Much of Murray Bookchin’s ecological thought developed at a time when racism and xenophobia were urgent problems in the radical green movement. A small but vocal subset of deep ecologists opposed immigration on environmental grounds, and were known to suggest that AIDS or even famine were simply nature running its course and should not be actively prevented.

Bookchin rightly saw this as despicable, and identified deep ecology’s moral framework of placing humans as just another species among many as the root of the problem.[1] As a result, he devoted considerable energy towards establishing the uniqueness of humans, often denigrating nonhumans in the process—we are not “mere animal species,” he wrote; “we are more than herds that browse on the African plains.”[2]

While this may have been at least understandable in the 1980s and 1990s, today’s context has at least partially shifted. Even mainstream green groups like the Sierra Club have rejected their anti-immigrant past. The dominant strains of left environmentalism are socialistic, and in an exciting development, environmental proposals such as the Green New Deal incorporate universal healthcare and housing.[3] Indeed, in some climate advocacy circles it’s become almost tacky to bring up polar bears.

Meanwhile, however, nonhuman animals haven’t had it this rough since an asteroid hit the Yucatán Peninsula. Extinction rates for vertebrate animals are anywhere from 20 to 50 times higher than the standard “background rate;”[4] by 2020, wild vertebrate populations are on pace to be, on average, one-third of the size that they were in 1970.[5]

It’s arguably even worse to be captive. Tens of millions of vertebrate animals, largely fish and rodents, are experimented upon in labs,[6] and untold billions live on farms where they are physically and psychologically abused and ultimately slaughtered.[7] Billions more marine animals, wild and captive alike, are stabbed in the face and/or suffocated by the fishing industry.[8] The irony is that all this is happening as scientists learn more and more about other animals’ capacity for pain, pleasure, strong social bonds, and complex cognition.

The social ecological tradition, including Bookchin himself, has long been critical of the worst of these abuses. But its investment in human uniqueness has served to implicitly or explicitly devalue nonhuman lives. Social ecologists support animal welfare and oppose wanton cruelty, but have tended to ignore or reject more ambitious demands for rights and liberation.[9]

This, I argue, is a mistake. It is rooted in empirical misunderstandings about other animals and a failure to imagine alternate ways of sharing the Earth. In fact, the radical democratic ethos and ecological values of Bookchin’s philosophy are themselves a useful framework for sketching out a truly liberatory world for all life, and animals in particular.

Bookchin’s Ecological Ethics

Before getting too deeply into the argument over animal liberation, it is useful to understand the ethical grounds on which Bookchin rests his theory of social ecology. I am far from the first to summarize Bookchin’s approach, so I will here be relatively brief.[10]

Bookchin bases his ethics on what he perceives to be “some kind of directionality toward ever-greater differentiation or wholeness” in evolution.[11] Like an acorn that has within it the potential to become a tree, Bookchin argues, nature is always in the process of becoming its fullest self, achieving its fullest potentials.

What are these potentials? Bookchin emphasizes diversity and mutualism, the nonhierarchical symbiotic relations between organisms that contribute to the common good of the ecological community. There is also spontaneity, freedom, and “a natural tendency,” he writes, “toward greater complexity and subjectivity, … toward self-consciousness.”[12] By “subjectivity” he means “the fact that substance … actively functions to maintain its identity, equilibrium, fecundity, and place.”[13] No organism could sustain itself without some degree of subjectivity—in order to eat, reproduce, move, etc., it needs to “know,” consciously or not, where it ends and the outside world begins. This subjectivity, Bookchin argues, reaches its most developed form in the self-reflexivity of Homo sapiens, which he often described as “nature rendered self-conscious.”

For Bookchin, these potentials are not just biological facts, but offer an “objective” guide for our ethics: the ethical path is the one along which these potentials are achieved. “Ethics,” he writes, “is not merely a matter of personal taste and values; it is factually anchored in the world itself as an objective standard of self-realization.”[14] Deep ecologist Robyn Eckersley offers this pithy summary of Bookchin’s ecological ethic: “A thing is right when it tends to foster the diversity, complexity, complementarity, and spontaneity of the ecosystem. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”[15]

Critics have challenged whether (1) Bookchin has accurately ascertained what the true tendencies of evolution are;[16] and (2) following these tendencies is an “objective” guide to what is ethical.[17] While I share at least partial skepticism, I do not intend to enter into that debate here. What matters for our purposes is that we have rough agreement with Bookchin over the desirability of “mutualism, freedom, and subjectivity as aspects of a cooperative society that is free from domination.”[18] These simple goals might be justified via a range of ethical and (left-leaning) political theories, from social ecology to utilitarianism to ecofeminist care ethics. Moving forward, I will operate under the assumption that such goals are worth pursuing.

How we do so, however, is more controversial. In Bookchin’s work, human societies in their self-consciousness and complexity form a “second nature” that emerges out of “first nature.” The goal is for “first and second nature [to be] melded into a free, rational, ethical nature”;[19] Bookchin’s “free nature” is sometimes also termed a “third nature.” This means that “the most conscious of life forms—humanity” has a “responsibility … to be the ‘voice’ of a mute nature and to act to intelligently foster organic evolution,” guiding the nonhuman world towards ever greater fecundity and complexity.[20].

Part of being this “voice,” for Bookchin, is some degree of kindness towards nonhuman animals. In a debate with deep ecologist Dave Foreman, he assures the audience that “I don’t believe that human beings are lords over nature and that animals and other forms of life are subordinates,” insisting that “torturing animals in the name of research is monstrous.”[21] In 1985, he spoke favorably on the counterculture’s shift towards new ways of relating to both humans and nonhumans: “There is … a certain consensus, a certain basic understanding that if you are a pacifist that you will be predisposed also not to be brutal to animals at the very least, and not to eat them at the best.”[22] On the surface, this desire to cultivate freedom and subjectivity within nature seems not only to be consistent with but to actively require something like “animal rights,” a respect for the bodily autonomy of nonhuman animals and a commitment to creating space for them to pursue their own flourishing as part of the broader ecological community.

But there are tensions within Bookchin’s oeuvre: in one breath he speaks of the necessity of wild, self-willed places, and in another speaks of carefully sculpting and cultivating first nature.[23] While perhaps this need not be a direct contradiction, it can at the very least be confusing to the casual reader just how human-directed a “free” nature is to be. This tension persists in his specific comments regarding nonhuman animals, as in this passage from The Ecology of Freedom:

A horse, too, has its “grain” or its “Way” — its prickly nerves, its need for attention, its capacity to fear, its delight in play. Behind its verbal muteness lies a wealth of sensibility that the rider must explore if the horse is to achieve its own capacity for perfection — if its potentialities are to be realized.[24]

He does not deny the horse’s subjectivity, or the human rider’s responsibility to help the horse. However, he does assume a human rider plays a role in developing the horse’s potentialities—who is to say that the horse’s “capacity for perfection” involves being ridden at all?

