Marxist Animalism
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Sadly it doesn’t, it is usually short, stresssful and ends very violently.
These are actually the sort of arguments animal abusers across the board use.
Bullfight fans say that if it weren’t for their “sport”, the “poor bulls wouldn’t be bred.”
“If we didn’t farm and eat wild boars, the poor things would suffer by being at large.”
“If it weren’t for dogfights, there wouldn’t be any pitbulls.”
“If we didn’t keep hold of the kittens for more vivisection, we would have to put them down.”
“If it wasn’t for us breeding them for canned shooting, lions would die out.”“What’s the point of animals if we don’t eat them?”
And so on and so on.
If I can summarise my many posts on this thread I have highlighted:
firstly, the ecological unsustainability of the current high levels of the meat industry;
secondly, the carcinogenic and ill-health effects of red and processed meat;
and thirdly, the psychological damage of those who are required to undertake the job of killing and butchering animals.
Each taken alone suggests why a reasoned and rational future society such as socialism would wish to change their eating habits and adapt their diets.
I have conceded, very much like many other human behaviours, meat-eating cannot be imposed, legislated or outlawed. Nor can it be proselytised like a religion.
However we do see a switch patterns when there is an increased use of substitutes and alternatives made available and readily accessible. The increased awareness within the food producers itself no longer driven by cost or profit concerns and from consumer education will shift opinions, just as we presently see with sugar and salt intakes.
That it is likely, agroecology and flexitarianism, will best describe how we produce and consume food – a mostly grain plant-based diet supplemented with limited intake of animal protein, perhaps farmed fish and locally reared chickens with perhaps more insect protein added in some shape or form.
Local conditions and cultures will result in a diversity of customs. There will not be one-size fits all.
Global food chains Vs. locavore-orientated will be debated and best practice adopted as the Communist Manifesto aspiration of the dissolution of the town and country divide expresses itself more and more within socialism and we all begin to understand the mechanics of field to fork food production.
Edit – P.S. I have also suggested that the very environmentally unfriendly and often exploitative pet-ownership will drop as the emotional need for companionship is lessened by instead a growing personal relationships between humans themselves.
I’ll go with all of that. Relationships with fellow animals will also form, but not pet/owner as we have today, but this will take longer to evolve. As the human class-society psychology of conquest of nature ceases, to be replaced with respect on the part of humans no longer fearing predation on “livestock”, so our relationship with our fellows of other species will develop. For most of us that will consist in respectfully leaving them alone. For some, though, the work of ethologists like Marc Bekoff, Jane Goodall, Tony Fitzjohn, George Adamson, Charlotte Uhlenbroek and many others will inspire, as I see it, more and more people freed of the prejudices of class society, its alienation from nature and its psychology, as said above, of conquest and superiority.
We hear the word omnivore a lot. Omnivore doesn’t necessarily mean have to eat, but can eat if necessary.
Like our closest relatives the chimpanzees, early human scavenger-gatherers were opportunistic meat-eaters. Only in the Ice Age north did meat, for obvious reasons, become of major importance. Elsewhere it was a rare treat, as it is with chimps.Today, meat-eaters in the industrialised world tend to eat it with every meal, every day, with no necessity other than taste and habit. To defend this they say, “Humans are omnivores, so we win the argument.”
You can’t help exaggerating, can you? I expect some meat-eaters do eat meat with every meal but I don’t know that the majority do. I certainly don’t. In fact some days I don’t eat meat at all but I am not having anybody telling me from a position of sanctimonious superiority what to eat and what not to eat.
But you’re not content with people eating less meat. They mustn’t eat any and you denounce anyone who does as somebody who wants to be cruel to animals and is favour of big game hunting, bull fighting, etc, etc.
There have always been vegetarians and food reformers in the party but never, in my recollection, anyone as intolerant and hostile as you towards fellow members who aren’t.
Not at all. I agree, as i’ve said, with Alan regarding everything he has said.
I am looking at the future, and pointing out errors about other animals which reveal you to be outdated in these matters. At the same time, it is yourself who steers every argument toward meat-eating vs vegetarianism, even when that is not the issue. Plus, your misrepresentation, say, of the Guardian article, which contains nothing about ill-treatment by vegetarians, is dishonest.
But I do applaud your dislike of cruelty, although I think you are naive about “humane” killing, and in Bijou’s case misinformed about farmed animals living longer lives, which is ridiculous. Obviously we wouldn’t want to leave modern and dependent domesticated animals in a wild setting to fend for themselves, which would be cruelty indeed. There would have to be human management and reversed breeding projects for a long time. Also, while we still have carnivorous pets, slaughter houses would still be necessary. All of this would be for a socialist society to implement, or not. It is my vision, but i’ll be long dead.
