Questions regarding the human species relationship to the natural world can be complicated to understand. It encompasses all three categories of Marxist “philosophy”: dialectical materialism, historical materialism, and scientific socialism. First, let me say that I’m sympathetic to discussions on this subject matter in general; but I find the way Jon Hochschartner’s article compares animal “’exploitation” to human slavery objectionable.
animalism
Jon Hochschartner: Towards a Marxist Animalism
To develop a Marxist animalism, we must situate non-humans within the labor theory of value, building on the intellectual groundwork laid by anti-speciesists like Barbara Noske and Bob Torres. The vegetarian socialist George Bernard Shaw reportedly argued, “I don’t need a theory of value to tell me the poor are exploited.” I’m sympathetic to such anti-intellectualism. But the truth is that for animalists to effect the species politics of Marxists, who have a disproportionate ideological influence on the far left, we must learn to speak their language. While I am very far from an expert on the minutiae of communist theory, this is what I have attempted to begin doing here.
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