Later in the book is a more clarifying passage: “We would do well to respect the animals and plants we consume by using an etiquette, perhaps even ceremonies, that acknowledge their integrity and subjectivity as living beings.”[25] Thus, we are assured that nonhuman animals must be respected and not abused outright, but can still be killed. Morally, it appears that a cow or pig is closer to a plant than a human.

In another lecture he allows that vegetarianism is at least a worthy topic of discussion, stating “you can argue about the wisdom of eating meat or not,” but it does not appear the question is of much interest to him.[26] Therefore, although being “the ‘voice’ of a mute nature and [acting] to intelligently foster organic evolution” involves attunement to the needs of other species, for Bookchin this ultimately appears to be a human-directed enterprise.

The Problem with Second Nature

To understand the origin of the pedestal upon which Bookchin has—intentionally or not—placed humanity, we must examine how he distinguishes first and second nature. Although the exact components of “second nature” vary throughout Bookchin’s work, there are various recurring claims regarding the fundamental distinction between human and nonhuman life. These center on the uniqueness of human culture (including our language and tools), how we shape the environment, our capacity for altruism, and institutionalized social structure. The problem is, the majority (arguably all) of these supposedly defining features of human society are, at least to some extent, shared across species.[27] Let’s go through them one by one.

Perhaps the most general claim Bookchin makes regarding the distinction between first and second nature concerns the uniqueness of human culture.[28] This claim contradicts current research in ethology, where it is now generally accepted that chimpanzees, humpback whales, and various other species have distinct cultures, including socially transmitted knowledge and behaviors. For example, elephant matriarchs pass on knowledge about the best watering holes, the safest migratory routes, how to react to humans, and more.[29] Humpback whale pods each have their own songs, and different pods learn and introduce elements of other pods’ songs into their own.[30]

Part of what might make human culture unique, for Bookchin, is “a richly symbolic language.”[31] Yet wild prairie dogs have specific calls for different predators; they will adjust their calls for humans in different colored clothing, and offer distinct calls when presented with new shapes, suggesting they are describing what they see. Their captive counterparts lack this range of vocalization, suggesting this language is learned.[32] Apes who have been taught sign language have been known to innovatively combine words to form new words. For example, Washoe the chimp signed “water” and “bird” for “swan.”[33] In a particularly impressive example, two dolphins were trained to invent a new trick—perform something they’d never done before—at a certain command. Not only did they wrap their brains around this abstract concept, they managed to perform the new, never-before-performed trick in sync. Though we don’t know exactly how, clearly there was some form of communication taking place.[34]

Bookchin also points to “an effective human technics”[35] or “tool-kit”[36] as a defining feature of second nature. Yet tool use has now been shown to exist across the phylogenetic tree, from octopi to crows to wild pigs.[37] Some species, however, are only known to use one kind of tool; a “technics” or “tool-kit” implies a certain range of tool use. Still, we might look to chimpanzees, for instance: chimpanzees at Gombe National Park in Tanzania use leaves to soak up water to drink, and rocks both as weapons and to crack open gourds.[38] They pick the leaves off of sticks before using them to “fish” for termites. This is learned, not ingrained: other chimp communities might design and use entirely different tools.[39] Here, tools are clearly something distinct to a given community—a part of their culture—and there is some degree of elasticity.

Beyond culture, another criteria Bookchin uses to separate first and second nature is that humans “no longer merely adapted to their environment; they began to significantly change it with a distinct purposiveness. … often with a clear idea of the means they required to create a more congenial habitat and way of life.”[40] However, within ecology there are uncountable examples of organisms effecting significant change upon their environment. Those who might plausibly be said to do so with “purposiveness” include Australian kites and falcons who have been seen dropping flaming sticks to start fires that flush out prey.[41] Bottlenose dolphins off the coast of Laguna, Brazil have learned to work together with humans to catch fish.[42] In this last example, it is hard to say who is changing whom—it may be more accurate to suggest that the two species are symbiotically co-creating a shared second nature.

Bookchin makes the related claim that only humans maintain “carefully managed source of nutriment.”[43] At a time when overfishing, overhunting and unsustainable agricultural practices are pushing species to extinction en masse, this claim borders irony. But even allowing that human food management is in many ways impressive, so is that of some nonhumans. Cleaner wrasse eat dead tissue off of larger fish, who wait in line for the wrasse’s exfoliation services. The wrasse will let the largest predators skip the line, and knows whether and when to “cheat” by eating a fish’s helpful protective mucus in addition to its dead skin. The wrasse does not cheat with more dangerous fish or when other prospective clients are watching, and, when caught, offers extra services to win back disgruntled clientele.[44] More commonly, many birds and rodents store nuts for the winter, memorizing hundreds if not thousands of cache locations, something that many humans would find practically impossible.[45]

Up next is altruistic action.[46] “Sharing food, collective care-taking for the young, an abiding sense of responsibility to the infirm and to the family group as a whole” are key human attributes that are by and large lacking in chimpanzees, Bookchin claims.[47] But this assertion—that food sharing is unusual in chimpanzees—would be news to primatologist Frans de Waal, who has described what happens when you hand a chimp “a large amount of food, such as a watermelon or leafy branch,” in captivity: “The owner will take center stage, with a cluster of others around him or her, soon to be followed by a spin-off clusters around those who obtained a sizable share, until all food has trickled down to everybody.”[48] Nonhuman sociality also includes “collective care-taking for the young,” as when de Waal describes how unrelated females babysit for chimp moms. His books contain myriad examples of primates, elephants and other species adapting their life patterns to accommodate injury or even neurodiversity among groupmates.[49]

For other forms of altruistic action, evidence is abundant. In a rather cruel lab experiment, rats acted to help a drowning member of their species even if it meant ignoring chocolate.[50] In another example from 1964, scientists observed a rhesus monkey that refused food when doing so subjected another monkey to an electric shock. “The monkey persisted in this refusal for twelve days, nearly starving itself to death,” writes philosophy professor Mark Rowlands.[51]

Lastly, Bookchin elaborates various defining elements of human social structure. For one, second-nature communities must have “a division of labor (however rudimentary).”[52] This is a low bar, evident everywhere from ant colonies to wolf packs (species that also share food). Another distinction, he writes, is that only human beings form societies — that is, institutionalized communities.”[53] Much hinges here on the definition of “institutionalized.” If it merely means that communities are “structured around … forms of responsibility, association, and personal relationship in maintaining the material means of life,”[54] it could describe almost any social animal, in particular those with division of labor. But Bookchin further insists on the qualification that these structures must be “distinctly mutable and highly malleable.”[55] He writes: “An institution is a distinct way of organizing your interaction with other members of your species or, more specifically, other members of your group.” Institutions are social, not biologically given. Thus, “You can change institutions.”[56]

