Tag Archives: Capitalism

The Nation-State and Animal Emancipation*

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Marv Wheale                                  

One of the main functions of the nation-state and its layers of government is to protect private property rights, at least for those with adequate income to afford property.  Nonhuman animals are embedded in the private property regime.  The state treats them as somewhat dissimilar to owning inanimate assets through the exercise of anti-cruelty laws.

The animal rights movement attempts to change the property status of animals to those of persons. The trouble with this line of activism is that even if animal property law could be undone most animals would still have lower-class status. The state would continue to allow these inferior animals as food while maintaining humane treatment stewardship laws. No laws would be enacted to prevent human animals from utilizing such animals because of the state’s obligations to cultural speciesism and capitalism’s animal agriculture and processing industries.   

By comparison, state-legislated eradication of capitalism’s labor exploitation would not end the subordination of labor to capital in the workplace.  Adequate pay and working conditions would put some limits on employers but not permit full democracy on the job.  The class structure of capital – the owners of production – which makes labor produce surplus profit for bosses, holds fast.  Capitalist-state altruism to other animals discloses a similar inequality.

This doesn’t mean ending the private property position of animals is unimportant. It indicates we are prone to distorting what can be done by state reforms (one step at a time ideology) in the liberation of animals.

For at least several reasons, the state by its very creation is not a neutral mediator that can be swung in any direction.  For one thing, it has often formed from the theft of Indigenous peoples’ land subordinating their authority in political decision-making. Second, the state is integral to reproducing capitalism and with it, the cultural customs of meat, dairy, eggs, and other animal uses no matter which political party is elected. More, the state is a male fabrication that depends on controlling women’s bodies to populate the nation and sustain capitalism by giving birth and providing childcare to prepare future workers for the citizenry and economy.  

Thus the state can’t be carried over to an equality-based society.  We have to conceive of abolishing the state – similar to what was done to feudalism and monarchical rule in many parts of the world – not making it nicer while leaving the underlying burdensome structures intact.

On the other hand, we can’t simply theorize to replace the state with organized free associations.  Human-animal dominance, male authority, white primacy, colonization, economic classes and ableism could easily be carried over from the former system by habitual conscious and unconscious attitudes/ways when organizing new paradigms.  A vegan feminist democratic framework for leveling hierarchies is essential to overcoming these injustices because it openly rejects them as nonstarters in the design process. Vegan feminism always cautions against working to halt human-animal imperialism in isolation of class, male, white, abled, gender binary, and heteronormative dominance. Many other social movements don’t have this expansive grasp of reality.  

Vegan feminism also sees the various structures of inequality within any given nation-state as connected to the multi-state apparatus.  States are not self-sufficient.  They depend on other states to cooperate, have a rule of law and advance trade in the global market.  Though some states have more power, they all mediate nationalism, internationalism, war/imperialism and capitalist accumulation across the earth.  They provide the official legal framework for organized violence against animals and human animals. 

Since state power operates internationally, worldwide solidarity must be imperative to our politics of total liberation, with special attentiveness to major state powers.  The cessation of animal subjugation, oppression among human animals, wars and ecological collapse depends on it.  

Clearly, the end of states is unattainable at present.  It requires long-term and complex collective work.  For the short term, the best that we might be able to accomplish is to simply raise awareness through the channels available to us learning praxis as we go.    

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 A Guaranteed Livable Income for Fostering Social-Ecological Justice

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Marv Wheale

Climate upheaval, environmental devastation, poverty, male preeminence, white primacy, normative gender identity dominance, abled superiority and human supremacy all coexist with the prevailing mode of production and life – capitalism.  This system, invented by rich white men, categorically undermines animals’ and human animals’ lives through class divisions and interactions with the other stated hierarchies.  A revolutionary societal remaking is thereby required to end these oppressions and abolish the current top-down market economy.  

Economic inequality has denied people – particularly black, brown, queer and disabled  – a healthy ecosphere and an equitable share of global wealth.  These people live mainly in the global south (many in the northern countries too). They along with resource extraction have made enormous profits for foreign capital while receiving meager financial returns. The poor have contributed little on a per-capita and lower-class basis to climate disruption yet suffer most of the consequences.  

The upper classes consume and invest in the economy, the most, causing high carbon emissions. The cost of justice therefore should be borne by them, the primary polluters and beneficiaries, who lead the profit and growth-oriented hierarchical system.

Social-ecological restitution must also be directed at nonhuman animals used as commodified goods in the structure of production and consumption.  Their rights have been systemically violated and the crimes have added to biosphereic degradation.  

To realistically accomplish the purpose of system change we have to first take non-reform reform steps that don’t re-legitimize these overbearing institutions, like bland reforms do.

