I escaped the Reddit regime a little while ago. I consider myself a marxist-leninist-MZT. Vegetarian and vegan for a few years. I’ve a lot of thoughts on how marxism and veganism are connected. Never wrote them down. I’d like to start smth like a club for marxist vegans to develop our own proletarian theory. Most vegan theory I found is either openly bourgeois (Francione is a literal TERF) or revisionist (anti-China, anarchist, libertarian). How about fixing this?

  • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
    12·
    8 months ago

    I’ll start by saying death to US. I hope I didn’t imply that your home is somehow less healthy than the Great Satan!

    What I’m saying the people who are forced to kill animals, whether for survival or income, are harming their mental health. I am not saying that they are unhealthy; they can cope with it as long as they don’t have a lot of other stressors in their life, people who kill animals can live healthy, productive lives.

    But, based on the rates of mental illness associated with slaughter work that far exceed other lines of production work, there’s clearly something unhealthy about killing animals. People who kill animals are more likely to experience health complications, like PTSD and addiction and suicide.

    We can analyze the material reality of common practices in a scientific manner. Notice I never brought up morality. I am speaking purely about the impact on health. Smoking certain plants is culturally significant in some cultures, too, but it’s also unhealthy. Plenty of people who smoke never experience health problems, but the reality of the health impacts don’t change just because people did it for 1000s of years.

    Have you ever killed an animal? I killed a rabbit once. Did you know they scream? I don’t think that was good for me.

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
        13·
        8 months ago

        They are forced by their need to acquire meat. It’s not the same coercion as under capitalist domination but I’d say that counts as being forced to kill by their material conditions. Slaughterhouses are definitely worse than barnyard slaughter, maybe the two can’t be compared, but I don’t think there’ve been studies about hunting or small scale animal husbandry. The mass suffering is also definitely worse, but death is its own kind of horror regardless of whether we suffer before our end or not.

        I killed for food, sort of. I was in Scouts and we did lots of camping trips where we’d do stuff like: start a fire without matches, make an improvised shelter for sleeping, learn how to treat hypo/hyperthermia in the bush, fish without a fishing pole, etc. I don’t regret any of that, but that rabbit fucked me up. Killing and gutting fish isn’t nice either, but I never had trouble sleeping because of it. Catching a rabbit and watching her struggle in the snare, breaking her neck, it was pretty horrible.

        As for bugs, maybe I’m not a True Vegan but as far as I’m concerned they’re a natural and plentiful source of B12 in case the supply chain ever collapses and I need to survive entirely off of beans and rice. I’m not going to go out of my way to eat crickets as long as I can just eat fortified yeast, but I’d definitely feel a lot better about it than eating any mammals, birds, fish, etc.