Yet wolf packs offer a potential nonhuman example, where an alpha’s leadership style can range from more egalitarian to the borderline tyrannical. In Yellowstone National Park, one pack actually rebelled and killed a particularly abusive alpha. In another pack led by an especially skilled female, two brothers assumed the position of co-alpha males. This would seem to indicate malleability in wolf pack structure, as well as, in the case of the rebellion, the capacity to change social relationships.[57]

Bookchin, however, argues that truly institutionalized communities can be neither pure instinct nor based on the idiosyncrasies of individual animal personalities. But this is difficult to prove for nonhuman communities, making it near impossible to say for certain whether this is distinctly human or not. Orca ethology offers a potentially complicating case study. Communities of the species Orcinus orca have distinct behaviors and social structures, even where they share habitat, and form genetically distinct populations.[58] But such genetic separation does not necessarily mean their differences derive from “pure instinct.” As Bookchin himself writes, “choice is not totally absent in biotic evolution. Indeed, it increases as individual animals become structurally, physiologically, and, above all, neurologically more complex.”[59] Though we don’t know exactly why orcas are evolving the way they are, it’s clear they are socially and neurologically complex creatures with at least some agency in their lives.

None of this is to say there is nothing unique about humans. You do not have to agree that these nonhuman examples are totally equivalent to the human version; no one will argue that a chimpanzee’s toolkit is as varied as that of a human carpenter. But on many details—e.g., whether chimpanzees share food—Bookchin’s strident assertion of fundamental difference is factually wrong. To be fair, the study of animal behavior and cognition has made great strides in the decades since Bookchin wrote most of his books, so he did not have access to all of the latest research. But in his polemical works, Reenchanting Humanity in particular, he is dismissive of even the idea that nonhuman animals could prove so complex and is consistently contemptuous of the notion that humans are “mere animals.” Where nonhumans are dismissed, humans are uplifted.

While he is cognizant that evolution must continue, his writing often treats humankind as a sort of apotheosis, the perfected result of nature’s drive towards freedom and self-consciousness. But evolution hasn’t just been perfecting humanity—it has been perfecting trees, jellyfish, bacteria and mushrooms, not to mention the communities within which all these species live and interact.[60] This adaptive process will continue long after Homo sapiens either dies off or becomes something new. Indeed, by portraying the differences between human and nonhuman animals as an unbridgeable chasm, he argues against the grain of his own nature philosophy. His “dialectical naturalism” stresses evolution over stasis, gradation over binaries, and a developmental logic grasping towards complexity and subjectivity; all of this should counsel against human exceptionalism. In short, Bookchin’s exaggeration of human uniqueness—largely a reaction to the anti-humanism of some primitivist and postmodern thought—clouds his broader ecological thinking.[61]

By contrast, I suggest we understand the divide between first and second nature as blurry rather than sharply demarcated, recognizing that at least some nonhuman species might fall partly or fully on the other side of the line. More radically, perhaps there are cognitive and behavioral capabilities possessed by other species that humans lack, and that make up part of a distinct second nature in that species. At this point one could be forgiven for rejecting the first/second nature dichotomy outright, though it may still be useful. But what is clear is that Bookchin’s paternalistic approach to animal ethics stands on shaky empirical ground. In fact, an updated social ecology that accounts for second nature among nonhuman animals might then refine its nature philosophy. Freedom, complementarity, and subjectivity are not to be cultivated by humans alone, but mutually developed and drawn out by in a cooperative process with other animals.

Redefining moral agency

In The Philosophy of Social Ecology, Bookchin mocks the idea of “a moral “democracy” in which humanity’s “right” to live and fulfill itself is equitable with the “right” of butterflies, ants, whales, apes, and—yes—pathogenic viruses and germs to live.”[62] It is certainly true that many deep ecologists have advocated the absolute equality of all life forms.[63] I do not aim to dispute that a human life matters more than that of a microbe. But Bookchin’s formulation also dismisses the far more specific call for animal rights; if it is absurd to equate humans with ants, as it may well be, it is surely even more ludicrous to lump whales and apes together with pathogenic viruses. One shouldn’t replace a moral monism that flattens out distinction with a dualism that does the same thing.

Bookchin himself acknowledges the “mind … has its own natural history,” and that the core components of human brains exist in some other animals as well (but not in plants, fungi, or unicellular organisms).[64] As noted in the previous section, many aspects of “second nature” are shared across animal species as well. Given this, it’s worth considering whether some other animals may be deserving of something like “rights,” even if a virus does not.

Before I continue, a brief word on “which” animals. Many—though not all—of the animals I mentioned in the previous section on second nature were social mammals, who tend to have the most behavioral overlap with humans.[65] On the other hand, the more fundamental features of “mind”—a form of subjectivity known as “sentience,” the ability to feel pleasure and pain, to consciously experience one’s life in some way—are likely shared more broadly across the animal kingdom. My working assumption here builds on the work of philosopher Michael Tye, who suggests that sentience is shared by most or all vertebrates (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish) and many invertebrates, including commonly exploited groups such as cephalopods (e.g., octopi), crustaceans (e.g., lobsters) and at least some insects (e.g., bees).[66] These are the animals I have in mind when I speak of animal rights. But precisely where and how to draw that line is fraught, a subject I will return to later.

Even where Bookchin grants the sophisticated minds of animals, he is adamant that “rights” are still precluded.[67] In The Philosophy of Social Ecology, he argues:

“Rights,” in any meaningful sense of the word, are the product of custom, tradition, institutional development, social relationships, an increasing self-consciousness of historical experience, and … conceptual thought that painstakingly formulates a constellation of rights and duties that makes for an empathetic respect for individuals and collectivities. Leopards recognize no “rights” among themselves and certainly no “rights” to life, much less “fulfillment,” among the animals on which they prey. As mammals, these predators may be more self-aware than, say, frogs, because of their complex neurological and sensory apparatus. Hence, they may be more subjective, even more rational in a dim way. But their range of conceptualization from everything we know is so limited, often so immediately focused on their own needs, that to impute ethical judgements involving “rights” to their behaviour is to be truly anthropocentric, often without even knowing so.[68]

Here Bookchin concedes mammals may have a “dim” rationality, but maintains that the concept of “rights”—requiring features purportedly limited to second nature—is beyond what a leopard is capable of. Thus, extending “rights” to leopards would be anthropocentric, “introduc[ing] a hidden humanism—essentially, a feeling of empathy and identification—that we bring to all forms of life.”[69] As only humans can conceive of rights, nonhumans can’t have them.

