I have grown used to hearing accusations that Gary Francione’s animal rights position, in particular, is ‘divisive’.[1] As an animal rights advocate, Francione claims that nonhuman animals who are sentient are rights bearers. He is opposed to them being used by humans and regards their use by humans as rights violations.
This seems to be a pretty standard way of expressing oneself if one takes a rights-based view of things. However, as I have pointed out before,[2] this is not the language of the present animal protection movement and, as far as I can tell, has never been the language of the animal movement. The majority in the current post-1970s movement have rarely framed their fundamental case for nonhuman animals in rights-based language, favouring - for a variety of philosophical and ‘practical’ reasons - to make orthodox cruelty claims and claims about ‘unnecessary suffering’, the cornerstone concept in traditional animal welfarism.
Given this, how odd is it that a social movement that, by and large, studiously avoids and often opposes rights-based philosophy and rights-based claims-making nevertheless deliberately calls itself – insists on calling itself - the “animal rights movement”? How odd is that – but more to the point – how divisive is it? And how insulting to those who actually take animal rights theory and practice seriously and who want to make rights-based philosophy the fundamental base of their campaigning about human-nonhuman relations.
In the same year (1975) that Peter Singer’s influential text, Animal Liberation, was published, animal rightist Tom Regan began to write about human-nonhuman relations. His initial thoughts coalesced into his 1983 book, The Case for Animal Rights. Since at least the early 1980s, then, some animal advocates have wanted to seriously make rights-based claims about human-nonhuman relations. This minority of advocates have wanted to say that they regard many nonhuman animals as right-holders and want to assert that what routinely and systematically happens to these animals at the hands (and knives and forks) of humans are rights violations.
In the language of the Vegan Society’s Donald Watson, they have a passion to “ripen up” the public to serious animal rights claims.[3] Animal rightists want people to begin to consider whether eating that steak or wearing that fur or leather garment is a rights violation rather than simply “being cruel” to animals.
As said, many animal advocates reject and oppose animal rights philosophy and claims-making. They don’t care about rights and they apparently don’t care that some others do. I have never, ever, understood, in these circumstances, why they will not at least have the decency to call themselves something other than “animal rights” when they know there are other animal advocates who make rights-based philosophy the foundational basis of their animal advocacy. Perhaps for the sake of some weird adherence to a snappy name or label they do not really support they will run roughshod over the aspirations of others, or else they think moral rights are “nonsense on stilts” and wish the idea no good at all.
In truth, what’s going on when people call Gary Francione ‘divisive’ is that they are complaining because he will not endorse or engage in mainstream animal welfare campaigning. This indicates an ignorance of Francione’s writing which critiques such campaigns and sets out a programme to undermine the property status of nonhuman animals and establish veganism as the moral base of an animal rights movement.
How could Francione – or any Francione-inspired animal advocate – endorse the type of campaigns that are currently prevalent in the animal movement? Such campaigning involves a switch from battery cages to ‘enriched’ battery cages, encourages free-range systems that in no sense deserve the name, and urges animal user industries to ‘humanely’ gas millions of chickens in gas chambers. Do such campaigns even begin to challenge the property status of animals? Do such campaigns suggest a commitment to veganism? Do they in any sense seem to deserve the title ‘animal rights campaigns’?
[1] This is a common theme as articulated by animal advocates such as Norm Phelps: http://www.veganoutreach.org/articles/normphelps.html//url However, academic commentators sympathetic to animal welfarism do the same, for example Robert Garner in his Animal Rights: The Changing Debate (Macmillan 1996) and Gary Francione’s stalker, Dr. Sztybel: http://sztybel.tripod.com/blog.html
[2] http://human-nonhuman.blogspot.com/2007/12/google-it.html
[3] Utilitarian animal welfarist Peter Singer apparently recognised this ‘ripening up’ idea of Watson, acknowledging that new ideas are likely to sound strange to the ear when first encountered. He comments on page one of Animal Liberation that ‘“Animal Liberation” may sound more like a parody of other liberation movements than a serious objective’.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
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13 comments:
Thanks for laying this down, Roger. And concisely, too! I was actually able to read this all in one sitting. ;)
The welfarists’ claim that Francione is “divisive” is bizarre on multi levels.
First: the new welfarist movement asks animal rights advocates to unify around a position that has nothing to do with animal rights. Moreover, the new welfarists’ call for unity is idle as no animal rights advocates can, or should, take seriously a call to unite around something that has nothing to do with animal rights.
