Yoshie Furuhashi:
> It strikes me as inherently obnoxious to posit the essence of humanity
> ahistorically ("common mental capacity" or whatever the "essence" is
> assumed to be) first and then see if a human individual or a group of human
> individuals in question empirically possess this posited essence (or "make
> the grade," as Gordon felicitously puts it). This is the problem of the
> Robinsonades:
>
> ***** Smith and Ricardo still stand with both feet on the shoulders of
> the eighteenth-century prophets, in whose imaginations this
> eighteenth-century individual -- the product on one side of the dissolution
> of the feudal forms of society, on the other side of the new forces of
> production developed since the sixteenth century -- appears as an ideal,
> whose existence they project into the past. Not as a historic result but
> as history's point of departure. As the Natural Individual appropriate to
> their notion of human nature, not arising historically, but posited by
> nature. (Marx, _Grundrisse_) *****
>
> Irony, as Michael Hoover suggests, is that both humanists and "animal
> rightists" assume the ahistorical essence of what "being human" means.
> Now, the (implicit or explicit) question "Is X Human?" arises only when X
> in question is assumed to be a boundary case, because of the oppression of
> X (whether X be mentally retarded individuals, blacks, Native Americans,
> women, foreigners, homosexuals, etc.). *If* we ever get to create a
> communist society where no oppression exists, we'll forget to ask such an
> *insulting* question; since no one's humanity will be under question,
> humanism, having completed its historical task, will gracefully disappear
> into the dustbin of history. The existence of humanism is a necessary &
> necessarily tragic accompaniment of the "wrong state of things," to use
> Adorno's words; so, what we need to work on is to abolish the "wrong state
> of things," as soon as possible. (Ethics & politics, for communists who
> seek to abolish all oppressions, must be considered with this goal in mind;
> therefore, universal moral principles designed for *all* purposes &
> occasions [or one-size-fits-all morality] are out of question, firstly
> because capitalism with all its contradictions, together with sexism,
> racism, & other oppressions, makes a mockery of universalism in practice,
> and secondly because to abolish capitalism one must be a partisan, thinking
> in terms of what's good for the working class, not of "humanity" in
> general.)
If valid ethics can't exist -- that is, there can be no rhetoric dealing with whether one thing is generally better than another -- then we can't have communism or any other political ideology, because then communism is just one more thing, neither better or worse, no more or less real or valid, than any other idea. In other words, we're in the world of nihilism. An argument for nihilism can't be validly constructed, because then one would be saying nihilism was _better_ than other ideas, but it can be lived out. However, most communists I have heard about reject nihilism in both practice and theory, so they do in fact believe in some kind of (universal) ethics. They think communism would be a good thing for themselves and other people in general. That is an ethical view and assumes that opinions of that kind are valid.
Those who believe that it is generally all right to do harm to (non-human) animals generally (re)construct the concept "human" if they feel called upon to defend their beliefs and practices using ethical discourse. So this is the rhetoric which the "animal-rights" believer usually must confront (besides mere threats, abuse and derision).
Certainly being-human has a history. Those who propose to take power over others, unless they intend to be each one sole and absolute dictators of the universe, have to try to work out deals in which they, as members of a dominant group, will recognize each others' place in the group's system, whether it's a gang or a military formation or a class like the bourgeoisie. The process of forming and arranging the group is facilitated by the construction of classifications of beings defining who may belong to the group, and often subgroups within the group, e.g. human beings, males, White males, rich White males, rich White males who have the right family and connections, etc.
One who stands outside one of the boundaries may question the boundary in terms of the set of beings within a larger boundary, e.g. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" where it was clear in practice that "men" referred to adult White (or English) free males, maybe with property, who wanted to question certain kinds of monarchical and aristocratic privilege. Sadly, those outside boundary X but inside boundary Y are often all too willing to accept boundary Y even while rejecting boundary X -- I'm sure I don't need to give examples. Meanwhile those inside boundary X often propose erecting more boundaries, or placing those too close to boundary X further away. This is where questioning, say, the humanity of Negro slaves or the Whiteness of poor people or certain ethnic groups came in. It is, simply, the ideological business of a dominance group.
However, it _is_ possible to question the boundaries one is inside -- hence there have been liberals among the nobility, middle-class communists, White opponents of Negro slavery, and so on. Just so, it is reasonable to stand inside the boundary "human" and yet question it. In rejecting the challenge, others can ignore the question, that is, they can appeal implicitly to their power, or they can (re)construct "human" in such a way as to permit the continuance of their beliefs and practices. As I've pointed out, this reconstruction is full of pitfalls of both the logical and the historical sort, e.g. deciding that some beings are privileged on account of their genes has had some very bad outcomes in history. And we know that mere science, undirected by ideology, does not do the desired trick, because it inconveniences by coming up with evidence of consciousness, sentience, affections, intelligence, will, communication, complex social structure, and even a sort of ethical practice among non-humans -- all the things that are supposed to distinguish humans are found on the other side of the line.
In my admittedly limited experience, I have not observed any theoretical (re)construction of the human which successfully licenses doing serious harm to beings outside the boundary while not also licensing harm to some humans -- if indeed the theory stands up at all, which many of them don't. So, while one may lack the intuitions which motivate animal-rights activists or devout Jains, no one seems to be able to show that their beliefs are wrong (unethical). That being the case, condemning or disparaging them (as in this mailing list) is a waste of time, especially if one holds that other issues are more important, and it's as well a gratuitous, unprovoked giving of offense to people who may well be one's allies on other issues.
> Now, the question of rights and liberalism. As you correctly point out,
> rights, in practice, do not serve well women, blacks, disabled individuals,
> etc. (in fact, non-property owning working class individuals in general,
> including white men) who were originally excluded from rights discourse.
> Moreover, bourgeois rights of equality, even if they were to be
> universally, not arbitrarily, enforced, are and will be always the unequal
> right to unequal labor. Why? Because human beings are different in their
> needs & abilities, whereas equal rights assume the necessity of reducing
> differences to some common measure. Granting "rights" to humans does not
> fundamentally solve the problem of unmet needs. The needs of animals will
> be met *even less* adequately through the "rights" discourse, since
> "rights" were *not* designed for, nor can they ever be exercised by, those
> who by nature cannot enter, as "free & autonomous individuals," into the
> exchange relations in the sphere of "freedom, equality, property, and
> Bentham."
>
> Forcing animals into the Procrustean bed of "rights" discourse, to me, is a
> form of cruel and unusual punishment, expressive of the irony & aporia of
> idealism. Concrete differences are not allowed to exist without them being
> forced into abstract identities & contradictions under capitalism, so not
> just human beings but also animals are now asked to bear the ideological
> burden of abstract individualism & identity thinking. Pathetic indeed.
People have a very hard time talking about beings, human and otherwise, as possessing significant ethical and political status without talking about "rights". Some who oppose the use and consumption of animals use the term "animal liberation" as in "Animal Liberation Front" -- any being with will and interests to pursue can be free. On the other hand, for me rights are pretty artificial anyway, so I suppose one can artifice them as one chooses. I dislike its use in this context because it's unclear, not because it's unreasonable _per_se_.
Gordon