Beasts of Burden: Capitalism - Animals - CommunismPublié en Octobre 1999Introduction
While there have always been groups and individuals with feet in both camps, for the most part discussion between those involved in animal liberation and communists has been at a derisory level. 'Debate,' in so far as it exists, consists mainly of abuse and rarely moves beyond the level of comments like 'wasn't Hitler a vegetarian' (actually not - he injected 'bulls blood' into his testicles, and does this mean you can't be a communist and a house painter or an Austrian?). We hope to prompt the beginnings of a real debate about the relationship between the 'animal question' and the 'social question'. This text does not claim to have all the answers or to be the 'communist manifesto' for animals, but we think that it does pose some of the key questions. Over to you... 1. Capitalism and class society
For the majority of human beings the consequence is a life dominated
by work, half-lived in schools, factories, offices and prisons. It is obvious that the experiences of humans and animals are linked,
having a common origin in the same system of production and exchange. But
we want to go further and assert that the development and maintenance of
capitalism as a system that exploits humans is in some ways dependent upon
the abuse of animals. Furthermore the movement that abolishes capitalism
by changing the relations between humans - communism - also involves a
fundamental transformation of the relations between humans and animals.
The hunting of larger animals for food, with the increased importance of meat in the diet, may have become more significant when humans encountered colder conditions in which plant foods were harder to come by, particularly in the last Ice Age. Large scale hunting brought with it a more rigid sexual division of labour, as the mobility required effectively excluded women who were pregnant or nursing young children. Hunting also saw the earliest traces of the transformation of free human
activity into something resembling work. This is partly because hunting
requires more effort: 'On average 240 calories of plant food can be gathered
in one hour, whereas, taking into account the high failure rate of hunting,
it has been estimated that one hour of hunting produces only 100 calories
of food' (Ehrenberg). Even once hunting had become established, It is certainly not the case that all early humans ate meat all of the time. The popular image of bloodthirsty primitives slaughtering their way through the animal kingdom is nonsense. The notion of 'Man the Hunter' whose 'principal food is meat, and his principal occupation hunting' has been criticised as 'largely a reflection of the interests and preconceptions of nineteenth-century Western male anthropologists and of the status of hunting as an upper class pastime in nineteenth century Europe' (Ehrenberg). So-called 'hunter gatherer' societies should perhaps be called forager
societies as the gathering of plants, nuts and grains was in most cases
far more fundamental than hunting, and accounted for a higher proportion
of the regular diet. In most modern foraging societies, plant foods gathered
primarily by women account for 60-70 per cent of diet (Ehrenberg). For most of the time humans have existed, they 'lived in relatively
autonomous and scattered groups, in families (in the broadest sense: the
family grouping all those of the same blood), in tribes'. In these societies, the relationship between humans and the rest of
the natural world was completely different to the modern one. The most
significant fact about animals in so-called 'primitive communism' is that
they do not belong to anybody. There is no private ownership of land, trees,
or animals, and no domestication. While some animals may be hunted, all
animals run wild and free. People only take what they need from nature,
and where animals are hunted it is on a limited basis. Animals are not viewed as commodities, but are regarded with a mixture of awe, wonder, respect and fear. Instead of being seen as subordinate species, they are seen as separate beings sharing the world with humans. Often communities adopt a particular animal as their 'totem'; animals may be regarded as ancestors or protectors of the tribe, and may even be worshipped. 1.2 Domestication and domination
We should avoid ascribing to agriculture the role of 'original sin',
the singular cause of humanity's misfortunes and of our expulsion from
some primitive communist Eden. The development of states and classes were
contradictory, complex and contested processes taking place over many millennia.
While the domestication of plants and animals was an important part of
this story, we do not want to suggest that it was the whole story.
