Marxist Animalism

[alanjjohnstone]

I think this is half ways a counter to the self-rigteousness of veganshttp://www.alternet.org/food/unsavory-problem-angry-vegans-who-push-and-preach-their-ideals

[ALB]

John, the front page headline in today's Times gives you a chance to have a go at two birds with one stone: religion and cruelty to animals:

Quote:

Big increase in religious slaughter of animals. Muslim campaigners reject use of stunning

Apparently, their religion requires that they can only eat meat from animals that have died from loss of blood. The orthodox Jews are just as bad. But to their credit the Sikhs and Hindus ban the eating of hallal meat (they only allow eating meat from an animal killed from a single blow). But hallal meat is served everywhere, and not just to muslims, in prisons, schools, hospitals. Does anyone know why? It can't be just to suck up to muslims. Is it cheaper or something?

[Anonymous]

Don`t know. I do know that it`s a side issue, in the sense that it is self-congratulatory indeed for the secular westerner to assume conventional slaughter is exempt from such horror. Extremely naive. You must have read Sinclair`s "The Jungle."I know that it is  religious influence, namely Hinduism, which is infuriating capitalists by standing in the way of a wholesale slaughter for profit along western lines in India – dependent on different regions. Areas of southern India have been vegan for millennia – without thinking about it. I do agree that western vegans make a profession out of it and seldom speak of anything else. That is because their Christian cultural heritage is carnivorous.Interestingly, numerous members of the Japanese feudal nobility committed seppuku – both sexes – rather than allow meat to be eaten at home following the Meiji revolution. In all, two million samurai killed themselves, for many reasons, but slaughter of animals for food was one powerful motive too. (See one instance of this in the classic autobiography, Daughter of the Samurai.)

[ALB]

John Oswald wrote:

Areas of southern India have been vegan for millennia – without thinking about it.

I find it hard to believe that whole areas have been vegan (as opposed to sects living in part of an area alongside meat-eaters). What is the evidence for your claim?Hinduism might ban eating cows (an ideological reflection of the fact that they were essential to agriculture) but I don't think it bans eating fish or birds. In fact I find it hard to accept that any people, even in South India, living in a coastal area would have abstained from eating fish. It just wouldn't make sense. And I find it only slightly less hard to accept that people living in inland areas wouldn't eat birds, eg chickens. That wouldn't make sense either.I suggest that vegetarianism has only ever been a minority practice everywhere pursued by religious or other sects amidst a majority meat-eating population. And always will be ….

John Oswald wrote:

Interestingly, numerous members of the Japanese feudal nobility committed seppuku – both sexes – rather than allow meat to be eaten at home following the Meiji revolution. In all, two million samurai killed themselves, for many reasons, but slaughter of animals for food was one powerful motive too. (See one instance of this in the classic autobiography, Daughter of the Samurai.)

I think your claim that some "two million" (your emphasis) Samurai committed ritual suicide (by self-disembowelment) a mere 150 years ago  is also very dubious. Two million would in fact been all the Samurai then existing. It would have been an event of world-wide significance and knowledge. I suggest it is completely untrue. What is your evidence for it?

[Anonymous]

Seppuku is ritual suicide, but not all seppuku is hara kiri. Women generally cut their throats and samurai women always carried a ritual dagger for that purpose, as well as for defence. Many samurai women who were wives of daimyo burned themselves alive in their castles following Meiji. Not all samurai were daimyo. Most were ronin – propertyless, errant, samurai.Of course, there are many parts of the world where vegetarianism is widespread, largely because of religious principles and dietary laws. Hindus, Jains and Taoists all advocate vegetarianism to a greater or lesser extent, and this has a positive effect on the availability of vegetarian food in India and Asia. Between 20% and 40% of India's population is vegetarian – the figure is muddied by the fact that most Indian Hindus do not consider people who eat eggs to be vegetarian. Clear food labelling laws make things easy for vegetarian visitors. Most of the food served at Sikh gurdwaras is vegetarian, not because Sikhs are required to be vegetarian but because they aim to offer food that is acceptable to as many people as possible. http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/sep/23/best-countries-to-be-vegetarianAs of 2007, UN FAO statistics indicated that Indians had the lowest rate of meat consumption in the world.[12] In India, vegetarianism is usually synonymous with lacto vegetarianism. Most restaurants in India clearly distinguish and market themselves as being either "non-vegetarian", "vegetarian", or "pure vegetarian". Vegetarian restaurants abound, usually, many vegetarian (Shakahari: plant-eater, in Sanskrit) options are available. Animal-based ingredients (other than milk and honey) such as lard, gelatin, and meat stock are not used in the traditional cuisine. India has devised a system of marking edible products made from only vegetarian ingredients, with a green dot in a green square. A mark of a brown dot in a brown square conveys that some animal-based ingredients (in addition to milk or its direct derivatives) were used.[13]According to the 2006 Hindu-CNN-IBN State of the Nation Survey, 31% of Indians (over 350 million people) are vegetarians, while another 9% consumes eggs.[14] Among the various communities, vegetarianism was most common among the Jain community and then Brahmins at 55%, and less frequent among Muslims (3%) and residents of coastal states. Other surveys cited by FAO[15] and USDA[16][17] estimate 20%–42% of the Indian population as being vegetarian. These surveys indicate that even Indians who do eat meat, do so infrequently, with less than 30% consuming it regularly, although the reasons are mainly cultural and partially economic.[17]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country#IndiaMaybe I should have stipulated vegetarian, but southern India has never had a majority meat-eating population.