A Guaranteed Livable Income, regardless of employment or unemployment status, (also known as Universal Basic Income) is rapidly gaining social approval in dozens of countries. It could be a way of allocating the redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor, through taxation.  And it has the potential to reduce harm to nature.  There is already enough wealth in the world economy to meet everyone’s needs without more earth-damaging growth in economic output. 

A GLI would afford employees to work less, translating into lower emissions and pollution from decreased production.  Moreover, let’s not forget that numerous workers are being dislodged by capital’s use of robotic technology, especially artificial intelligence, making GLI adoption extra urgent.

To ensure the globalization of a GLI there would have to be a transference of wealth within and from affluent nations to poorer ones by way of tax justice and tax havens to advance the sustainability and equity goals of the impoverished.

Initially, to achieve major social-ecological improvement a GLI has to secure the basic needs of every person to fully participate in society.  Only then will people have the choice to reduce or withdraw from working in the disastrous compulsory capitalist model of production and its animal reproductive/slaughtering industries.  Our fear of financial insecurity and radical social change would be minimized, opening up time and creative energy for pursuing socially and ecologically sound production and lifestyles.  

If other than human animal liberation, grounded in veganism, is not included in the transformation then the democratic process is an exclusionary facade and environmental goals will be thwarted.

All the above is an impetus for the GLI movement, the animal rights movement, the ecology movement, the feminist movement, the LGBTQI+ movement, the antiracist/colonialist/capitalist movement and the disability movement to join forces to construct a world of equality for life’s beings.

Really Knowing and Interfering in Reality

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Marv Wheale

Species are socially composed by human animals into a vertical chain of worth.  Species, gender, class, race, ability, size and age structures of nations are material extensions of patriarchal logic.  Vegan Feminism is the way onward and upward.

Assigned “edible animals” have a unique type of non-status in the species pyramid of patriarchy that is obscured by generic terms like speciesism and human supremacy.  These animals share no allowable claims to personhood and space; they are treated as a horde not as individuals; most of the places they inhabit are unlivable.

Another feature of consumable animals is that they are a mainstay of “men” made structures across time and location.  Whichever human animal society you study, – tribal, spiritual, religious, monarchical, feudal, nation state, capitalist, etc – has been built on the use of these animals and their secretions.

Capitalism, for instance, is dependent on food designated animals to achieve and reproduce itself.  Inducting them is not simply adding another product to the economic system.  Eating flesh (and plants) fuels both capital and labor to carry out their unequal power roles.  Huge profits are made by businessmen in the purchase and sale of bodies, dismembered parts, human labor, land, buildings, machinery, insurance, feed grains, fertilizers, water systems, fossil fuels, electrical power, transport, veterinarian skills, pharmaceuticals, human healthcare (to deal with the symptoms of eating other animals) and funeral industry services. The wealth gained is spent in part to boost more growth in buying and selling death, contributing to the expansion of the whole economy. 

Some theorists think capital is structurally indifferent to edibly purposed animals in the process of production and reproduction.  The hypothesis maintains that capitalism has no innate requirement for animals but merely makes use of them as opportunistic instruments to create another market for profits.  If there was no significant demand for animals in the future due to growing consumer awareness of animal suffering and of impacts on the biosphere, the system would move on to capture more lucrative ventures.

Historically however, in lived practice, “extra-economic” inequalities have always been part of the inner workings of capitalism and key to its dominating and alienating success.  Animal and human animal subjugation is a legacy from pre-capitalist times, a social inheritance baked into capitalism’s nature.  The economic model evolves past oppressive ties in varied ways to suit its own drive for accumulation.

The capitalist productivist mode could not endure without the nation state to regulate it.  Unrestricted market relations would end in a destructive free for all in an economically lawless world.  

In relation to consumable animals, state entities mediate the production and reproduction of such animals for capitalists.  Welfare state provisions/subsidies keep the system hardy, along with cruelty prevention laws (extolled by animal advocacy nonprofits), to ensure animals remain captive to capital use and keep the public content. 

What might we learn about social transfiguration when we start with the premise that eating animals is a keystone to the existence of capitalism, nation-building and male dominance not merely a correlation?  Could it be the adoption of Vegan Feminism, the commitment to veganism and to solidarity with anti-patriarchal-capitalist-racist organizations?

Nonhuman animal welfare fixtures and their fixations have omitted this assessment altogether.  They have dominated public policy shaping for nonhuman animal exploitation redress, without reference to the interconnections between patriarchal capitalism and the consumption of other animals.  Their short-sighted step-by-step proposals to the government and industry are otherwise known as incrementalism and siloing. Championing veganism and human equality coalitions in unison, as the solutions to animal and human animal oppression, go against the establishment’s standard practice of fundraising, publication, and lobbying to reduce harm.  What becomes of redress when mediocrity and decontextualizing injustice are the plan for change?