Some form of agriculture existed for thousands of years without particularly
radical social change. The transition from foraging to farming is believed
to have begun in the so-called Fertile Crescent (now covered by Iraq, Iran,
Turkey, Syria, Israel and Jordan) around 10,000 BC and to have become well-established
in this area by 6000 BC. However, only small numbers of animals were kept,
with most meat still being obtained from hunting. The social impact of this was enormous. Out of the practice of 'animal
husbandry', Camatte argues, 'grew both the notion of private property and
exchange value' and 'the rise of patriarchy'. Gender relations were transformed. The demand for labour required women
to have more children (in foraging societies childbirth tends to be spaced
by three or four years). The intensification of women's work in reproducing
labour excluded them from other tasks. 1.3 Animals as wealth
Domesticated animals were a fundamental form of wealth 'which could be accumulated and handed on from one generation to the next.... as one family accumulated more cattle, or acquired better ploughs the gap between their wealth and that of their neighbours would increase progressively... A distinction between rich and poor, which is insignificant in forager societies, develops' (Ehrenberg). As well as being maintained as an embodiment of wealth, animals not needed for immediate consumption could be traded with other property owners and even be used as money. In this early stage of the market, as Marx observed in Capital, 'The money-form comes to be attached... to the object of utility which forms the chief element of indigenous alienable wealth, for example cattle'. As animals became the property of groups or individuals they could be not only bought and sold, but stolen and fought over. While the development of hunting required the organisation of part of the community as a killing machine, the transformation of this into a war machine to systematically kill other humans may have arisen 'when for the first time people owned a resource which it was both worthwhile and fairly easy to steal' (Ehrenberg). 1.4 Slavery
In the modern period, racist ideology defined black people as more animal
than human, legitimising slavery. Slaves were treated as animals, having
to endure 'terrible conditions under transportation, the removal of children
and the separation of families, branding with hot irons, the wearing of
collars and chains and even medical experimentation'. Similarly, 'Animal domestication furnished many of the techniques for dealing with delinquency: bridles for scolding women; cages, chains and straw for madmen' (Thomas). We could probably add prisons to this list too, and more recently the use of cattle prods in torture. 1.5 Cows, boys and Indians: Primitive accumulation and animals
In pre-capitalist societies, these conditions do not exist. The land either belongs to nobody or it is divided up into small plots, with most people having their own plot of land which they either own or can use, and/or access to common land. People who can grow their own food have no need to earn money to buy food, and given the choice most would not take a job in a factory. For this to change, peasants have to be forcibly deprived of land through 'conquest, enslavement, robbery [and] murder'- 'this history, the history of their expropriation, is written in the annals of mankind in blood and fire' (Marx, 1867). The historical evidence suggests that not only is capitalism dependent
on ruthless primitive accumulation, but primitive accumulation relies upon
the animal industry. In England, the process of 'forcibly driving the peasantry
from the land' and enclosing common land started as early as the late 15th
century. But what was it that motivated the nobility to undertake this?
This process was accompanied by the clearance of forest, particularly
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In this period, 'An ideology
of meat-eating (ennobling the heart, enriching the blood, encouraging the
soldiers) played its part in the formation of the eighteenth century person...The
growth of London meat consumption has been linked to the development of
scientific breeding practices, the extension of turnpikes and highways,
the draining of marshes, the cutting down of forests' (Linebaugh). As well
as opening up grazing land for animals, this was also aimed at clamping
down on the forest-dwellers, many of them squatters living 'free from the
normal social constraints of church and manor courts' (Thomas).
The genocidal colonisation of the Americas also featured the replacement of indigenous people with profitable animals, starting with Columbus who brought the first cattle and horses to the 'New World' in 1494. Hollywood's myth of the epic struggle between cowboys and Indians might not be historically accurate, but it does express a basic truth. The dynamic for the dispossession and extermination of native peoples was often the wish to replace them with cattle .Ironically some of the victims of earlier dispossession helped in this process. For instance in Patagonia, Araucanian Indians were rounded up and slaughtered in the 1870s, making way for cattle grazing. Some Scots helped in this slaughter, 'exiled in the Highland Clearances, torn cruelly from their homeland and tossed on to the high seas, they fetched up in the Falklands, then took part in another brutal clearance at the other end of the world' (Wangford). Cattle grazing was not the only aspect of the animal industry important to colonisation. In north America in particular the fur trade was important, as shown by the crucial role of the Hudson Bay Company. According to Fredy Perlman, in the late 18th century 'Fur is Europe's oil. The French Empire in America revolves around fur. The nascent Russian Empire in Siberia is a fur trappers empire'. Primitive accumulation was not driven by a historically inevitable manifest destiny. There had to be an immediate economic incentive to dispossess those living on the land, and this was provided by the profits to be made from animals. In this sense the animal industry was the starting motor of primitive accumulation, without which the subsequent gains for the ruling class (the creation of a proletariat, access to mineral wealth etc.) may not have been realised. 1.6 Animals and the origin of the factory system
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 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).
