After reading some discussion on lemmygrad about veganism, I felt the need to share my thoughts in a separate thread, as comments weren’t appropriate for the wall of text I’m about to throw.
Before we start, very important precision. This is not about environmental veganism, only about animal-liberation veganism. Consuming less animal products will be a lifestyle change we must anticipate to limit environmental destruction. This is about the moral philosophy of veganism and its contradictions with materialism.
Intro
Veganism is often rationalised under the form of a syllogism : it is immortal to kill and exploit humans, and non-human animals are equal to humans, therefore, it is immoral to kill and exploit non-human animals.
Now, I must say, if one is to contest the validity of this syllogism as a basis for veganism I encourage them to provide one since it could drastically change my point of view.
Like many syllogisms, there is appeal and validity to it until you question the premises. Let’s review them under a materialistic lens.
Morality and materialism
The first premise is that it is immortal to kill and exploit humans. As leftists, we tend to wholeheartedly agree with such a statement, as it encapsulates our ambitions and dreams, however this cannot be pursued for a political manifest beyond utopian wishful thinking. Historically, killing has been justified as a high moral act whenever the one being killed was deemed worthy of death. The reason it is generally considered immoral to interrupt one’s life is because humans simply have to collaborate to survive, therefore every society has developed a social construct that allows us to live as a social productive species. But whenever a war enemy, criminal, or dissident person is being killed under certain circumstances, the killing becomes justified, morally right.
As materialists, we don’t base our interpretation of morality on a notion of some metaphysical, reality-transcending rule, and even less in relation to an afterlife. Morality is a human construct that evolves with material conditions. In that case, the relationship of human morality with non-human animals becomes more complicated than it seems. Humans do have empathy for other species but are also able to consume their flesh and products, a contradiction that has defined the construction of morality around non-human animals through history. This explains why it seems desirable for a lot of people to stop unnecessary animal cruelty while still wanting to consume their flesh, there is an act of balancing between empathy and appetite.
Equality of species and violence
Now you might have noticed that this framework is definitely human-centric. That brings us to the second premise, which is the equality of all species. By all means, it is absolutely outdated to maintain the idea of “human superiority” on all non-human species in the current times. As materialists, we should realise that humans evolved at the same time as other species, are dependent on the ecosystem, and that there is no fundamental variable that we have to consider as a criteria for ranking in an abstract “order of things”.
That said, the equality of all species doesn’t automatically mean the disappearance of inter-species violence. Firstly, we cannot stop unnecessary violence between fellow living beings that don’t share our means of communication (unless we exerce physical control over them, but that’s even worse). Secondly, there is an assumption that only humans possess the ability to choose to follow a vegan diet, which is extremely strange considering that it makes humans the only specie to have the capacity to be moral. Either non-human animals are excused for their chauvinistic violence against other species because they are seen as too limited, determined by their instinct, but it makes humans actually morally superior to other species. Or the animals must be held accountable for inter-species violence, which no vegan upholds, thankfully. Last option would be to consider that inter-species violence is part of life, which I agree with and think is the materialistic approach, but that means there is no reason to adopt a vegan diet.
Conclusion
So what does that let us with? Morality being a social construct with a material use in a human society, and humans being fundamentally empathetic, it is completely understandable that society will be progressing towards diminishing meat consumption to allow the minimization of animal suffering. But the exploitation of animals as means of food production doesn’t have a materialistic reason to go away (unless we’re talking about climate change, of course). The inter-species violence of humans against cattle and prey is part of nature, because we simply are a productive omnivorous specie just like any other.
This is mostly why I would discourage pushing people to abandon all animal products in the name of ethics. What should be encouraged is acceptance of every specific diet, be it religious diets, or animal-liberation diets. Strict vegetarianism must be a choice of heart that is based on profound empathy, not a superior moral choice or, worse, a moral imperative.
I feel like you just switch humans and the non-humans part to see why this doesn’t hold up for people who support increasing the rights of humans. You talk about leftists thinking it is immoral to kill, so are you arguing if you don’t think that, you aren’t a leftist? And if that’s the case, the logic ought to hold up in a non-subjective way, if leftists belive this, isn’t it a moral choice and if it is a moral choice, why isn’t it also one of morals when it comes to animals? I think you’re argument is just saying, morality is subjective and so a choice cannot be inheritly moral. Which if you think that, does that hold accross everything, or just this? (and if that isn’t the argument you are making, please do explain. ) My argument isn’t trying to be rude to you but this is an explanation of the issues I see here.
(Edit caus my first answer was poorly worded and rude)
If you have questions about the meaning of certain passages you are most welcome to ask about them!
I was only hinting that the temptation is great to agree with the premise that killing is morally wrong.
About the subjectivity of morality: the divide between the objective and subjective is too limiting when talking about social constructs. A social construct can be studied as an object, but only exists as thoughts and behaviours shared by subjects.
Another way to see would be that human morality is an aspect of human societies, and non-human animals aren’t part of the human society. Morality is something humans do, not something that encapsulates all nature in a metaphysical way. So it’s up to us to define how we relate to other species, just like any other species define how they interact with other species.