Second: the corporate movement itself, far people uniting people around animal rights, has in fact obliterated the integrity of this concept. I cannot think of anything more damaging than a "movement" that asks to unite around regulatory campaigns, no matter how damaging or demaning to the concept of animal rights. Ironically, it is Francione who has always been seriously concerned with movement unity – unity, that is, around the concept of animal rights (as opposed to that of new welfarism).
Third: new welfarism – by which I mean the promotion of welfarist regulation and “humane” animal products (in particular) and nonvegan initiatives (in general), all supposedly in the service of animal rights -- is morally inconsistent with animal rights, and empirically antithetical to abolition.
The solution to a “movement” which claims that we should unify around a position that is morally and empirically incompatible with animal rights is not to endorse such unity, but to take a hammer to it.
In this sense I confess to being "divisive" :-)
I am a newcomer to the blog, and I appreciate seeing an uncompromised commitment to the abolition of animal slavery which is so often lacking among animal activists these days. However, I can't help but think that you're conflating two very different things in this post. Granted, organizations such as PETA call themselves animal rights organizations but engage in a lot of animal welfare campaigns. However, to simply refer to them as animal welfare groups seems to blur a not inconsiderable difference between PETA and, say, the ASPCA.
The difference is this: animal welfare groups such as the ASPCA do not have as their end goal the abolition of animal slavery, but seek ultimately only to reform animal slavery. Organziations such as PETA, which operate under the banner of animal rights, on the other hand, have as their stated ultimate goal the abolition of animal slavery. The reason why people at PETA speak the language of animal welfare so frequently and engage in reformist campaigns is because they believe that these measures will lead, eventually, to their end goal of total animal liberation. The ASPCA, on the other hand, engages in animal welfare campaigns and speaks the language of animal welfare because they don't think that there is anything intrinsically wrong with animal slavery.
Don't get me wrong. I don't think that reformist measures are going to lead to liberation. But this is a matter of disagreement about what, in fact, will work--it is essentially a dispute about tactics between people who share the same ultimate goals.
(It's worth noting that PETA and other animal rights groups are not welfarist across the board. In addition to reformist stuff like their KFC campaign, they also distribute "Meat is Murder" bumper stickers, advocate veganism, lead campaigns demanding the end of certain, targeted animal experiments, and a quick look at the FAQs on their website shows them demanding that animals be granted rights and that their exploitation be abolished. They engage in a lot of reformist stuff that I don't like, but that's not all they do.)
In this way, it makes sense for PETA to call itself an animal rights group. It just happens to be a misdirected one. And in this way, Francione comes across as divisive (and like a megalomaniac) when he says that there was no animal rights movement until he started sharing his views on the internet.
As abolitionists, I think we need to recognize not only the differences between ourselves and other animal rights activists (and the differences are significant), but also the similarities which may form a basis on which we can persuade these activists of our point of view. If we go around trying to stip other activists of their "titles" as animal rights activists, then we are not only being divisive, but also petty.
ej, I totally disagree. Just because someone believes that animals have moral rights does not make her an animal rights activist. ARAs spend their time campaigning for rights. AWAs spend their time campaigning for welfare reforms. If someone who believes in AR campaigns for AW, then that person is an AWA who happens to believe in AR, but is not an ARA. It's not petty to observe that fact, nor is it divisive. I like James' call for all AR believers to unite around our true goal. We should show some integrity and backbone, and focus as a stronger force to promote veganism as a moral baseline, rather than promoting happy meat.
ej,
Many people treat other humans – coloured people, for example, or women – as morally inferior beings. If someone treats other humans that way, albeit not all the time and among other things he does, while claiming to be in favour of human rights, would you consider and call him a human rights activist ?
Most people treat nonhumans exclusively instrumentally, as things, that is, not as persons, rightsholders. If someone treats nonhumans that way, albeit not all the time and among other things he does, while claiming to be in favour of animal rights, would you consider and call her an animal rights activist ?
Welfarists are humans who treat nonhumans exclusively instrumentally, as things, not as persons, rightsholders, by, for example, running campaigns to get industry to slaughter animals more ''humanely.''
The difference is this: animal welfare groups such as the ASPCA do not have as their end goal the abolition of animal slavery, but seek ultimately only to reform animal slavery. Organziations such as PETA, which operate under the banner of animal rights, on the other hand, have as their stated ultimate goal the abolition of animal slavery.
PeTA’s abolitionist-sounding rhetoric cannot seriously be counterbalanced against the fact they engage in (welfarist) advocacy which cannot seriously be described as consistent with animal rights. Animal rights calls for an immediate end to the instrumental treatment of animals. Yet PeTA promote CAK, for example, which is a more economically efficient method of killing. I don’t know how a concept that calls for an end to the instrumental treatment of animals can be used to characterize a group that promotes the instrumental use of animals. It surely violates the conditions of the concept’s intelligible application.