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). 1.7 Good Breeding: the genetic intensification of production
With animals things have gone a stage further with a modification of
the physical bodies of animals to make them more productive. There is a
long history of selective breeding of animals in this way, described by
John Zerzan: 'the domesticating of animals... defies natural selection
and re-establishes the controllable organic world at a debased artificial
level... Transmuted from a state of freedom to that of helpless parasites,
these animals become completely dependent on man for survival. The twentieth century has seen a number of attempts to apply animal breeding techniques to humans, as promoted by the eugenics movement. Forced sterilisation and other efforts have been applied to stop the 'unfit' and disabled from breeding. While this was applied with the most ruthless determination in Nazi Germany, eugenics programmes have also been implemented in social democratic Sweden and elsewhere. In Britain, eugenics may not have been systematically applied but its ideas were very influential amongst sections of the ruling class earlier this century and influenced various state policies. For instance, birth control pioneers like Marie Stopes were partially motivated by such concerns. Selective breeding of animals is now being refined through the development of a range of genetic/bio-technological methods. Animal species are being genetically manipulated to develop xenotransplantation (cross species organ transplants), pharming (the production of drugs and other products from genetically-mutated animals) and increased food productivity. Examples of the latter include attempts to develop chickens without feathers and animals whose immune systems attack their own fat cells to produce leaner meat. In a further move in the commodification of life, the European Parliament has recently voted to allow the patenting of genetically-mutated animals and plants. Biotechnology companies can now claim that a mutated animal they have 'invented' is their exclusive private property. Camatte anticipates that one possible long-term development of capitalism
could be the 'mutation of the human being, or rather a change of the species:
production of a perfectly programmable being which has lost all the characteristics
of the species Homo Sapiens'. The Critical Arts Ensemble suggest that this
has already begun as 'Individuals of various social groups and classes
are forced to submit their bodies for reconfiguration so that they can
function more efficiently under the obsessively rational imperatives of
pancapitalism (production, consumption, and order)'. 1.8 Extermination
The same mania of extermination fuelled the hunting of humans defined
as animals, such as the Aboriginal peoples of Australia, or the indigenous
population of the Philippines, the subject of 'goo-goo hunts' after the
US conquest of 1898.
Today we are used to seeing the last survivors of endangered species conserved in zoos. The origin of these zoos formed part of the same colonial mentality that exterminated so many creatures: 'the spectacle of the zoo animal must be understood historically as a spectacle of colonial or imperial power' (Baker) with the captive animals serving as 'simultaneous emblems of human mastery over the natural world and of English dominion over remote territories' (Ritvo). 1.9 Vivisection
On the contrary, the intensification of the abuse of animals often contributes directly to improving the techniques of domination of human beings. In some cases this is self-evident. The classic example is military research. In the UK, the use of animals in experiments at the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) at Porton Down in Wiltshire increased steadily in the 1990s, with tests including shooting pigs and monkeys and a range of biological warfare experiments. It may be true that some new drugs could benefit some individuals in
spite of being tested on animals. But there are plenty of well-established
cures that the majority of the world's population are denied access to
because of their poverty. The answer to the question 'why does capitalism experiment on animals?' is 'because they can't get away with doing it to humans'. But there are exceptions - since Porton Down was set up in 1916, tests have also been carried out on more than 12,000 humans, chiefly military 'volunteers' duped into taking part for a few perks without being properly informed of the consequences. Substances tested have included nerve gas, mustard gas, anthrax and LSD. Hundreds of ex-servicemen claim that they are suffering from disabilities including skins and eye disorder, kidney and liver complaints and depression as a result. It has only recently been revealed that in the 1950s tests of the nerve gas Sarin killed a 20 year old conscript, Ronald Madison (Guardian, 20.8.99). 1.10 Commodity fetishism and meat
Commodity fetishism is the process whereby commodities are imbued with
a life of their own with their origins as the product of labour concealed.