[Anonymous]

I must yield on the two points.The figure of two million samurai in connection with suicide in the decades following Meiji entered my brain from something I was reading. I know it referred to members of the samurai class as a whole, men and women, and the thousands of propertyless and homeless samurai who were reduced to beggary and menial jobs, and especially to women, who found themselves especially vulnerable. I`ve been ransacking my library to try to find the source, but so far have not been able to. I understood the samurai and their retinues in total numbered some 35 million. I remarked what I had read because of my interest with regard to meat consumption and the resistance to it.As for India, it was a vegan who told me that. Plus I believe in his documentary on India, Michael Wood spent time with communities in the south who were vegetarian and this also confirmed in my mind what the vegan had said. I`ve been looking through Michael Wood`s book, but again cannot find confirmation there. My apologies.John Oswald praises the Hindus for their vegetarianism (1791), from whom he took his own dietary practice. Likewise, the Emperor Ashoka had instituted the prohibition of all killing, so that was in my mind too, as well as the veganism of the Jains.Mea culpa.

[ALB]

Thanks for the clarifications.

John Oswald wrote:

I understood the samurai and their retinues in total numbered some 35 million.

According to this article, 35 million was the total population of Japan at the time (middle of the 19th century):http://www.willamette.edu/~rloftus/LastSamurai.htm

Quote:

the samurai class was about 5 percent of a population of thirty-five million

That about 1.75 million.

Quote:

Perhaps it's too much to expect that our entertainments have a factual basis. But now I have to deal with the aftermath, with students who will think that all samurai (all five hundred of them, instead of nearly two million) were pure warriors who lived in the mountains, instead of as underemployed urbanite bureaucrats. I have to explain how rare seppuku (ritual suicide, also known as hara-kiri) was.

Your source wasn't Tom Cruise's The Last Samurai was it?

[alanjjohnstone]

I have spent a few years living in South India, John, in the state of Kerala which is perhaps unusual in that it has large local populations of Muslims and Christians. But i did travel extensively around Tamil Nadu and stayed a month in Mumbai. I can confirm that there are the two vegetarian restaurants and they are always clearly signed. The Pure Veg cannot serve or cook any type of meat on its premises as it would contaminate the cooking and eating utensils. A lot of Sikh tourists from the North used them. They are both popular but ordinary restaurants prevailed in number and popularity. We have to also understand there exists an argument that the ban on beef is historically a Brahmin caste imposition upon the lower castes.http://www.countercurrents.org/comm-puniyani250204.htm http://www.countercurrents.org/elango030714.htmhttp://www.countercurrents.org/comm-bidwai210803.htmMany radical dalits now reject vegetarianism for this political reason.The reason for vegetarianism, is the same reason why a lot of meals in Thailand are predominantly vegetarian…cost…not just to buy but, don't forget storage and spoilage…not everybody have fridges or reliable electricity even if they did, and food is bought daily at corner markets that spring up each morning for a few hours, or specific markets for specific foods.The only occasions i heard of any food poisoning was from hotels and restaurants who would return unsold displayed food from buffets back to the fridge. Street food and cheap restaurants were safer…they bought only what they could sell that day and cooked there and then with the order, usually, not heated up…Thali meals always come in veg or non-veg forms, and they are much favoured regional versions sought after. The meat i found difficult to obtain was any sort of pork. Mutton (goat) and chicken was freely available and eaten by all three religions, as was fish. Beef was also available but pricey.  Plenty of dairy products …a curd that serves as a yoghurt substitute. A lot of fish. The main sausage available was a very tasty chicken and one type had a cheese centre that melted when cooked. Surprisingly the most popular soup was tomato and many rural village restaurants have it on the menu and i often joked it was the real Indian national dish. Anyway, all anecotal, but it does confirm that vegetarianism need not be some niche market but can be adopted nationally but in the real world, people would be omnivores but the proportion of meat eating would drastically reduced. Regards to veg and halal/kosher food…travel tip…if you are on a long haul air trip…pre-order those…you get served first and always hotter, usually tastier…but now one of the requisites of airlines is to report halal requests on security grounds among all the banking and credit details of purchasing tickets…i think i read they now have to keep 40 separate items of detail of passengers for security. 