There are at least two problems with this. First, it is not clear that it should matter. If humans are indeed meant to uncover an objective ethics within nature and act in accordance with it, and if we are tasked with cultivating “respect and sensitivity for the nonhuman world,” why would rights for animals be inconsistent with this? After all, as Bookchin repeatedly notes, human societies are also ultimately natural, and in his theoretical framework, so are our ethics. Therefore, it may well be perfectly “natural” for us to recognize rights for other animals, even if the animals themselves are unaware. If one accepts that ethics are objective, these rights would technically not even be a human construct.

But the second problem may be more fundamental. Many animals, in particular mammals and birds, do display some degree of empathy towards other creatures, even if only within their own species. While Bookchin picked leopards as his example, his argument becomes less tenable when considering more social species, such as wolves or dogs.

In their provocative book Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals, biologist Marc Bekoff and philosopher Jessica Pierce argue that social mammals in particular exhibit a suite of behaviors encompassing cooperation, empathy, and justice that, taken together, constitute a species-specific morality. Justice, perhaps the most surprising of the three, manifests most clearly in a sense of fair play. They detail how play among canines involves a system of rules and expectations—often one dog will invite another, who can accept or refuse. When play begins it is tailored to the physical capabilities of the individuals—an adult male will go soft on a pup, for instance—and a dog that bites too hard will often pause and appear to ask forgiveness before continuing. Even more intriguingly, violating these rules brings consequences. They note that “Young coyotes and wolves react negatively to unfair play by ending the encounter or by generally avoiding those who ask them to play and then don’t follow the rules.” In turn, “Coyotes and wolves who play unfairly find it difficult to get others to play with them after they’ve been labelled a cheater.”

They also offer this suggestive anecdote: “Domestic dogs also don’t tolerate noncooperative cheaters, who may be avoided or chased from play groups … Up-ears was chased out of the group and when she returned, Blackie and Roxy stopped playing and looked off toward a distant sound. Roxy began moving in the direction of the sound and Up-ears ran off, following their line of sight. Roxy and Blackie immediately began playing once again.”[70] Blackie and Roxy are most likely not considering Kant’s categorical imperative before they act, but they are enforcing a social contract that has been violated. The morality described by Bekoff and Pierce is species-specific: dog morality only holds among dogs, wolf morality only holds among wolves, etc. But could a similar contract—with attendant rights and responsibilities—cross species lines and be implemented in our own close relationships with, for example, domesticated dogs?

Social ecologist Peter Staudenmaier would likely argue no. In a 2005 article titled “Ambiguities of Animal Right,” he argues that the idea of giving rights to animals “fundamentally misconstrues what is distinctive about humans and our relation to the natural world.”[71] For Staudenmaier, what sets humans apart is moral agency—we “can engage in ethical deliberation, entertain alternative moral choices, and act according to [our] best judgement.” Indeed, “[m]oral agents are uniquely capable of formulating, articulating, and defending a conception of their own interests… As far as we know, mentally competent adult human beings are the only moral agents there are.” Somewhat alarmingly, after declaring the special status of “mentally competent adult human beings,” Staudenmaier leaves unaddressed what this implies for human children or the mentally incompetent. In a footnote he dismisses this concern as “irrelevant to the question at hand. I am not arguing that moral considerability is restricted to moral agents, nor that there is a firm ontological divide between humans and other organisms.” This is reassuring: I would agree that moral agency is not what makes us morally considerable. Much of what makes my own life worthwhile to me—joy, play, meaningful work, loving relationships—is shared widely across species. But if moral agency is not the key criterion for moral considerability, why does Staudenmaier’s critique of animal rights focus on it?

“What the peculiar role of moral agents demonstrates,” he writes, “is that some distinctions between different types of moral considerability are very much warranted, and that the mere equal consideration of interests fails to capture some fundamental facets of ethical action.” What he appears to be saying is that simply saying other animals should be treated “equally” ignores that they must be treated differently, as they are not moral agents. But different need not mean worse. Young children are not moral agents, and children have rights, so Staudenmaier’s argument is wholly consistent with animal rights.

Staudenmaier’s biggest mistake may be his argument that “articulating and defending a conception of their own interests” is specific to humans. But contra Bookchin, nonhuman nature is not “mute.” Disabled vegan theorist Sunaura Taylor writes in Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation, that “Animals consistently voice preferences and ask for freedom.”[72] She continues:

We deliberately have to choose not to hear when the lobster bangs on the walls from inside a pot of boiling water or when the hen who is past her egg-laying prime struggles against the human hands that enclose her legs and neck. We have to choose not to recognise the preference expressed when the fish spasms and gasps for oxygen in her last few minutes alive. Considering animals voiceless betrays an ableist assumption of what counts as having a voice.

This articulation, however, may be insufficient for Staudenmaier. He writes, “To act ethically means, among other things, to respect the principle that persuasion and consent are preferable to coercion and manipulation.” Human-nonhuman interactions cannot be ethical in this way because “animals cannot be persuaded and cannot give consent.” He illustrates the supposed significance of this point with one example:

If I am convinced that one of my human housemates needs to take some kind of medicine, it is not acceptable for me to force feed it to her, assuming she isn’t deranged. Instead, I can try to persuade her, through rational deliberation and ethical argument, that it would be best if she took the medicine. But if I think that one of the cats needs to take some kind of medicine, I may well have no choice but to force feed it to him or trick him into eating it.

The simplest objection to this may be to say, “So what?” Let’s allow that cats (or young children, or the “deranged”) can ethically be force-fed medicine; it does not then follow that it is okay to kill them. We have already established moral agency is not necessary for granting rights, so why dwell on it?

But the deeper trouble with this example is the implicit picture it paints of a cat as lacking not only moral agency, but any sort of agency at all. This flies in the face of new insights scientists are revealing about the agency of nonhuman animals. In one study, horses were successfully taught to use pictograms to express whether they did or didn’t want a blanket. As animal studies scholar Eva Meijer writes, this opens the intriguing possibility that a similar system might be set up for horses to express other preferences, such as whether they want to be ridden.[73]

The inert cat also contradicts the more quotidian experiences of many people with their companion animals. My childhood dog may not have liked taking a bath, but he would let my family bathe him. Yet had a stranger tried to do so, they might have lost a finger. This isn’t explicit written consent, but neither is my dog wholly passive in the ordeal. A dog who looks at the doorknob, looks at me, looks back at the door and barks is not trying to coerce or manipulate me; he is expressing an interest, one I can choose to satisfy or not by opening the door.

