Carrol Cox wrote:
> > Do you believe it is OK then to inflict pain and death on animals for
> > cosmetic, human purposes, or to raise them in horrid conditions for food?
>
> There is simply no connection between the bizarre concept of "animal
> rights" and the rather important question inflicting pain on animals. "Rights"
Whatever. Have you read anything on the philosophy of animal rights?
Are you one of those leftists who doesn't give a shit about the politics of everyday life? By this I mean those leftists who see food politics issues as being something unimportant to the "revolution", or as lifestylist, or as something that can be postponed.
> are meaningless except in terms of political struggle, and animals are
> hardly going to engage in political struggle. That does *not* mean, however,
> that the question of animal pain is not socially/politically important for
> humans.
You need to read up on animal rights philosophy before you narrow this discussion down to "political struggle."
> Now the human species does need for survival small amounts of
> trace elements in animal protein. (Complete vegetarianism may
> be adopted safely, since a person has achieved a lifetime supply
> of this element by birth -- unless the mother is a vegetarian.)
What? Nonsense. Human need protein and trace elements, both of which can be obtained from plants.
So
> some domestication of animals (at least for dairy products) goes
> without saying. But more: water and other ecologoical concerns
> make it essential that before too many more generations vast
> areas of the world (e.g., the great plains) not be kept under
> cultivation. That means that a rather large part of the protein
> potentially available for humans (unless we want the desertification
> of half the planet through grain cultimation) will exist in the
> form of grasses that cannot be directly ingested by humans, but
> must be processed through animals.
Your argument here has some merit--I use a similar argument with vegan animal rights friends. Domesticated animals are pretty important to the ecosystem of a farm, especially organic farms. But there is no dietary need for dairy products. Consuming dairy products is a luxury which does include incidental dietary needs. After all, humans are one of the few, if not only, species which consumes milk products after weaning.
> A healthy working class movement would incorporate demands for
> the humane treatment of animals, if for no other reason than that habits
> of brutality are incompatible with solidarity -- but one can only have
> contempt for those who would impose a vegetarian diet on the human
> species. The important political question for the left is how the divisive
> and contemptible activities of extreme "animal rightists" can be kept
> from disrupting the movement. The racist attacks on the Makah in
> the name of animal rights is an instance of such contemptible politics.
You say a working class movement "would," while I say it does. If you aren't doing it now, then you won't do it later. We can't postpone these issues until after the revolution, for similar reasons to why we can't postpone opposition to biotech food until later. In the biotech case, if you don't fight it now, you may have nothing to eat once your revolution starts.
The reason why you fight for human treatment of animals is because the violence against them, and their domestication, has parallels to the same suffering inflicted on humans.
Animal rights diviseness as an important question for the Left? Nonsense. This is only a concern for leftists who feel guilty about eating their steak dinners on Nation cruises.
I agree about the racist attacks on the Makah. I support the Makah right to whale.
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