A Vegan Feminist paradigm recognizes eaten animals’ full structural position in the world through authentic ways of seeing, knowing and interceding.

*The revelations of this piece are not original to me

The Sexual Exploitation of Dogs

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By Julia Jagodka

Who doesn’t love puppies? They’re adorable, playful and free-spirited, yet most of these cute pups that people adopt (or buy) are products of a cruel chain of events. According to the ASPCA, female dogs are expected to be ready to mate when they are about 6 months old and are forced to mate for the profit of the owners. Too many loving puppies will be the result of forced and abusive mating. Think about it; this very closely resembles child prostitution in a nonhuman sense.

There are “farms” called puppy mills that are notorious for profiting from “breeding” dogs. These puppy mills are often overcrowded and unsanitary; all unhealthy for puppies confined in small areas and forced to breed. The ASPCA explains that puppies who are bought from puppy mills are more likely to have heart complications, as they are traumatized by the treatment they received at those puppy “farms.”

In addition to heart disease, puppy mill puppies are prone to other congenital and hereditary conditions including blood and respiratory disorders. Puppy mill puppies often arrive in “pet stores” and in their new homes with diseases or infirmities ranging from parasites to pneumonia. Because puppies are removed from their siblings and mothers at a young age, they also often suffer from fear, anxiety and behavioral problems.

The female canines are forced to breed over and over again to fuel society’s demand for purebred puppies, meaning that capitalism is running on the female dogs. Yet this isn’t only happening with dogs, but also with chickens forced to produce eggs, cows forced to produce milk, and pregnant horses forced to produce estrogen; all female bodies are exploited for the profit of our capitalist society.

Moreover, a female dog is actually called a bitch. This is more than a technical term for a female dog; it has larger social meaning. Such language is often used as an insult to demean their status. Its pejorative usage intersects with sexism and heterosexism, because it is also levied as an insult towards a woman or even non-conforming men. A man’s first instinctive response towards a woman who deceives or insults him is to call her a ‘bitch’ (Wrenn 2017). Why do people feel the need to impose these ‘societal norms’ onto dogs and other inhuman animals?

Female dogs are not the only animals who are sexually exploited. Male dogs are also used for “breeding,” of course. It is not uncommon for people to post advertisements of their “studs” online to secure them a mate to produce more purebred pups. Not unlike human men, studs are supposed to be muscular and sexually virile. If these “breeders” can’t get them to naturally reciprocate, then it gets even creepier. There are actual machines, called ‘mating stands’ that enforce this process of breeding if the canines are being uncooperative, or the female is too big for the male (Bailing Out Benji 2017).

There is also something classist and racist about the fetishization of purebreds. Dogs that are not purebred, dubbed ‘mutts’, are often tossed aside, unwanted, and put into shelters. Scruffy mutts, who deserve just as much love as any other dog, are ignored. With this in mind, intersectionality theory is also relevant to canines because of the devaluing of disability. Puppy mills can produce physical deformities and mental disabilities since there is inbreeding occurring. Some dogs are killed instantly after birth because of perceived defects (Fackler 2006). If a dog has a physical disability that reduces their chances of being ‘purchased’ or adopted, they are likely to be put into a shelter or “euthanized.”

Humans are sexualizing and objectifying these animals. Why do humans feel the need to control dogs in such ways? People like the feeling of superiority. People (particularly men) begin to believe they are superior to them, which gives them a justification to exploit them for their profit (Luke 2007, p. 6). Breeding contributes to the homelessness of future puppies. Present day shelters have now been turned into ‘landfills’, with canines often kept in lonely cages, and, for the majority who enter shelters, these dogs will likely be killed. People are treating these canines like puppets and controlling their lives and destinies.

Although humans and dogs are very different biologically, we are more similar than we think. Human females endure sexual objectification at work by male co-workers, or even in restaurants by strangers. Female dogs, meanwhile, are sexually objectified by their “breeders.” This sexual objectification extends to males as well. In “breeding facilities,” males are consistently judged based on masculine gender norms relating to sexual performance. Both male and female dogs are extorted for the “breeders’” profit.

All species should be able to live in unison, and humans should not take advantage of nonhuman animals. The exploitation of canines should be socially rejected. If people continue to protest these puppy mills, hopefully they will go out of business and cease operation. Without puppy mills in play, more potential dog purchasers will resort to adoption. Rather than purchasing dogs like objects, adopting a best friend should be the first action. Puppy mills should be completely disbanded considering that the industry inherently exploits female dogs through forced “breeding” and objectifies these animals by making them commodities.

