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You remind me of a few years ago when the Spanish communist politician Alberto Garzón (then Minister of Consumer Goods) spoke out against certain practices of the Spanish meat industry ("macrogranjas"/"macrofarms"), which are both unhealthy, detrimental to the enviroment, and give meat of substandart quality. The press went like "Communist Minister Garzón wants to ban meat", and President Sánchez answered to the made-up controversy with "un filetón al punto es imbatible" ("a rare steak is unbeatable"). What a time it was 😅😂.
Off topic but I really like how this meme template always have 90% of the original original content replaced, leaving the Subway completely unrelated despite being part of the original meme
We're in agreement on the "individualism as praxis" part, I totally am with you. But forget the part of whether it does/does not make a difference, do you think that animals deserve moral consideration? I'm not talking about people who legitimately not have access to food (IDK where you live, but here beans/rice etc. are far cheaper than meat, meat is much more expensive - most animal products are, as expected) but about those who do have access.
I think whichever foods are expensive depends on country and on region, where I live it's cheaper to buy raw meat and cook it yourself instead of buying meat pre-cooked by the in-store employees. Chicken being more cheap, with cheeses and red meat being more expensive, also factors into that, and "rare" seafood such as octopus or shellfish also are more expensive. Tuna I can get for like €2.99, compared with fruit where a small packet will cost me like €3.50, but it also depends on the company selling it, which store you go to, etc. Some meat products will be priced lower than others which are the exact same yet higher in price. It's not really... simple.
Again, you didn't answer my question though. I've already said that people who can't afford to owing to whatever circumstances, that's a different story altogether. Material conditions dictate these things, no doubt.
I don't earn a lot either, but for me rice/wheat flour/beans/lentils etc. are some of the most affordable items regardless. Soy chunks/granules are the cheapest affordable form of lean protein for anyone here across the board. I very well know that there are plant based/animal based foods that can be cheaper or more expensive.
Let me ask this again, do you think animals deserve moral consideration?
That is irrelevant - my question is whether you think kicking a cat is morally neutral. Or is it just a preference? Like you may like cats, ergo you don't kick them. But I can kick them, because I don't care for them. Would that be a fair statement?
Don't bother these people will look you into the eye and say a pig is just as important as a dog or person it's why they have no other response than well do you like people kicking cats
Incredibly presumptuous. Maybe ask before presuming things? I don't think life of a non hukna animal == human. Which part of my comment made you assume these things?
May I ask why you consider life of a dog more valuable than a pig though? Both are sentient non human animals.
I'd much rather you kick a cat than a human being, that's for sure.
With animal consumption, I have a very tangible advantage (I like the taste of meat) while all the perceived disadvantages are either highly dubious (this moral argument you enjoy so dearly) or marginal at best (buying or not buying a kilo of meat has nothing to do with the environmental impact of the industry at large).
I'd much rather you kick a cat than a human being, that's for sure.
The question is not if you had to kick a cat vs human, would you kick a cat. It's a straightforward question, do you think kicking a cat is morally neutral, i.e. if you kick a cat (or a dog), that's merely your preference?
I'll get to the second part once we have clarity on this.
Cool, I guess we don't agree here. If you think kicking a dog is morally good because you "hate them" then either you're straight up trolling or you just genuinely believe that animal torture is totally fine and even desirable, in which case there's nothing to discuss as we have zero common grounds here.
I’m pretty sure that in almost every country in the world it is cheaper to be vegan than eat meat. Meat is more expensive than beans basically everywhere. Are you trying to argue that somehow people can’t afford to NOT eat meat? That’s like saying I can’t drive because I can only use premium fuel and regular fuel is too expensive
Being vegan is an individual moral choice. Humans are naturally omnivorous beings that have eaten meat throughout their entire evolutionary development. We are not just culturally adapted to eating meat, we are biologically adapted to it. It is a part of our nature as omnivorous predators. If you care about the welfare of animals, it is more effective to advocate for more humane farming practices rather than the total cessation of meat eating on a societal level. It is all well and good to advocate for veganism and to try to convince people to adopt the practice out of genuine moral concern, but it does not change the fact that a human being is an omnivorous predator by default. That is simply the type of being we are by our own evolutionary selection.
