthy in the present advanced capitalist societies (see Fast Food Nation, 2001), the best way to change those conditions is to help workers in slaughterhouses to organize, and help small farmers organize to fight agribusiness, and to help the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (McDonald's farmworkers) organize. Vegans are just silly. If you are a vegan, and make it your sole political cause, you're ridiculous. If you are a dedicated organizer and comrade in the class struggle, and happen to be a vegan as your own personal choice, than you're fine by me.
-eric
Dec 10 2007 10:26
Forum etiquette 101: Read the whole thread before responding. And yeah, I read that part of the manifesto months ago, and made the proper connections.
Dec 11 2007 08:44
I agree with Marx that neither "animal liberation' nor vegetarianism have anything at all to do with the class struggle (I also agree thst veganism is ridiculous and will never be practised by more than a relative handful of people: good luck to them, but pity their kids).
Another communist who was sceptical on this issue is William Morris. This is what he wrote in Commonweal on 25 September 1886:
Quote:
Our readers will have noticed several letters amongst our correspondence on the subject of Vegetarianism, one or two of which were written in a somewhat aggrieved tone, apropos of attacks by Socialists on that doctrine, if one may call it so, though several comrades and friends of ours are vegetariains, It seems to me that there is no need either to attack a vegetarian or to confer a vote of thanks on him, so long as he is one because he chooses to be so on any grounds that please himself, whether he makes it a matter of health, or economy, or sentiment. But a man can hardly be a sound Socialist who puts forward vegetarianism as a solution of the difficulties between labour and capital, as some people do, and as one may think very severe capitalists would like to do, if the regimen were not applied to themselves; and again, there are people who are vegetarians on ascetic grounds, and who would be as tyrannical as other ascetics if they had the chaince of being so. I do not mean to say that Socialist vegetarians are likely to fall into these traps; they only make themselves liable to the sneer of an anti-Socialist acquaintance of mine, who said to me one day 'All you Socialists have each of you another fad besides Socialism.'
Let's keep pour fads to ourselves and get on with the real class struggle over the ownership and control of the means of production.
Dec 11 2007 18:46
Luigi Fabri, from Bourgeois Influences on Anarchism, 1917: (good article by the way, seems anarchism has always been plagued by the same crazies)
Quote:
There are, for example, vegetarian anarchists who include in their beliefs vegetarianism; but good god, it would be very strange if these people would maintain that those who are not vegetarians are not true anarchists.
very strange indeed
Dec 11 2007 22:03
Personally I keep my AR beliefs and my politics as far apart as fucking possible but here's a naive tie-in that I wrote up a few nights ago when trying to talk myself though my opinions.
i. Anarcho-communism or dystopia. No cake option.
ii. Anarcho-communism may very well be unobtainable, and humaninty may very well be up shit creek without a paddle.
iii. Point ii does not mean for a moment that we should give up. We should be neurotically unable to accept the fact that it ain't gonna happen, refuse to come to terms with the death of the spirit of liberty and free socialism. When we are old, pissing our last in a dystopian police state, death will have to drag us singing 'Le internationale' to our fates.
iv. The meat/dairy industry is a destructive force on the environment. [url=Enter URL here]http://www.viva.org.uk/campaigns/hot/overview/index.php[/url]
v. It is also detrimental to human health and often provides shit work with bad pay and bad conditions.
vi. To get the meat/dairy industry anywhere resembing non-world destroying it has be be decentralised, localised and non-profit-based. This is workable only by the efforts of the workers and the community themselves, and points towards Anarcho-communism.
vii. being sentient, enough to feel suffering/joy/psychosis etc should in my eyes bar you from unnecessary suffering at the least and from being killed unless its for the greater good. Ie: so a community of non-veggies can have sustainence.
viii. As with points i and ii, while I in my daft fantasies would love an Anarchist world where veganism and vegetarianism is more popular, I accept in my heart of hearts that that won't happen.
Dec 11 2007 22:37
capricorn wrote:
I also agree thst veganism is ridiculous and will never be practised by more than a relative handful of people: good luck to them, but pity their kids
hmm there's decent vegan cakes, ice cream and all kinds of other stuff you can have now, you don't have to miss out on much really. and Carl Lewis was vegan while he was at the peak of his athletics career - arguably the greatest athlete of all time, and so is Mac Danzig, the guy who just won 'The Ultimate Fighter', hardly people you need to pity on account of their diet being unhealthy or anything, and it is growing. I'm vegan and fitter than almost everyone I know. I agree it's nothing to do with socialism or class struggle though, more of a 'moral'/personal thing for me, that's why I don't talk about it on libcom unless someone specifically slates it.