Medical needs may or may not ultimately prove an area where consent in cats can be achieved. But there is a wide range of human-nonhuman interactions where, should humans deign to listen more, we might deliberate together to reach a mutually satisfactory decision. In fact, in so doing we might look to models developed to help human children and the intellectually disabled represent themselves; the capabilities of both groups are underestimated in Staudenmaier’s portrait.

Staudenmaier and Bookchin both might object that this deliberation is not truly ethical as it would not be held on purely rational grounds. But the truth is that neither are many, if not most, human ethical decisions. “Human morality is much more “animal-like” than our common-sense assumptions would suggest,” write Bekoff and Pierce.[74] “Reason and judgment don’t so seamlessly connect with action.” An ethical society might seek to approach many matters more rationally, but sometimes we may prefer that someone not stop to think before acting. A woman who runs into a burning building to save a stranger’s child is likely not making a hyper-rational, reason-driven calculation—the reason is simply that there is a child in danger.

This sort of reasoning is common across mammals, and can even cross the species line. There are numerous accounts of orcas rescuing dogs at sea, or where humpback whales have intervened in orca hunts to protect gray whale calves and other marine mammals.[75] Wild orcas, dolphins, and elephants have been documented protecting and aiding humans, making it particularly galling that we would hold their alleged lack of moral agency against them.[76] As animal welfare advocate Paul Shapiro writes, “Being able to care about the interests of others is central to what matters in morality, and arguably more important than abstract principles regarding proper conduct.” And it is clear that caring is a trait shared by many nonhuman animals.[77]

Objections from the Left

Having gone through some theoretical concerns about animal rights raised by social ecologists, I will briefly address several more practical objections raised by Staudenmaier and others.

A conflict with humanism

Many on the Left are wary of animal rights competing, intellectually and in practice, with other causes they believe to be more important. Staudenmaier writes, “No civil rights activist or feminist ever argued, ‘We’re sentient beings too!’ They argued, ‘We’re fully human too!’ Animal liberation doctrine, far from extending this humanist impulse, directly undermines it.” It’s certainly true that many mainstream animal rights groups ignore other social justice issues, or make crude and offensive comparisons. But what many of these leftists ignore is the fundamental connection between varying forms of oppression—both in practice and in theory. Social ecologists in particular should be attuned to the intersectional ways in which various hierarchies reinforce one another.

Most obviously, animal agriculture and fishing at their current scale are an ecological disaster driven by capitalism, contributing to pollution, wildlife declines, and climate change that disproportionately affect the poor and marginalized. But scholars of race, gender, ability, and animality have all pointed out how the inferior status of nonhuman animals also serves to reinforce hierarchies between humans as well. Burger ads objectify women, playing to men’s lust for bodies; ecofeminists look to how the egg and dairy industries commodify reproduction, and how the “natural” labor of human reproduction largely undertaken by women is undervalued by capitalism.[78]

Critical race theorist Claire Jean Kim has written on how comparisons to nonhuman animals have been used to justify atrocities against Black, Chinese and Native Americans. Racism, in turn, then reinforces the human/animal divide. Social ecologists are primed to accept Kim’s argument that domination of humans by humans contributes to the devaluing of nonhuman nature; what we sometimes forget is that this can work the other way around. As Kim suggests, “The synergistic taxonomies of race and species will need to be dismantled together or not at all.”[79]

Black vegan feminists Aph and Syl Ko point out that “humanity” has historically been defined by the ideal of civilized white European humanity: the human/animal binary, they argue, exists to oppress people of color as well as nonhuman animals.[80] In a parallel fashion, Sunaura Taylor has described how physical and mental difference are used as the basis of oppression of both humans and nonhumans, setting up another unjust hierarchy.[81]

Indigenous peoples and neocolonialism

Another particularly fraught concern is that largely white animal rights activists have historically employed racist rhetoric to target indigenous hunting practices.[82] It is also not entirely clear whether a widespread plant-based diet would be healthy or sustainable in some regions, most obviously in the Arctic. Does advocating against the killing of animals therefore constitute a form of cultural imperialism?

As similar critiques have been leveled at Western feminist and queer advocates, it is not surprising that ecofeminists have much to say on this question. According to law professor Maneesha Deckha, most ecofeminists argue for a “contextual moral vegetarianism” in which the moral case against killing is suspended when survival is at stake, as it arguably is in certain remote locations where plant food may never be an option.[83] But in many areas indigenous communities could plausibly survive even if they stopped hunting and fishing. There is significant disagreement about whether and how animal advocates should engage such communities.

Both indigenous and non-indigenous writers have weighed in on this debate, representing all sides. Many, Deckha writes, maintain that “reliance on tradition as a ground for killing animals must be carefully scrutinized, noting that cultures are not static and that traditions are frequently violent and problematic.”[84] Some writers suggest that this scrutiny should occur wholly within indigenous communities themselves—i.e., non-indigenous people should not decide which traditions are problematic. Others maintain it is acceptable for outsiders to also contribute to the discussion—so long as they are conscious and intentional in acknowledging and adjusting for historical power dynamics.

Writing as a descendant of European settlers on stolen land, I will not take a firm stand on this issue here. But as Deckha points out, it is a mistake to assume veganism is only white, currently or historically. Indigenous vegans exist and long have, and it is useful to read their work—as well as the work of their indigenous critics—to get a better grounding for this debate.[85] What matters for our purposes here is this: there is no monolithic indigenous view on the subject. If there is a majority opposed to animal rights, certainly the same could be said of the dominant culture. Thus, while this debate continues, it should not be used as a shield by non-indigenous people to avoid scrutinizing their own behavior. It is its own form of exploitation for those of us living as part of the dominant culture to point to the traditions of other people to justify our own behaviors and preferences; i.e. we can’t use indigenous hunting practices to defend the production of chicken nuggets.

Plants, ecosystems, and “sentience”

A related objection, which sometimes points specifically to certain indigenous cosmologies, is that animal rights unfairly privileges animals over other nonhuman life. There are two versions of the argument: either other life forms, and perhaps ecosystems themselves, are also sentient; or they are not, but sentience is not all that morally relevant. We should note that Bookchin himself derided the former position as “fatuous” and, worse, “nondialectical,” mocking questions such as “What if rocks think?” and “What if redwood trees have consciousness in any sense that compares with our own?”[86] But as an increasing body of research shows a surprising level of sophistication in plant behavior, the prospect of some form of plant consciousness becomes worth more seriously addressing.[87]

Many animal liberationists do advocate that all life be respected, and that we do our best to engage in ethical relations, whatever that looks like for a given life form. Given the anatomical similarities across animal species, however, it is reasonable to suspect that fish consciousness looks more like human consciousness than (still-hypothetical) plant consciousness does. Plant behavior may be complex, but it is at least disputed whether complex behavior even requires consciousness.[88] These are reasons to be wary of leaping headfirst into claims of plant sentience.

