Another thrilling round of "Anarchism and Animal Rights

If the concept of rights are not static from one group to the next, and given that we're talking about black oppression and womens' oppression are you implying black people need a different set of rights to women? Think you might want to rephrase bits of that.

Anyway, yes obviously I recognise the differences in the kind of oppression caused by racism and sexism, but I'm talking about what these groups can achieve by liberation. I recognise the equal nature of men and women, the equal nature of black and white people. I don't recognise the equal nature of humans and animals.

From all the evidence of their behaviour we can conclude that the animal experience of oppression is negligable. If you're talking about animal experience of pain then you might have an argument, but any moves towards limiting that kind of suffering under capitalism is at best a distraction for a revolutionary and at worst divisive. A distraction because animals are not a group we can build solidarity with or expect to liberate themselves, so it is in no way part of a class struggle. Divisive because historically AR movements have divided the working class or villified sections of it.

Also, peppered grillsteaks taste sooo good.

Oh no, it is. Only a denier of the obvious with his head up his own arse would disagree.

Bird flu quite probably (no, almost definetely) came from the factory farms of south east asia -which is one of the biggest producers in the world. They, and factory farms in general, are ripe for disease due to the densely packed areas of living beings, usually of the same breed and connected easily to communication links. The fact that so many chemicals and antibiotics are used on these and other animals should be worrying. But yes they are also massively detrimental to the environment; they produce millions of gallons raw animal waste, the aformentioned chemical overuse and inefficient use of resources, land and so on.

I knew you were going to mention that; but I assumed we were still on the subject of using animals for food. But if you want to bring it up, actually no silk production and so on is often not particularly good for the environment.

Um yes I know. That's why I said that it isn't always environmentally OK. More and more GM soya is being grown and greater amounts of chemical pesticides/herbicides etc. are being used. Yet this is a relatively recent development and not how soya can be grown.

no, why did I mention ethics dumbass? That's why I'm vegan. And beef production isn't the only form of meat (duh) but the ethical and efficiency arguments against it are not peculiar to that form of meat production alone...infact it goes to all.

----

Because something cannot liberate itself it should not be liberated if possible? The Black slaves often heroically rose up against the slave masters and riots in places such as Jamaica were a turning point in history. And yet remember that without the action of white, British citizens the Abolitionists etc. there would have been no emancipation or atleast at that time. So yes, where an oppressor voluntarily or is forced to stop oppressing you could call that liberation by another. The fact that self-liberation may not be possible is not argument against liberation itself. A pregnant sow chained and confined to its stall may be completely incapable of escaping, that in no way makes her suffering disgusting and cruel. But where animals can escape, fight back etc. they have done; the system of human imposed animal cruelty is something we have to change.

I'm just trying to get my head round your absurd arguments...(you didn't mention bourgeois vs. proletariat there incidentally because, well, thats an example where we aren't trying to achieve "unity and equality".) But animals, I believe, deserve an equality of respect in terms of their desire for happiness and freedom (like human beings) and fear of oppression and pain. In terms of unity, it depends what you mean, you're very much thinking of it from a selfish point of view.

Millions of animals are tested upon everyday. Millions are bolted, electrocuted, stunned and cut for their carcasses. Millions are made to work back breaking, life sucking work. Millions are killed for sport, entertain and fun. I think, if it was about numbers and the scale of suffering animals would come top.

Concerning the rest of your post, if you actually, seriously believe that... you need help.

The thing is, whether it's white man denying a Black man a seat, or men beating a women or someone else kicking a dog to death Injustice is all the same.

no - kicking a dog is obviously not as bad, it is wrong and unlike eating meat and testing medicines etc pointless but it is not as bad as the other examples

you are lowering women and "blacks" to the level of dogs - which is pretty sick

Surely injustice isn't all the same, there are varying degrees. Being sacked is an injustice, a black man being lynched for the colour of his skin is ever so slightly more unjust.

And the billions of children working in sweatshops are crying for them as we speak.

