Marxist Animalism
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“The highest quality beef comes from animals that are under 36 months of age. Old cows produce highly acceptable beef if properly fattened and processed. Depending on the calf and the feeding regime, calves are best slaughtered between three and 16 weeks of age.”
Farm animals only live a fraction of their natural life spans.
“David Taylor, a vet who examined Shambo, has said, “he is a very healthy bull, with no symptoms of TB. It would be an absolute crime to put that animal down.” He also argued that the tests were completely subjective. The Welsh assembly refused to carry out a second test to confirm exposure to bacteria.”
Wikipedia
No one here is denying that we want to end capitalism: poverty, war, etc., so I don’t know what point you are making. That human life warrants dismissal of nonhuman life?
Or is it the same old chestnut, that we don’t care about human misery because we care about nonhuman misery? Funny we’re socialists then, isn’t it?
You will have to gas chicks born male every day, and kill unwanted bullocks too, even if you don’t sometimes cut corners by killing the bullock in front of his mother or throw the chicks alive into the crusher.
Rosa Luxemburg:
In the yard where I walk, military wagons often arrive, packed full with sacks, or old uniforms and shirts often spotted with blood…. They are unloaded here, passed out in the cells, mended, then reloaded, and delivered tot he military. The other day, such a wagon came drawn by water buffaloes rather than horses. This was the first time that I saw these animals up close. They are built sturdier and broader than our oxen, with flat heads, their horns bent flat, their skulls rather resembling the skulls of our own sheep; the buffaloes are completely black with large soft eyes. They come from Rumania, they are trophies of war…. Anyway a few days ago, a wagon loaded with sacks drove into the prison. The cargo was piled so high that the buffaloes could not make it over the threshold of the gateway. The attending soldier, a brutal character, began to beat away at the animals with the heavy end of his whip so savagely that the overseer indignantly called him to account. ‘Don’t you have any pity for the animals?’ ‘No one has any pity for us people either!’ he answered with an evil laugh, and fell upon them even more forcefully…. Finally, the animals started up and got over the hump, but one of them was bleeding…. Sonitschka, buffalo hide is proverbial for its thickness and toughness, and it was lacerated.
Then, during the unloading, the animals stood completely still, exhausted, and one, the one that was bleeding, all the while looked ahead with an expression on its black face and in its soft black eyes like that of a weeping child. It is exactly the expression of a child who has been severely punished and who does not know why, what for, who does not know how to escape the torment and brutality…. How far, how irretrievably lost, are the free, succulent, green pastures of Rumania! How different it was with the sun shining, the wind blowing; how different were the beautiful sounds of birds, the melodious calls of shepherds. And here: the strange weird city, the fusty stable, the nauseating mouldy hay mixed with putrid straw, the strange, horrible people – and the blows, blood running from the fresh wound….”‘We both,’ Rosa added, ‘stand here so powerless and spiritless and are united only in pain, in powerlessness and in longing….’
“Meanwhile, the prisoners bustled busily about the wagon, unloading the heavy sacks and carrying them into the building. The soldier, however, stuck both hands into his pockets, strolled across the yard with great strides, smiled and softly whistled a popular song. And the whole glorious war passed in front of my eyes…. Write quickly. I embrace you, Sonitschka.
<p align=”right”>Your Rosa</p>
Sonitschka, dearest, in spite of it all, be calm and cheerful. That’s life and that’s how one must take it: courageously, intrepidly and smilingly – in spite of all.”Louise Michel:
“As far back as I can remember, the origin of my revolt against the powerful was my horror at the tortures inflicted on animals. I used to wish animals could get revenge, that the dog could bite the man who was mercilessly beating him, that the horse bleeding under the whip could throw off the man tormenting him.
“I was accused of allowing my concern for animals to outweigh the problems of humans at the Perronnnet barricade at Neuilly during the Commune, when I ran to help a cat in peril. The unfortunate beast was crouched in a corner that was being scoured by shells, and it was crying out.”
Michel believed there was a link between the subjugation of animals and the subjugation of humans. “The more ferocious a man is toward animals,” she wrote, “the more that man cringes before the people who dominate him.” In fact, she credited her opposition to the death penalty to witnessing the slaughter of an animal as a child.
She raged against vivisection, writing, “All this useless suffering perpetrated in the name of science must end. It is as barren as the blood of the little children whose throats were cut by Gilles de Retz and other madmen.”