But even should these claims prove true—a prospect I am willing to entertain—then it wouldn’t automatically upend animal liberation. Instead, it could merely add “plant liberation” to the mix. This should not affect our imperative to free animals from labs, zoos, aquaria, puppy mills, fur farms and the like. On the surface, this might seem to make food production a thornier question—is it worse to kill a cow or a carrot? But given that farmed animals require large amounts of plant feed—and that actually existing animal agriculture involves habitat destruction, pollution, inefficient land use, and general ecological mayhem—what’s best for the plants may often be humans eating them directly anyway. Indeed, this is the conclusion reached by Matthew Hall in his book Plants as Persons: A Philosophical Botany. A world in which plants have rights on par with those of animals is therefore not one in which animal rights have been abandoned, but one in which human supremacy has been radically challenged. If a carrot has the same rights as a cow, how can we maintain the line between cow and human?

Staudenmaier also brings up plants, but from the other end of the argument—the perspective that sentience doesn’t matter, ecosystems as a whole do. Animal-rights thinking, he writes, betrays an “obliviousness to ecological values … The well-being of a complex functioning ecological community … cannot be reduced to the well-being of … individuals.” On this account, the focus on sentience by animal rights advocates can obscure the moral claims of “trees, plants, lakes, rivers, forests, ecosystems” and other non-sentient entities.

One can accept that non-sentient beings have moral claims, however, without then concluding that sentience is irrelevant. After Staudenmaier spends several paragraphs uplifting Homo sapiens over the chimpanzee, it is frustrating to see him argue that differentiating between chimpanzees and plants is “anti-ecological.” Even by his own standards, chimpanzees possess more elements of moral agency—empathy, cooperation, rational decision-making and problem-solving, grief, a sense of what is fair—and thus might require a different moral response than a river or bacterium. After all, the subjective experience of suffering must count for something. If you kick a dog and kick a rock, only one of them notices (at least that we know of). This is not to sell out rivers and rocks, or to deny the deep interconnection of all things. My point is only that thinking, feeling creatures require specific ethical responses.

Here is where social ecology’s tradition of recognizing “second nature” actually gives it a built-in framework for thinking about animal rights. Bookchin and Staudenmaier recognize the moral claims of first nature while recognizing that second nature puts humans in a unique position. If we understand second nature to be more widely shared, however, we see that many animals possess certain capabilities that distinguish them from the rest of nonhuman nature, and that this fact requires ethical consideration. One need not reject ecological values to recognize this, any more than one need reject ecological values to recognize human uniqueness.

As a final objection, one might say that the ethical complications suggested by contextual moral veganism and possible plant sentience weaken the concept of rights. But rights can come into conflict and often do; this does not mean they don’t exist. Recognizing animal rights does not require that there will never be conflict between humans and other animals, or that one or the other must always win out. What it does mean is that nonhuman animals’ interests in these conflicts must be taken seriously, and any solution must ultimately take into account the agency of the animals themselves.

Towards a Multispecies Municipalism

The Kurdish revolutionary Abdullah Ocalan, an avid reader of Bookchin, wrote: “The one thing I can still not forgive myself for is snapping off the heads of the birds I hunted [as a child] without any pity. … My only remedy was to pull down the masks of the ‘strong exploiter and ruling man’ who is a mere hunter and whose only talent is power relations and warring. Unless we understand the language of the fauna and flora, we will neither understand ourselves nor become ecological socialists.”[89]

How can we learn to understand that language?

Jennifer Wolch, professor of urban planning at UC Berkeley, offers one answer: “To allow for the emergence of an ethic, practice, and politics of caring for animals and nature, we need to renaturalise cities and invite the animals back in, and in the process re-enchant the city. I call this renaturalised, reenchanted city zoöpolis.”[90] She goes on: “The reintegration of people with animals and nature in zoöpolis can provide urban dwellers with the local, situated, everyday knowledge of animal life required to grasp animal standpoints or ways of being in the world, to interact with them accordingly in particular contexts, and to motivate political action necessary to protect their autonomy as subjects and their life spaces.”

Her claims are further supported by recent evidence suggesting that developing an emotional connection to nonhuman nature can help build environmental consciousness.[91] One might notice that the language—of re-naturalizing and re-enchanting urban space, and linking this to a project of expanding political agency—resonates with Bookchin’s libertarian municipalism. Indeed, the vision is in many ways a more robust version of Bookchin’s own call for “Communes [that] aspire to live with, nourish, and feed upon the life-forms that indigenously belong to the ecosystems in which they are integrated.”[92]

Wolch goes beyond nourishing and feeding, however, and expands upon what it might mean to “live with” these life forms. Her zoöpolis is also a space where nonhuman second nature could be given space to thrive.

But there remains an unanswered question in Wolch’s framework.[93] On the one hand, we need to invite animals back into the city to make humans care. But without that care, how are we going to generate the political will to invite animals back in the first place? Here is where Bookchin’s libertarian municipalist politics holds promise, a way to start building the reenchanted world we want from the ground up. To understand how, one useful model is the municipalist movement Cooperation Jackson based in Mississippi. Though they do not explicitly advocate animal liberation, their strategy to advance “ecosocialism” provides a variety of useful lessons.

Cooperation Jackson (CJ) operates (or aims to operate) three worker-owned cooperatives: a farm, a 3D printing company, and a landscaping and composting enterprise called the Green Team.[94] Crucially, all of these are designed to meet not only social but environmental needs. Freedom Farms operates according to sustainable, wildlife-friendly agro-ecology practices, and as of a recent personal communication was entirely plant-based (though there is talk of introducing aquaponics). The idea is that CJ’s cooperatives build community buy-in through the valuable services they provide, such as healthy food and landscaping; they also hold volunteer work days. For those too cash-poor to access CJ’s products, the organization is setting up a time bank so that hours worked can be exchanged for goods and services. CJ’s long-term goals include making Jackson a zero-emissions, zero-waste city, and setting up an “eco-village” of co-ops engaged in green projects from solar installation to waste management to child care and the arts. There’s also an ongoing education component to their work, including a newsletter that explains topics such as “ecosocialism” and in-person film screenings and discussions.[95]

From the Black Panthers’ survival programs to Greek mutual aid groups to brake light repair clinics by Democratic Socialists of America, social services have long been a way to both meet immediate needs and build broader movement power. Animal rights advocates can look to the Jackson model as a starting point for what an interspecies municipal strategy might look like—one that brings nonhuman animals as full subjects into everyday interaction with human residents, and allows for symbiotic co-creation of a just, ecological society. Cooperatively run gardens, farms, restaurants, grocery stores and caterers can help solve the problem of food access inequity, build alternatives to the destructive capitalist food system, and create spaces for education on animals, environment, and health. They could also aid people in their transition from meat, especially those with health issues that make this transition difficult (in the near future, lab-grown meat perhaps could help this as well). Mutual aid projects might provide food for free, or as part of a barter or time-banking system.