It is particularly well-developed in relation to animal products, whose
origins are systematically disavowed by supermarket packaging and linguistic
distancing (pork not pig, beef not cow). Recently this fetishism has been partially fractured by disclosures about the animal production process resulting from health scares. In France, blood and offal from animal carcasses, sewage and untreated water were revealed to have been used in making poultry and pig feed; in Belgium dioxin contamination was found in poultry. In Britain there was the BSE epidemic in cows (and in some humans) linked to the practice of feeding cows with protein pellets made from the remains of chicken, as well as outbreaks of E.Coli food poisoning from contaminated meat. The health impact is not confined to those who eat meat. Even the British
government's advisory committee on the microbiological safety of food recently
warned of the 'calamitous consequences' of the overuse of antibiotics in
farming (Guardian, 19.8.99). Are these problems of capitalism or of meat production per se? Clearly the thirst for profit is a major factor and specific practices could be reformed, and indeed are being reformed. But meat production on anything like the current scale would be impossible without intensive farming. There is a limit to how far it could ever be possible to sanitise an industrial process involving slaughter, blood and the eating of flesh. If meat eating answers a human need, it is a need that many human cultures and an increasing number of individuals do not feel. It is certainly a need for the huge food corporations who depend on it. In modern capitalism it is a need, like smoking, that has to be continually reinforced by marketing, regardless of its effect on people, animals and the environment. 1.11 Hunting and class power
Hunting has performed a similar function as a display of ruling class power in modern Britain. For much of the 18th century, fox hunting was 'the casual and disorganised pursuit of backwoods squires and farmers'. The development of regular hunts with their own territories in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries came about as fox hunting became the favoured leisure pursuit of the great landowners. As well as a means of socialisation for upper class males, fox hunting 'reaffirmed their prominence in the local community' (Colley). Interestingly in view of the hunting lobby's claim to defend the rural way of life this process saw the further subordination of the countryside to the interests of the wealthy: 'The very scenery of Great Britain was now reorganised and re-envisioned in keeping with the leisure priorities of men of land and substance. Hedges were torn down, ditches filled, gates and bridges built, tenants' privacy invaded, all in pursuit of the unfortunate, uneatable fox' (Colley). In the twentieth century hunting has provided a means for the social integration of the non-aristocratic rich into more traditional wealthy circles, and it remains primarily a pursuit of the rich and powerful from the royal family down. Despite this, abolishing hunting would no longer threaten the interests
of the ruling class as a whole. Capital is becoming more impersonal and
is not dependent on the kind of socialisation offered by hunting to create
a coherent dominant class. 1.12 Working class violence - against animals
The internalisation of relations of domination partially explains why
some working class men take pleasure in killing animals. Even fox hunting,
while organised by and for the rich, relies on the paid and unpaid participation
of terrier men and a cross-class mix of hunt followers. This was evident
on the mass rally in favour of hunting in London's Hyde Park (1997). 1.13 Beyond humanism
The construction of 'man' in this image has involved the denial and repression of human needs and desires. Thus whole categories of human life, such as sex, dancing and nakedness have been denounced by moralists throughout history as 'bestial'. Women who step out of line can be referred to as dogs, bitches, shrews, vixens or cows (Arkangel). The Italian socialist (and apologist for domestication) Antonio Gramsci wrote approvingly that 'The history of industrialism has always been a continuing struggle...against the element of 'animality' in man. It has been an uninterrupted, often painful and bloody process of subjugating natural (i.e. animal and primitive) instincts to a new, more complex and rigid norms and habits of order, exactitude and precision which can make possible the increasingly complex forms of collective life which are the necessary consequence of industrial development' (Prison Notebooks). In cultures less penetrated by the values of capital, this animality is something to be admired rather than degraded. Thus an elder of the Dogon people in Mali once said: 'Animals are superior to men because they belong to the bush and don't have to work. Many animals feed themselves on what man grows by painful toil' (Horniman). In fact wildlife does provide an implicit critique of human society, as an inspiration, and contrast with 'domesticated' society. Despite attempts to portray all animal social life as amounting to a permanent war for survival, anyone with cats or dogs knows that much of their lives are spent playing and lazing around. As Fredy Perlman shows animal activity is the opposite of alienated labour, much like human activity in 'primitive communist' societies: 'A time and motion engineer watching a bear near a berry patch would not know when to punch the clock... the bear makes no distinction between work and play. If the engineer has an imagination he might say that the bear experiences joy from the moment the berries turn deep red and that none of the bear's motions are work'. 'Wild' remains an insult passed on the free (or those who would be free), just as rioters continue to be denounced as animals and militant workers as wildcat strikers. But the flipside of this is that the idea of wildness as liberation will always have a hold on the imagination of rebels and insurgents ('rise like lions after slumber, in unvanquishable number' - Shelley). If, according to Martin Luther in 1530 and Pope Leo XIII in 1891, possession of private property is an essential difference between man and beast (Thomas), then we should be happy to shake off our 'human nature'. 1.14 Capitalism and animals today
Today capital has diversified and the animal industry is one among many.
