ALB
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One thing we are all agreed on here is that each species is unique. Which is why it is invalid to draw conclusions about “human nature” from the way other animals behave, even other apes. If they are aggressive, hierarchical, territorial (or not) that does mean that humans are or have to be “by nature”. The argument from the behaviour of one species to that of another is invalid.
Desmond Morris called his notorious book The Naked Ape. In fact a more appropriate description of the human species would be The Clothed Ape as this brings out the species’s unique feature of being able to consciously change and improve their environment as a result precisely of their biological nature. Humans are culture-bearing, tool-making animals whose actual behaviour can and does vary immensely as they adapt to getting a living in different environmental and technological conditions.
I know I keep on repeating this but humans really are the only species capable of saving the plant and other animals. Ironically, though biologically humans are omnivores, our capacity for flexible behaviour means that some can choose to be herbivores. Personally, I don’t think all or even a majority of humans will adopt that lifestyle or need to. But no other animal is capable of deciding to give up hunting and eating other animals if doing so is part of their uniqueness.
That is why we shouldn’t run humans down by comparing them to bacteria or suggesting they deserve to become extinct as misanthropes are won’t to do.
Ok. Thanks. I will see if I can dig out that orange booklet.
The other views you list may well be examples of “speciesism” but you are not saying that they were expressed in the Standard, are you? It is inconceivable that views like those below would ever get past any editorial committee. In fact I can’t conceive of anyone expressing them except as a provocation.
A speciesist would see the extinction of all the gorillas on the planet as less of a tragedy than the death of one single human.
A speciesist will mock a man grieving the loss of a beloved nonhuman, and scoff, “It’s only a dog!”
A speciesist will say that if a trophy hunter is about to kill a lion, and the only way to stop the hunter is to kill him, then it is best to let him shoot the lion.
I don’t think most of those arguments have ever been expressed in the Socialist Standard.
Only three on the list offer some albeit vague details, one of which is to an internal document (and so did not appear in the Standard). It would be useful to have had an exact reference about “evolution’s supreme achievement” but even that would be an one-off. And that would hardly make it a view that was “rife”.
The remaining article does not “mock” those who believe that animals have or should have “rights” but is a general criticism of the concept of “rights”, offering an alternative theory as to why humans should not be cruel to other animals. It is not about vivisection and the subject is not even mentioned. Why would we want to mock those against it as that’s a reasonable view that most people share?
Anyway people here can judge for themselves as here it is:
The basic message and practical application of both animal righters and the article is “don’t be cruel” whoever said it and whatever the philosophical justification behind it.
Another leftist plea not to not vote for Biden:
https://www.nytimes.com./2020/05/13/opinion/socialists-support-biden-election.html
Some of the arguments he sets out to refute are ones we make too. For instance;
”The two major parties are merely the right and left wings of the capitalist system. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.”
Precisely.
What is this “speciesism” that is supposed to be rife in the Party and the Socialist Standard? It seems to be a philosophical theory, concocted by animal-rightist philosopher Peter Singer to morally justify being a vegetarian. Animals should have the same “rights” as humans so that eating them is as morally reprehensible as cannibalism.
But of course “rights” is a bourgeois concept and as we, as Marxists, deny that humans have rights we can’t be accused of favouritism towards humans when we say that animals haven’t either. I hasten to add that this does not mean that cruelty to humans and animals (or cannibalism) is ok. It merely means that this has to be condemned on some other basis than “rights”.
It’s true that most party members are not vegetarians and that the Party is not a vegetarianist party. So of course you are not going to find articles advocating this or condemning meat-eating in the Standard. (You will of course find articles condemning the mistreatment of animals under capitalism.)
So, the charge of “speciesism” is ill-founded, not to say specious.
Wez, I think we ought to challrenge him on his claim that Marxists are committed to the ladder theory of evolution leading to humans at the top as superior to all other animals. I think he’s probably picked this up from some anti-Marxist “animal-rightist” writer who has mistaken the Leninist ideology of the old USSR for Marxism (which of course he should know, and in fact does know, is not Marxism at all).
