The following is a letter I wrote to the Socialist Worker in light of a rekindled discussion on the topic of animal rights/liberation (here to be regarded as synonymous). It was not published, which is why I’m posting it here. Although I do not identify as a Marxist, I do identify as an anarchist/socialist and feel the sorts of pitfalls in the Socialist Worker discussion are endemic to the Left in general. Rather than address every statement made worthy of an eyeroll or facepalm, I would simply like to recommend better background for participants in these discussions before publishing one’s “position” on animal liberation.

—–

I am delighted to see the recent discussion on animal liberation in Socialist Worker. Unfortunately, I have noticed two distinct problems with the debate up to this point: critics of animal liberation focus on marginal—often inconsequential—topics, and are often woefully out of touch with the theory and movement they are attempting to critique.

Many of the quarrels over animal liberation mentioned—e.g. how accessible veganism is to the poor, whether Marxism accounts for animal liberation—miss the fundamental facts on which the animal liberation movement is premised: nonhuman animals have communities, families, friends, and emotions just like humans do; and they do not want to be raped, imprisoned, mutilated, or killed any more than humans do. These are the central facts that make animal liberation important, and denying any of them flies in the face of scientific fact, common sense, or both.

The relative accessibility of veganism to the poor is not relevant to the rightness or wrongness of animal liberation theory—if the vice of capitalism did prevent the working poor from access to a plant-based diet, this is a place where socialism and animal liberation could come together, as both an animal ethics issue and a public health issue. It is not, however, a reason to invalidate animal liberation.

To the second example, animal rights activists do not need the facts about animal sentience and suffering to fit into a Marxist framework (although in some ways they do fit, and the movement would benefit greatly from Marxist approaches). Compatibility with Marxism is good, but the degree to which animal liberation is not compatible is merely the degree to which people who care about justice must also stand outside of Marxism to enforce it.

This is not new—feminism received much the same treatment decades ago. It was widely considered incompatible with Marxism and a distraction from class struggle. Many aspects of feminism fit within a Marxist critique of capitalism, but others complicate Marxism, forcing a reconfigured, more nuanced approach. We now accept that this does not mean we should discount feminism, but merely is evidence that, however valuable, Marxism’s scope is not all-encompassing, and we should not limit ourselves to it.

To be clear, there are plenty of valid critiques of the animal rights movement from the Left—allegations of rampant sexism, racism, and bourgeois attitudes are often valid, and should be voiced loudly and with conviction. But criticizing the movement as it exists must be sharply divided from criticizing the movement’s philosophy and central claims—especially the work of its many Left-Wing proponents. These works have obviously gone unread by the most vociferous socialist critics, whose often facile arguments are no different from those of the average person I encounter on the street. The fact that these individuals see fit to publish these arguments is evidence of their utter disregard for the rich and growing discourse around animal liberation, particularly the intersectional approach offered by the growing field of critical animal studies.

For example, in the latest issue of the Journal for Critical Animal Studies, Kris Forkasiewicz critiques the valuation of animal being within ecological socialism. In the Prison and Animals special issue, Amy J. Fitzgerald explored the implications of slaughterhouse work programs for prison inmates. The central theme behind the field of CAS is understanding the oppression of nonhuman animals as closely tied to capital and to modes of human oppression, with a focus on forming effective political alliances across issues.

There are differences between class struggle and animal liberation, as there are differences between any two movements, but these differences need not diminish the significance of either one, and there is much to be gained by addressing both. My hope is that future debates about this issue on Socialist Worker will catch up to the discourse going on in Left-Wing animal liberation circles, leaving questions like “what will we do with all the animals when we stop eating them?” and “What about free-range meat?” in the Google search bar where they belong. —- Drew Robert Winter is Director of Publications at the Institute for Critical Animal Studies