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?
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I implied that you didn’t and that this was why you were focusing on barriers. If you had a vegan ethical stance you would be able to find a way.
I’m not following your logic. But appealing to normative or historical practice is not enough on its own and is, for example, how reactionaries justify themselves.
I am and it was easy.
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You don’t what? I don’t understand what you are saying.
I actually said you did not want to twice already. Very first thing I said, I think…
Though nothing in modern diets under capitalism is particularly “natural”. All of our foods are technologically developed, including basically all of our crops over thousanda of years, mostly through artificial selection and hybridization.
Hmm, did I say that?
Hmm, did I say that?
I would be happy to discuss the science of trophic levels, human behavior, and diets if you are interested. Calling a modern diet under capitalism “natural” doea not really make sense, though.
I am? How so?
Everyone knows plants live, this ia not news to any vegan and it is not inconsistent to eat them. Animal agriculture is far more negatively impactful on the environment.
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You’re actually not, though! Historically, humans were hunter gatherers with a diet fairly different from yours, I would bet. Think about what you would be eating if you needed to forage between the Euphrates and Tigris some handful of thousands of years ago before widespread agriculture. And then consider that humans were out there doing human things for hundreds of thousands of years before that. They weren’t eating storebought nitrogenated steaks from generations-bred, cornfed cows! Domesticated cattle did not even exist. There were Aurochs.
That is not a quote of anything I said. I’m saying that we live in capitalist societies with industrialized agriculture and our foods have been highly modified by humans. How do you define a natural diet? Does it include twinkies? Sweet corn? Winter Wheat? What does it really mean to call a diet natural or not?
Actually, I said it was easy for me. That is the opposite of what you are saying I said.
How am I trying to force other people into it?
That depends on how it is fed. If you ever provide it with feed, this statement is probably false. And the vast, vast majority of chickens are given feed.
Is every chicken you eat a backyard chicken not prpvided with feed?
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But you’re also not eating like 99% of human history in the sense that your diet is very different. It took humanity thousands of years across myriad cultures to generate the foods we take for granted. This is something that often goes unappreciated about past and current cultures, as some of the most amazing technologies are plants like corn, potatoes, wheat, soybean, lentils, etc, not just electricity or guns. There are also many such technologies that are not widely known or have even vanished, which is cultivation without planned plots or inputs, just taking care of the environment threw stewardship of existing plants and lands, like the ubiquitous technology of controlled burns. This made food that would not go to market, but sustained societies.
So, why would eating like 99% of history be the thing to do in one way but not the other?
Like whole foods, that kind of thing. That’s good! But don’t forget that villages are highly advanced and use agricultural technology developed over thousands of years, right down to the food itself.
I haven’t moralized once. I suggested a materialist analysis of the phenomenon of modern veganism, which is basically the opposite of that.
I have not guilt tripped.
Can you tell me what I’ve done that’s annoying?
I suggested a material analysis of modern veganism as tied to capitalism and imperialism. We are currently discussing things that you have brought up, not me.
I don’t know what you mean by this. Can you explain? Thank you!
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I’ve just been reading your responses and I think one point you might want to be careful with is “Human Nature” as if it’s a fixed static thing. Humans are capable of all manner of things in our natural form, but that does not automatically mean that those things are inherently good, healthy, or moral. According to just basic natural ability, and simple evolutionary strategy, every man should go around impregnating as many women as possible in order to propagate his DNA to the next generation. This was what our ancestors used to do, and it’s what many animals do in nature all the time, which is completely biologically feasible. However, as humans we are uniquely capable of rational thought, and we have the ability to rise above simple animal behavior, which is why the average person won’t go around killing each other’s children and taking each others mates. It’s an extreme example but I was hoping to maybe give you some idea of how the “Nature” talking point can be twisted to justify things that any normal person would see as absurd.
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