Shared from
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2015/01/519071.html
1. Anarchism impoverished
Anarchism, for me, is
struggle against all forms of domination. It is a beautifully simple
idea that helps call into question every oppressive norm.
But
our relationships of subjugation with billions of other species on the
earth is one norm that few seem to take issue with; not only are other
species unable to communicate their experience to us, but to question
means to challenge entrenched habits and world views. If we want to be
consistent in our politics, then there’s no way we can continue to
ignore the impact our anthropocentricism (human-centeredness) is having
on the rest of this planet.
Yet, just because most of us are
implicated does not mean that we are burdened with some kind of
‘original sin’. Quite the contrary: the beauty and power of anarchism is
that it pushes us all to live lives that are more just, loving,
meaningful, satisfying, and collectively free. So when we talk about
speciesism, far from being dismissive, we should embrace the challenge
it poses, look further into the issue, and do what we can to change the
miserable status quo.
2. Alienation from the land
Through
civilisation and conquest, insatiable capitalist cultures have
alienated most of the world’s population from the ecologies which have
been our species’ life support systems throughout its existence. This in
turn has desensitised us from the mass enslavement of swathes of
non-human lifeforms to the service of humans and capital. Yet, since
this alienation is all that many of us city-dwellers have ever known, we
do not really appreciate what is being lost. If this rings true for
you, then spend some quality time with other animals; look at what they
do, how they interact with one another. Read about the taming of the
wilderness for capitalist expansion, and learn about the key role animal
agriculture plays in transforming vibrant woodland into the
monocultural fields that constitute our countryside today.
3. Animals are at the bottom of the dung heap
The
sheer scale, intensity, and normalisation of animal exploitation and
suffering is greater than that of any of our species. If you don’t
agree, (so it sort of goes), you just aren’t paying attention. Hundreds
if not thousands of entire species have been enslaved to capitalism,
being imprisoned, manipulated, selectively bred, experimented on, used
as reproductive machines & killed for our satisfaction, profit, and
entertainment.
Each year, around 1,000 million animals are
farmed and killed in the UK for ‘food’, while over the same period the
equivalent of 86 million chickens are thrown away uneaten. In life, the
vast majority of chickens are crammed into sheds with complete disregard
for their needs or desires as living creatures, before being killed at
6-7 weeks (naturally, they live for around 7 years). Selective breeding
of meaty birds means they’re unable to support their own weight and
spend 76%-86% of their time lying down; death from thirst or hunger
comes to many. Soiled litter solidifies around their legs producing
painful ulcers. In the case of egg-laying hens, the majority kept in
cages, the intense stress of their short, miserable lives can lead to
self-harm and cannibalism, so many have their beaks cut – without
anesthetic – to reduce this risk. Whereas their wild ancestors laid
12-20 eggs per year, human enslavement has produced a modern
reproductive machine that lays up to 300 eggs for our pleasure and
profit annually. This is to say nothing of the dairy, pork, beef or
fish-farming industries. Those animals are not going to be able to tweet
about their misery (there is as yet no evidence that pigs are daft
enough to while away their time on social media): go read up on it
yourself.
Meanwhile, each year nearly 4 million animals in the
UK alone are subjected to ‘research’ in the name of science; experiments
to test new products like medicines and chemicals (cleaners, plastics,
pesticides, food additives etc.), and military trials. The most
prestigious UK universities continue to cage and experiment on the same
animals for many years on end. These include depraved invasive
experiments that physically and psychologically manipulate primates (eg.
implanting electrodes into their skulls, removing parts of their
brains, studying the effects of deliberately inflicted stress and pain,
and so on).
On top of their uses for ‘food’ and ‘science’,
there’s the breeding of pets for human pleasure (thousands of which are
subsequently held in UK shelters at any one point after being taken from
mostly incompetent ‘owners’), and the use of animals to make money in a
host of other industries (racing, zoos, circuses etc.).
4. Defensiveness maintains domination
All
systems of oppression are supported by defensive attitudes,
justifications, trivialisation and denial. Sometimes these claims might
be fair enough, but people more often than not simply react to feeling
attacked and respond from a selfish position of self-preservation. An
anarchist ethic should stem from a desire for individual and collective
liberation, so I like to think that when a comrade challenges my
behaviour, I put my wounded pride aside for a moment and at least give
the point the consideration it deserves.
