Banner image: “The sacrifice of the ox when it is slaughtered is always the same.” – Karl Marx, Grundrisse, collected works 28, p. 533. Image by an Alliance member, used in Antidot.
Daniel Werding, Christin Bernhold and David Müller are members of the Alliance for Marxism and Animal Liberation. The Alliance
is a political association of various animal liberation groups centered
in Germany and Switzerland. It was formed to support research,
criticism and debate over the ideas of Marxism as they impact the animal
liberation struggle and to contribute to a new approach to the praxis
of the movement. The Alliance published it’s 18 Theses on Marxism and Animal Liberation1 in January, 2017. An English translation was released August 2018. Along with 2 other members of the Alliance, they spoke with Currents editor Michael John Addario. The interview was conducted over email between November 2018 and April 2019.
The history of the animal liberation movements in Germany
have some clear parallels with the liberation movements in the West, but
they have also developed within the unique framework of German
philosophy and German society. They also appear to have developed a bit
later than the North American and some of the other European movements.
Could you tell us a little bit about that history?
The history of what can be called the latest wave of the animal
rights and animal liberation movements in Germany started at the end of
the 1980s. The movements at that time still described themselves as
animal welfarists, although they weren’t really “welfarists” in the
reformist (and bourgeois) sense that we see today. Political and
theoretical discussions on these issues were just beginning. Most of the
activists had an autonomous anarchist background or an affiliation to
the Green Party, which was founded at the beginning of the 1980s.
Accordingly, their positions were a mixture of moral philosophy and the
“unity-of-oppression” approaches. Back then, direct action dominated.
This orientation, among other things, led to the first “anti-terrorism”
trial against animal activists, which took place in Hamburg.2
All defendants were found not guilty. The split between welfarists and
more radical currents happened quite early – at the end of the 1980s and
the beginning of the 1990s.
The differences between the animal rights movement and parts of the
autonomous left resulted in an ideological clash at the Tierrechtswoche
(“Animal Rights Week”) in Hamburg in 1995.3
This led to a reorientation within some of the groupings in the
movement. They started to engage in theoretical discussions and began to
formulate a critique of forms of autonomous politics then dominant in
Germany. In the first years of the new millennium, this turn found its
expression in new theoretical positions based on the traditional
critical theory by Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse. Birgit Mütherich4 published her influential book about the problem of human-animal relations in the work of Weber, Marx and the Frankfurt School5
in 2000. At about the same time, the first platform for campaigning on a
national level was founded: Offensive gegen die Pelzindustrie
(Offensive Against the Fur Industry), and the first of a number of
successful campaigns against the fur trade was launched.6
Shortly after that, the Jewish-Israeli critical theorist and professor
Moshe Zuckermann helped the radical currents of the animal rights and
liberation movements to explore the legacy of the Frankfurt School in
favor of animal liberation politics.
Marcuse and Davis, USCD, 1968 “Nature, too, awaits the revolution” – Herbert Marcuse “To be vegan is part of a revolutionary perspective” – Angela Davis I am especially interested from what you described, in an
earlier conversation, as a “turn to Marxism” in the German animal
liberation movement, roughly between 2006 and 2008. How substantive and
influential was that turn in practice – and what do you attribute that
turn to?
Tierrechts-Aktion Nord (TAN), which is known today as Assoziation Dämmerung (Association Dawn),7 organized an important congress in Hamburg called “Soften the Stony Heart of Infinity” (a phrase by Adorno) in 2006.8
The contributions to the congress were published in a book with the
same title, published by journalist and longtime animal liberation
activist Susann Witt-Stahl.9
One of the contributors was Marco Maurizi. Marco is an Italian
philosopher, musician and an active intellectual in the broad field of
critical human-animal studies. In 2005, shortly before the congress took
place, his Nine Theses on Speciesism appeared.10
Together with his two chapters to Susann’s book, which were the outcome
of his talks at the congress, those theses were seminal for the groups
who had already been discussing critical theory and animal liberation.
Maurizi’s theses explained, in condensed form, the differences
between a historical materialist approach to animal liberation and
metaphysical ones. He used Peter Singer’s philosophy as a model for his
definition of metaphysical anti-speciesism. Marco’s basic idea is that
“speciesism – our belief that man is something other than and superior
to every other animal – is the cause of nothing; it is rather the effect
of something that the metaphysical anti-speciesists have not yet
explained.” Here, “speciesism” is a prime example for what Marx and
Engels called “superstructure” and it is the effect of political
economic praxis – the “something” that metaphysical anti-speciesist have
not yet explained. Even today in human-animal studies, metaphysical
approaches have significant influence.
Susann’s book – and especially Marco’s interventions – led to deeper
discussions about animal liberation and Marxism. At the same time,
however, metaphysical anti-speciesism was getting a big boost by the
emerging “human-animal studies” fields in academies in the
German-speaking world. These fields are still dominated by left-liberal
and radical democratic forces promoting post-structuralism (including
Actor-Network-Theory), various new ethical approaches and “denucleated”,
or eclectic, readings of the Frankfurt School.
The background against which this latter intellectual development
took place was a general movement of the German left to the centre: in
the wake of the ideological and political turn to the right and
neoconservatism, the weakening of the traditional radical and
socialist/communist left and the historic event of massive neoliberal
cuts carried out by the first national government of social democrats
and the Green Party – in which many leftists had placed big hopes.
Economically, German capital was all but entirely uncontested in its
dominance – and even gained opportunities for new profits due to the
liberalization of the labor market and deregulation of the juridical
forms of capital-labour relations. Germany was also being reinvented as a
global player, approving its first participation in an open war of
aggression after the Second World War, 1999 against the Republic of
Yugoslavia, and its second in the still ongoing war in Afghanistan.
Thus, if you like, one faction of the animal liberation movement took a
“turn to Marxism”, but it was really a counter-current, as in Walter
Benjamin’s sense that it has been “brushing history against the grain”.
This was unfortunately neither part of a mass movement, nor did it
dominate the broader left.
Cover of 18 Theses on Marxism and Animal Liberation, January 2017How did the 18 Theses on Marxism and Animal Liberation come to be developed? Coming out of these intellectual currents, we started meeting in 2014
with animal liberation activists from Switzerland and Germany who
shared our point of view and began to discuss Marxist theory and
politics and strategic issues in the movement. At that point, we had not
yet planned to create a formal alliance. However, the meetings spawned
fruitful debates on animal liberation from Marxist and socialist
perspectives. It was necessary to elaborate on these perspectives in
order to advance it within the movement – as well as make it accessible
to people more generally interested in “animal issues”. We also wanted
to develop these debates and agendas further. The Tierrechtsgruppe Zürich11 published an issue of Antidot12 – a supplement to the Swiss left-liberal weekly newspaper WOZ13
– in late 2014 focusing on “Marxism and Animal Liberation.” It was a
publication of journalism rather than theory, but its essays developed
some aspects of the critique we discussed during that time. Reactions to
it showed us that there is indeed interest in anti-capitalist and
socialist positions on animal liberation. Unfortunately, none of the
articles have been translated into English.
