ALB
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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).
I don’t understand the point you are trying to make. Of course conditions in places where animals are killed will not be the same in socialism as they are today under capitalism, any more than conditions in factories and offices will be. Ensuring safe working conditions is one of the primary reasons for establishing socialism.
And your argument that humans are somehow repelled by killing other animals to eat doesn’t wash either. Humans have always done this. In fact as omnivores it could even be said that it is “natural” for humans; it is certainly not unnatural or harmful.
The case for vegetarianism is a moral not a scientific case. If people want to be vegetarians for moral or ethical reasons that’s fair enough but they should stop trying to bolster their ethical choice with science.
Basically vegetarians who say that everybody should stop eating meat haven’t got a leg to stand on. We should not mix up the argument for socialism with theirs; otherwise we undermine the credibility of our own case.
At one time cutting up carcasses was a skilled craft and the early unions of such workers were craft unions.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journeymen_Butchers%27_Federation_of_Great_Britain
But, as in other trades, the employers eventually destroyed the craft aspect of the work and had it done by unskilled general workers and working conditions got worse. Note that both the unions mentioned above eventually disappeared.
Your argument is basically a variety of the “who will do the dirty work” question. To which we have traditionally replied: what is regarded as “dirty” has more to do with social attitudes to it than with the nature of the work itself and that this often reflected the low wages paid to those doing it. I don’t know what will happen in socialism any more than you do, but I can imagine that those humanely killing animals to eat will be highly regarded by the meat-eating majority for carrying out an essential job ( which they needn’t have to do all the time).
Working in an abortion clinic must also be pretty distressing for those working there and presumably there will be studies too of the effect on their mental health. But you don’t argue that in socialism women should not be entitled to an abortion unless they are prepared to work in such a clinic.
That’s a good point. For Alan’s pipedream of a world gone vegetarian there’d first have to be a mass slaughter of food animals, either in one go or gradually. And what fanatical veggies make of that?
It’s just not going to happen and doesn’t need to happen. As to producing artificial meat, what a waste of resources that would have to be to cater for the vast majority of humans who want to eat meat, as humans have been since we came down from the trees (and probably while we were still up there).
Socialists shouldn’t make fools of themselves and of socialism by advocating such an unrealistic idea. If you want to be a vegetarian, fair enough. Go and be one, but leave the rest of us alone and stop pestering us to be one.
One of my brothers is indeed a vet and hit the headlines when he had to serve notice about a bull that was being mistreated by vegetarians:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/jul/27/ruralaffairs.topstories3
O irony !
The privatisation that has gone on in the NHS has been to pay contractors an amount that allows them to make a profit from providing services to it, not (yet?) to directly provide medical care for profit. In this way health care remains free for patients. Except that dentists have long been allowed to charge and make a profit out of actually providing health care, which NHS doctors are not.
I don’t understand why you have posted this here and not in the coronavirus thread. Your point can’t be that workers in the meat industry have died from the virus, therefore become a vegetarian, can it? If so, what conclusion should be drawn from the fact that (many more) bus drivers have died?
Interesting new study here which brings out the co-evolution of tool-making and the human brain. Benjamin Franklin was nearer to the mark than he thought when he described humans as tool-making animals.
This is a key feature distinguishing humans from other animals and which has meant that human societies have changed along with the tools (instruments of production) they make and use. No other animal society can change in this way.
But like all other animals how humans procure what they need to survive shapes their behaviour, the only difference is that the others’ is unchanging while humans’ changes in line with the tools they use.
Negative interest rates, knowingly and voluntarily offered by the lender, mean that the lender is in effect paying the borrower to store their money; which would reflect the fact that the alternative uses of the money are more risky. This is what appears to have happened the other day with some government bonds ( which are loans to the government); some capitalists must be buying them because they don’t think much of the economy’s profit-making chances.
The government has also been reported as contemplating a negative bank rate ( as it used to be called) as the rate the Bank of England, as the central bank, pays commercial banks on deposits with or borrowings from it. In this case it would be a (probably forlorn) attempt to get the banks to lend more to productive capitalists by penalising them for letting their money lie idle . People will always want to borrow money for some money-making project but banks have to judge whether these projects are viable so as to be sure they get their money back. When profit-making opportunities are not good, the government can’t force banks to make risky loans. You can bring a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. as governments have repeatedly discovered.
Allowing inflation to reduce the real purchasing power of a loan is a ploy governments have traditionally employed to reduce what they have to pay back. This may happen with the loans governments have taken out to deal with the pandemic. But it would go against the practice of recent decades of favouring the lender rather than the borrower. Some reformists have been campaigning, with their calls to cancel debts with a “jubilee”, to reverse this and favour instead the borrower. Not much chance of that happening, I would have thought.
Forgot to add that all this confirms that what is important for the operation of the capitalist economy is the rate of profit not the rate of interest.
From a capitalist and a reformist point of view that Marx is right. If you want to help “the poor” why not simply tweak the welfare state instead of proposing a massive reform which will have all sorts of consequences and complications?
It is true that paying the unemployed a basic income whether or not they are looking for work would benefit them in that they would no longer be harassed by officials to report on their search for a job, etc. But if the scheme was just for them then it would no longer be a “universal” basic income.
In any event, governments responsible for running capitalist affairs are unlikely to agree to doing even this watered-down version as it would tend to undermine the wages system. As the report on the Finnish and other pilot schemes concluded, these schemes didn’t encourage people to seek employment. Which was why they were judged failures.
This particular reform like workers coops is no solution but it’s now something all “progressives” have to advocate. But both really are practicable diversions from what is the way forward and we should hammer them every time they rear their ugly heads, emphasising that what is needed is a society based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of life, with production directly for use and distribution on the principle of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.”
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/how-ignorant-british-policy-inflamed-war-syria
Well, well. It was only Parliament that prevented Cameron doing a Blair and going over the top. So it does have its uses even under capitalism. In any event, more effective than extra-parliamentary marches and protest demonstrations which failed to stop similar action in Iraq.
Actually there is no longer a lockdown in England. Everybody can now leave their house as often as they like and travel in their car to Land’s End or the border with Scotland if they want.
The only rule now is “social distancing”. You must stay 6 metres (the length of two supermarket trolleys as they are helpfully pointing out in case you don’t know what a metre is) apart from anyone else. But even this is unenforceable outside shops and workplaces, where it’s up to people’s sense of social responsibility. You’re not supposed to invite anyone into your house not even close relatives but, if what my neighbours on both sides do on a regular basis is anything to go by, this is widely ignored.
Dave, was there one in Manchester?
It is being reported that the bosses of the profit-seeking businesses that run “academies” as schools that not under local government control are more eager to open them than those still run by local councils. Revealing confirmation of the pressure market forces exert to put profits before health.
What a bunch of time-wasting reformists ! Luckily they are not calling themselves socialists.
Incidentally, Chomsky’s comment on the review if his book in this month’s Socialist Standard can be found in the Feedback section here;