Yet time and again
issues raised around speciesism are mocked, trivialised and dismissed,
which is both a massive disrespect to other animals and to those
comrades. Ok, so this isn’t helped by the puritannical vegans out there
who guilt-trip those who eat the occasional skipped cheese sandwich, but
only the laziest and least committed comrade can attribute their crap,
anthropocentric attitudes to encounters with the Vegan Police.
5. Animal abuse is inseparable from patriarchy
For
me, animal abuse is on the same spectrum as misogyny, homophobia,
racism, and the abuse of children, the elderly or disabled. Claims that
these analogies are racist/sexist/ableist only underscores the inherent
speciesism of such a position, for how can we make exceptions for other
sentient beings? The basic principles are there: violence perpetrated
for pleasure or gain by ‘strong’ against the ‘weak’.
In one
suburban family home, a woman is threatened by a male fist; somewhere in
another, a pet hamster gets flushed down the loo: both are worthless
rubbish in the eyes of those who wield relationships of possession over
them. In the toilets of a hipster bar, a Siamese Fighting Fish lies
lifeless and numb on the gravelly bottom of its barren tank; in Croydon,
an Afghan refugee friend waits for years on end for word from miserly
Home Office bureaucrats: both reduced to mere numbers and objects by
those with money in mind.
How can anyone fail see these issues as essentially one and the same, or reject one and justify another?
In
1901, anarchist Elisée Reclus described how as a young man he struggled
against almost overwhelming pressure for conformity against his
vegetarian ways, “parents, official and informal educators, and doctors,
not to mention that all-powerful person referred to as “everybody”, all
work together to harden the character of the child in relation to this
“meat on feet”…”[1]. Over a century later, the culture of meat &
dairy consumption is still maintained by ridicule and social pressure.
It is especially bound up in machismo (e.g. you’re a bourgeois wuss if
you can’t handle a bit of liver), and marketing that exploits masculine
insecurities, even though 99% of such macho posturing revolves around
meat pathetically acquired from the likes of Tescos, rather than from
creatures that have been hunted (see Carol J. Adams’ The Sexual Politics
of Meat for an in-depth discussion on this). If you want to prove
yourself an adept hunter, I can think of much better targets than wild
boar.
6. Veganism isn’t a middle class ‘consumer choice’
It
might sound trite, but for many ‘ethical vegans’, veganism really is a
philosophy rather than just a dietary choice. Challenging how we think
of animals as products and producers for our pleasure, questioning the
‘necessity’ or inevitability of animal consumption, and varying our diet
beyond animal sources is just one part of that, but there are many ways
to subvert our relationships with other animals – from fighting the
culture of pet breeding, to carrying out acts of liberation &
sabotage. In fact, a definition of veganism coined by Vegan Society
co-founder Donald Watson, was the notion that animals should simply be
free from exploitation and cruelty. This removes some of the emphasis on
consumer choices, as favoured by green capitalists & liberals. Too
often, critics hone in on hipster vegan cupcake shops or fancy fake
cheeses, glibly equating all veganism with shallow ethical consumerism
or a bourgeois fad. But where there appears to be a market, we can
always expect some corporation to cash in on it (H&M’s recent
rip-off of the Kurdish YPJ’s uniform springs to mind as an example).
It’s also disingenuous to claim it’s a ‘class privilege’ to eat a
plant-based diet – if anything it’s cheaper if you’re not going in for
fake meat and dairy substitutes. The irony about these claims is that
that the animal rights/liberation movement in the UK is significantly
more working class and less dominated by academics than my experience of
other major ‘single issue’ movements in the UK at present. Class-based
critiques of veganism from feminists with PhDs says more about
themselves and where they spend their time than anything else.
There
are obviously some people who can’t avoid consuming animals because
conditions make it unviable (eg. destitution, certain illnesses,
migrants in transit, desert-dwelling peoples…you get the picture); the
point is to do what we can because we at least reject speciesism as we
should any other system of domination. Unfortunately, many of us are not
even there yet.
Attempts to carve out an ethical way of life
under capitalism and the state inevitability tend to feel hollow. So
what’s the point of changing our individual practices now? Well, apart
from the obvious problem that mass insurrection still seems a distant
prospect, consistency in our ideas and our actions gives us lives worth
fighting for. The existence of relationships based on love, solidarity
and respect spare us from unrelenting misery of life under capitalism
and compel us to attack the systems which threaten them. Without the
inspiring examples of my comrades around the world, I would be tempted
with total resignation. Challenging ourselves and each other to question
domination in all its guises builds on that affinity and breaks down
isolation. Anarchy cannot be perpetually postponed; to whatever extent
possible it must be lived in the present.