We decided to consolidate our efforts and constitute what is now our Alliance
and also to develop a statement that basically explains why we think
that Marxism and Animal Liberation belong together. We needed something
that we could use to present our position to both young comrades within
the animal liberation movement and to Marxist comrades who always
wondered why their crazy vegan comrades kept arguing that animals are
something that Marxism should care about. The process of collective
writing and debating took about one year. We wrote down our theses as
our theoretical founding document and published it as a brochure in
January 2017. After the Theses were released, we discussed them
at several events of both the animal liberation movement and the
Marxist left. Comrades from different countries translated them into
English and French.14 We hope to facilitate a larger, international debate on Marxism and animal liberation, which we consider long overdue.
Cover of Antidot: “Dem Schlachten ein Ende setzen – Marxismus und Tierbefreiung, December 2014How would you summarize the theoretical standpoint of the Theses? It’s a classical Marxist standpoint from which we address both the
animal liberation movement and the Marxist and communist left. We argue
that animal liberation and Marxism not only might work together but in
fact necessarily belong together and must unite. This is why the text is
split into two main chapters: one arguing “Why anti-speciesism must be
Marxist,” the other one “Why Marxism must be anti-speciesist.” As
historical materialists, we think that animal liberation politics need
Marxism to understand the relationship of society to both animals and
nature and, at the same time, Marxism needs to recognize that animals
must be liberated from exploitation and oppression just like the
proletariat – which does not mean that the way they are exploited and
dominated by capital works in exactly the same way.
In the first section, we take a critical look at the intellectual
currents that are most influential in the animal rights and animal
liberation movement at the moment – namely, bourgeois moral philosophy,
liberal legal criticism and liberal (post-structuralist)
anti-authoritarianism. We argue that all of them have their merits.
However, in the end, they are not able to give a satisfactory answer to
the question as to why exactly animals are exploited in capitalism, why
this exploitation works the way it works and where speciesist ideology
really comes from. We then introduce historical materialism and the
works of Marx and Engels as a theoretical foundation which is both able
and necessary to answer these questions. It also provides the
instruments to analyze the economic position animals have in capitalism.
The second section argues that on the other side, Marxism is
inconsistent if it keeps ignoring the animals. While arguing that
capitalism inherently harms the interests of the proletariat, Marxists
are incoherent if they want to abolish capitalist exploitation and
oppression in order to liberate the working class but at the same time
deny that for animals. This is not a moralism, per se, but a
fundamental – revolutionary – moral position that Marxists are driven by
in their will to end the systematic suffering that capitalism causes.
For historical materialists, there is no justifiable reason not to
respect the interests and rights of non-human animals.
A number of scholars have been grappling with elements of
Marxism and animal liberation for some time now, among them figures such
as David Nibert and John Sanbonmatsu in the US and Dinesh Wadiwel in
Australia. The question of animal labour has animated writers such as
Jason Hribal and has also been taken up by some academics outside of a
Marxist framework. Did you draw from any from these figures?
Our aim was not to write an academic text, but a political essay
which outlines common ground for Marxists and animal liberationists.
Thus, the number of explicit references is intentionally low. But you
can find some references to Marx and Engels, Luxemburg, Adorno or
Marcuse – some explicit, some implicit. Furthermore, we drew in large
extent on our experiences in the debates we have been having in the
German-speaking world in which, with all due respect, the scholars you
name have not yet become as influential as, for e.g., Gary Francione,
Donna Haraway or Carol J. Adams. So, the short answer is that while some
of us are familiar with Nibert, Sanbonmatsu and Wadiwel we have not yet
discussed them as a collective. And we also found it necessary to
formulate a position based on the original works of Marx and Engels, who
we don’t consider speciesist or anthropocentric.
Jason Hribal has become a bit famous in Germany, at least in the
academic world. But the focus of the reception has been more on his
concept of animal resistance and the related reformulation of animal
agency. In contrast to him, we do not think that animals “resist” their
exploitation and oppression, or that it is helpful to extend agency in
such a particular way. We think that it is necessary to be precise with
our terms and that a transfer of concepts from the working class to
animals is not always easy. This does not mean that animals go
voluntarily to the slaughterhouse or that they are not actors in
history. Actually, as Marxists we know that not only humans have been
making history. But we think that “resistance” is not the right term to
conceptualize what animals do. Not every individual or collective act of
denial, refusal, non-corporation etc. is automatically an act of
resistance – neither in human or in animal histories.
On Hribal’s proposal to consider animal as laborers, the quality of
the concept depends a lot on its exact meaning. Obviously, animals do
work for their own reproduction and/or for “animal capital.”
Incidentally, Marx and Engels had already stated this, although many
pro-animal scholars try to prove the opposite. It is actually quite
interesting to observe that some post-postmodernists now “rediscover”
nature and animals as agents, while Marx and Engels had already
considered them to have a history of their own, even in their early
works. But does the fact that animals perform labor mean that animals
are part of the proletariat, as Hribal assumes? We have been considering
the question of animal labor for a while now, and we do not think so.
Marx and Engels used this term for a specific class, within the
historically particular capitalist social formation, and which is
defined by its relation to capital: i.e., with respect to the property
relations and the production and distribution of profit. The relation to
capital by wage workers and by animals respectively differ. In the
latter case, it is a property relation which allows capital to
super-exploit animals.
Furthermore, if we consider Hribal’s political definition of the
proletariat, we would argue that animals are not a politically conscious
part of the working class. We think this particular transfer of a
concept does not help us to better understand contemporary society. In
the worst case, it confuses our analysis. Nevertheless, we do appreciate
the histories Hribal has collected about animals who do not cooperate
with their exploiters and oppressors. They are really fascinating and,
of course, they contradict the wrong perception of animals as passive
material, automatons or machines.
There is a significant anarchist element within many animal
liberation movements. Some of this is often more in name – almost as a
kind of cultural affiliation – rather than reflecting classical
anarchist practice. Is there a genuine Marxist-Anarchist debate or a
clash of organizational strategies in the German movement?
The short answer would be no. If you exclude postmodernist
neo-anarchism, the genuinely anarchist current within the animal
liberation movement is not as strong as it used to be. Unlike the 90s,
where, say, the eco-anarchism that many of us grew up with was quite
influential, culturally and theoretically, it does not organize itself
as an explicitly “anarchist” current anymore. Ironically, one of the few
groups which at the moment labels themselves “anarchist” is an animal
liberation group in Hannover run by so-called “anti-Germans”15
who use allegations of antisemitism in order to slander traditional
leftists. Secondly, there is simply no organized theoretical debate
within the movement about these issues at the moment.
We would actually prefer to have such a “clash of organizational
strategies” – at least that would imply a debate, which could
potentially push things forward. But strategic debates just aren’t
taking place at the moment. Of course, there are activists with an
anarchist or libertarian background. So far, no critique or reaction to
our theses from an explicitly anarchist point of view has been
formulated. There are of course some of our positions and arguments
which are questioned, e.g. the focus on the class question as a core
question of capitalism, or the necessity to join forces with the labor
movement. But since these issues are not really debated with regard to
organizational questions, that sort of debate is not happening.
Could you tell us a little bit about the Alliance? How was it formed and how is it organized? The Alliance was formed in 2014. It is based in several
cities in Germany and in Switzerland. We started our collective work
with the above-mentioned newspaper supplement Antidot. We
outlined some basic ideas on historical materialism and animals and a
Marxist approach to ethics as class ethics. We also did some analysis of
the German and Swiss meat industry, looked at the interconnections
between eco-socialism and animals, criticized the emerging vegan culture
industry, and so on. We had rich editorial discussions about the paper
and its contents, about debates in the emerging human-animal studies in
the universities and about developments on the left. We concluded that
we need at least three things: (1) an independent, organizational
approach of Marxists and animal liberationists, (2) a collective
theoretical and political discussion of the interconnections of Marxism
and animal liberation thought, and (3) a strategic debate on how to move
forward.
