{"id":8057,"date":"2018-10-10T12:19:41","date_gmt":"2018-10-10T20:19:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/?p=8057"},"modified":"2018-10-13T12:22:49","modified_gmt":"2018-10-13T20:22:49","slug":"animals-and-socialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/2018\/10\/10\/animals-and-socialism\/","title":{"rendered":"Animals and Socialism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Jon Hochschartner<\/a><\/p>\n

An interview with activist Dayton Martindale.
\nfrom Splice Today<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dayton Martindale is a founding member of\u00a0the Democratic Socialists of America\u2019s Animal Liberation Working\u00a0Group. At the time of writing, his effort hasn\u2019t yet received formal recognition from the broader organization. The associate editor of\u00a0In These Times\u00a0<\/em>discussed capitalism\u2019s adaptability, animals in Marxist theory, and more in the following interview.<\/p>\n

SPLICE TODAY:\u00a0How would you describe your economic politics?<\/em><\/p>\n

DAYTON MARTINDALE: I identify loosely as a libertarian ecosocialist. I want to see the end of class and other hierarchies. In the short term that means developing and expanding worker- and\/or community-owned cooperatives aimed at social and ecological benefit; time banks and\/or local currencies to build community and give cash-poor people a way to make ends meet; gardens and community land trusts for democratically run food production and affordable cooperative housing.<\/p>\n

In the long term something like communism as envisioned by Marx or Kropotkin, or in Ursula K. Le Guin\u2019s novel\u00a0The Dispossessed<\/em>: from each according to ability, to each according to need, where social bonds and reciprocity replace conventional money and market relations. An important part of economic democracy is political democracy: confederated networks of local assemblies where communities are empowered to control their own lives.<\/p>\n

And another part of that economic vision is that it\u2019s ecological\u2014extraction is reined in, we use (on net) less energy and raw material, more stuff is reused, and the ethos is less consumerist.<\/p>\n

ST:\u00a0How have your views regarding animals been received on the socialist left?<\/em><\/p>\n

DM: A variety of responses. In college, a lot of my socialist friends were also vegetarian or vegan, or at least ecologically focused, so I thought most leftists cared about non-human life. Once I graduated I realized that wasn\u2019t the case.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had a lot of conversations with meat-eating leftists where they seem really receptive, even explicitly tell me they think my argument for animal liberation is correct or that they don\u2019t have a good counter-argument. Some want to continue the conversation and I think they\u2019re potential allies, but then there are others who don\u2019t really care to follow up and tell me they are content to remain, in their own words, hypocritical, inconsistent or irrational on this issue. Which always surprises me coming from people who are otherwise driven by strong moral and political principles, a willingness to question and challenge the status quo.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve also met many socialists who are personally vegetarians but don\u2019t necessarily integrate that into their politics. They don\u2019t think fighting for non-human animals is a high priority or winnable, necessarily.\u00a0But I\u2019ve also come into contact with a lot of people who share the politics of animal liberation and are excited to see it brought into left spaces. The other vegans have maybe felt isolated in socialist spaces in the past and, even if they can\u2019t get involved with the working group, support what we\u2019re trying to do.<\/p>\n

ST:\u00a0Does DSA have any official position on animal exploitation?<\/em><\/p>\n

DM: Not explicitly, to my knowledge. There is language on establishing \u201ca humane social order\u201d with \u201cnon-oppressive relationships\u201d opposed to \u201cenvironmental destruction,\u201d so to me if you put all that together you come to something like an opposition to exploiting non-human animals. But it\u2019s not explicit.<\/p>\n

Speaking for myself, I think changing that would be a high priority for the working group. A lot of those who expressed interest in joining thought our most important short-to-mid-term role would be to get the issue on the table (so to speak) within the organization. That could look like a lot of things: hosting educational potlucks, film screenings and\/or reading groups in local chapters; op-eds in DSA and other left publications; memes and tweets online. We could cook vegan food for DSA events and have little leaflets.<\/p>\n

Another direction is to talk with other working groups about a DSA purchasing guide: don\u2019t buy from companies that, say, are union-busters, or use prison labor, or are targeted by BDS. And maybe don\u2019t buy so many corpses of nonhuman animals. My dream is for animal liberation to be automatic in any socialist\/left politics. I don\u2019t think you can fight for justice and equality without including everyone, and everyone isn\u2019t just humans (though of course it includes humans in very significant ways).<\/p>\n

ST:\u00a0Is there any way in which speciesism is used to further human class exploitation?<\/em><\/p>\n

DM: I think there are a million ways in which speciesism and human supremacy further human class exploitation, and other oppressive hierarchies. In the industrial farm, for instance, as conditions grow worse for the captive non-humans, conditions grow worse for human workers as well. You sometimes see videos of workers abusing cows or pigs in a farm, and it\u2019s atrocious, but you have to wonder: is it entirely the worker\u2019s fault, here? Or is it really the corporation that is benefiting from exploiting both, from putting them in stressful, unhappy conditions that turn the human worker against the cow?<\/p>\n

Another example, one that goes both ways, is the undergrad or grad student in the lab. Their boss is often a professor who\u2019s been killing mice for decades and doesn\u2019t give it a second thought. The student is in some sense a precarious worker\u2014they don\u2019t want to question their boss for fear it means they can\u2019t advance in the field. So they\u2019ll start doing experiments and mass murdering these rodent prisoners and consciously buying into the speciesist culture of the lab until they\u2019re as hardened as the professor. Speciesism is normalized enough that there\u2019s little incentive to speak up, though I know from reading testimonials and also from talking to personal friends that undergrads often have hesitations when they first start vivisecting.<\/p>\n