Dec 13 2007 10:33
W Morris wrote:
I do not mean to say that Socialist vegetarians are likely to fall into these traps; they only make themselves liable to the sneer of an anti-Socialist acquaintance of mine, who said to me one day 'All you Socialists have each of you another fad besides Socialism.'
The fad being the selective incentive required to create the public good. The whimpering spectre of the New Left with its shopping list of oppressions rears its wizened head once again.
capricorn wrote:
Let's keep pour fads to ourselves and get on with the real class struggle over the ownership and control of the means of production.
If the struggle for control is not in the name of a more humane and just world, then what is it for? The division is between those for whom socialism is to protect the weak from the strong and those for whom it is something else.
Can comment on articles and discussions
Haven't read the whole thread, so I'll make comments about the initial page and update them as I go along (if I find the time that is).
I'll start by being blunt and saying that I mostly agree with revol68's first comment about finding a fiver and getting a clue.
But let's make it less declarative and more specific.
Firstly, there's effectively no such thing as animal liberation. Animals can only liberate themselves collectively by overthrowing human control somehow. This is impossible at least for the foreseeable future (and I mean eons here, or human civilization destroying itself). Whenever someone says 'animal liberation' they mean 'enforcement of animal 'rights' ', they don't mean any sort of liberty. Usually they actually mean 'state enforcement of animal rights legislation', although Anarchist-leaning animal-rightists may make the distinction between these two. But they might also think that humans breaking into labs and opening cages or torching animal torturing facilities constitutes liberating animals somehow.
This is not the important point, however, as I think it's important to look at animal-rightism as a tendency and a phenomenon among activists. From my experience here in Palestine, going "the animal rights way" is something that has happened to groups which were formerly more specifically Anarchist (at least in propaganda; mostly the Anarcho-punk crowd actually), but got exasperated/despaired/demotivated/choose your own adjective. The first phase is that their propaganda links the struggle of humans and animals for liberation. The second phase is that their group starts doing mainly animal-rights-related activities but the propaganda uses Anarchist imagery, symbolism and rhetoric, and Anarchists still hang around at the group's basement/mini-office/storage room/mini-infoshop/etc. The third phase is that Anarchism is gradually phased out of all propaganda and the membership begins to include more and more marked non-Anarchists. In the last phase a change of guard happens with the leadership of the group and the still-not-deanarchismized Anarchists are somehow thrown out or distanced from activities and the next thing you know you're seeing this association for animal rights offer school hour curricula about how Jewish religion supports rights for animals. Some extricated refugee Anarchists might try to re-form into a different mini-group, which is again stuck in the bog of Anarcho-animal-rightism and dissolves gradually.
Well, I've only known this to happen once and I'm not sure I have all the details straight since I didn't experience all this first hand.
Unless someone can convince me that animal rightism is somehow a meaningful and useful aspect of struggle, I will continue to see arguments for it as mostly ex-post-facto self-justification and politics-of-rights-based sophistry. (Needless to mention that I dislike 'rights' politics, as it presupposes a sovereign which grants rights, and limits what you are 'allowed' to 'ask for' by whatever you're 'entitled' to by 'right').
PS - Fair disclosure - I've always eaten meat but have considered stopping doing that. I even actually tried it about 8 years ago but couldn't get myself to do it for prolonged periods of time.
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treeofjudas: I don't at all buy into your claim about how the use of animals and their slaughter for food is a major tool for dividing the proletariat. There are countries where until relatively recently only fish was widely consumed while other animals were not - and even in most European countries the mass availability of meat is relatively recent. There was no trouble dividing the proletariat along racial lines before that. Plus, you can very well describe people of other races using anthropomorphization of non-consumption animals: He's snakey, they're lying hyenas (hypocritical), or like vultures digging into the pray etc.
Also, I generally tend to think that class solidarity shouldn't be based, psychologically on compassion, and certainly not on pity, but rather on solidarity, and the perceived unity and/or harmony of interests.