The Alliance thus became formalized and we launched theoretical discussions, the 18 Theses
being the first result. We are an association of groups and individuals
with different political backgrounds, scattered geographically. We hold
collective meetings several weekends a year. For these meetings, we
take turns preparing inputs on theoretical and political currents and
other issues, to make sure that everybody is on the same page, educate
ourselves and be up to date, etc. We have plenary discussions on
significant topics in which all activists have a common interest. In
addition, we hold regular phone conferences with delegates from all
participating groups. Despite our emphasis on theoretical work and idea
formation the first phase of our alliance, we see ourselves primarily as
a political activist organization. Theory and praxis cannot be
separated – both have to be part of what we do politically. It took us
most of that first year to write the theses.
The first step to a new strategic approach followed in March 2018.
The animal rights/ liberation movements are in a terrible state at the
moment. We organized a conference about “The Future of the Movement”.
The idea was to present and discuss a proposal for a new movement
strategy. Instead of doing only localized work, or a lot of small,
single-issue campaigns which are mostly unsuccessful, we proposed to
focus the principal forces of the movement collectively on the meat
industry, as it is both the main economic profiteer and the most
influential political agent in animal exploitation. Additionally, we
think that the meat industry could be a focus of opposition for the
broader anti-capitalist left, given the relations of exploitation
between capital and labor are among the most extreme, considering the
social ecological problems produced by the meat industry, and given the
contribution of agriculture to greenhouse emissions. That’s where we are
at the moment. The conference in Hamburg, 2018, organized by the Alliance for Marxism and Animal Liberation, discussing socialist perspectives in the animal liberation movement.The animal liberation movements worldwide are at a critical
historical moment. They have struggled to find a place within major left
currents – explicitly Marxist or otherwise – even as the needs for them
are so politically urgent. The numbers of non-human beings owned and
slaughtered every year is the highest in human history and the nature of
their use is of an almost incomprehensibly sadistic character. What do
you see as the most urgent strategic aims of the movements?
You’re right with that observation. We consider it crucial for these
movements to join forces, if only for the simple reason that the
bourgeoisie and its apparatuses are pretty well organized and we, as
their enemies, must just do the same in order to be powerful. And let’s
not forget that the animal liberation movement is not the only left
movement with a de facto urgent need for allies.
We think it is vital to focus strategically on the meat industry. It
is the embodiment of the global oppression and exploitation of animals,
workers and nature. It is responsible not only for most of the
systematic slaughter of animals, but also for pollution, deforestation,
ecocide, prevention of food sovereignty, the oppression of workers’
rights and the destruction of their unions. It is a primary locus for so
many of the contradictions of capitalism. The meat industry can
potentially be a political arena in which different anti-capitalist
movements meet to join forces. Such a campaign could enable us to create
the common ground for animal liberation, eco-activists, unionists,
communists, and opponents of imperialism to unite.
Of course, it would be naïve to believe that such a thing could form
overnight, not the least of which is due to the mutual skepticism and
political differences between and among animal liberation groups and
different left currents. We are in relatively uncharted political
territory. We do not have ready answers to certain questions. Things
must really be tried out in practice.
This requires careful solidarity-building work. For instance, at
different sites of the German meat industry, local groups – mainly
unionists and residents – can start discussing what to do against the
devastating working conditions. The discontent among workers in the meat
industry has always been high and everybody knows that. The same is
true for citizens living near slaughterhouses. Local campaigns and
initiatives need to aim at building bonds with these people. One can
build from there. It’s important to keep in mind that workers in the
meat industry care about their jobs not because they necessarily want to
work killing animals – much of the job is psychologically stressful –
but because they need an income. This distinction is important for the
question of solidarity. How should our movement act in such a context?
At any rate, advancing animal liberation positions in these campaigns
would require real participation over the long term, rather than just
going to a meeting and speaking against slaughter.
Of course, it is a consistent problem that the Marxist left, social
movements and liberal elements that promote technological fixes – such
as, say, agroecology – are either ignorant or hostile to the animal
question. This has not exactly helped animal liberationists finding
their place in “the left,” as you say.
How that’s supposed to change is a matter on its own. But when it
comes to the question as to what the animal liberation movement needs to
do to develop the potential to build broader alliances, a first thing
is giving up single-issue politics. This is the very precondition to be
able to even think about joining forces with others. The animal
liberation movements must ensure that they do not themselves serve the
prejudices that often exist in the Marxist left, like for instance, that
they are only interested in vegan consumption, or that they do not pay
attention to questions of political economy – especially the
exploitation of workers – and so on.
In July of this year, we will participate in an action conference organized by Animal Climate Action (AniCa),
which will be discussing strategies against the meat industry and is
organizing a major mobilization against the EuroTier 2020 in Hannover, a
world leading fair for animal production. We are looking forward to the
discussions there. “Bring
slaughter to an end: expropriate the meat industry, abolish
capitalism”. Rally against the Meat industry, Zurich, Switzerland, 2018But how you see such class politics functioning?
Democratizing the economy and producing for human need is certainly the
socialist project writ large. But in transforming workplaces to worker
and council leadership, we can quite easily anticipate class conflicts
around the liberation of animals. This seems to me something that must
remain at the centre of animal liberation politics generally. As you
said, the animal rights movement – even the animal liberation left – has
not exactly prioritized socialism and class politics.
Animal liberation class politics have to be developed within the
traditional left, the pro-animal movements and society. We have to
develop it ourselves – theoretically and practically. The lack of such
politics, sometimes even the frank refusal of such politics, is one
major reason why we are disconnected from the left. Like it or not,
there is no other way than pro-animal class politics if we take into
account the objective forces in our capitalist society and the objective
of a just and free society for all. Again, simple vegan outreach,
“veganizing” education and direct actions are not sufficient – they are
often even politically counterproductive. On the other hand, we do not
consider the establishment of these politics to be an “automatism”, or a
way of least resistance. There are still large reservations among
leftists and animal rightists, not to mention the classical
social-democratic left within the unions’ apparatuses. Thus, there are
going to be conflicts about socialism, animal liberation and their
interconnection within the left and with liberals, democrats and so on.
But there are always some people who are at least open to discussion and
to selective alliances on both sides. Finding them and initiating
conversations is one of our first tasks.
With respect to civil society and the state, we have no illusions. As
with other locations of class struggle, the ruling classes are not
going to like what we want or what we do. One faction does not want to
deal with the issues at all and openly fights against us. The other, the
more (neo)liberal one, wants to pacify us. These capitalists and
politicians promote vegan commodities and lifestyles, improved animal
welfare regulations, the acknowledgment of some species and in-vitro
meat in order to maintain the bourgeois hegemony with regard to animal
exploitation.
However, as the history of the working-class struggles shows,
integration is not liberation and the ruling classes have treated those
who refused integration with even more rigor. The hard or the soft way,
in the end we have to struggle against capitalism and the capitalist
class in general and animal capital in particular. Our task is to
organize and educate ourselves as best as possible and formulate a
strategic project against animal capital that appeals to pro-animal
activists and leftists on the one hand and to the broad working class
and public on the other.
If we get this done, we are already a big step ahead.
Tiger farm in China. They are raised to be slaughtered for their body parts.