 

Works Cited

Fackler, Martin. 2006. “Japan, Home of the Cute and Inbred Dog.” The New York Times, 27 Dec. 2006.

Luke, Brian. 2007. Brutal: Manhood and the Exploitation of Animals. University of Illinois Press.

ASPCA. N.d. Puppy Mills.

Bailing Out Benji. 2017. “The Sexual Perversion Behind Breeding.” Bailing Out Benji, April 20.

Wrenn, Corey. 2017. Module 11: Intersections with Other Animals.

Julia Jagodka is currently a first year student at Monmouth University that is majoring in Biology. After college, she hopes to pursue a career in dentistry. She grew up in Avenel, NJ. Jagodka loves animals, and even helps in nursing feral kittens and finding them new, loving homes. In her free time, she loves to draw and paint. Jagodka is the oldest of her two siblings and that is why she hopes to be a good role model for them while they grow up. Julia speaks fluent Polish, as both of her parents immigrated from Poland about 19 years ago. She had also attended Polish School every Saturday for the last 10 years in order to perfect her Polish. Overall, she is a very enjoyable an engaging person to be around.

whyveganism.com

“Obsessive” Vegans: The Politics of Vegan Ableism

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In the bid to become more effective activists, it is important to acknowledge differences in identity and access that characterize the Nonhuman Animal rights movement’s diverse constituency. Although recent publications such as Sunaura Taylor’s Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation have drawn attention to the many compelling intersections between speciesism and ableism, it remains the case that the movement at large is insensitive to the experiences of non-able-bodied persons.

As I explored in a 2015 publication with Disability & Society, both the Nonhuman Animal rights movement and its countermovement engage in ableist frameworks to dismiss the legitimacy of one another’s position. For instance, speciesists regularly refer to liberationists as “crazy,” while liberationists have been known to employ labels of “sick” or “schizophrenic” in retaliation. Since publishing this article, I have noticed that “obsessiveness” is another identity under contention. As with “craziness” and “sickness,” “obsessiveness” becomes a flashpoint for both sides of the animal rights debate, while actual disabled persons are erased in the crossfire.

Problematizing mental illness resonates in an ableist society, and Nonhuman animal rights organizations too willingly adopt resonate frames regardless of the negative consequences for those whose identity is objectified. Vegan Outreach, the Humane Society of the United States, and other professionalized charities frequently chastise vegan liberationists for “obsessing” over animal ingredients in a self-centered effort to achieve “personal purity.” In doing so, they pull on social stigma against self-focused behaviors and anxiety disorders to shame radical contenders into silence, or at least to dismiss them as lesser-than in the movement hierarchy.

While it is unfortunate that Western society stigmatizes disability, it is truly shameful that the Nonhuman Animal rights movement, a movement that purports to represent compassion and justice, should exploit ableism for its gain. When vegans call nonvegans “psycho” for consuming flesh to advance the movement, they trade on ableism. When nonprofits call vegan liberationists “obsessive” for finding fault in reformist approaches to speciesism, they are doing the same.

In other cases, OCD is trivialized in the pursuit of profit in a movement that has been co-opted by corporate interests. Take for instance the vegan makeup company Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics: “The first step is admitting you have a problem,” says company founder David Klasfeld, “I did and the result is a line obsessively crafted from the finest ingredients possible, to celebrate the driving compulsions of makeup fanatics everywhere.”

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is not simply a qualifier to denote extremism or fanaticism. It is a real medical condition that impacts real people.  While level of severity varies and some individuals are able to live healthfully in an able-bodied world, the International OCD Foundation emphasizes that:

Those tortured with OCD are desperately trying to get away from paralyzing, unending anxiety…

I also wish to emphasize that ableism is a feminist issue. Anxiety disorders disproportionately impact women, a demographic that happens to be most receptive to anti-speciesist messages and dominates the movement’s rank-and-file. This predisposition to anxiety is not a biological happenstance. It is, in large part, a survival strategy that develops in response to strain within a patriarchal social structure.

Thus, vegans would do well to lend solidarity to stigmatized groups in forgoing inconsiderate ableist references to all things determined to be bad (“obsessive” vegans) and trivial (“obsessively” vegan makeup). Ableist claimsmaking is tactically impotent as it is bound to offend and alienate the disabled community that makes up a considerable portion of the Nonhuman Animal rights movement’s constituency.

