I liked this essay more after re-reading it.
This essay has 18 dense chapters. Most of them can be expanded.
It didn’t talk about how much mainstream idea of veganism (superstructure) is formed by capitalism. If you go to the mainstream websites, veganism looks like it’s only about food and crazy raw foodist parents. The bourgeois mainstream never presents vegans in a good light. The bourgeoisie is really interested in making vegans look bad.
Marxism is not only about explaining things but also about how to change things. We explained why marxism needs veganism. How do we integrate it into marxism if most “marxists” are carnist? AES states respond somewhat to the environmental arguments of the last chapters: https://www.nycfoodpolicy.org/food-policy-snapshot-china-five-year-agricultural-plan-cultivated-meat/
To the urgency of veganism for socialism, it’s not just the environment that we need to preserve to survive. Communism a priori can’t commodify animal BEINGS. Fuck, carnism can’t just fit into a communist society. How’s someone a commodity just for being another species? It’s a dumb idea that’s 1" away from justifying slavery.
What can we do about veganism now? Here are my thoughts:
-
In the current state of the world, the working class, me included, are struggling to survive the imperialist attacks that feel like fighting a bear. This contradiction alone is too big for us. Under capitalism and early stage of socialism (modern AES), we vegans must focus on the biggest enemy.
-
Continue our peaceful marxist vegan agitprop. Socialist countries really respond to environmental arguments. We must use that. From IX: “We do not exploit animals because we deem them to be inferior, rather, we deem animals to be inferior because we exploit them.” To me this sounds like it doesn’t matter what way we make people exploit animals less. If socialist gov accepts our arguments and promotes a plant-based diet only for env and health reasons, then ethical veganism will still grow from this. A lot of people will just stop seeing veganism as this impossible thing as presented by bourgeois propaganda.
-
One day, imperialist capitalism will become weak after socialist states become strong and many. That day, we must really confront speciesists just like we do capitalists. Not peacefully.
For a moment MUTB sounded like they deny modern AES: “it is regarded as an overly simplified theory and as an authoritarian ideology which has become obsolete with the end of actually existing socialism”. This was what mutb says anarchists think of marxism. I’d add a small remark that modern AES is real.
MUTB quotes Marx saying: “Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence.” Animals can also produce their own means of subsistence. That can be seen in crows and great apes. So, Marx here failed to distinguish humans from non-human animals. MUTB successfully found a correct distinction: “the working class can be the subject of its own liberation. Animals, in contrast, can only be objects of liberation.”
Can’t wait to hear your thoughts, comrade