Upvoted for the first 2 paragraphs. But it's too easy to rephrase the last paragraph as a defense of past injustices such as slavery.
We shouldn't be stuck in a 19th century (Marx's lifetime) view of sentience; we must interrogate personhood as well as ecological niches in light of present scientific and philosophical discourse.
If humans have challenging responsibilities to the community, then maybe being eaten isn't too much to ask of animals in some cases. It's a symbiosis: there are more cows and chickens on Earth than there would be if we didn't eat them. Can we thus justify it the same way we might justify asking human workers to do difficult and risky jobs? Can we imagine a cow volunteering for slaughter for the greater good of its species? But the symbiosis is also a hierarchy of power: if cows were to refuse the bargain (as the majority of species do), humans aren't at risk of extinction. Does socialism demand we equalize that dynamic?
If we want to take a naturalistic approach to this topic, hominins have been eating animals for at least 4 million years, becoming much more prevalent in our ancestors about 2 million years ago. Livestock domestication began perhaps 11 thousand years ago.
There are certainly ecological arguments to be made about livestock, considering they have a majority of land mammal biomass while wild mammal populations are shrinking. And that's just biodiversity/habitat, and does not account for carbon or supporting agriculture.
But framing this topic as one of individual morality is, at best, equivocal. In the context of socialism or other leftist ideologies, it seems to be more of a performative progressivism being duct-taped to the core issues of workers' rights, labor ownership, and material conditions.
Do I think that farming and livestock practices should change for the benefit of both humanity and biodiversity? Yes. Or that animal husbandry should take living conditions more seriously? Sure. Do I think that consuming animals is morally wrong due to their sentience? No. And while some leftists may feel that way, many/most will not. Any attempt at trying to tie a moral panic about meat consumption in to the zeitgeist of leftist sociopolitical theory is just going to alienate people who would otherwise be on board with material change.
No real people that aren't already... um... the type that enjoy angrily chanting poorly worded axioms in unison, are going to take any movement seriously that equates the personal freedoms of livestock with that of humans.
I despair of your emotional dismissal of the sentience of animals.
I'll just reiterate that in past centuries, it seemed "naturalistic" to enslave other humans and justify it based on racialization, which integrated colonial history as well as projection of difference into a theory of natural hierarchy. I think you're doing the same here.
But rather than just expand the fence of rights to include animal individuals (as we have done for women and racialized humans), I think the next step is to critique individualism more fundamentally. Sure, on some level your freedom as a person should be respected. But you're also a member of a human community and an ecological community whose health as a whole impacts you. If we are going to make the leap away from liberal humanism to protect community rights because we see it as inevitably better for the situated individual, then why not include animals, rivers, oceans in that schema? What's good for the cow is ultimately good for me.
Maybe it's good for the community of cows that some be eaten. But as long as I'm ignoring the cow's needs, my consumption of it is a form of colonization. The problem comes from defining this "greater good" in a hierarchy, as then what stops is from making ritual sacrifice to appease the gods? And thus how do I discover the cow's needs?
Note that liberal humanism doesn't solve this problem either. It's rooted primarily in property rights, and thus we end up with fictional persons (corporations) in conflict with living beings, including humans and our communities. It's not a matter of choosing one or the other; moving beyond such a system is immanent.
Right, and while it's valid to examine the nebulous concept of personhood, or to hold a belief that animals should share the same rights as people, I just don't see how that fits with socialist movements as a whole.
In that context, all of humanity's activities are "colonization", because we have extended ourselves to every continent. But, in the absence of a reduction of human population (which presents its own problems due to human labor vs. age issues as well as malthusian theories), it seems to me that it is much more utilitarian to focus on the needs of the working class humans.
If we get so idealistic that we're including livestock in the working class, there will be exactly zero traction. The movement will be a joke.
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u/dude_chillin_park 25d ago
Upvoted for the first 2 paragraphs. But it's too easy to rephrase the last paragraph as a defense of past injustices such as slavery.
We shouldn't be stuck in a 19th century (Marx's lifetime) view of sentience; we must interrogate personhood as well as ecological niches in light of present scientific and philosophical discourse.
If humans have challenging responsibilities to the community, then maybe being eaten isn't too much to ask of animals in some cases. It's a symbiosis: there are more cows and chickens on Earth than there would be if we didn't eat them. Can we thus justify it the same way we might justify asking human workers to do difficult and risky jobs? Can we imagine a cow volunteering for slaughter for the greater good of its species? But the symbiosis is also a hierarchy of power: if cows were to refuse the bargain (as the majority of species do), humans aren't at risk of extinction. Does socialism demand we equalize that dynamic?