The reason why people at PETA speak the language of animal welfare so frequently and engage in reformist campaigns is because they believe that these measures will lead, eventually, to their end goal of total animal liberation.
If PeTA want to be taken seriously as an animal rights group, then they cannot flagrantly undermine that by promoting an ideology which, with the best will in the world, no informed animal rights advocate can take seriously. Now there is no empirical proof that welfarism is causally related to abolition. Moreover -- and this is an irony which is perhaps to terrible to be edifying –the welfarist measures promoted by PeTA are themselves empirically incompatible with abolition (because they will, for example, benefit exploiters economically). How, therefore, can PeTA intelligibly claim that welfarism is causally related, or conducive to, abolition? When PeTA’s claims are empirically groundless there is not need for anyone to take them seriously – and so no need for them (these claims) to be taken to militate in favor of the claim that PeTA is an animal rights group.
Don't get me wrong. I don't think that reformist measures are going to lead to liberation. But this is a matter of disagreement about what, in fact, will work--it is essentially a dispute about tactics between people who share the same ultimate goals.
This constitutes a reductive understanding of the situation. For it neglects other considerations that bear, or should bear, on the assessment of whether a group is (or is not) an animal rights group. Surely, the defining characteristic of an animal rights group is that its advocacy be doctrinally consistent with animal rights.
Francione comes across as divisive (and like a megalomaniac) when he says that there was no animal rights movement until he started sharing his views on the internet.
This blurs the not inconsiderable distinction between a serious animal rights advocate and, say, Hitler.
Moreover, it is close to blindness not to see in the abolition / welfare debate anything more than “pettiness.” We think new welfarism is an insidiously false liberatory ideology. It propagates false claims about welfarism’s empirical capabilities; and denies to veganism its affirmative, potentially transfiguring character.
Thanks to everyone who have commented on this blog entry. For now, I would just like to respond to ej's comments about PeTA and the ASPCA.
It is true that there are differences between these orgs. Although not a popular terms in many quarters, the concept of new welfarist (as opposed to welfarist) marks and does capture this difference.
I'm even prepared to go as far as calling PeTA (and their philosopher) progressive welfarists as opposed to traditional ones. By his own insistence, PeTA's philosopher is not an animal rightist. Indeed, one could even think that PeTA are disrespectful of Peter Singer for falsely labeling him a rightist. This issue is a little more complicated though because one needs to appreciate the difference between moral and legal rights and accept that utilitarians will engage in rights-talk as a kind of political shorthand. Not, however, as the foundation of an ethical position and that is what animal rightists want to do more than anything else.
It really shocks me that the rightists in "the animal rights movement" (by which I mean people who want to make rights-based claims about human-nonhuman relations their fundamental claims) are crowded out and called divisive by nonrightists who will not give up the name for what appears to be selfish, lazy or political reasons.
Just to respond to some of the objections raised against my comments, I wish to emphasize that there is a substantial difference between promoting reformist measures for animals because you believe that this will lead to their ultimate liberation and promoting reformist measures because you think that reform is the end goal.
Of course there is no empirical evidence that reformism works toward the goal of animal liberation, and my own belief is that such measures are, in fact, counterproductive, but there is also no empirical evidence supporting the abolitionist view--or at least no conclusive evidence. I know many of the people who work at PETA personally, including their higher-ups, and I can say from that experience that when they promote reformist goals, they are doing so in good faith, ie, because they really believe that reform will lead to their goal of total animal liberation. Mistaken as they are, I find it simplistic to call such activism merely animal welfare activism. It seems more correct to call it misguided animal rights activism.
Addressing Karin's concerns, I think there is a good example of someone using humans instrumentally in the service of genuine human rights activism--Oskar Schindler, a man who bought Jews in order to liberate them. Was Schindler an ersatz human rights supporter because of this?
Francione and some other abolitionists are divisive insofar as they ignore the fact that other animal rights activists, such as those at PETA, are in agreement with him as to the ultimate goals of the animal rights movement. And the question of whether reformist measures are or are not effective in achieving animal liberation is not at all an easy one to resolve. Indeed, I don't think it's possible to conclusively resolve it, even though I do have my own educated opinion on it. I myself have pretty much run the gamut in terms of my approach to animal activism (starting from a flimsy animal welfare view, to a more robust Singerian welfare view, to a PETA-style, revolution-through-reform view, to the abolitionist view), and I realize that one can plausibly, and in good faith, maintain each of these views. Francione, by smearing PETA and other animal rights groups as merely animal welfare groups, seems to ignore the possibility that people could disagree in good faith with the abolitionist view on what tactics and strategies are most effective in achieving animal liberation while still sharing his ultimate goals. Once the substantive agreements between abolitionists and other animal rights supporters is acknowledged, a more respectful and mutually enlightening interchange can take the place of the rather splenetic and polemical one which now plagues intra-movement discourse. If you go around hyperbolically demonizing non-abolitionist animal rights supporters as supporters of animal slavery instead of seeing them as people with the right goals but the wrong means to those goals, then you are being divisive.