According to the International Vegetarian Union website, one Louise Michel attended the 1890 International Vegetarian Congress in England. The report of the meeting states she “expressed her views on Vegetarianism. The eating of flesh meant misery to the animals, and she held that it was impossible for men to be happy while animals were miserable.”
The point is we can not end the miserableness of it without ending capitalism. Your attributing the sentiments of others to us is incorrect.
Any socialist would have the same view here.
I used to wish animals could get revenge, that the dog could bite the man who was mercilessly beating him, that the horse bleeding under the whip could throw off the man tormenting him.
Remembering the eventual butchery of the humans present in that example it was also understandable surely that her priorities could have been seen to be skewed by another individual, we are all different.
The Luxemburg example stands out, as it is of a single vicious soldier who was called to account by another overseer as above, we are all different.
No one here is denying that we want to end capitalism: poverty, war, etc., so I don’t know what point you are making. That human life warrants dismissal of nonhuman life?
Or is it the same old chestnut, that we don’t care about human misery because we care about nonhuman misery? Funny we’re socialists then, isn’t it?
No it is the old chestnut that we can not do anything about it until we have socialism with production for use and free access commensurate with the humane values which will proceed from this. Your Luxemburg example does not consider that the cruel soldier was under the lash also.
You will have to gas chicks born male every day, and kill unwanted bullocks too, even if you don’t sometimes cut corners by killing the bullock in front of his mother or throw the chicks alive into the crusher.
Why on earth would these methods transfer into socialism? You are emotionally over egging your pudding.
No it is the old chestnut that we can not do anything about it until we have socialism with production for use and free access commensurate with the humane values which will proceed from this. Your Luxemburg example does not consider that the cruel soldier was under the lash also.
Agree.
Why on earth would these methods transfer into socialism? You are emotionally over egging your pudding.
Well, if you have a meat industry, you would have still to decrease the number of male offspring which have no “use” (too many bulls, too many roosters, when you want dairy cows and egg-laying hens): since these animals will exist solely to be used/eaten/exploited by humans, and are to have no life that is their own.
Ou readers will have noticed several letters amongst our correspondence on the subject of Vegetarianism, one or two of which were written in a somewhat aggrieved tone, apropos of attacks by Socialists on that doctrine, if one may call it so, though several comrades and friends are vegetarians. It seems to me that there is no need either to attack a vegetarian or to confer a vote of thanks on him, so long as he is one because he chooses to be so on any grounds that please himself, whether he makes it a matter of health, or economy, or sentiment. But a man can hardly be a sound Socialist who puts forward vegetarianism as a solution of the difficulties between labour and capital, as some people do, and as one may think very severe capitalists would like to do, if the regimen were not applied to themselves; and again, there are people who are vegetarians on ascetic grounds, and who would be as tyrannical as other ascetics if they had the chance of being so. I do not mean to say that Socialist vegetarians are likely to fall into these traps; they only make themselves liable to the sneer of an anti-Socialist acquaintance of mine, who said to me one day ‘All you Socialists have each of you another fad besides Socialism’ (William Morris, Commonweal, in September 1886).
Alan Johnstone wrote
“So meat-eater will have a temporary respite as the present generation of slaughter-men carry out final culls of farm animals.
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Again i have to say that work which leads to occupational diseases that cannot be avoided will end in socialism and second-best alternatives will substitute.”
Bit of a contradiction there Alan.
Whose going to slaughter the remaining domestic livestock?
As I said earlier in this thread, the Peter Rabbit brigade imagine that living a non domestic lifestyle is wonderful, long and ends in a pleasant death. Sadly it doesn’t, it is usually short, stresssful and ends very violently.
Sadly it doesn’t, it is usually short, stresssful and ends very violently.
You mean like the lives of farmed animals.
Farm animals only live a fraction of their natural life spans.
“Peter Rabbit Brigade” – your term of contempt for those who want animal exploitation to end? Got it. The usual old diminution and crass dismissal of the “animal movement.”
(Bold and large letters not intentional. Something went wrong).
After we have socialism, and if, as is to be expected following current trends, meat has largely disappeared from the diet , the future could then begin to see, where possible, the breeding back of domestic animals to their wild roots. More forests, re-introduction of hardy wild herbivores, and carnivores too.
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