BEIJING — The Chinese government, reversing a 25-year ban, announced on Monday that it would allow the use of rhinoceros horns and tiger bones in medicine, a move that environmentalists described as a significant setback for efforts to protect the animals from extinction.
The State Council, China’s cabinet, said in a policy directive that it would legalize the use of rhino horns and tiger bones for “medical research or in healing,” but only by certified hospitals and doctors, and only from rhinos and tigers raised in captivity, excluding zoo animals. While such remedies are highly profitable, they have no proven benefits to humans.
Environmentalists said the decision would likely help fuel a black market for wild rhino and tiger parts, which are revered in traditional Chinese medicine for supposed healing powers, and could lead to increased poaching of the fewer than 30,000 rhinos and 3,900 tigers still in the wild.
“It’s a devastating decision,” said Leigh Henry, director of wildlife policy at the World Wildlife Fund in Washington. “I can’t overstate the potential impact.”
With only around 3,900 left in the wild, every tiger counts. But China’s latest move to lift the ban on tiger bone trade threatens to put a dark cloud over the world’s wild.
The announcement on Monday threatened to undermine President Xi Jinping’s efforts to promote an image of China as a responsible environmental steward capable of tackling global issues like climate change and air pollution.
“A small number of individuals stand to make a lot of money perhaps at the price of the species,” said Peter Knights, chief executive of WildAid, an environmental advocacy group based in San Francisco. He added that the decision “comes completely out of the blue and with no rationale.”
In 2016, China, along with the United States, announced that it would ban the sale of ivory. China’s domestic ban, which went into effect earlier this year, was widely applauded as a critical step in ending elephant poaching in Africa.
Now, just as prices for rhino horn are decreasing and populations of tigers seem to be stabilizing, the environmental advocates say, China threatens to hurt that progress.T
Chinese officials on Monday did not draw attention to the reversal of the rhino horn and tiger bone bans, put in place in 1993, nor did they explain the decision.
Experts said the move was probably related to the government’s efforts to encourage the growth of traditional Chinese medicine, an industry valued at more than $100 billion, with more than 500,000 medical practitioners.
While leaders of traditional Chinese medicine have officially discouraged the use of rhino horn and tiger bone for years, an underground trade has continued.
Rhino horn is used in Chinese medicine to treat a variety of conditions, including fevers, gout and food poisoning. Tiger bone, often turned into tiger bone wine or so-called glue, is thought to boost health, cure a range of ailments and increase virility for men. Endangered animal parts are not widely used in traditional Chinese medicine, but folk remedies incorporating them form a small but profitable market.
Mr. Xi has used Chinese medicine as a way to expand China’s overseas influence, and his government has promoted it in places like Zimbabwe and Nepal. The government hopes Chinese medicine will win global acceptance alongside Western therapies.
The Chinese state media sought to portray Monday’s policy announcement as an effort to help protect rhinos and tigers by improving oversight. The regulations said that trade of rhinos, tigers and their related products was illegal, except for a handful of purposes, including medicine, scientific research and “cultural exchanges.”
The State Council said in the announcement that the medical use of rhino and tiger parts would be strictly monitored. Only doctors certified by the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine would be allowed to administer the medicines.
China is estimated to have 6,500 tigers in captivity as of 2010, according to the World Wildlife Fund, though the number of rhinos in captivity is unknown.
Experts said the number of animals in captivity that could be used for medicinal purposes would likely not meet the demand in China, potentially leading to increased poaching and a thriving underground trade.
Neither has the Marxist left stood up for the liberation of animals so far, nor has the animal rights and animal liberation movement taken up the construction of a socialist society. We argue that Marxists and animal liberationists have the same enemy–the bourgeoisie. Our 18 theses justify why they must unite for a truly revolutionary project.
Marxism and the liberation of animals are two things which, at first glance, do not seem to have much in common. Neither did the former make waves for being particularly animal-loving, nor are animal lovers known for taking up the cause of liberating the working class and the construction of a socialist society.
Quite the opposite: Classical Marxism has little appeal to the predominantly autonomist-anarchist animal rights activists; it is regarded as an overly simplified theory and as an authoritarian ideology which has become obsolete with the end of actually existing socialism. Although the critique of capitalism and the labour movement’s vocabulary (‘comrade,’ ‘class’) are regaining popularity amongst the radical left, one nevertheless does not quite know what to make of traditional Marxists. Marxists are considered to be people who notoriously hate animals and only talk economy, and who are often indistinguishable from petty bourgeois philistines who do not want to forego their grilled sausages.
Marxists, in turn, do not hold animal liberation activists in particularly high regard either: they are often seen as strange ascetics and bourgeois moralists who invest themselves in negligible causes instead of focusing on the key issues. They are expected to take part in actions and alliances for class struggle, but to leave their ‘animal craze’ at the door. Many comrades break out in cold sweat when they ponder a society in which both humans and animals alike are liberated from exploitation and oppression, since it would mean giving up their meat and cheese. And anyway: Friedrich Engels already made fun of the “Herren Vegetarianer” who underestimated the importance of meat consumption in the history of human civilization and who were, at best, utopian socialists.
Nevertheless, we reject this opposition and believe that the historical materialist analysis and critique of society developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the corresponding politics and the call to liberate animals from their socially produced suffering all necessarily belong together. On the one hand, demands for animal liberation are indeed moralist if they do not analyse the historically specific conditions in which the exploitation of animals is taking place and which social changes are necessary to end it. On the other hand, however, every Marxist critique of society remains incomplete if it does not consider the fact that, to make profits, the ruling classes have not only exploited the oppressed classes within the history of class struggle, but also and always animals (and nature).
The exploitation of wage labourers on the one hand, and of animals on the other, may have qualitative differences in the way they have developed historically, and their relation to the means of productions also remains different today. In spite of all the differences, however, the working class and animals have a common history during which they have both faced the ruling class antagonistically as suffering, humiliated, oppressed and abandoned beings; the former as subjects, the latter as objects of liberation. Hence, we argue: the idea of animal liberation remains inconsistent when it repudiates the historical materialist critique of society. At the same time, Marxism remains equally inconsistent when it refuses to acknowledge that today, the liberation of animals must be integral to contemporary Marxist theory and politics. Firstly, the current stage in the development of the productive forces not only makes such liberation possible, but indeed necessary. Secondly, everyone who aspires to create a world without socially produced and objectively preventable exploitation, domination and suffering is required to also acknowledge the suffering of animals and strive for its abolition. Isolated approaches to unite Marxism and animal liberation have already occurred in the history of the left and the labour movement. But these have not become widely accepted to date. The following theses explain why Marxists and animal liberationists should not be compelled into a forced marriage but rather unite in a bond for life.
Why anti-speciesism must be Marxist
I.
Modern, capitalist society recognises animals only as material carriers of value and as capital’s means of production, as means of labour and subjects of labour which are supplied by nature for free–as long as no human labour is used to harness it.
The executives in the meat industry, the heart of the animal exploitation complex, earn billions with the killing of animals. In Germany alone, record turnovers of up to 40 billion Euros per year are reached by slaughtering more than 60 million pigs, 3.5 million cows and 700 million chicken, ducks and geese annually. Even in Switzerland, the sales volume amounts to 10 billion Swiss francs. In circuses and zoos, ‘exotic’ animals are usually kept under atrocious conditions to perform excruciating, stultifying show-acts. During hunts, they are killed for the mere amusement of mostly well-off huntsmen. In experiments, they serve as objects of research and labour, while the pet industry overbreeds and sells them off as toys. These conditions are horrific and brutal and anybody who witnesses them and who does not have a completely alienated relationship with the environment experiences at least some sort of empathy with the sentient beings when seeing them in their plight.