If respecting
non-human life is neglible “lifestylism” as some suggest, then we should
see treating our partners with respect (e.g. not abusing them) in the
same light. I’m under no illusions about the capacity for veganism to
create revolutionary change, but that is as true as for any ‘lifestyle
choices': we can’t just content ourselves with changing the way we live
& treat each other – we always need to combine this with attack on
the structures of power.
7. Veganism is not ‘cultural imperialism’
The
basic principles underlying veganism are by no means ‘Western’ (in the
sense of a product of ‘Enlightenment’ thought originating in Western
Europe); if anything, as capitalist land expropriation first wreaked
havoc in that part of the world, quite the opposite is true. Through a
close relationship with plants and animals, often amplified by animist
beliefs, many indigenous peoples maintain healthier relations with the
animals around them – to the point of exaggeration and romanticised
cliché. The fact that some prominent English-speaking liberals began to
spout loudly about animal welfare in the 19th century does not give the
‘West’ a monopoly on respecting animal life. In fact, some of the
discourses in which these were embedded (particularly, seeking a
scientific rationale for animal welfare), were more problematic than the
practices of indigenous peoples who engaged in hunting for their food,
but never sought to enslave the animals in the first place.
There
have nevertheless been some overtly racist campaigns from the charity
PETA, or imperialist – and frankly ridiculous – concepts such as ‘World
Week for the Abolition of Meat’. But just as the existence of liberal
feminist charities makes few of us dismiss feminism altogether, this is
hardly basis for claims that veganism is inherently ‘Western’ or
imperialist. Such an attitude is also patronising and dismissive of the
many people and cultures that avoid meat and dairy for spiritual and
ethical reasons, either for most of the year or altogether.
Lastly,
animal farming goes hand in hand with the continued dispossesion of
people from the land. It requires huge quantities of land for production
of animal food; this true for both the ‘free range’ animals grazing on
pastures and for those eating feed in dark animal factories. By
contrast, significantly more people can be sustained on a given piece of
land on a plant-based diet than on livestock, which is also far more
water intensive. Land grabs from cattle ranching in South America have
been a major driver of landlessness of the poor and of destruction of
indigenous peoples’ lands and cultures. Arable land is both scarce and
poorly distributed; we need to make major changes in our relationships
with it if we are to cope with massive population rises whilst resisting
unethical practices such as the expansion of human sterilisation
programmes or major incursions into what pockets of wilderness remain.
8. Carnivorous appetites mean ecocide
Animal
agriculture means habitat loss for wild animals and the precipitation
of climate change. The world’s forests, for example, have roughly halved
in the past 30 years [2]. Animal agriculture has been a major driver of
this, especially in regions like the Amazon, which is both the source
of rich biodiversity and approximately 20% of the world’s oxygen output.
As anarchists we need to stop supporting the breeding of other living
beings and the reproduction of destructive relations with the land – not
just as an end in itself, but as one tactic among many in the fight
against the immiseration of the earth.
In a world beyond
capitalism, neither animal agriculture nor hunting are going to be
viable means of survival on a wide scale. The continued breeding and
rearing of animals, ethical implications aside, will be unfeasible for
many communities due to the intense land and water requirements that it
entails. The romantic hunter fantasy of the millenarian primitivists,
more ethical on the surface, harks back to an era when the land was
carpeted with verdant forests and human was at one with beast.
Unfortunately, the post-industrial landscape we are going to be left
with is likely to be very different to the forests and steppes we roamed
prior to the growth of civilisation. What little wildlife remains will
be relegated to the margins and no doubt threatened with extinction by
human hunters. Although hunting skills may be useful for individuals in
emergencies, it is not a collective solution and will ultimately be
suicidal if we see it as such.
~Notes~
[1] Elisée Reclus, On Vegetarianism (1901) in Anarchy, Geography, Modernity: selected writings of Elisee Reclus
[2] Franz J. Broswimmer, Ecocide (2002)
See also From Animals to Anarchism by Dysophia for more on the topic and a good reading list.