Some would no doubt argue that capital has no imperative to exploit animals,
and that a consistently 'cruelty free' capitalism is a possibility. Indeed
this view seems to be shared both by pro-capitalist advocates of market
forces liberating animals (through consumer boycotts), and by anarchists
and communists for whom this is 'proof' that opposition to animal exploitation
offers no threat to capitalism. It would be a mistake to think that the exploitation of animals is now
only of marginal concern to capital. The companies involved in funding
animal experiments are some of the world's largest multinationals. In Marxist terms, meat production represents the destruction of use-value to increase exchange-value. Food that could be used to feed people is instead fed to animals in order to increase profit. Most of the energy and nutrition this provides is (from an economic point of view) wasted in keeping the cattle alive, rather than directly transferred into muscle. Ten acres of land will support 61 people on a diet of soya beans, 24 on wheat, 10 on maize but only 2 on meat from cattle. Cattle are thus used by capitalism as a form of fixed capital, consuming living and dead labour in order to produce a product (meat) containing increased surplus value. McDonalds has become a totem of capitalist expansion, at the cutting
edge of the development of low-waged, casualised work combined with the
most advanced spectacular techniques of marketing. No part of the world
is held to be completely subordinated to the global market until a McDonalds
has opened there.
2. Communism 'Communism is not a programme one puts into practice or makes other put into practice, but a social movement¼ Communism is not an ideal to be realised: it already exists, not as a society, but as an effort, a task to prepare for. It is the movement which tries to abolish the conditions of life determined by wage-labour and it will abolish them by revolution' (Dauvé & Martin). Communism is not a utopian blueprint for the future nor has it got anything to do with the 'communist' regimes of the past where capitalism was managed by the state. Communism is the movement towards the abolition of states, classes, private property, money and hierarchies of power, and the collective creation of the means to satisfy our needs and desires. 'Communism is the continuation of real needs which are now already at work, but which cannot lead anywhere, which cannot be satisfied, because the present situation forbids it. Today there are numerous gestures and attitudes which express not only a refusal of the present world, but most of all an effort to build a new one' (Dauvé and Martin). We believe that many of the activities carried out against the exploitation of animals fall into this category of 'gestures and attitudes' and are therefore expressions of the communist movement. Radicals who scorn the notion of animal liberation have a long tradition
to draw upon. Marxist political economy adopted the enlightenment project
of the domination of nature in its entirety with the natural world being
perceived as an unlimited raw material for industrial progress. 2.1 The secret history of animal liberation
In some areas of the world, whole communities have been primarily vegetarian. This may be associated with the influence of Buddhist or Hindu ideas, but it may also be the case that religious ideas simply reflected the existing social practices. The anti-British Indian Mutiny of 1857 was sparked by British ignorance of the importance of vegetarianism. The immediate cause of the Mutiny was the refusal of Indian troops to use rifle cartridges greased with animal fat (since pig fat was used this also offended the Muslim troops). Vegetarianism has often been associated with religious heresies, a fact adding to their persecution. Cathar heretics brought before the Emperor Henry III in 1052 were accused of having 'condemned all eating of animals, and with the agreement of everybody present he ordered them to be hanged' (cited in Spencer). In China, an 1141 edict declared: 'All vegetarian demon worshippers... shall be strangulated'. It was amongst such heretic tendencies that radical communistic ideas
often flourished, circulating amongst the poor and providing inspiration
for 'millenarian' revolts. During and after the English Civil War, vegetarianism was advocated
by some Ranters like John Robins; by a Hackney bricklayer called Marshall
who argued that it was 'unlawful to kill any creature that had life' and
by Thomas Tryon, who condemned 'killing and oppressing his fellow creatures'
as well as slavery, war and the treatment of the insane (Thomas).