As a consequence, a commitment to ending animal exploitation often begins with being appalled by the killing of animals on a mass-scale and by their ideological degradation. At the same time, such a commitment may begin with an impulse of solidarity in search of an explanation for the exploitation and for a way to abolish it. Empathy with the suffering of animals then leads to a theoretical reflection on the relation between humans and animals and sparks the impulse to become active in the struggle for the liberation of animals. But how does this impulse manifest itself in practice? Let us look at the theory and practice of the current animal liberation movement.
II.
In a nutshell and somewhat simplified, the contemporary German-speaking animal rights and animal liberation movement is dominated by a politico-theoretical current which the Marxist philosopher Marco Maurizi describes as “metaphysical anti-speciesism.” It is composed of three main schools of thought:
Bourgeois moral philosophy in the tradition of Peter Singer, Richard Ryder, Tom Regan, Hilal Sezgin and others.
Liberal legal criticism, the figurehead of which was for a long time Gary Francione. Authors such as Will Kymlicka and Sue Donaldson have joined him recently.
Social liberal post-structuralist anti-authoritarianism, which relies on the thinking of Carol J. Adams, Donna Haraway, Birgit Mütherich, Jacques Derrida and others.
Bourgeois anti-speciesist moral philosophy is predominant in a number of organizations and initiatives, such as PETA, which raise political demands for animal rights and animal welfare and appeal to consumers, the state and private institutions by means of petitions, lobbying, campaigns, offering expert consultancy and so forth.
Liberal legal critics form a theoretical and political bridge between moral philosophers and anti-authoritarianism. Depending on their interpretation and affinity to any of the two political theories, they may lean toward one or the other. This also explains to some degree the broad agreement in the animal welfare, animal rights and animal liberation movement that animal rights indeed are an aim to strive for.
The social liberal post-structuralist-anti-speciesist anti-authoritarianism makes its political appearance in forms of the extra-parliamentary left inspired by autonomism and anarchism respectively. Such autonomist anti-speciesism represents the core of the abolitionist wing of the animal rights and the animal liberation movement.
III.
Bourgeois anti-speciesist moral philosophy deals with the question of why the suffering of animals is considered different from the suffering of humans, or, to be more precise: why such differences provide the moral basis for actions.
Accordingly, this current vets commonly accepted justifications for killing and utilizing animals–for example that animals do not reason and lack cognitive abilities, that animal suffering is different in kind and less grave than human suffering, and so on. Also, it reveals the inner contradictions in the arguments for killing and using animals by pointing out that not all animals lack cognitive skills, for instance, and that neither are all humans (of all ages, and so on) equally capable of performing cognitive tasks. Moreover, even within the human collective, forms of suffering are so different that we could thus hardly speak of a universal human suffering in opposition to a universal animal suffering. As a consequence of such inconsistencies, advocates of the anti-speciesist moral philosophy maintain that there are no justifiable reasons to make morally significant distinctions between human and animal suffering. Accordingly, they ask why such distinctions are made in practice nevertheless. Their answer: because human society is permeated by speciesism, that is, the ideological assumption that the human species is superior. The argument is that just like racism or sexism, speciesism establishes normative boundaries that cannot be justified and thus lacks any actual foundation. Instead, according to Singer, speciesism, defined as “a prejudice or attitude of bias in favour of the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species,” is the reason for the “discrimination” against animals.
The merits of such a moral philosophy are that speciesist ideology is confronted with its own untenable claims. However, bourgeois anti-speciesist moral philosophy has numerous problems of its own: strictly speaking, it does not explain why animals are being exploited, why they are being made objects of economic utilization; rather, it explains how the different treatment of animals and humans is legitimized and shrouded under current social circumstances. This is an important distinction. Therefore, bourgeois moral philosophy can tell us which form of thought justifies that humans are not killed in abattoirs and why in the case of animals the slaughtering is not eliminated, for example. Yet it cannot contribute anything of substance on the origin and function of animal exploitation or, more specifically, explain both the abattoir as an industrialised business and for what purpose the animals are killed in it. Instead, it reduces all these questions to abstract, individual acts, views and practices that are treated in complete isolation from the functioning of capitalist society. Moreover, such moral philosophy is ahistorical: its subject matter is speciesist ideology of the bourgeois society within the here and now. It is interested in the history of human-animal relations only in terms of the history of ideology, if at all; it can tell us nothing about the social origin and the genesis of speciesist ideology.
IV.
Liberal animal rights theory primarily attempts to explain why animals, in contrast to humans, do not have civil liberties, why they are treated as objects but not as subjects of law. Its answer is essentially tautological: because animals are defined by law as property. Following this line of argument, because animals are normatively determined as human property, every serious conflict of interest between the species then leads to the defeat of non-human creatures. The status of animals as property then prepares the way for the institutionalized exploitation of animals. Depending on the respective politico-scientific reading, the problem is accordingly the absence of either negative or positive basic rights analogous to human rights. Advocates of this theory conclude that current law is based on a moral prejudice that privileges humans over animals, much in the same way as whites had once been favoured over black slaves. The theory of law thus excludes animals from being subjects of rights by definition.
The criticism of the judicial fact that animals are legally considered to be ‘things’ and/or ‘property’ of natural or legal persons has not lost any validity today. However, legal norms neither self-evidentially explain nor have they or the theory of law established the exploitation of animals. Animals are not just private property because the law says so or because jurists presume them to be. Private ownership (of the means of production) is constitutional because the law is the legal expression of bourgeois relations of production and exchange. In the course of class struggle, the ruling class has degraded nature in general and animals in particular to a means of production at their disposal, secured such hierarchy juristically and stipulated it as universally applicable. For that reason, it is lawful today for man to treat the animal as their property. Legal norms allow the exploitation of animals because they are bourgeois, not just because they are speciesist.
However, there are instances in which animal rights theorists have also contributed to focus the analytic perspective despite the legalistic and anti-speciesist mystifications immanent to their positions. In particular, among the irrevocable achievements of the anti-speciesist legal criticism is that it highlights how the juristic status quo enables an economically more efficient exploitation of animals and how it fosters the required political compliance of civil society at the same time–in other words, that the actually existing animal welfare law therefore secures rather than prevents the exploitation and oppression of animals.
Yet it weighs all the heavier, then, that animal rights theory is subservient to bourgeois illusions about state and law. Animal rights theorists sever the connection between capitalist economy on the one hand and the bourgeois form of state and its legal form on the other, and even propagate the latter as a positive frame of reference for progressive politics. Certainly, it is legitimate, insofar as it is possible, to enlist federal institutions and laws as tools in the fight against the animal industry. However, the demand to turn animals into citizens or similar subjects of rights is an ideological one. This is especially true against the background that, even among humans, state and law do not guarantee but undermine liberty, equality and fraternity.
V.
