Animal oppression and capitalism
LET'S START with the most important and complicated aspect of Paul D'Amato's article ("Socialism and 'animal rights'"): rights and liberation. What "biological and physical attributes" do you attribute to the right to life? I attribute the attribute of being alive...plus the many other protections we put on animals.
Does this mean swatting a bug should be considered murder? Of course not. But rights are not only those like speech or assembly or press, like D'Amato so "hilariously" thought in his head. And liberation is achieving these rights which are deserved. The liberation of a cow may be to have equal rights as a dog.
How can D'Amato deny these definitions? Because they aren't the exact same as people's rights and workers' liberation? There is more to the world than this. We are not the only ones living on Earth.
Animals do have a "will to live" in the same way we do. Do you think we strive for survival only because of our oversized brains? No. All animals strive for survival to pass on their genes to future generations, otherwise none of us would be here. Because the animal doesn't know the difference between a truck to take them for slaughter and one that takes them to a happy farm does not mean they don't have a "will to live." In addition to the "will to live," as opposed to your claim in the article, many animals do have culture.
One of the most offensive points D'Amato uses is the fact that high-ranking Nazis were for animal rights and were vegetarians. I fail to see what this has to do with anything. Nazis also provided universal health care (for those who "deserved it") and were environmentalists, but so what?
Using Hitler's vegetarianism is straight out of the extreme right's playbook and lacks any substance. To view living and thinking beings as commodities is far closer to Nazi thinking than seeing all living creatures as complex and beautiful beings who deserve to live their lives.
Another interesting view from D'Amato is that a being must be able to fight for its rights in order to deserve them. Now, I assume he doesn't believe this, but it is exactly his point in this article regarding animals. I'm sure now that I've phrased it directly, everyone realizes that we would not say the same for humans who are unable to fight for their rights.
Regarding the comment of whether to save the dog or the person: who would you save, someone you know or someone you don't know? Someone you know. We are "programmed" this way through evolution, and it is similar to why normal people (many in People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are definitely loons) would save a human over a non-human. However, many would be hard-pressed to choose between a stranger and a loving pet.
Also, why is it we eat so much meat and drink so much dairy? It is a product of the capitalist system. The lobbying by the meat and dairy industries to get the government to institute programs to convince us these things are necessary and necessary at high levels--like the "great" statistic of high levels of osteoporosis, but high milk intake.
It is my opinion that the very fact that we are so different from other species due to our advanced brains means that we have the ability to live our lives with as little impact on other species as possible. Or a beneficial impact, such as cats, who domesticated themselves. Some cultures do rely on fish or other animals for survival, which changes what is "right" or "wrong"--it is not universal. But we do not need to consume meat or dairy to survive, and yet we do. Isn't life "too short to make others' shorter"?
This doesn't mean animal rights are a part of socialism. A main difference is animal liberation, as opposed to workers' liberation, will not come with their own hands (barring some freak evolution). But they are an oppressed group whose oppression is intertwined with capitalism. And they deserve our recognition of their rights.
Tristan Sloughter, Chicago