So, if he doesn’t mean “Leninism” when he says “Marxism”, he would seem to be claiming that this is the view of the Party or Party members. If so, we are going to have to ask him to quote chapter and verse. Stephen J. Gould, who he admires and is a critic of the ladder theory, is also quite popular amongst Party members (despite his being soft of religion). Here, for instance, is a review of one of his books.
Incidentally, that book review quotes this passage from Gould (which is making the same point as Pannekoek):
“the biological basis of human uniqueness leads us to reject biological determinism. Our large brain is the biological foundation of intelligence: intelligence is the ground of culture: and cultural transmission builds a new mode of evolution more effective than Darwinian processes in its limited realm—the “inheritance” and modification of learned behaviour.”
To denigrate the human species is counter-productive from his own seeming main concern of wanting to protect other animals since humans, thanks to the nature of their brain and the culture it permits, are the only animal that can take action to do this. Humans are the hope of other animals and of the biosphere generally.
Of course he can rail against humans and the working class for not doing what they could in this respect but that’s not going to get the world any nearer to socialism, as the only framework within which humans can act to save the planet and other animals on it.
I agree your argument could be sustained ie knowing that the poor would suffer most the government took steps to ensure it didn’t spread from poor areas (but did they know that any more than they knew it would affect men more than women?)
But I still don’t think that’s could be the real reason. It is much more likely to have to do with what might have happened to the economy and health care system if they did nothing. Also doing nothing would not have been possible politically. If any government had tried this here it would have been driven out of office by popular and parliamentary protests. Even now they are having difficulty in persuading all those who could return to work to do so.
Good advice when you are in a hole: stop digging !
Here is how the Dutch Marxist Anton Pannekoek put it in his 1944 Anthropogenesis.
Seems ok to me (except not saying that humans are animals too) and the points I have been trying to make.
”There are thee main characteristics which differentiate between man and animal. Firstly, there is abstract thinking. Although animals do show a certain measure of intelligence, and though mental processes do take place with them which have their seat in highly developed brains, the capacity for abstract thought is only found in man. This is the thinking in concepts which has elevated him to so high a level of theoretical knowledge and science. Secondly there is speech, there is the use of language. Although animals do produce sounds intended for mutual information, with man alone these sounds have significance as names, and thus are the basis of a high spiritual culture. Thirdly there is the use of tools made by himself. Even though animals do make use of dead things from their natural surroundings as aids to their own support, with man this has become an habitual use of implements specially made for a purpose and according to a preconceived plan. These implements are the basis of an ever growing technique, and therefore of our entire material civilization.”
If he wasn’t using the word “bacteria” as a term of abuse, why did he use it to describe humans? I never did biology in school but I think that biologists divide life-forms into kingdoms, one of which is animals and another bacteria. So it is inaccurate to describe humans, as animals, as bacteria. But in this case it is more than a error of taxonomy (for which Bijou’s observer from another planet might be excused). It was clearly to intimate that humans were just as “lowly” as bacteria, an appeal to the popular ascription of inferiority to bacteria.
Now he’s calling humans bacteria. He criticises the view that humans are superior to other animals (which nobody here has argued) and says that the correct attitude it that humans are just different as are all species (which is true) but his language reveals that he actually thinks that humans are inferior.
But language is no more unique to humans than tool-making (since other animals do use sounds and signs to communicate with each other). Human language, however is qualitatively different in that it is based on abstracting in the mind parts of experience and naming them; it is with these named abstractions (“symbols”) that humans think enabling, as you say, humans to pass this on to others especially future generations, so that knowledge accumulates.
It is the same with tool-making. Some animals do this but on nothing like the scale that humans do; which explains the evolution of human society in line with the development of tool-making and tool-using.
So I think that a visitor from another planet would classify humans as unique not only in terms of language and thinking based on abstractions but also in terms of the extent of their tool-making as a result of this. If political correctness didn’t exist on their planet they might even venture to describe humans as being better at this than all other animals.
Who said that the lockdown was imposed for the benefit of the “middle class” and “petty bourgeoisie “:
I never understood the title of this thread. I think it is meant to suggest that animalism is a bad thing but according to this, it doesn’t sound so bad:
”Animalism is a communist philosophy of all of the animals being treated equal and sharing equally in both the responsibilities and rewards of the farm. Communism is defined as follows: Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, stateless and revolutionary socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production.”