Later in the 19th century the anarchist and Paris communard Louise Michel declared 'The origin of my revolt against the powerful was my horror at the tortures inflicted on animals'. Michel's fellow Paris Communard Elisée Reclus, the anarchist communist and geographer, was a vegetarian who opposed the slaughter of animals for food. Occasionally, opposition to animal abuse was taken up by wider sections of the working class. In Battersea, south London, there were riots on the working class Latchmere Estate in 1906 as locals defended the 'Brown Dog' anti-vivisection statue from attack by doctors and medical students. 2.2 The modern animal liberation movement
However, we are certainly not arguing that this movement is in totality
a revolutionary movement confronting capital. Like all social movements,
the animal liberation movement contains contradictory tendencies - at the
one pole a socially conservative position, uncritical of capitalism, parliamentary
politics, hierarchical single-issue campaigns, at the other a non-hierarchical,
direct action-based approach placing the particular issue in the wider
context of radical social transformation. Despite the criticisms that can be made of animal liberation ideology and practice (some of which we will set out later), some animal liberation actions and attitudes are certainly expressions of communism. A clear example is the practice of liberating animals from farms, kennels
and laboratories in the kind of raid pioneered by the Animal Liberation
Front in the 1970s. Communists have criticised capitalist progress and development, including the idea that science and technology are neutral and will lead to a suffering-free golden age. Animal liberationists have put this critique into practice by, for instance, disrupting research and attacking laboratories. Ideas of animal liberation enrich communist theory by posing the key
question of the relationship between humans and the natural world. As Camatte argues, 'The proletarian movement unfortunately retained certain presuppositions of capital, in particular... the vision of progress; the exaltation of science; the necessity of distinguishing the human from the animal, with the latter being considered in every case inferior; the idea of the exploitation of nature.... All this meant that the demand for a human community was kept within the limits of capital'. Apparent single issue movements focusing on, for instance, animal liberation are therefore necessary to correct 'the shortcomings of the classical revolutionary movement... which had become infested with notions of power and domination'. Animal liberation perspectives enable us to see that if the reconciliation
of humans and nature is to be more than an empty wish, concrete measures
have to be taken to change the way humans relate to animals, such as dismantling
the technology of factory farming. Some anarchists and communists argue that the 'animal question' is irrelevant because animals cannot fight for themselves: 'Animals can never play a part in class recomposition' (Aufheben, 1995). Yet any class recomposition that does not express the inter-relatedness between humans and other forms of life risks staying on the terrain of capital. By this we mean that the working class needs to overcome its fragmentation and assert itself not only to get a better deal as a component of the capitalist machine, but to challenge the relationship between this machine and life on the planet, human, animal and vegetable. 2.3 Everything that walks on the earth is governed by blows
Such an approach tends to ignore the fact that people are social animals
who do not exist as independent beings in themselves. We don't see those who actively express this need as being alienated from their own, real needs. On the contrary, as an article on the mass opposition to live animal exports in the mid- 1990's put it: 'The fact that people are moved to confront the state by the suffering of animals at least gives us hope that people are not completely alienated' (Do or Die). The basis of working class concern about animals is not misplaced sentimentality
(though we think that sentiment is at least as legitimate a human response
as detached scientific rationality) but empathy arising from a shared condition
as beasts of burden: 'everything that moves on the earth is governed by
blows' (Os Cangaceiros). If this empathy has been largely absent from revolutionary theory, it
has found expression in revolutionary situations. Compassion is not a word found very frequently in revolutionary discourse, but as Communist Headache argue in relation to animals: 'Part of class struggle is the struggle against domination. This includes understanding how we are dominated and understanding how we are taught to fetishize domination and so dominate each other within our class. Domination can be countered by compassion, however this compassion needs to be rediscovered as part of a class struggle in which people are coming together in the human community'. 2.4 Confronting the state
Hunt sabbing is one of the few forms of animal-related activity to get a begrudging respect from traditional communists. Uniquely it can involve an unmediated confrontation with individual members of the ruling class. Many hunt sabs despise hunters because of what they do to foxes and because they are rich, although those who go sabbing in the expectation of a weekly re-enactment of the peasants revolt can be disappointed at the reality of hours sitting in the back of vans or sneaking through the woods. While opposition to hunting might not in itself be a marker for subversive attitudes, the act of attempting to sabotage it directly is another matter. New Labour opponents of hunting continue to support the use of repressive legislation against hunt sabs because they recognise the threat posed by groups of (mainly) working class people taking matters into their own hands in defiance of the law. Other struggles have involved mass confrontation with the state. The
movement against live animal exports (1994/95) at Shoreham in Kent and