More subtly, I think the very existence of the category of the \u201canimal\u201d\u2014the idea in our minds that some beings are less than, dumb brutes there to be used and exploited\u2014is something that has helped enable countless historical atrocities, and intersects in mutually reinforcing ways with how we classify race, gender, ability and class. To undo one of these hierarchies means confronting the logic of hierarchy itself.<\/p>\n

ST:\u00a0How would you respond to the suggestion that personal veganism is an individualistic solution to a systemic problem?<\/em><\/p>\n

DM: I think it\u2019s true. That doesn\u2019t mean personal veganism is useless. I\u2019ve been vegan for more than five years: it\u2019s a way of reaffirming my values and prefiguring the meatless world I\u2019m trying to build, and acts symbolically on people in my social networks. My vegan diet has led to conversations about animal exploitation, and I think changed a lot of people\u2019s minds. And contrary to popular belief, it\u2019s usually\u00a0them<\/em>\u00a0asking\u00a0me\u00a0<\/em>about veganism\u2014not the other way around.<\/p>\n

That said, vegan diets alone aren\u2019t the answer. It\u2019s going to take structural political and economic changes to win real liberation for animals. Individual choices can to an extent help feed into that, but it\u2019s also going to take massive amounts of collective action. I\u2019ve written about this question in a climate context\u2014is it worth flying less, driving less, eating less meat\u2014and come down in a similar place. It definitely is, but mainly insofar as it feeds political action and starts building the world we wish to see in the here and now, less for its direct effects (though those can matter too).<\/p>\n

ST:\u00a0Is vegan capitalism possible?<\/em><\/p>\n

DM: I strongly doubt it. On the one hand I do think capitalism is flexible. It adapted to abolition, suffrage, the New Deal and all these things. It\u2019s managed to appropriate aspects of left-wing movements from environmentalism to queer liberation. So maybe it could adapt to a phase-out of the meat, dairy, and egg industries. But even if it did, I don\u2019t think it would end species oppression\u2014vivisection may survive, for instance, and the killing and displacement of wild animals will go on apace.<\/p>\n

But really, I find such a vegan capitalism unlikely. So long as corporations are beholden to shareholders, ethics will take a back seat to profits. We may have capitalism with lots of vegan food in it, far more than we have now. But to actually get\u00a0rid<\/em>\u00a0of animal agriculture\u00a0I think it\u2019ll take democratic control of the economy, and even then it\u2019ll be a struggle.<\/p>\n

ST:\u00a0Jason Hribal has argued animals should be considered part of the proletariat. Bob Torres has said such a definition obscures the difference in revolutionary potential between animal and human laborers, and that animals are in fact super-exploited living commodities. Where do you stand in the debate?<\/em><\/p>\n

DM: I\u2019ve read Torres\u2019 book,\u00a0Making a Killing,\u00a0<\/em>but should say I\u2019m not an expert in this debate. However, I\u2019ve always liked to think of non-human animals as workers. They face some of the same challenges\u2014capitalism\u2019s drive for profits makes their \u201cjobs\u201d worse\u2014and large sectors of the economy run on their labor.<\/p>\n

And if you want to talk about revolutionary potential, there\u2019s some there. When cows escape from slaughterhouses they\u2019ll often go viral on social media, even among beef eaters. The escape is a worker refusing to cooperate\u2014a wildcow strike?\u2014and, through that refusal, gaining public support. Or look at how orcas\u2019 refusal to cooperate have put SeaWorld on the hot seat. Maybe it\u2019s not the same as human organized labor, but it\u2019s worth looking at.\u00a0That\u2019s not to say that \u201csuper-exploited living commodities\u201d isn\u2019t a helpful concept, but I wouldn\u2019t give up on the worker framing.<\/p>\n

The last thing I\u2019ll say is that different animals might play different roles in capitalism. A goldfish in a little glass bowl is different than a seeing eye dog is different than a circus elephant. I\u2019d need to think more about what those differences suggest as to strategies for liberation.<\/p>\n

ST:\u00a0British socialist Richard Seymour has said the relationship between animals and humans in Marxism is under-theorized. Do you agree?<\/em><\/p>\n

DM: Definitely! Perhaps what\u2019s most lacking is a theory of change and some vision of what we\u2019re working toward. There\u2019s a book\u00a0Zoopolis\u00a0<\/em>that has a creative sketch of a liberal vegan legal and political framework, and it\u2019s worth reading, but I haven\u2019t seen an equivalent radical text. How do Marxist theories of change envision transforming the position of nonhuman animals? Maybe there\u2019s stuff out there, but not that I\u2019ve encountered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jon Hochschartner An interview with activist Dayton Martindale. from Splice Today Dayton Martindale is a founding member of\u00a0the Democratic Socialists of America\u2019s Animal Liberation Working\u00a0Group. At the time of writing, his effort hasn\u2019t yet received formal recognition from the broader organization. The associate editor of\u00a0In These Times\u00a0discussed capitalism\u2019s adaptability, animals in Marxist theory, and more … <\/p>\n

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