I don’t quite agree with your last point. If it is what humans do, isn’t it equally available for humans to decide that their morality doesn’t extent to some other group? I mean of the idea is that the morality is for that specific group, what’s to make that group humans as a whole but not a smaller subset of humans like a particular ethnic group deciding that that morality doesn’t extend to those outside of the group?
I understand that it bothers you. What needs to be understood here is that what was considered morally right back then (for example: racism at the colonial era) might not be moral anymore at another point. Moral principles can be criticised, especially by revolutionaries. Morality emerges from material conditions, so we can act to change it when the material conditions are updated, but we can’t just invent a moral code arbitrarily. It’s basically just utopian vs scientific socialism : can’t invent a society from scratch, be we can build a better one in relation to material conditions.
In that post I defend that contrary to human ethnicities or sexual minorities that can absolutely be included as free members of society (example: there’s no reason a black person can’t learn to become a rocket scientist), animals are not physically able to participate to human production (example: you can’t train a cow to clean the factory floor and get her to do it happily because it helps everyone). Therefore, racism becomes morally wrong when we need to create a society where black people participate, but the use of non-human animals as means of production, given the proper respect and minimizing suffering, isn’t going to become morally wrong (outside lf climate change preoccupation obviously)
Why does what a group can do have any standings on morality? I don’t understand the argument for why that or if it is a connected group to the viewer why that is relevant.
I am willing to help you understand my point but I must admit I feel like we’re going circles. You keep asking me why do I care so much about why people think x or y is good or evil, I already explained why.
If I’m not mistaken you persist in thinking that morality is an absolute dogma, a set of rules transcending existence, an abstract imperative. This is not Marxist for the least so please provide your own materialistic analysis of morality so the conversation might become fruitful.
Because morality is the way an individual sees the contact. It’s Marxists to say that it may emotionally be viewed as transcentical even if the action itself and the “correctness” of it isn’t. It’s about the idea that the morality is transcendental because it is applied to each item. Morality isn’t absolute and is individual based so it doesn’t have to be transcendental. The way the individual sees it, it is. The way society has used to be to control behavior is another issue but that alone is a reflection of the way the group sees morality but not of morality itself
Fine, morality is subjective, let’s roll with that. So I get to choose whether doing anything is good to me. I will eat meat because I want to. Not very interesting but pretty convenient if a vegan calls me a murderer.
If I’m not wrong you seem to have a difficulty with the “materialism” part. Maybe it would be a good idea if you wrote me your own materialistic analysis of what morality is?
In any case I will try to explain better :
In a materialistic philosophy, we see human ideas, and therefore all structures of society, as shaped by the material conditions of the subjects. At an individual scale, it means that one’s ideas is always rooted in its life experience. Everyone has a different life experience but all life experiences have a number of recurring aspects, so everyone has a different set of ideas but there are recurring patterns that we can study.
So for example if you want to study the political ideology of, let’s say, the immigrant proletariat of Italy, you can do by observing a good number of different people and contextualising everything by observing their material conditions. Then we know what people think, so we can choose to start mobilising them or not. We know how to most effectively mobilise them, we know what objectives we need to reach, we know what to not expect from them. This is the scientific approach to revolution.
In a utopian, idealistic approach, on the contrary, activists will push ideas that they find good and be upset when people tell them to fuck off with their bullshit.
So if we take morality as an object of study, in a materialistic framework we will ask ourselves not what people should think but why do they think like they do. Ask yourself: what kind of material conditions could be linked to the appearance of an idea of “good and evil” in all societies since the beginning of History? Why do people, with their material life, developed a common dogma of things that they consider bad and good actions, that is always specific to a certain region, time in History, and class?
My take is that morality serves a purpose in the organisation of social life and production. In most societies it is considered immortal to not contribute to the production. An idealist could say either “laziness is inherently bad” or “laziness is inherently neutral and stigmatising it is inherently bad”. A materialist however will understand that in the past, the labor required to produce food meant that if one didn’t contribute to production, then they would make the group a lot more vulnerable to famines, and that now, capitalists are using this old ethics to pressure workers into finding the jobs that they made artificially scarce. When the material conditions change, the morality of people start changing too.
So back to “killing innocents is morally wrong”. Why do people always seem to agree that killing innocents is wrong? Because in all societies, if there wasn’t this social construct that is the moral imperative not to kill people for no reason, we would end up in an environment where no one could survive. The combination of the material need to cooperate in production, and the material reality of empathy (that is a trait we probably evolved because we need to cooperate) made us develop a behaviour that ensured we didn’t end up in a state of constant danger.
So when the idealist say “killing is wrong because life has inherent value in the absolute state of things” we say “no, killing innocent humans would create a state of chaos we cannot survive in, humans materially need each other”
So if someone were part of a group that was disabled to such an extent that they were unable to contribute, does that justify killing them? And as for young children, I feel like that still falls within the boundaries of your definition. But otherwise, I feel your definition of what is ethical relies upon not what is correct as I am thinking of the definition of but what was useful evolutionarily. Which isn’t necessarily how morality is commonly thought of by myself or by others.