The post-structuralist-anti-speciesist critique of power proceeds in much the same way as the bourgeois moral philosophy, but radicalizes the ethical consideration of human-animal relations. It asks primarily how the animal was introduced to the world as a social construct and holds that this construct is continuously reproduced through, for example, religious, literary or journalistic publications and those of the natural and social sciences–from the bible through Descartes to Kant. Speciesism, it claims in unison, is the result of a dualist construction of society and nature, “the large occidental discourse” (Coetzee) of the human and the animal. Furthermore, advocates of this current highlight that while all those characteristics that had been somehow beneficial to the progress of human civilization–reason, science, will, rationality and so forth–are ascribed to society, whereas the side of nature is identified with everything that has been superseded and left behind by this process–spirituality, drives, affectivity, magic and so on. According to this interpretation, such a dualist construction continues within the relation between humans and animals: humans are constructed as reasonable, rational and analysing subjects, which are raised above animals who are constructed as unreasonable creatures of nature controlled by their drives and affects. Arguing by means of this dualism is the foundation of the post-structuralist-anti-speciesist critique of power to explain the political dominance of humans over animals, the control of the former over the latter as well as the latter’s exclusion from democracy.
In its proceeding, the post-structuralist-anti-speciesist approach differs little from that of anti-authoritarian feminists and anti-racists, who examine forms of sexist and racist practices in similar ways. According to this perspective, sexism exists because the woman is constructed as an emotional creature driven by affects and requiring protection, whereas the man is constructed as being rational and ‘cool headed,’ strong-minded and able to assert himself; the root of racism, in turn, is the construction of the other, for instance peoples and religions degraded as primitive in contrast to the superior Western nations.
The radicalness of the anti-speciesist critique of power amounts to showing the duality residing in speciesist ideology, to calling this duality out as an instrument of political domination and to reject passing off the struggle against one ideology as more important than fights against other ideologies. For this reason, autonomist anti-speciesists oppose animal exploitation with the same conviction that they oppose sexism, racism, homophobia and other social mechanisms of exclusion which belie any promise of bourgeois emancipation. This is also why the unity-of-oppression approach–known in its current form as intersectionality or total liberation–is so popular among them.
In purely analytic terms, many observations of anti-authoritarian anti-speciesism are correct. The problem is that they deliver mere descriptions of the dominant discourse on human-animal relations and other forms of oppression, but no explanation as to why the human-animal relation is the way it is, and why the criticized discourse is so predominant. A post-structuralist-anti-authoritarian anti-speciesism can elucidate the character of the dualism of human and animal in bourgeois ideology, that is, how it is present as an ideological form of thinking in discourses that are called upon; it cannot, however, determine the origin or the function of this ideology. It offers no explanation for what exactly created the ideological dualism of the human and the animal and what mediates it. Whenever anti-authoritarian anti-speciesists allude to this point, their analysis becomes woolly. For this reason, it remains phenomenological, in the end purely formal and, above all, idealist, as it considers mere (wrong) thinking to be the engine of history. What is more: The unity-of-oppression approach confuses the question of the qualitative interrelation between different types of oppression and their genesis with their political-normative assessment. Ultimately, it is capable only of tautological patterns of explanation: Speciesism hence arises from speciesist discourse. Historical materialist theories are mostly taboo. The question of the inner and functional correlation between bourgeois relations of production and racist ideology, for example, is confused with the question of whether capitalism as a mode of oppression is normatively worse than racism or more important an issue–or vice versa. Thus, already the attempt at analysis is rejected.
VI.
We can thus establish: both anti-speciesist moral philosophy, and its more radicalised version, anti-authoritarian anti-speciesism, as well as the liberal legal criticism offer no useful explanations for the exploitation of animals and its ideological concealment. They can describe speciesist ideology and legal norms in detail, determine their parallels and commonalities with other similarly structured ideologies and norms and also highlight inner contradictions within these ideologies and laws. They cannot tell us, however, how ideological thinking about animals or their status as property came into the world and why in bourgeois capitalist society animal exploitation took on precisely the highly technological, industrialised form which it currently has. In short: they do not help us understand why, in whose interest and how exactly animals are exploited in capitalist society.
Such theoretical deficiencies yield immediate consequences for political praxis: all three approaches deal exclusively with the inner functionality of speciesist reasoning. Accordingly, every form of animal exploitation appears to them as the result of speciesist consciousness–for them the political practice directed at liberating animals is also primarily a question of adequate thinking, moral comport and legal norms. The circle of friends, the butcher, the producer of meat, the animal testing laboratory and its lobbyists–according to those schools, they all must cast off their speciesist thinking for animals to be freed. Social praxis is here above all a question of social consciousness, which is the sum of the consciousnesses of all its separate individuals. Animal exploitation and animal liberation are reduced to a philosophical, epistemological, at best theoretical judicial problem. Moral philosophers, theorists of law and anti-authoritarian-anti-speciesists neither really explain that those who profit from the exploitation of animals have a strong interest in perpetuating current forms of animal exploitation, nor do they explain why they have this interest.
VII.
Here is precisely where Marxism comes into play. The early writings by Marx and Engels discuss the relation of being and consciousness, of nature and society and also of humans and animals. Marx and Engels pose the question in what way historically specific forms of cognition and consciousness interrelate with the way in which society is organized–in other words, the question of the element of mediation between being and consciousness. Their answer, grossly simplified: through social labour in the respective historically specific relations of production, humans produce by way of their material existence their own consciousness as well as the conditions by which this consciousness can and has to change. It is social labour–the active alteration of pre-existing conditions–which molds both nature and the functionality of society, while also creating the basis for the understanding of both. Hence, Marx and Engels say: we must look at what produces the supposed dualism between being and consciousness, between society and nature, what mediates and influences it, what constitutes the inner relation between humans, society and nature–and this something is social labour in its respective historically specific form. Therefore, the contradiction between society on the one hand, and animals and nature on the other does not simply develop in people’s minds: capitalism as a historically specific form of organizing social labour produces this contradiction constantly anew: within the capitalist process of production, animals and nature quite literally become a mere resource to exploit.
This way of understanding the relation between humans, society and nature is historical materialist. It is a materialist perspective, because it assumes that social existence forms the basis for consciousness; and its materialism is historical, because it does not consider existence as fixed and invariable but understands it as existence that is produced socially by humans themselves. There also exists an unhistorical materialism, from which Marx and Engels disassociated themselves forcefully. The relation between being and consciousness is not a deterministic one in the sense of a simple schematism, as Engels emphasizes: “The economic situation is the basis, but the various factors of the superstructure — political forms of the class struggle and its consequences, namely constitutions set up by the ruling class after a victorious battle, etc., forms of law and the reflections of all these real struggles in the minds of the participants, i.e. political, philosophical and legal theories, religious views and their expansion of the same into dogmatic systems — all these factors also have a bearing on the course of the historical struggles of which, in many cases they largely determine the form. It is in the interaction of all these factors and amidst an unending multitude of fortuities (…) that the economic trend ultimately asserts itself as something inevitable.”
VIII.
If we want to explain, criticize and abolish the exploitation of animals, rather than deal exclusively with the patterns of its legitimization, we must rely on the tools of historical materialism.
In one of their most important texts for this endeavour, The German Ideology, Marx and Engels show how humans step by step worked their way out of nature by repressing both inner and outer nature, how they learned to use and subjugate nature and how thereby humans produced the difference between nature and society themselves. According to this analysis, humans produced and domesticated themselves by learning to dominate external and their inner nature through labour. Marx and Engels highlight that humans were originally animals–and that they also remain such. However, through social labour, through the social development of production and distribution and through their socio-historical evolution humans attained a gradual difference from other animals. In Marx’s and Engels’ words: “Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organization. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their material life.” At the same time, it would not occur to Marx and Engels to “dispute the ability of animals to act in a planned, premediated fashion,” as Engels writes in Dialectics of Nature, “but all the planned action of all animals has never succeeded in impressing the stamp of their will upon the earth.” Humans, creatures of nature, who have to satisfy natural needs such as food, drink and so forth, hence do not differ categorically but gradually from animals, and this gradual difference is the result of their own politic-economic social praxis.
