this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2025
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Animal rights has a place in Marxism
Animal rights are not defensible as a Marxist point of view. The basis of Marxism is working people and others marginalized under Capitalism joining in solidarity and using their collective power to overturn Capitalism and establish a dictatorship of the working class.
While animals are marginalized under Capitalism, they can neither engage in solidarity nor do they have any power to express in a collective movement.
You may believe that exploitation is animals is immoral, but Marxism is not a moralistic ideology, and there is no direct Marxist justification for animal rights.
If you trained a machine to feel pain when mistreated, desire freedom, and fear death; but it would still perform its function for whoever exploits it, Worker or Capitalist; there would be no Scientific Marxist justification for workers to cease exploitation of the machine.
so are you gonna say that climate change has no place in marxism because trees cant organise themselves?
I understand where you're coming from but I think the answer is that a capital M 'Marxist understanding of climate change' would be centred in 'climate change as an issue that affects the human ability to maintain organised civilisation' rather than the perspective that the planet and it's ecosystems are worth maintaining for their own sake.
Humans are not disconnected from the ecosystem. The wellbeing of animals is also the wellbeing of humans.
I am not saying I disagree with you, I'm just saying that the origins of Marxism is in an age of Western philosophy where "nature" was very much regarded as separate and indeed subservient to humanity, and that the 'traditional Marxist lens' on climate change would be "this should be fixed because it will negatively affect the development of socialism". I think that with the knowledge and advancements we've made since the 1800's we obviously need a different philosophical approach to the situation.