 

Corey Lee WrennDr. Wrenn is Lecturer of Sociology. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology with Colorado State University in 2016. She received her M.S. in Sociology in 2008 and her B.A. in Political Science in 2005, both from Virginia Tech. She was awarded Exemplary Diversity Scholar, 2016 by the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity. She served as council member with the American Sociological Association’s Animals & Society section (2013-2016) and was elected Chair in 2018. She serves as Book Review Editor to Society & Animals and has contributed to the Human-Animal Studies Images and Cinema blogs for the Animals and Society Institute. She has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals including the Journal of Gender Studies, Feminist Media Studies, Disability & Society, Food, Culture & Society, and Society & Animals. In July 2013, she founded the Vegan Feminist Network, an academic-activist project engaging intersectional social justice praxis. She is the author of A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory (Palgrave MacMillan 2016).

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Dove “Real Beauty” is a Real Nightmare for Animals

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Dove Real Beauty Veganism
Palm oil is produced by extremely exploited, practically enslaved humans in developing countries. Production is also extremely destructive to the environment, and orangutan populations, in particular, have been hit hard.  Many Nonhuman Animal rights activists have stopped consuming palm oil and have urged vegan companies to switch out the offending ingredient.

Recently feminists have joined the dialogue as well with parallel campaigns against palm oil. Unfortunately, their claimsmaking tends to overlook the intersectional nature of this social problem as their efforts tend to focus on nonvegan products. Without vegan praxis, feminism undermines itself.

orangutan-orphan-palm-oil

Organizations such as Fem2pt0, for instance, have targeted Dove (a product of Unilever) insisting that the soap brand to go “slavery-free” and drop the problematically-sourced palm oil.  Yet, even with the most ethically produced palm oil, forced labor remains fundamental to Dove products.

Most name brand soaps available in major supermarkets rely on the oppression of vulnerable Nonhuman Animals. Unless the soap is specifically marked vegan or vegetable-sourced, chances are very good that the soap is composed of slaughterhouse renderings. That is, one of the main ingredients in Dove is the body tissues of Nonhuman Animals. These “ingredients” never gave consent, never received compensation, and ultimately lost their lives in the exchange. This violence should be identified within the feminist critique of Unilever and similar corporations, but, unfortunately, it is not.

Consider also that Unilever, like many name brand cosmetic companies, is a company that tests on Nonhuman Animals.  Unilever claims to be moving away from vivisection, but it continues to test nonetheless.  Nonhuman Animals are tortured with abrasions and blinding with the chemicals and detergents found in nonvegan soaps.  Many companies hold trials in which animals are force-fed ingredients until at least half of the sample population dies to determine toxicity.  Dove soap is always sourced from oppression, torture, and death, palm oil or no. These products are made of the bodies of the nonconsenting, from the products of the nonconsenting, and are tested on the bodies of the nonconsenting.

Dove has a weak record in demonstrating its concern for the suffering of others. Remember the feminist Facebook protest of May 2013?  Because Facebook was unresponsive to the rampant misogyny and violence against women and girls promoted throughout the platform, feminists began to pressure its advertisers instead.  Many companies quickly pulled out, but Dove stubbornly remained with Facebook.  Neither has Dove been popular with feminists with its shallow representation of women’s self-acceptance in the “real beauty” advertisements. Everyone is beautiful to Dove, but not quite beautiful enough to forgo its beauty products.

Dove ad featuring seven women in their underwear happy and posing

Ethical consumption is, in other words, far from simplistic and many angles must be examined. For those feminists who are concerned about the suffering of others who are commodified in the products we consume, it is necessary to consider veganism.

Step one? Go vegan and dump Dove; switch to vegan brands.  Affordable vegetable glycerin soaps are available in most supermarkets, and countless vegan companies offer amazing upscale soaps and body washes as well. Just steer clear of LUSH, it has a history of exploiting women and perpetuating rape culture.

 

Corey Lee WrennDr. Wrenn is Lecturer of Sociology. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology with Colorado State University in 2016. She received her M.S. in Sociology in 2008 and her B.A. in Political Science in 2005, both from Virginia Tech. She was awarded Exemplary Diversity Scholar, 2016 by the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity. She served as council member with the American Sociological Association’s Animals & Society section (2013-2016) and was elected Chair in 2018. She serves as Book Review Editor to Society & Animals and has contributed to the Human-Animal Studies Images and Cinema blogs for the Animals and Society Institute. She has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals including the Journal of Gender Studies, Feminist Media Studies, Disability & Society, Food, Culture & Society, and Society & Animals. In July 2013, she founded the Vegan Feminist Network, an academic-activist project engaging intersectional social justice praxis. She is the author of A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory (Palgrave MacMillan 2016).

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