IX.
Therefore, historical materialism provides a fruitful approach to explain the history and development of human-animal relations: they are the result of a process of civilization in which humans have worked their way out of nature through social labour and have thereby produced the difference from non-human animals themselves. Unlike post-structuralist anti-speciesism, for example, historical materialism can not only describe the dualism between humans and animals but also explain it. Furthermore, it can identify social labour as the element through which this dualism is constantly reproduced in practice. It follows that the ideological perceptions of animals are not mere figments of imagination but are also actually true, in so far as they have a real material foundation. Speciesist thinking about animals hence is not the basis of animal exploitation, but rather the latter’s ideological reflex. Marco Maurizi got to the heart of this: “We do not exploit animals because we deem them to be inferior, rather, we deem animals to be inferior because we exploit them.” Yet from this also follows that we have to determine the historically specific forms this relation is organised in. After all, there is no universal social labour that propels the process of civilization, but always only social labour in historically particular forms of organization.
X.
It is not just the politico-economic relations of current capitalist society that brought about classes that confront each other antagonistically, but also the preceding relations. The conflict between the classes, which results from their opposing interests, remains history’s engine to this day. Accordingly, the Manifesto of the Communist Party states: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
Within contemporary bourgeois-capitalist class society, the organization of social labour rests basically upon two social relations: the organization of labour by way of the market–labour is a commodity–and class relations: workers and capitalists confront each other in the process of production. Capitalists own the means of production (or the necessary capital for their acquisition), they thus buy instruments of labour, subjects of labour and labour force (the latter offered by the wage labourers who have nothing else to sell) and deploy them in the production process. The product re-assumes the form of commodity, which is sold for profit. However, this profit, the accumulation of which is the reason and purpose of capitalist production, does not just fall from the sky. It can be obtained only by exploiting the workers: they work beyond the point at which they have produced a value equivalent to their wage; they thereby produce a surplus that is not at their own but at the capitalists’ disposal. Capitalists, writes Marx in the third volume of Capital, build “a veritable freemason society vis-à-vis the whole working class.”
Therefore, given that there are both exploiters and exploited in capitalist society, it is not the whole human species who exploits animals. Instead, the exploitation of animals and wage labourers first and foremost takes place following the interests and under the direction of the ruling class. Of course, the exploitation of animals and the exploitation of wage labourers differ qualitatively, and the latter do not necessarily act in solidarity with animals just because they are also being oppressed and exploited. Workers in abattoirs even kill animals. But capitalist relations of production do not only rest upon an antagonism between capitalists and the working class, but also between the ruling class and nature as well as animals. The former conducts the industrially organised exploitation of animals and profits substantially from it. Accordingly, as Marx writes, “The view of nature attained under the domination of private property and money is a real contempt for and practical debasement of, nature.” This of course includes animals. To answer the question why not only workers are exploited under capitalism but also animals–if in a particular qualitatively different way–one must examine the position and function that animals inherit in this form of organizing social labour, and hence the specific capitalist form of animal exploitation.
XI.
Animals do not immediately take part in the social relations that are characteristic for capitalism as active individuals–they do not purchase or sell anything on the market, not even their labour: when they expend labour in the process of production they do not receive wages in return. Accordingly, animals do not produce surplus value and are not part of the working class. Their exploitation corresponds to what Marx describes as exploitation of nature: by virtue of bourgeois property rights and the economic power at their disposal, the capitalists make a profit from the ruinous dealing with animals and nature. This is not exploitation in the sense of the labour theory of value. Yet Marx also does not limit the notion of exploitation to the production of surplus value. And he certainly does not conclude from the observation that slaves also do not produce surplus value that they are not exploited.
Since they cannot resist in an organized manner, animals are appropriated just like other natural materials as freely available means of production, that is, as instruments of labour (as though they were machines for the production of eggs, milk, meat and so forth) and subjects of labour (leather, meat for further processing and so on). Wage labourers perform the oftentimes violent appropriation in practice. They execute, under capital’s command, the production of surplus value, which in the animal industry encompasses killing and milking as well as performing vivisections and suchlike more. The products that are produced by animals or which they themselves are, are processed further by wage labourers and are finally sold as commodities. The production of profits hence rests not only upon the exploitation of wage labourers, but also on that of animals in particular and of nature in general. For the purpose of maximizing the profits that are realized through the exploitation of animals, capitalists are striving to integrate animals into the process of production as efficiently as possible. Efficiently also means: by abstracting from their qualities, among which is their ability to suffer.
XII.
From all this follows for us that only a historical materialist anti-speciesism proves capable of comprehensively explaining and analysing human-animal relations, which upon closer inspection reveal themselves today as relations of exploitation and domination between capital on the one hand and the proletariat, animals and nature on the other. A historical materialist anti-speciesism opens up new perspectives for the analysis and critique of bourgeois class society, and it identifies areas in which the capitalist order proves vulnerable and which need to be targeted in order to liberate animals from exploitation.
Indeed, one cannot conclude from the critique of political economy that animals would automatically be liberated within a socialist or communist society. Yet, the struggle against the rule of capital and its expropriation are necessary preconditions in order to enable people to collectively cast the decision: we will liberate the animals!
As long as the relation of capital persists and with it the control of the ruling class over what is produced, as well as how and by what means, capital will appropriate nature and incorporate everything into the process of valorisation from which one cannot save oneself or take a stand against.
Why Marxism must be anti-speciesist
XIII.
For Marxists, much of what has been said so far is not new. Historical materialism and the Marxian critique of political economy are after all the guiding principle of their economic and political analyses. They could therefore shrug their shoulders and tell the animal liberationists: well spotted, now stop with the moralizing and start fighting capitalism with us. And they would have good reasons for this!
We think, however: If one is serious about historical materialism, then one must acknowledge that humans and animals do not only have a shared history. Above all, the oppressed, exploited classes and animals have the same enemy, who profits from and is responsible for their exploitation while also organizing–in different ways–their oppression: the ruling class. In addition, Marxists need to recognize that due to its damaging social and ecological effects the current extent of animal production is objectively irrational and obstructs social progress.
XIV.
The current level of the development of productive forces does not just allow us to think about resolving the socially produced suffering of animals and to pose the question of including them in the struggle for liberation. A glance at the carbon footprint of the meat industry or its mindless consumption of natural resources also highlights the urgent necessity to develop a Marxist position on the social dealing with animals. The contradiction between capitalism and nature has reached a scale today that threatens the principal survival of the human species–to which industrialised animal production makes a significant contribution.
Today, the exploitation of animals is not only objectively unnecessary, but irrational and counter-progressive. It causes excessive and ever-growing consumption of resources such as water and soy, which are not used for meaningful purposes but are deployed in the production of meat, milk and eggs, and which are not at all rationally distributed. The ecological damages caused by clearing rain forests, by monoculture cultivation or by the pollution of water are already partially irreversible. Therefore, whoever believes that they can ignore the production of meat or even transpose it into a socialist operation, is taken in by the naïve and romanticized image of industrialized food production that the capital lobby groups are promoting. The conversion of the food and meat industry into ecologically sustainable, vegan and socially planned production, in contrast, would be a timely socialist demand.