Addressing Karin's concerns, I think there is a good example of someone using humans instrumentally in the service of genuine human rights activism--Oskar Schindler, a man who bought Jews in order to liberate them. Was Schindler an ersatz human rights supporter because of this?
Oskar Schindler rescued Jews from the gas chambers by requiring them as workers for his factory. He did not negotiate with the Nazis about alternative ways of killing them.
You claim to be an abolitionist but you obviously don't understand what abolitionism is all about: it is about consistency, the accordance of means and ends, goals and ways of achieving them. Everybody is free to claim to pursue whatever noble, honourable goal she pleases; the claim is to be evaluated depending on the actions taken by those who make it. The National Socialists wanted to get rid of unemployment, and they claimed to aim at the overall best thing for Germany. So did the political opposition. The Nazis pursued their goal with rearmament and concentration camps. Was there just a disagreement about ''strategy''?
The Spanish Inquisition claimed to further the salvation of its victims.
The reign of terror of the Jacobin during the French Revolution was carried out in the name of ''liberation, equality, fraternity.''
All systems of injustice and oppression and their respective ideologies can gain and preserve the power they have only because they are supported by people who seriously believe in them as the epitome of higher values, a ''greater good,'' or as instrumental in achieving such good. The goal someone claims to pursue is mirrored in the actions they take, and the claim has to be evaluated in the light of these actions.
Once the substantive agreements between abolitionists and other animal rights supporters is acknowledged, a more respectful and mutually enlightening interchange can take the place of the rather splenetic and polemical one which now plagues intra-movement discourse.
I hope very much that a respectful and enlightening interchange can take place but it will not take place as an intra-movement discourse, for the simple reason that those who will take part in it belong to opposing groups between which there are no substantial agreements, at least none on animal rights and abolition. Abolitionism is the countermovement to the – with Francione, I am reluctant to call it a movement – animal welfare forces which are prevalent in society. And for that very reason of those opposing groups being two entirely and fundamentally different things, abolitionists are not being divisive: there is simply nothing that could be divided.
Organziations such as PETA, which operate under the banner of animal rights...have as their stated ultimate goal the abolition of animal slavery.
Indeed. And if I claim that I'm a tomato then I am a tomato -- and if anyone doesn't take me seriously then they are being polemical.
I know many of the people who work at PETA personally, including their higher-ups, and I can say from that experience that when they promote reformist goals, they are doing so in good faith, ie, because they really believe that reform will lead to their goal of total animal liberation. Mistaken as they are, I find it simplistic to call such activism merely animal welfare activism. It seems more correct to call it misguided animal rights activism.
I often hear people say that PeTA have good intentions and are misguided. But if people remember that in the service of those intentions
PeTA employ welfarist measures which are saturated with speciesism, then they will not believe that those intentions can excuse much. The conjunction of speciesist means with abolitionist ends is absurd as a matter of theory, insidious as a matter of practice -- and it yields a chimerical movement that nourishes itself on the very things it should be opposing, namely, speciesism, welfarism, animal use.
ej, I agree that the distinction between animal welfare activism and "misguided animal rights activism" is substantial. As Roger pointed out, the latter one is called "new welfarism," at least by abolitionists. Of course its proponents don't like the moniker!
Abolitionists often lump traditional and new welfarism together, which makes sense to an abolitionist, but is confusing for everyone else. Specifying "new welfarism" would go a long way towards cutting out a lot of bickering, because much of it consists of new welfarists trying to differentiate themselves from traditional welfarists.
If we acknowledge the difference, we can concentrate on showing how supporting reform for ANY reason is incompatible with AR.
Regarding the "diviseness" issue, it helps to emphasize the difference between criticizing the concept & orgs that support it, on the one hand, and criticizing individuals in a patronizing manner, on the other. If we can be careful to remain courteous while arguing w/individuals, then it's easier to accept that what's now called "unncessary diviseness" is actually an "essential difference."
While we occasionally do point out that distinction, it's not always evident in our interactions.
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