I wasn't implying we should forget about one injustice in the face of others, I was responding to Volin's assertion that animals suffer more than humans:

Hmmm.

No, my point is that it's still Injustice and Oppression. Whether its kicking a dog or any other example commited against human beings you might differ as to the degree of the crime but it is equally a manifestation of wrongdoing. It's wrong and should be stopped.

Why are you using that as an argument against animals? I'm equally against both. Do you think ARAs are against human rights or what? Do you think its ok that either of them exist in the world? Em, no.

Yes, but all that's dependent on what your view on animals is in the first place. I mean, under capitalism farmed animals are viewed as resource in the same way that say, iron ore is. But communism isn't going to liberate iron ore is it? Unless the writer was trying to argue that animals as a commodity is comparable to labour value as a commodity, which is a pretty impossible position.

Untrue. Most if not all communists view capitalist progress as being masively beneficial to humanity, even if capitalist economics a massively detrimental to it. And I doubt many ARAs disrupting research believe they are putting communist ideology into practice.

Marx was talking about us having a full understanding of our natural environment and using it to it's full potential. Massive misunderstanding of his words there especially since I can't see how the relationship between humans and animals outside the context of their being part of the natural world could be described as a conflict. I mean, I'm sure the writer didn't think resolving conflict with the natural world means being nice to trees and rocks, but somehow makes the leap from a statement about our relationship to the natural world to our relationship to animals.

Ok, so the communist ideology is borne out of the same enlightment thinking which gave rise capitalist economics. But the concept of animal rights also has its roots in enlightment thinking. And that last sentence (my bold) is just a totally unsubstantiated statement which makes no sense at all.

But iron ore isn't a sentient, living being that suffers and un-necessarily. Whatever your "view" of animals is, this is scientifically and behaviourally without doubt. Now that's a massive difference, and when you start seriously thinking about the extent of the commodification of life and resources you cannot, at the same time, "view" the comparison and similar treatment of inanimate matter with living beings as anything but absurd. It is a product of capitalist thinking, and with the transformation of capitalism and challenging of its thinking our treatment of animals and the environment will have to change.

Agreed, and most communists happen to be pseudo-capitalist maniacs that think mass industrialisation and workerism are good things.

How many entire species are we wiping off the face of the Earth?

The argument here though was whether or not animal liberation is part of the class struggle. For the argument about animal sentience/suffering etc please refer to previous posts by me, kalabine, ghost_otr, madashell and others.

Anyway, the point I'm making is, to go back to the example of iron ore. Iron ore under capitalism is viewed as resource but it is also seen as a commodity in a specific way unique to capitalism. But it was still viewed as a resource prior to capitalism and presumably still will be viewed as a resource after capitalism. So it follows that it is perfectly concievable that animals, which were seen as a resource before and during capitalism could still be a resource in a communist society.

Also, you've brought in environment in that last sentence, which is a totally seperate issue, and probably one where we 95% agree.

If by mass industrialisation you mean the most efficient production utilising the best technology available for the maximum benefit of humanity - guilty. If by workerism you mean having a class struggle analysis and seeing the proletariat as a class capable of defeating capitalism - also guilty. But these are seperate issues - I recommend you start new threads if you want to discuss them .

But how does this constitute a direct conflict with animals (this is the fallacy the writer of beast of burden was making and what I was addressing)? At worst it is down to mismanagement of the environment, at best it is a neccessary forfeit of human expansion. But again, this is a seperate issue to animal rights really - personally I'm all for species preservation, albeit in the context of preventing environmental destruction.

What do you think motivates animal liberationists? Ofcourse it's the suffering of the animals, how could you possibly differentiate between the two? Animal Liberation, Animal Rights and the stance for better treatment of the environment and non-human animals are all linked and a fundamental part of my (and undoubtedly others') anarchism. I'm saying it's a part of the class struggle...

"with the transformation of capitalism and challenging of its thinking our treatment of animals and the environment will have to change."