[alanjjohnstone]

Much of this thread has been about the moral/ethical concerns but i think the socialist case is the ecological/health one. We argue for a rational society broadly planned for peoples needs and welfare. "Production of one pound of beef protein causes 250 times the GHG emission as compared to the production of one pound of legume-derived proteins. Or another way for comparison, 20 servings of vegetables correspond to less GHG emission than one serving of beef. if the current cultural and diet trends continue to 2050. During this period, increase in global population by 36%, together with increase in dietary shift towards meat consumption, will cause an increase of estimated 80% in GHG emission from food production. This increase in emission is equal to the total 2010 global transportation emission. Furthermore, a substantial increase in land needed for agriculture will be necessary. A global shift from the omnivore diet to the alternative plant-based diet can dramatically slow down this trend. The scientists estimate that this global diet change with several other changes (such as reduced wastage of fresh produce) will reduce agriculture derived GHG emission by 30-60 % and reduce land usage by 20-30%. "http://www.science20.com/thoughts_for_food_and_beyond/blog/diet_health_planet_trilemma-152991

Quote:

Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet. – Albert Einstein 

[Anonymous]

Well, maybe we should rename ourselves the VPGBAnd forget about the class struggle.

[alanjjohnstone]

Much of our case and propaganda is promoting the possibility and the feasibility of a sustainable future society.We suggest and accept that there must be changes in energy policy, to waste and pollution management, but most of all in our food production system. The SPGB case is that these necessary changes cannot and will not be permitted by capitalism. I argue that what you eat, the social cost of what you eat and the environmental and health consequence of what you eat are part of the class struggle. They are determined by the profit system and by those who owns the means of production and distribution…the food and retail industry,  I think it is no coincidence that most revolutions are spurred by the lack of affordable food and that one of the common demands concerns access to food. A look of history will see a correlation between food and politics. I am not arguing that vegetarianism will make socialists but i am saying that socialism will create vegetarians. We tend to avoid saying that this will be necessary for fear of putting people off.  Indeed, i think in Germany it was calculated by promoting vegetarianism policies the Green Party lost  2% votes. But we aren't in politics for popularity. We are saying present society is not providing for people because of its economic imperatives and that we can change those by political action which will then permit people access to a better life…a better well-being both physically and mentally…Are we to not to say how that can be achieved ?Too often we get accused of not talking about peoples daily lives…the bread and butter issues (pun intended) ..yet you seem to say that what we eat and need to survive…what it is ….how it is produced…the way it is distributed…is in some way not a class issue.I'm not declaring it our number one priority as you infer by your VPGB remark.But like many things whats now being called "food sovereignty" has become a political question that we must answer.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_sovereigntyIt took us long enough to start raising our profile on the environment which i still think we have not done sufficiently.I place food alongside the nationalism/immigration as topics that have become part of the everyday fare of popular politics where we have to show that socialism provides the only permanent answer. 

[ALB]

Here's an anecdote from the Monument (page 137):

Quote:

True, not all the Party were food reformers. Bill Read, an East London speaker, who kept a workmen's eating house, used to bellow that vegetarianism was a capitalist plot to lower labour costs by making the working class feed on grass.

Today, too, not all the Party are food reformers …..

[alanjjohnstone]

yup, i am well aware of that quote and i have used it a lot as a put down….and i often cite lettuce as an example..tasteless bit of greenery slapped on the sandwich or plateBut without being malicious or conspiratorial…it does say Bill Read had a vested interest – a cafe owner…What was his menu consist of and what items provided his best profit margin…i dare say it just might be his Full Monty breakfast…not those who ordered his beans on toast …(mere guess-work on my part)Not all in the party are food reformers, as you say…but neither have all members been involved in the labour/union movement but i'm sure they take a class position upon it . .i think the Monument describes how many members sought occupations that were in many ways escapes from employment/wage slavery…antique dealers…booksellers…various self-employed like printers, (Wasn't Glasgow Branch nicknamed the Socialist Party of Glasow Bookies)because during the time of illegality many sought income as bookie-runners)  …perhaps a disproportionate number,  i'm not sure,) compared to the fate as those of us those who were subject to bosses and overseers and the 9-5 and had to seek the protection of the union and were active in it for self-defence…i'm sure there may exist a divergence of emphasis between those two type of members …but i speculate…you been a member and known more members and their background than me…but what i am saying is that we are not all sociological homogeneous…and that may reflect in our attitude towards various issues… a member  brought up in the country, just might be more sympathetic to the huntin', shootin', and fishin' pastimes than a city bred person like myself…I still maintain that the food movement is part of  the environmental movement (they overlap considerably) and the party as a whole cannot ignore it…even if not all members as individuals choose to recycle or choose to cycle or shop at the local Oxfam charity shop instead of M and S or Primark  …it isn't about lifestyles, imho, but politics and the socialist answer to capitalism.

[Anonymous]

http://www.whale.to/b/viv.htmlScientific and important to read.

[ALB]

ALB wrote:

. But hallal meat is served everywhere, and not just to muslims, in prisons, schools, hospitals. Does anyone know why? It can't be just to suck up to muslims. Is it cheaper or something?

I think I've found a partial answer to my question. According to this recent news item, it will be because it's cheaper:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/london-council-defends-criticism-over-claims-it-banned-pork-from-primary-schools-10041519.html

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