Brightlingsea in Essex saw thousands of local people blocking roads and
standing up to the police over several months. Many people who are or have been involved in action against animal abuse have also been involved in other struggles. In this way, the range of practical skills developed in the animal liberation movement have circulated around struggles, becoming tools that can be applied in different situations. This covers everything from printing a leaflet, or moving vans of people around at short notice to clandestine forms of organisation and prisoner solidarity. 2.5 Beyond the ideology of animal rights
'Spectacular production is obviously keen to keep the unpalatable side of production hidden' (Law). Those who take the trouble to look behind the screen can be so overwhelmed by the horrors they find there, that everything else seems almost irrelevant. The conflict between humans and animals can come to be regarded as completely overriding any social contradictions, including class, and some individuals can even develop a form of misanthropy in which all humans are seen as intrinsically 'bad' with the exception of the valiant few who totally abstain from animal produce. Total abstention is more or less impossible, and to moralistically condemn others for not going far enough only limits the scope for a movement to develop. Nevertheless, vegetarianism/veganism is not just a matter of sanctimonious handwashing. The 'question of a loving and respectful relationship with other living beings' necessarily involves 'a rejection of nutrition that comes, not only from the genetic manipulation of animals, but also from their cruel treatment in battery conditions or laboratories' (Dalla Costa). Not eating animals brings about qualitative improvement in the well-being of animals (as well as quantitative reduction in animals killed), even if as an isolated act it can be commodified and turned into another lifestyle marketing niche. From the standpoint of animals a vegetarian capitalism would be a step
forward. But for reasons we have set out earlier, this is an extremely
unlikely outcome given the vested interests of the animal industry and
the ingrained habits of daily life under capitalism. An overemphasis on boycotting the products of particular companies is
based on a misunderstanding of the nature of capitalism. Capitalism is
more than the combined efforts of 'bad' multinational corporations. It
is based on social relations mediated by property and money. The lack of understanding of the dynamics of present day society, of a class analysis, can result in attacks on low-level workers in industries which exploit animals, as if they are as equally responsible as the managers or bosses. It is ludicrous, as occasionally happens, for McDonalds workers to be denounced as 'scum' when their exploitation is as central to the company's profits as the dead cows in the buns. We can all recognise these problems, and it suits the views of many
anarchists and communists to pretend that all animal liberation activities
take place in this reactionary framework. 2.6 What's wrong with rights?
The notion that we all have rights disguises real inequalities. As Anatole France once said, the rich and the poor alike have the right to sleep on the streets. We all have the right to buy a palace, but we don't all have the means to do so. As a legalistic concept, rights imply a state to defend and enforce them, which means the preservation of the alienation of individuals from each other, and hence alienation between humans and nature, including other animals. The bourgeois character of rights has become increasingly apparent with
the emphasis on rights and responsibilities. There is a need to move beyond 'animal rights' as such, in order to fight more effectively. People need to understand why animal exploitation occurs as well as how. This is not because we think that everything has to be postponed until 'after the the revolution' but because the real emancipation of animals and humans requires a fundamental social transformation in the direction of communism. 2.7 Animals in a Communist Society
Disagreements would continue even in the society that would emerge as
the communist movement developed to a stage where capitalism was in the
process of being abolished across large parts of the world. Communism is
not the application of a universal moral code, or the creation of a uniform
society, and there would be no state or similar mechanism to impose, say,
veganism, even if many people thought it desirable. We can say with confidence though that the status quo would be untenable,
and that there would be a radical transformation of the relations between
humans and other species.
As part of the factory system, factory farms would come to an end -
who would want to work in them anyway? We would also expect a move to restore
wilderness and reduce the amount of land given over to agriculture. As
we have seen, growing food for animals and then eating the animals uses
up a lot more land than just producing vegetables for humans to eat.
One consequence of this would be that humans would no longer see themselves as always above and distinct from other animals: 'Communism... is not domination of nature but reconciliation, and thus regeneration of nature: human beings no longer treat nature simply as an object for their development, as a useful thing, but as a subject... not separate from them if only because nature is in them' (Camatte).
PostScript: Anarcho-punk, the ALF and the miners' strike - a cautionary tale from the 1980s 'I have a sense of both fear and repugnance when I see comrades who hate their past or, worse still, who mystify it. I'm not denying my past, for example my workerist past; on the contrary, I claim it. If we toss everything away, we live in a condition of permanent schizophrenia.' (Sergio Bologna quoted in Wright 1996) This account of the movement through anarcho-punk to class politics
in the 1980s is very much based on our own experiences. We think that it
is worth talking about because it is also relevant to other times and situations.