Animals were never seen as a commodity before the rise of capitalism (or more specifically husbandry) and in a communist society which would have eliminated capitalist ownership of the means or production, wage labour and commodification our relationship to animals as a commodity could not exist. The oppression of the environment, animals and humans are completely connected and a genuine improvement one must likewise deal with the others. We're all part of the same world.

I dont think a modern communist society would be 100% free of the using of animals as a resource, just as primitive societies did...but like them, it would mostly be plant-based, and our relationship with animals would be more in recognition of their value as living, sentient beings.

What would constitute a "conflict" with animals? All of our recorded history has been one where we have existed with animals in a state of domination and oppression. We have obliterated species, habitats and any animals we do allow to exist with us have been for our own benefit and their enslavement. It is also not a situation any animal would accept, they just have to.

I'll reply about industrialisation and workerism...

This thread is a pile of pish. Both sides are fankly being ridiculous.

First off the assertion that 'liberating' animals from their cages is a direct confrontation with capital is off the wall. Supposing tomorrow every animal life was made sacred - it wouldn't make a toss of a difference to capitalism - it would just make the vivesectors use deprived, desperate people and convicts in their experiments. Of course it's inefficient to farm animals. A brief look at the the protein cycle makes that glaringly obvious, but how is that relevant to the class struggle? I am a vegetarian but before the cry 'hippy' gets taken up my favourite foods remain deer, ostrich, and other game. Vegetable ranks very low on my leet of personal food preferences, but for economic reasons I don't think it's viable at present to eat meat. However the wooly and 'ethical' arguments against eating animals are just emotive nonsense by comparison to these.

Also the frankly ludicrous assertion made by many here that pigs are not sentient and don't feel oppressed is neither here nor there in this debate and smacks of misplaced macho posturing. Blatantly pigs have cultures (Fucksake! Ants have fucking cultures! There's nothing special or 'human' about cultures) and more baltantly pigs feel pain and are self-aware enough to experience oppression and/or freedom. Treat a dog badly and you make it neurotic (Just like people eh? What the fuck do youse think the whole conditioning process that say guard dogs or fighting dogs undergo is all about? It's exactly the same process that you would put a person thru to turn them into a polis or a pit-fighter or something, albeit on a slightly more mechanistic and crude level to account for the dogs more limited intelligence). If that's true of dogs then it is infinitely more true of pigs, of which study after study has found to be much more intelligent than dogs or 'higher primates' like chimps. They've been able to teach pigs human language and have identified in pigs a degree of relatively advanced numeracy. Pigs also quite clearly demonstrate emotional awareness and sentience. There are amonst the most intelligent animals alongside porpoises, primates and certain birds of the crow family. If that makes people uncomfortable killing or eating them then those people are already vegetarian.

Undoubtedly there are arguments to be had about the rights and wrongs about eating pigs but personally none of the aforementioned information would make me balk at killing or eating pigs. I do think tho that if people wish to eat animals and can't kill them for themselves then there are good reasons why they shouldn't. I think it should be a minimum requirement of eating animals that you can, if the situation presented itself, kill them. Naturally I don't mean by that that on some daft diffusionist evel that industrial production of meat is unsupportable - as a communist I am obviously in favour of the fruitful division of labour. Industrialisation is necessary for the emancipation of humanity from material slavery. But I do feel that if you can't face the mortality of the animal you are eating then patently you are, at an emotional level, vegetarian and it lacks self-awareness and is redolent of moral corruption for you to fool yourself that you can eat animals and not at some level have a problem with the fact.

It should not make a difference whether pigs or shrimps or fucking mussels feel pain, are oppressed etc. on whether or not communists take a pro or anti-animal liberation position - it's a personal choice issue; from my perspective animals are not humans, fullstop, but I don't pretend that my views on the matter are anything other than my personal ethics. A communist society is desireable whether it eats meat or not (clearly the meat thing is a side issue compared to the liberation of mankind).