As we obtain larger plots of community-owned land, we could set up cooperatively-run sanctuaries for rescued animals and rehabilitation clinics for wildlife that are integrated into the larger co-op network. Worker-owners would receive a living wage, nonhumans would be given space to live according to their desires, and community members would be encouraged to volunteer, earning hours in their time bank account while simultaneously building emotional connections to nonhuman animals and the environmental consciousness that accompanies such relationships.

Other projects a municipalist group might undertake are community trash clean-ups, habitat restoration along rivers and in forests, non-lethal rodent-proofing measures, dog-walking services, rescue groups for birds injured in building and car collisions, and shelters for dogs and cats. Film screenings and dinner discussions could explore animal and environment-related topics. And we can plan trips outside of the city, especially for those who can rarely afford to do so, to help with trail maintenance, volunteer at animal sanctuaries, or simply enjoy the great outdoors. In addition to their immediate effects, all of these activities also help “reenchant” the city, as Wolch writes, which may help generate the political will to introduce more pro-animal projects at greater scales.

Of course, other questions remain. For instance, this is a very city-focused plan; the strategy might look different in more rural areas, especially those where interacting with nonhuman animals is already common. We also need mechanisms to navigate differing views, building organizations that are welcoming to individuals who have not yet embraced animal rights without sacrificing principles. Ensuring adequate protections for nonhuman life will require modifying our direct democratic processes, ensuring all interests are represented and placing certain actions off limits (both in public and private spheres).[96] An in-depth exploration of this topic is beyond the scope of this article, but several potential paths forward are explored in Eva Meijer’s exciting new book, When Animals Speak: Towards an Interspecies Democracy. These paths will be explored and developed by different multi-species municipalities experimenting, integrating feedback, and comparing notes on how to harmonize the relationship between humans and the nonhuman world.

But what’s certain is that Bookchin’s framework of human second nature guiding nonhuman first nature towards a new, “free” nature needs revising. Humans are not the only species with a second nature, and we cannot be the only species guiding the ongoing process of remaking society—otherwise, those other species will not truly be free. We must learn how to listen to, deliberate with, and act in concert with nonhuman animals if we are to build a truly equitable third nature that unlocks our collective potentiality.



[1] Bookchin, Murray and Dave Foreman. Defending the Earth: A Dialogue Between Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman (1991). See Chapter 6: Where I Stand Now.

[2] Examples are numerous throughout Bookchin’s work, though these are taken from Remaking Society (1989), as quoted by David Waller in “A Vegetarian Critique of Deep and Social Ecology” (1997)

[3] This is not to say that eco-fascism and other right-leaning green ideologies do not exist, nor that racism has been stamped out of left and liberal spaces. But most climate and environmental discourse on the Left is today centered around impacts upon humans, in particular the poor and otherwise marginalized.

[4] Ceballos et al., Table 2 https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/5/e1400253

[5] As this statistic is frequently misunderstood and misreported, it is worth clarifying here. It does not (necessarily) mean that the total number of vertebrate animals has fallen by two-thirds. For instance, if a population of tigers fell from 10 to 5 (50%), and a population of antelope fell from 100 to 60 (40%), the average decline would be 45%, even though “only” 41% of individual animals have died (45 out of 110).

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/oct/27/world-on-track-to-lose-two-thirds-of-wild-animals-by-2020-major-report-warns

[6] Exact estimates range significantly: https://www.baltimoresun.com/health/bs-xpm-2010-08-26-bs-hs-animal-testing-20100826-story.html. The United States does not keep track of exact animal counts for all species, but for the EU’s species breakdown, see: https://speakingofresearch.com/2013/12/12/eu-statistics-show-decline-in-animal-research-numbers/

[7] More than 66 billion chickens were killed for meat in 2017, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QL. For a handy guide on how to use the search engine, see: http://www.christiankoeder.com/2017/08/cracking-faostat-code-fao-kill-numbers.html

[8] One report estimated from 0.97-2.74 trillion wild fish are caught annually: http://www.fishcount.org.uk/published/std/fishcountchapter19.pdf

[9] See Ecological Politics: Ecofeminists and the Greens by Greta Gaard for a discussion of this phenomenon.

[10] Much of the discussion that follows draws from Murray Bookchin’s The Philosophy of Social Ecology: Essays on Dialectical Naturalism (1990).

[11] TPoSE, p. 27

[12] TPoSE, p. 43, italics Bookchin’s

[13] The Ecology of Freedom, (Cheshire Books 1982) p. 207.

[14] TPoSE, p. 24

[15] Eckersley, Robyn. “Divining Evolution: The Ecological Ethics of Murray Bookchin” (1989). She is riffing off of Aldo Leopold’s land ethic: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”

[16] Eckersley (1989) is one such critic. In “Ecology and Anthropology in the Work of Murray Bookchin: Problems of Theory and Evidence” (1998), Alan P. Rudy challenges Bookchin’s analysis of evolution. Bookchin replied directly to Eckersley: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-recovering-evolution-a-reply-to-eckersley-and-fox

[17] Eckersley also raises concerns about going from “is” to “ought,” a critique Bookchin anticipates and addresses in The Philosophy of Social Ecology. Objections have also been raised in this journal (2002): http://social-ecology.org/wp/2002/09/harbinger-vol-3-no-1-buttercups-and-sunflowers-on-the-evolution-of-first-and-second-nature/

[18] TPoSE p. 85

[19] TPoSE, p. 182

[20] TPoSE, p. 32. Note the description of nonhuman nature as “mute”—we’ll return to that later.

[21] Defending the Earth, (South End Press, 1991) p. 35

[22] Around 27:25 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqPwr-cVz_M

[23] For more on this, see Eckersley, Bookchin’s response, and the introduction to Defending the Earth.

[24] EoF, p. 238.

[25] Ibid, p. 303.