Questions about animals and the environment are often associated with so-called
'counter-cultural' scenes, and tend to be jettisoned as people engage with
more traditional radical politics. In the early 1980s the anarchist movement in Britain got the kick up
the arse it sorely needed with an influx of politicised punk activists.
The anarcho-punk scene was associated with nationally-known bands like
Crass, the Poison Girls, and Conflict but in towns across the country (and
indeed across Europe and beyond) thousands of people formed bands, put
on squat gigs and generally raged against the machine. Animal liberation was central to anarcho-punk. Seemingly every band had at least one song about hunting or vivisection, and record sleeves featured graphic images of animals in various postures of suffering. Many punks adopted a vegan lifestyle and threw themselves into animal activism - punks made up the majority of many hunt sab groups. The same period saw the direct action animal liberation movement reach
new heights. The Animal Liberation Front had been established in 1976 and
by the early 1980s raids to rescue animals from laboratories and acts of
economic sabotage against hunting, factory farming and vivisection targets
were becoming increasingly common and enjoying widespread support. Alongside the ALF there was a wider movement of direct action, including
milita t demonstrations (2000 people entered the military's Porton Down
lab site in 1982) and mass raids on laboratories to gather evidence of
animal cruelty (rather than to liberate animals). 1984 also saw the start of the longest and bitterest fought episode
in the class struggle for many years in Britain - the miners' strike. The
strike posed a major, and ultimately terminal challenge for anarcho-punk
ideology. Crudely, this world view tended to moralistically divide the
world into two camps - the good (people who thought and acted like anarcho
punks) and the bad (those who collaborated with the system). The violence of the miners' strike also weakened the hold of pacifism
on the punk scene. The new mood was given expression in the paper Class
War, launched in 1983, which combined punk style graphics and imagery with
a language of class violence and revolution. The early Class War was fairly
clear that animal liberation was part of the revolutionary movement against
capitalist society. Class War intervened at antivivisection marches denouncing 'the bureaucrats
of the BUAV' (British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection) for their
fear of 'the growing militancy of the animal liberation movement, the increased
daring of its attacks on property and confrontations of the police'. The anarcho-punk scene began to fragment. Crass called it a day, and
scenes across the country fell apart into sometimes acrimonious factions.
Some people tried to just carry on as before - an anarcho-punk scene defined
by the politics of the early 1980s continues to this day, albeit as a narrow
subculture rather than a thriving movement. Some of those who remained primarily focused on animals were caught up in a spiral of increasing repression and the isolated militancy of a small number of activists. Mass direct action was increasingly eclipsed by arson campaigns, poisoning scares, and even bomb attacks claimed by the Animal Rights Militia. Most of the (ex) anarcho-punks who remained politically engaged were moving in a completely different direction, rediscovering various forms of class struggle politics. Class War benefited most from this, but all the currents of the libertarian/communist milieu experienced an influx of new blood, including the anarcho-syndicalist Direct Action Movement, the Anarchist Communist Federation and the various ultra-left and post-situationist scenes. From the point of view of the development of a radical anti-capitalist
movement this could have been a major step forward, combining the subversive
practice and imagination of the anarcho-punk scene with a clearer understanding
of capitalism and communism. But this didn't happen. Animals were now irrelevant, and if anything eating meat was a badge
of the 'ordinary people'. Some 'Vegan police' who had moralistically condemned
others for eating meat, now criticised vegetarians for not eating meat:
the diet changed but the self-righteous attitude stayed the same. Concern
about animals was derided as middle class and liberal.
With hindsight, the most that can be said about developments of the
1980s was that it represented a step sideways from one confused set of
ideas to another. People were no more or less working class when they adopted
their patronising 'prolecult' lifestyle than when they were punks. Ex-punks starting to eat meat went hand in hand with the reversal of
pacifism into the advocacy of violence and terror, down to the level of
'red-blooded' flesh devouring communists advocating a 'red terror'. And despite having a more coherent world view, many born-again class
struggle anarchists actually had a less subversive relation to the world
than before. Anarcho-punk did involve a practical critique of the way things
are, not just at the level of direct action but in the development of different
ways of doing things such as creating alternatives to the commercial distribution
of music. Animal liberation may have been written out of the personal biographies
and political histories of revolutionary politics, but we would argue that
it has made a significant contribution to the development of the communist
movement.
Sources
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