It is however, on a much less emotive and far more important level, quite apparent tho that too much of modern food production is given over to animals, and contrary to the assertion that twice as much food is produced than is necessary to feed humanity there is actually a food production defecit. At precisely the point in time when China's industrialisation has permanently depleted the amount of available land for agriculture - with the result that China is now needing to import vast quantities of grain - the reform of the common agricultural policy (set aside land et al) has cut the amount of food produced by the EU by half - in other words we're now entering a state of rapid diminution of grain reserves and global food underproduction [source - Private Eye]. Under these material conditions true communists can hardly support the massive overproduction of meat, which will be a contributary factor to a coming starvation that will be experienced by the world's poorest, who can already hardly afford to purchase grain and seed and whose countries, guided by neo-colonial priorities, produce useless cash crops like tobacco.

This is the debate that needs to take place. Not some wanky activist crap about how much you feel for or don't feel for some cute fluffy bunnies being tortured in cages. If half the time that was spent on opposing daft, poncy bastards on horses and geeks in lab coats was used profitably for the class struggle we might actually get somewhere!

Solidarity,

Nick Durie

Surely the solution to this rift is compromise. I suggest we synthesise animal liberation and the class struggle by agreeing to only eat and test makeup on posh animals? For example ponies, owls, pandas, foxes, etc

exactly, what else can you do with a posh dog like that, but to test a new pantene pro-v formula on it?

more like this

Aye, but, slightly off topic has anyone else noticed that the most revolutionary thing on the telly is shampoo? What with all those free radicals and revolutionary formulas its worth sacrificing a few puppies eyes in order to get it right. No?

I would definitely consider the action of destroying and vandalising the private property of a corporation/government being used expressly to encage, torture or otherwise harm an animal as a challenge to the legitimacy of the power relationship; and a confrontation with capital. Such people *mindfully (rather than mindlessly) carrying out illegal direct action for their beliefs and the lives of animals, regardless of and contrary to the profit and interests of the propertied class cannot be but an anti-capitalist action.

D’you know what I love? People gate crashing a discussion, obviously not having read what’s been said. The oppression of animals is not prerequisite of capitalism, and yet this oppression and others like it have been tied up with the progress and establishment of capitalism. I’m a revolutionary, I believe that the status quo can only be left behind by radical all-encompassing change. “Animal Liberation” could only ever be achieved by this. However I’ve never said that the abolishment of capitalism will definitely mean an end to animal oppression; and vice versa. The social revolution of anarchists goes beyond that.

Actually human testing is already widespread and animal experimentation is only a part of the process. Also you’re overlooking the growing alternatives to animal testing which quite a number of scientists are favouring, anyway, as being more efficient, safer and not to mention ethical.

How is a more efficient and ethical food production relevant to a better society? Hmm…

You mean the same pigs which;

(*)feel pain and are self-aware enough to experience oppression and/or freedom,

(*)of which study after study has found to be much more intelligent than dogs

(*)and also quite clearly demonstrate emotional awareness and sentience

?

What arguments do you have (against the apparently “”woolly” and ethical”) that justifies you depriving another sentient, freedom-loving, intelligent animal of its life for your palate?

Industrialisation is the intensive application of industry, urbanisation and factory-style production. It was the idea of 19th and early 20th century theorists that such intensive agriculture and industry would rid us of our poverty and scarcity (and all that crap) and we would all be giddy with happiness. They forgot, as Russia testifies, about the lives of the workers it was meant to be improving and of the environment which bore the brunt of this great PROGRESS. Industrialisation is the antithesis of an environmentally sustainable society. That’s not to say I’m against industry, but people seem to be confusing the two.

Actually, and you completely misunderstand Animal Rights Activists, we don’t believe it is. It’s not a “personal choice issue” to screw over people of a different race, women, the working-class or anyone else your “freedom” demands. When you have a situation where

Animals are everywhere being exploited

Suffer

And yet don’t need to

Then you start to wonder, whether it is infact your “personal choice” to support the mass abuse of animals for your own gain.