[26] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-second-nature

[27] Also see Mason Herson Hord’s talk at the Institute for Social Ecology’s 2019 Annual Gathering, beginning at 35:12 here: https://youtu.be/Lb706MN3ts0?t=2112

[28] See, for instance, TPoSE, p. 162. “By second nature, I mean humanity’s development of a uniquely human culture…”

[29] https://qz.com/africa/1203988/african-elephants-are-migrating-to-safety-and-telling-each-other-how-to-get-there/; http://www.safari-center.com/memory-serves-better-for-matriarch-elephants/

[30] For more: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/04/strongest-evidence-animal-culture-seen-monkeys-and-whales; https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/550373/animal-behavior-culture/

[31] TPoSE, p. 162

[32] https://medium.com/health-and-biological-research-news/prairie-dog-chatter-the-science-behind-a-new-language-9144ace4114f

[33] https://medium.com/health-and-biological-research-news/prairie-dog-chatter-the-science-behind-a-new-language-9144ace4114f

[34] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2015/05/dolphin-intelligence-human-communication/

[35] TPoSE, p. 162

[36] Re-Enchanting Humanity, (Cassell, 1995) p. 124

[37] https://www.sciencealert.com/we-can-now-add-pigs-to-the-growing-list-of-non-humans-that-can-use-tools

[38] https://www.masterclass.com/articles/chimpanzee-intelligence-with-dr-jane-goodall#observing-chimpanzee-intelligence

[39] https://janegoodall.ca/our-stories/chimpanzees-and-culture/

[40] Re-Enchanting Humanity, (Cassell, 1995) p. 124

[41] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/01/wildfires-birds-animals-australia/

[42] https://slate.com/technology/2013/01/fishing-with-dolphins-symbiosis-between-humans-and-marine-mammals-to-catch-more-fish.html

[43] TPoSE, p. 162

[44] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/03/the-fish-that-makes-other-fish-smarter/554924/

[45] As primatologist Frans de Waal put it, “Clark’s nutcrackers (members of the crow family) recall the location of thousands of seeds that they have hidden half a year before, while I can’t even remember where I parked my car a few hours ago.” https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/10/opinion/sunday/what-i-learned-from-tickling-apes.html

[46] Re-Enchanting Humanity, (Cassell, 1995) p. 124

[47] RH, p. 25

[48] The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society by Frans de Waal, p. 173)

[49] In addition to The Age of Empathy, see The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates and Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are?

[50] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/05/rats-forsake-chocolate-save-drowning-companion

[51] https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/animals-and-us/articles/fellow-passengers

[52] RH, p. 124

[53] RH, p. 125.

[54] Language used in The Ecology of Freedom, p. 29.

[55] RH, p. 16.

[56] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-second-nature

[57] As recounted in Carl Safina’s Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel (2015).

[58] Also discussed in Safina (2015).

[59] TPoSE p. 107.

[60] To expand upon an idea from Daniel Quinn’s novel Ishmael, one wonders if jellyfish philosophers would perceive evolution’s “grain” to be towards increasing translucence, squishiness, and electricity.

[61] Again, exactly how much he exaggerates can be debated, but it is inarguable that he exaggerates.

[62] TPoSE p. 163

[63] Although Eckersley and others dispute that they are literally saying killing a human and killing a bacterium are equivalent.

[64] TPoSE p. 119

[65] This should not be surprising, as we are social mammals, too.

[66] Tye, Michael. Tense Bees and Shell-Shocked Crabs: Are Animals Conscious? (2016)

[67] Animal liberationists, of course, are divided on the use of rights. Utilitarians such as Peter Singer and ecofeminists such as Lori Gruen reject rights on philosophical grounds, yet are still committed to the flourishing of nonhuman animals and their serious moral consideration. When I use “animal rights” throughout this piece, unless otherwise specified I do not necessarily mean the belief that nonhuman animals possess Kantian deontological rights so much as any ethic that says other animals matter for their own sake, and that directly challenges human supremacy. I tend to think any such ethic would inevitably manifest at least partly as social and legal “rights,” even if not in a strictly Kantian sense.

[68] TPoSE p. 185

[69] Ibid.

[70] Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals (2009), p. 120

[71] http://social-ecology.org/wp/2005/01/ambiguities-of-animal-rights/. Portions of my critique, as well as other parts of this article, are adapted from: https://theecologist.org/2018/aug/06/animal-liberation-below-toward-radical-interspecies-municipalism

[72] Excerpted here: https://thenewinquiry.com/on-ableism-and-animals-2/

[73] Eva Meijer, When Animals Speak: Towards an Interspecies Democracy (2019), p. 230

[74] WJ p. 31

[75] https://www.hakaimagazine.com/news/killer-whales-are-bullies-and-humpbacks-are-bouncers/

[76] See Carl Safina’s Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel for some particularly striking examples. An excerpt can be found online: https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2016/08/31/woo-woo-whale-magic/

[77] For examples, see Wild Justice as well as practically any of Frans de Waal’s books, including The Age of Empathy, The Bonobo and the Atheist, and Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are? For a discussion of the Hume/Kant debate over whether morality is rational and how it relates to animals, see: https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/animals-and-us/articles/fellow-passengers

[78] See, for instance, the work of Carol Adams.

[79] Kim, Claire Jean. Dangerous Crossings: Race, Species, and Nature in a Multicultural Age (2015).

[80] Ko, Aph and Syl Ko. Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Veganism from Two Sisters (2017).

[81] Taylor, Sunaura. Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation (2017).

[82] Studies show that U.S. vegans and vegetarians are disproportionately people of color, but activists remain stubbornly white, reflecting a problem within the movement.

[83] Ed. Lori Gruen, Critical Terms for Animal Studies (2018), Deckha’s essay begins p. 280

[84] Critical Terms, p. 286/7. Indeed, this sentiment echoes Bookchin’s own critiques of cultural relativism.

[85] Deckha cites, in particular, the indigenous vegans Margaret Robinson and Craig Womack.

[86] TPoSE, p. 38/9

[87] For a popular introduction to some of this research, see: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/23/the-intelligent-plant

[88] For a fictional exploration of this idea written by a biologist, check out Blindsight (2006) by Peter Watts.

[89] Manifesto for a Democratic Civilization, Volume 1 Civilization: The Age of Masked Gods and Disguised Kings (2015)

[90] Wolch, Animal Geographies. The use of the word “reenchanted” feels especially fitting in light of Bookchin’s book Reenchanting Humanity. https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3487-zoopolis

[91] Jill Suttee’s article “How to Raise an Environmentalist” surveys this research (Yes Magazine, Sep 24, 2016).

[92] TEoF

[93] I don’t mean this as critique necessarily; I have not read all of Wolch’s work, so it’s possible she addresses this elsewhere.

[94] While the activity of these co-ops fluctuates over time, here I’m more concerned with their strategy and intent than precise current practice.

[95] The information on Jackson is compiled from a mix of public talks and personal communications with Cooperation Jackson members Kali Akuno and brandon king, as well as the book Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson, Mississippi (2017), eds. Kali Akuno and Ajamu Nangwaya

[96] https://thebaffler.com/salvos/speaks-trees-astra-taylor