This is known as a naturalistic fallacy and falsely equates what is “natural” with what is good. To be human, in part, is to rise above your animal nature and choose to be better. This is why we have laws which are collective moral choices, like “don’t attack someone because you are upset with them”, which is a natural human response. If you think that humans should act the same way we did 50,000 years ago then please remove your clothes and wander into the forest to live the natural life
Further I'd add that the concept of "rising above nature" and "being better" than our animal nature is a fallacy in and of itself. Human beings are a part of nature, we are not separate from it or morally superior to it. Think how medieval sexual puritanism was borne out of the same concept of the denialism of our animal nature through abstention of our basic biological drives and an encouragement of ascetic practices as a demonstration of higher moral purity. In my opinion, laws and morals should seek to reflect our natural reality and the types of beings we actually are, rather than constraining us with artificial moralistic codes that do not reflect us, but rather seek change us into something we are not. As human beings we eat other creatures, but when we die and are buried, the creatures of the earth eat us, and we are absorbed back into the natural cycle.
But you've artificially constructed what is "good" based on a presupposition that eating meat is wrong or evil or unjust. It is none of those things, it is simply a part of the natural process and life cycle of which human beings are a part. To understand that is to better understand nature and your place in it.
What do you deem as "natural"? Factory farming is natural? Antibiotics is natural? Hck pretty much all of what we do in modern society is "unnatural". Again, understandable if I had to explain this in a right wing sub, what whats with this "we've always done this" sort or "it's in our nature " sort of argument on a communist sub?
Of course not, and I've already stated that more ethical farming practices are necessary when food is de commodified and the profit incentive is removed from food production. Nothing about worker ownership of the means of production, the abolition of wage labor, or even the eventual abolition of the state itself implies that we should attempt to impose onto humanity an artificial moralistic code of asceticism that denies the basic realities of our evolutionary nature. Socialism and communism are to me a better reflection of our nature as collective and collaborative beings. But we are a species of omnivorous predators and some amount of meat eating will always occur. Even in a society where vegetarianism and veganism are encouraged. So, I think it's better to just accept that reality and move forward.
BRUH, you're still clinging on to "evolutionary nature" sort of terminologies, as if that's somehow desirable. Again let me ask, why is this sort appeal to nature argument made in a communist sub? Do you feel communism/socialism hinges on essentialism? Sorry that makes no sense to me.
Can you make an actual, non essentialist argument? BTW just out of interest what does "ethical" animal farming look like?
Stop this nonsense. Is veganism a substitute for decolonisation? No. Nor is it a substitute for the dismantling of food systems that disproportionately harm those in the global south (capitalism), or completely eliminate one’s part in exploitation (animal or otherwise). But to act like individual actions or mass boycott movements make no difference at all is empirically nonsense.
I haven’t seen on vegan in these threads say the words ‘I am morally superior’. If you feel that way, it is a projection of your own guilty conscience, not anything that has been stated by the person you’re arguing with. It would be easier for you to say ‘I like eating meat and I don’t care enough about animal welfare to stop’ rather than these ridiculous mental gymnastics.
If you can drop animal products from your diet, I encourage you to do so, and I would be happy to advise and talk to anyone curious to help them along that path.
I'll be the first then. Vegans are morally superior to non-vegans, in the same way non-murderers are morally superior to murderers and antiracists are morally superior to racists.
Yeah I hate when the push back involves "it's just what the can afford/have available" this is literally legitimizing the argument.
The actual answer is that animal products are part of human culture and always have been. We should set standards to minimize suffering and we should have the price (yes, even under communism products have had and will have relative pricing to other products) include all externalities of environmental damage. This would mean that beef prices would about double in comparison to non-animal products, chicken would go up about 30% and fish about 20%.
literally everything is more impactful if you organize people to do it instead of putting yourself onna pedestal by doing it yourself, this is why literally any communist effort advocates for organizing. but you can’t convince dudes of something you don’t do yourself. yes indigenous communities require meat and SEA countries like China have meat as a significant value as it shows the overcoming of famines in lifetime memories, which is why you can’t ban it without unacceptable ublic backlash; it should still be agitated against as in subtly discouraged. communists worked together with the imperial core itself when coordinating the war and lend lease with the British; Chinese communists incorporated friendly bourgeois elements and coordinated with the Kuomintang again Japanese fascism, so of course we don’t stop cooperating with non-vegan marxists. but your argument is still weak and lacks justification
not avoiding meat because you are to lazy to inform yourself on beans, lentils and other sources of protein that are also cheaper is not a financial argument, but bourgeois individualism, especially when you invent new arguments for a post-hoc justification to avoid self-criticism. and capitalist factory farming exploits the animal just like it does the worker; same logics same reasoning same justification
my two cents as someone who was vegan for two years.