It is well-known that the utilization and consumption of animals plays an important part in the history of human civilization. This, however, does not warrant its continuation to the present day: today’s productive forces do not only permit sympathy for the suffering of animals, but they also make it possible and necessary to restructure the relations of production accordingly. And, as the present theses in this paper ought to prove, Marxists have no reasonable cause not to do so.
The fact that the technological potential of developed capitalism enables historical progress should not hide the fact that this potential also allows for capacious destruction: it contains the possibility for liberation and at the same time for total reification, disregard and annihilation of life. If modern productive forces shall no longer be destructive forces but means for the unfolding of progress and well-being, those who have a mutual interest in this must join forces. They need to change the social relations, so that the productive forces are no longer deployed for the profit of few, but instead be developed and applied for the benefit of all. That is why we say: Marxists and animal liberationists should join forces in their struggle for a revolutionary, truly civilizing project–the liberation of humans, animals and nature.
XV.
In contrast to idealist conceptions of history, historical materialists assume that not ideas, but class struggles are the engine of human history. This struggle is based on the fact that within class societies the interests of classes which antagonistically oppose each other can never be reconciled–the antagonism can merely be disguised, or, rather, be suppressed by way of ideological mechanisms, religion, politics, law and so on. The ruling class is at pains to assure as much, for example by imposing their ideas as the dominant ideas.
Just as there are qualitative differences in the functions animals and wage labourers have within the process of production and in the process of their exploitation, the role animals inherit in the struggle against the ruling class is also different from that of the wage labourers. Wage labourers can organize to defend themselves, plan strikes and demonstrations or think about a liberated society. Above all, however, in contradistinction to animals, they can analyse the social conditions under which they are being exploited and dominated and, consequently, derive concrete measures to organize their own liberation. For this reason, the working class can be the subject of its own liberation. Animals, in contrast, can only be objects of liberation.
When it comes to the question of animal liberation, traditional Marxists often bring up this difference between wage labourers and animals. They argue that no historical necessity for the liberation of animals can be deduced from a systematically reflected social analysis. This is correct: when it comes to its implementation, animal liberation is essentially a politico-economic question–its necessity cannot be derived immediately from an analysis of capital. Yet the situation with regard to abolishing wage slavery is not significantly different. As a historical necessity, organized class struggle from below can neither be deduced from the analysis of capital relations and the realization that class struggle is the driving force of history. It also only exists if and when wage labourers politically decide to take it up.
Revolutionary Marxists not only analyse the modern mode of production. They also make the political decision to fight against their subjugation to capital based on their experiences, their suffering, their consciousness that they have of capitalist exploitation and their knowledge of the “material conditions, which alone can form the real basis of a higher form of society, a society in which the full and free development of every individual forms the ruling principle,” as Marx writes.
Whoever has accepted that liberation is necessary (at all) to end socially produced suffering and exploitation has no reason–other than an ideological one–to exclude animals from this endeavour. The analysis of capital relations as central relations of exploitation and domination in today’s society shows that the production of capitalist profits is not solely based upon the exploitation of wage labourers, but also upon the exploitation of animals (and nature in general). Capitalist production, in which the interaction between society and nature is organized in order to maximize profits, simultaneously saps the original sources of all wealth: “the soil and the labourer” (Marx). An uncompromising struggle for the abolishment of this relation must therefore include the struggle for the liberation of animals and nature.
XVI.
Thus, once one has decided to fight for liberation, there is no reason why one undertakes everything to end socially produced suffering, while at the same time excluding animals from this goal (according to some Marxists this is even the case in communism). Indeed, despite all qualitative differences in the exploitation of wage labourers and animals: both humans and animals alike have the capacity to suffer–even though it constantly takes on different forms. It would be inconsistent and a product of false consciousness to set a clear and absolute distinction between humans and animals where this capacity is concerned, something which has remained their commonality in spite of the gradual differences that have been developed socio-historically.
At this point, many Marxist comrades object saying that all the talk of suffering is moralism, and that morals cannot provide the foundation for a class conscious anti-capitalist politics. After all, one cannot fight the bourgeoisie with empathy or appeals to sympathy, but with an organization and a deliberate political line developed on the grounds of a concrete analysis of the concrete situation. And this is correct, but even so, they make two mistakes: they misjudge the historical materialist significance of suffering and confuse the genuine existence of morality with bourgeois moralism. The suffering we are writing about here is not an idealistic, but a historical materialist category. It is not a kind of suffering like lovesickness or toothache, but a suffering which is grounded necessarily in society’s organization, in its relations of production, and accordingly can and must be alleviated and potentially abolished. The will to do precisely this is an essential propulsion of class struggle and solidarity–it is part and parcel of historical materialism’s spark. To neglect the suffering in Marxist theory means accordingly to negate an important element of its foundation. Even politics in the best Marxian sense is initially motivated by morals, for the simple reason that, as we have demonstrated, the suffering under (wage) slavery and exploitation is a catalyst of the search for possibilities to abolish capitalism. The realization that the production of exploitation, oppression, imperialism and suchlike is inherent to capitalism, or, in other words: that it spawns conditions under which we suffer, causes Marxists to analyse and criticize society and, on this basis, to do revolutionary politics.
We can hence establish: Marxists are also driven by a moral impulse, which is essential for the decision to become politically active as well as to promote political messages. Yet they do not stop there. Rather, they realize the political and economic limitations of empathy and make the experience of suffering the starting point of a historical materialist analysis of society. Thereby, they derive the political necessity to organize themselves not exclusively from the exploiteds’ collective experience of suffering, but from the understanding of the objective position wage labourers occupy in the social fabric–and which possibilities for a class struggle from below arise from this.
This is the difference between morality and moralism: revolutionary morals understand that a “really human morality which stands above class antagonisms and above any recollection of them becomes possible only at a stage of society which has not only overcome class antagonisms but has even forgotten them in practical life” (Engels).
XVII.
As long as the class antagonism is not overcome, the alienation of workers from their product of labour, from themselves, from the social process of production and from nature will also persist. In the animal industry, such alienation needs to be extreme so that wage labourers are able to harm creatures capable of suffering in the process of production, to process them industrially, that is, to kill them. Within capitalist exploitation of animals, we lose the consciousness that we have an essential commonality with animals: that we, too, possess a tormentable body, and that ultimately to be a human also means to be an animal. The suppression of the inner nature of humans is both a condition and a consequence of the capitalist mode of organizing social labour at the same time.
XVIII.
When taking all of this into account, then we also have to conclude: the very indignation we experience in the face of capitalism’s brutality that drives us to a Marxist analysis of society and to resistance is the same one that animal liberationists experience in the face of the suffering of animals. The enemy of animals–capital–is also the enemy of humans. As a Marxist, as an anti-capitalist, one must turn this impulse of solidarity into fuel for one’s life, and understand and acknowledge the objective position of animals within the capitalist process of production, that is, that they belong to those oppressed creatures at whose expense the ruling class accumulates its wealth. The class struggle for the liberation of animals is the struggle for the liberation of the proletariat.
Bündnis Marxismus und Tierbefreiung/Alliance for Marxism and Animal Liberation is an association of people active in the animal liberation movement and in the communist left.