By mentioning bullfight fans, trophy hunters, etc., I was simply pointing out that the farming and slaughter is “for their own good” argument is similar to their arguments. I paid to rescue a wild boar from slaughter after a farmer got him back (the boar was among several escapees). I had to pay the farmer £200 and a sanctuary £700 to transport him. He went on to have 15 years of life he would not have had, a mate, and offspring.
But I do applaud your dislike of cruelty, although I think you are naive about “humane” killing, and in Bijou’s case misinformed about farmed animals living longer lives, which is ridiculous.
If you read what I was saying, I was talking about potential not actual and stated I deplore the trend in modern life of eating only very young animals, becasue they are supposed to be better. For instance mutton and hogget is hardly eaten now, because of the so called superiority of lamb, similalry boiling foul are often wasted because of their age. The article you yourself quote states that older cattle if cooked properly can be very good. I would argue that in a socialist society meat production would be far more local, more humane, and that as more time would be available cooking skills, lost over the years, would redevelop.
I would certainly feel more comfortable eating mutton stew, with mutton fresh off the Cheviot Hills, than eating rice and lentils flown or shipped half way around the world, or green beans flown in from Peru.
Returning to Alan’s earlier question about biting the testicles off male lambs, I suppose if there is such a thing as an urban legend, then that must be a bit of a rural legend. In actual fact they fit a tight fitting elastic band over the lambs scrotum and eventually the nads wither away and fall off.
Agan this would be unnecessary in a Socialist society as it wouldn’t be necessary or desireable to continue the current practices. The castration is done because it is said that the testosterone makes the meat of male lambs taste slightly stronger, (although there is little evidence of this and it is not done on many countries).
The cull of male lambs would also not be necessary or desireable. It is currently done for mainly economic reasons, one ram is allowed to live and that ram then “services” several flocks. Obviously for the ram that is selected a pampered life and a couple of months every year of non stop sex awaits. I would argue that the impact of this (although saving the famer the cost of raising less productive rams as well as ewes) is a long term tendency toward inbreeding and susceptibility to disease.
This is just one example of how socialism could introduce more humane and environmentally friendly farming methods.
Yes, agreed. And indeed, everything I foresee would be very gradual, locally dependent, etc.
I wouldn’t put hideous tales such as the one you mention all down as myths. If you read Plutarch about the horrors of ancient Roman slaughter practices, they make one’s hair stand on end, and have therefore origins in real history and are not myths. Similarly, in Latin America, tug-of-war using live ducks is considered fun.
Bijou,
We are discussing the late 20s and early 30s when farm labourers were treated not much better than beasts themselves by the farmers.
I myself had doubts and mentioned so in the post but I did some online research and it seems it was not such a rare practice.
How to Castrate: The time-honored method of castration in sheep where the testicles are removed by the teeth of the producer will probably never be replaced.
http://www.infovets.com/books/smrm/C/C104.HTM
Us kids were allowed to watch the men do this bloody work. They would hold the testicles tight underneath, slit the skin holding the testicle in, put
their mouth down and get hold of the testicle with their teeth, lift
it up a bit, slice it off with the knife in their other hand and then
spit the testicle on the ground. The man doing this had blood all over
his mouth and face.http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=375251
But truth or legend, doesn’t really matter, to this debate.
Alan
With that kind of genetic material in you, woe betide any comrade that crosses you at conference!!!!
The last time I attended, I was elected chair, Bijou, if that tells you something.
But you and I have the Border Riever blood in us
One thing that has been absent from this discussion is just how do we use our common ground in the case for socialism to persuade and convince non-socialists.
We have responded to the increased awareness of the environmentalist movement to climate change with various articles but have we given the same attention to the way we produce and consume our food?
I feel a reticence from some to emphasise that along with advocating socialism as a sustainable and non-polluting system by changing extractive and production methods and means of transportation, there will be required a change in our life-styles and our food consumption habits. We can happily make generalisations about how work itself will be transformed into socially useful and satisfying jobs.
But there is a reluctance I think to be more detailed and say that the menu from which we choose our meals will be very much different, a flexitarian diet rather than the presently predominant meat-eating one.
Maybe we are wary of being accused of holding a fringe belief, as I think was the case in the past with vegetarianism/veganism but today is very different. People are concerned about what they eat, where it comes from, how it is grown, and what impact it has on the various eco-systems. We have a receptive audience.
We can speculate about some aspects of socialism, such as creating the steady-state, zero-growth economy and explain broadly how that can be accomplished but are we wrong not to be more specific on how it can be achieved through changes in our daily diets.
Or is such conjecture risking deciding a blueprint for socialism.
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