Something does not necessarily have to be human to be of importance and to suffer unjustly; IMO the liberation of mankind will only be achieved when we realise the importance of the bigger picture. Where there are abattoirs there will always be battlefields and all that.

i dont want to live in a society where you can't eat meat if you want, i don't want to live in a society where medicines and medical techniques can't be tested on animals-such a society would not be libertarian

a libertarian communist society must be about human equality and freedom, there is no place for animals within that, the needs of animals must be subordinate to the needs and desires of humans

that's right; humans, as completely seperate and isolated as we are from the rest of "nature", will be completely free and equal to brutalise any thing we feel like. And when we finally fuck everything up too much we can head off in our purpose built flying saucer to Mars or any other dickhead fantasy you have.

I'm against eating meat, but I think it'd be a thousand times better if factory farming was removed (it probably would in an anarchist society anyway),those that ate meat did so limitedly (which would probably happen anyway) and had a greater awareness of where their food was coming from (again likely). Animal testing would have to be stopped completely however. You're just repeating the same dumbass rhetoric so many countless right-wing apologists spew when it's even questioned that we might not have the "right" to torture for own gain...even though its been repeatedly shown that such testing actually invalidates many drug tests.

Where there's subordination to anyone's "needs and desires", we will not live in a free society. And your freedom and equality isn't worth shit.

it is worthwhile for humans, and that's what counts

i do have a problem with factory farming and industrial food production, having worked in both industries and seen how badly the workers are treated and how unhygenic it is - i wouldnt have a problem with industrial farming if it could be fully automated and cleaned up, now that isnt going to happen under capitalism

but maybe it could be achieved in a libertarian society...

you recognise absolutely no need or necessity for improving animals lives, even in a libertarian society?

thats right.

of course he does!

[interjection: quite enjoying the synthesis of your two board-personalities here BTW!]

Volin: your posts, and the posts and ideas of quite a few otherwise sound AnarchoAR types, smack of a desire to force your dietary habits onto others. Unless these essentially non-political decisions (diet) are taken freely, we truly would not live in a libertarian society.

animal rights have only ancillary benefits to humanity. As a humanist, and therefore a speciesist, I concern myself with the lot of my fellows, thence higher animals and so on. I will concern myself with the lot of pigs when the cossacks ride through Paris, the great caledonian forest carves a verdant throng from the border threiplands to John o Groats and the last bourgeois is swinging by the guts of the last bureaucrat, when there are no more children down mines, no more sweat shops, no more capitalist butchery and when the lot of my fellows has been so improved as to leave nothing left to do beyond tinkering around to make the lot of domestic animals lives more fulfilled.

I don't think you'll find me disagreeing too much on this point but I think what is needed is not 'animals rights' but public education and public health campaigns and an end to bourgeois rule in food production.

Generally in the West proletarianization was accompanied by a fall in the living standards for a great many - particularly amongst artisan craftsmen such as weavers - hence many of the early anti-capitalist insurrections. However it must be said that while there was an average decrease in life span of something around 10 years overall, there were a good many village labourers who lived in extreme poverty whose lives could be said to have been improved during this period in some respects, and also those aforementioned artisan craftsmen could be very reactionary. Independent textile workers angry at the reduction in their wages - which were inflated to the manner in which they had grown accustomed by little more than the profits of imperialism in India and cotton plantations worked by slaves across the globe - befell the obvious rationalization of the capitalists. Why bother paying someone 20 shillings to work something himself on a hand loom when you can get him to work an industrial loom at massively increased efficiency for much less? And then later - why bother importing all this cotton from India and West Africa to process in Britain when you could do so in the country of production? The fatuous response from the unions of the day (always bastions of the fucking labour aristocracy) was to insist on embargos of these countries and huge protectionist measures to the massive detriment of the Indian working class. But on many levels these developments can be seen as rationalistic. Indefensible piracy yes, but certainly on many levels it seems like a rationalization. Also after some decades we see a rise in life expectancies as the industrialization against which you rail allows for the development of public health.

