> -- *my* position requires the coercive powers of the State to implement?
>
> What about all those thousands of Food Not Bombs-lovin' vegans who
> were in Quebec last week, trying to give capitalism a black eye? They
> all seem to have plenty of time to do both.
>
> Oh, but I guess your point is that any time they spend trying to avoid
> eating food produced by corporations for profit from the easily
> avoidable physical suffering of billions of animals is better spent
> doing more *real* progressive work?
>
> My guess is that you'd need the State to impose your own views
> about how progressives should spend their time a lot more quickly
> than I'd need it to impose my "moralism". There are, after all,
> societies in which many people, for moral or religious reasons,
> refrain, say, from eating meat -- and without the State pointing
> guns at them.
>
> Despite our "you suck, no you do!" posturing, I would still like an
> answer to my sincerely-asked question: Do you recognize any
> fundamentally individual moral obligations at all? It sounds like
> you don't, but I can't really imagine such a position.
Amen, Kendall. I've been an activist for a long time and I've moved in different circles. I could never figure out why very few of the activists who belonged to traditional Left organizations (i.e. ISO, RCP, or similar) were vegetarians or vegans. Granted that a dietary practice won't start a revolution (see my article in the next issue of Practical Anarchy on this), but you would think that these socially conscious folks would be sensitized to the reasons for becoming, for example, a vegetarian. After several years of thinking about this, it dawned on me that this was related to the problem of sexism and homophobia in traditional Left groups. Why? It boils down to an attitude that these things aren't important to the program of building the revolution, so they can be postponed until after the revolution happens. Feminism is secondary to organizing workers into revolutionary parties. Stopping environmental destruction is also peripheral to the revolution. Never mind the fact that there may not be a planet worth living on after the revolution happens.
It doesn't take much effort to change ones personal habits. One can still organize workers or oppose capitalism, and be a vegan.
<< Chuck0 >>
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INTERNATIONALISM IN PRACTICE
An American soldier in a hospital explained how he was wounded: He said, "I was told that the way to tell a hostile Vietnamese from a friendly Vietnamese was to shout ‘To hell with Ho Chi Minh!’ If he shoots, he’s unfriendly. So I saw this dude and yelled ‘To hell with Ho Chi Minh!’ and he yelled back, ‘To hell with President Johnson!’ We were shaking hands when a truck hit us."
(from 1,001 Ways to Beat the Draft, by Tuli Kupferburg).