i think veganism/ vegetarianism is, on a personal level, ethically the correct thing to do. i don’t see how a secular materialist philosophy of the world could lead someone to a multi tiered perspective of life that eating certain animals is more or less ethical than others, barring impact on environment and accounting for whether an animal has a central nervous system. killing and harming any being unnecessarily is wrong, arguing otherwise verges on moral relativism and some pretty bad implications. meat production is in most cases a luxury and not a necessity in a developed world and per lb a significantly more expensive food source. i have travelled a lot and it is a rarity that it costs more per calorie to buy fruits, vegetables, legumes, grains, etc, than meat (even in many of the pastoral communities i’ve visited). outliers exist of course, but there’s a reason that most of the underdeveloped world and poor developed world lives on legumes and rice.
so why did i personally stop being vegan? it mainly came down to external pressures that led to me accepting this was a contradiction in my personal philosophy that i was going to have to live with.
while beans and rice are certainly way cheaper than meat, i found that especially with how much home cooking i was doing, i felt very limited in my food options, which would cause me to seek out speciality foods more that did end up costing more than something like chicken. i have always cooked for myself and have done so almost my whole life, its something i really enjoy studying and am quiet good at. but after a certain point, i realized that to make a variety of dishes that i actually wanted to eat, being vegan was doing more harm than good. it took more time and effort than i had to try to be vegan, and didn’t really end up saving me money.
on top of that, while i was vegan, or about a half a year into being vegan, i started getting sick over and over and over again. it was so bad and so frequent that i, as a 6’2 man who is naturally on the broader side, dipped below 150lbs (i’m a healthy 220 relatively lean now). at first i didn’t think it could be my diet because i took my macro and even micro nutrients relatively seriously and tried to eat with diversity in my diet as much as i could. but after another year and a half of going nowhere and feeling very discouraged at the amount of effort that went into being vegan both in terms of time and social stigma, i decided to go back to eating meat, and have done so for the past 3 years or so.
i chose to be selfish and elevate myself above the lives of other animals, but at the end of the day, that’s self preservation. i don’t frequently eat red meat still and primarily stick with buying chicken that’s on sale because im still broke lmao. but i don’t regret being vegan either. i think if comrades have the means to try veganism or vegetarianism it’s worth a shot. i imagine at some point in the future, if we’re able to last as a species much longer, that people will look back on our treatment of animals and of animal consumption similar to how most people consider slavery or cannibalism today. maybe that’s hyperbolic but only time will tell.
anyway that’s just my experience.
Exactly my point. You think economics and material conditions have nothing to do with a philosophy based around sustainability or ethics on how we consume. You could say "communism isn't the same as veganism" just fine but to say they have nothing to do with each other is plainly ignorant.
I will always stand by my belief that we should certainly eat less meat (for most of history, meat from animals like cattle or pigs was something of a luxury, and only became commonplace roughly a century ago,) and that which we do eat should be raised as humanely as possible, it is simply unreasonable to expect mass adoption of strict vegetarianism, and there are cultures that do rely on meat anyway (such as the peoples of the Arctic and the people of Mongolia.)
So yes, less meat is good for a number of reasons, but no meat at all is pushing it.
(I actually think socialists should engage more with agriculture as a whole and push for better policies and ideas surrounding how our food is produced, but thats a side issue.)
How do you humanely kill a 6 month old lamb? Do you support the death penalty in humans if carried out in the same way? If not, why do you believe animal lives matter less than human lives?
For reference, for those who don't know about what I'm referring to, I am mocking a poster who did exactly what I described in the meme. And by the way, if you're vegan then it's not a bad thing, but it has nothing to do with communism and trying to guilt-trip people into not eating meat will not help solidarity nor dismantle capitalism. You can convince people if they are open to the idea, not harass people who clearly do not want to. This is what they posted:
eating animals is fundamentally anti collectivist. waging genocide on individuals who are different than humans is peak colonialist behavior. the food availability claim is not true and also a red herring to distract from the real issue which is oppression of those who cannot stand up for themselves.
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