The alternative diffusionist 'idyll' has its merits on some levels of course but mostly it's a pile of shite because it assumes some never never land of farm scale production based on a level playing field rather than the extreme rural poverty which comprised the lives of the vast majority alongside the relative affluence of the labour aristocracy, the guild members and the middle class who accounted for but little.

As for environmentally sustainable evidence the Nor Loch in Edinburgh... Heavy metals and poisons were emitted equally well by feudal production it's only a question of scale with capitalism and most of this is attributable to growth both economic and population as a result of cheap energy. These problems would have to have been dealt with anyway - with or without the industrial revolution. Modern capitalism as we know is whatr is puting a break on progress on this issue.

A romantic diatribe. If you'd ever lived in material scarcity you'd realise how utterly unimportant animal rights are compared to those of humans. That's not to say that I think cruelty is justified, it's just so much less important than say preventing massacres, wars, starvation etc.

Only in so far as it embodies a radical critique of capital for junkies to go on choaryin sprees, or for the SNLA to blow up post boxes marked ERII, which is not very far. You might just as well argue that burglars are being class consciousness by nicking stuff or vandals writing menshies on waws are engaged in the act of detournement, or that the labour party is the most revolutionary organisation going because it has over 60,000 members across the UK, most of them drawn from the working class.

I just don't see how it has any bearing on the class struggle. I mean Al Qaeda blow quite a lot of stuff up in a way that "challenge[s] the legitimacy of the power relationship [between whitey and the muslim world]; and [constitues] a confrontation with capital."

I think it's fundamentally more radical to get involved in tenants groups or to campaign on public housing, health, asylum or to pop into your local community centre and help the thing keep going.

Solidarity,

:red: Nick Durie :red:

we aren't talking about animals rights merely for the benefit ofhumans! Animal Rights Activists, like myself, advocate the betterment of living conditions for domestic and indeed wild non-human animals for their own sake. It is the cessation of using sentient beings as a commodity, for food, clothing and other things where that is possible. And, infact, it is very much possible. Alternatives can be found for nearly every product and use of animals which does not involve the infliction of mass institutionalised suffering, which are more environmental and have greater health benefits for humans...but just as the advocation of human rights is not merely about ourselves so it follows for animal rights.

You then say, "I concern myself with the lot of my fellows, thence higher animals and so on" so do you concern yourself, and I've asked this before, with the lot of chimps being daily tortured in labs across the world, or with dolphins being caught and drowned accidentally or intentionally or even the pigs you just mentioned? For these are "higher animals" in terms of intelligence snd they're being slaughtered en mass for our benefit. " I will concern myself with the lot of pigs when the cossacks ride through Paris, the great caledonian forest carves a verdant throng from the border threiplands to John o Groats and the last bourgeois is swinging by the guts of the last bureaucrat"...I really do wonder about the sanity of some anarchists. Again, what justification do you have for seperating the improvement of human lives with animal lives? Why is there a split between the two?

Commune run factory farms are ok with you? You're next rant about industrialisation is also a complete misunderstanding of what I was sayign and what industrialisation actually is.

But my friend, we dont live in material scarcity, do we? If I had to, I'd probably eat you.

Nick, that wouldn't come under "mindfully" carrying out illegal action... By the way you can get involved in tenant's groups, union organising and direct action and, at the same time, involve yourself in the struggle for animals. Many do, we dont see this

"I'm only gonnae help ma fellow humans first" shite

HUNTINGDON LIFE SCIENCES...put two and two together and destroy them. If you are anarchists and pro animal rights then you should be protect animals from the horrific HLS (www.huntingdonsucks.com) they kill 500 animals aday in ridiculous experiments. Just go to the website and then go join SHAC and destroy them through anarchy and terrorism. @

An who says, ketamines not usefull!