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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 183 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 183, February 1995.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
It comes as a surprise to many people that SWP publications (and most SWP members) do not support the idea of animal rights. We are always talking about rights: women’s rights, human rights and so on. Surely animal rights is the logical extension of this language.
But animal rights is a flawed concept that ignores our relationship with the rest of nature. Humans are commonly thought of as being either totally separate from, and above, the rest of nature (the traditional view in Western thought) or as just another animal, no more different from dogs, say, as dogs are from cats, The latter view is probably most often expressed in the theories of sociobiologists.
In fact our relationship to nature is much more contradictory than either of these one sided views. On the one hand we are, and always will be, part of nature. We have evolved just like every other animal and we will always depend on nature for our survival.
On the other hand, it is evident that we are different from the rest of nature. Through our labour and consciousness we have transformed our lives and our environment. We have separated ourselves from the rest of nature.
One manifestation of this separation is the concept of rights itself, which is an entirely human concept. I mean this not just in the sense that only humans can be aware of rights, but that rights are rooted in the conflicts and antagonisms in human society. Rights are political concepts, not things that exist ‘out there’ waiting to be discovered, or that we carry around with us whether we can exercise them or not.
Contrast this view of rights with that of Peter Singer, theorist and populariser of the idea of animal liberation. He believes, for example, that human beings have always had the right not to be slaves. But what can this really mean, when throughout most of human history people have been enslaved? The right not to be enslaved can only have meaning in the context of a society where the right is either fought over or recognised.
The basis of animal rights for Singer is that, like us, animals are conscious of their pain and suffering and are therefore entitled to equal consideration. Yet this is an entirely one way obligation. Why is it immoral for us to eat meat if it is perfectly acceptable for lions or owls? Vegetarians might argue that we should ‘go veggie’ because ‘we can’, but if it was a real priority we could also begin trying to stop animals eating each other, like the curious people who make their dogs ‘go veggie’ too!
Nobody seriously suggests this course of action, which indicates that we are not really debating the rights animals have, but the extent to which we should give their suffering consideration.
When we look to the other side of our relationship to nature, we must recognise that we can never live without trampling on the ‘rights’ of animals. Take the case of one of the officials of the Vegan Society, scorned by the society’s members for laying a mousetrap in his soya milk factory!
No vegan I know suggests we should do without clothes, clean water or many other products that make us comfortable at the expense, one way or another, of other animals.
To be sure, socialism would certainly put animal welfare at a higher priority than capitalism does. The question is: how much effort should socialists expend now to reduce animal suffering? When I think of the amount of human suffering in this world, as well as the job we have on our hands building an organisation that will be able to influence and lead a revolution, I must admit that animal welfare falls off the bottom of my list of current priorities.
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