A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #11-26 - Anti-speciesism to end all injustice. A critical response to the article "A Special Species" (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The article " A Special Species " -a response to the article on 
anti-speciesism " Beyond Speciesism: The Path to Total Liberation" -is a 
near-perfect example of a rhetoric that presents itself calmly, 
professes openness to change, recognizes the value of others' criticism, 
and then, elegantly, puts everything back where it belongs. Some might 
call it reactionary rhetoric, and rightly so. And indeed, it is 
something similar, but, if you like, even more subtle and, for this very 
reason, more worthy of a thorough response.

I will therefore try to analyze the arguments presented in the article, 
calmly, piece by piece.

Human prerogative as an alibi

The article begins with an argument that, repeated often enough 
throughout the text, ends up appearing like sound philosophy: we are the 
ones who care about the fate of animals, and the fact that we care is, 
among other things, proof of our "uniqueness." Our ability to 
"problematize," our ability to be moral, ethical, and conscious 
subjects, is an exclusive prerogative of human beings, and this 
qualifies and distinguishes us.

The argument is blatantly circular: highlighting those undeniable human 
characteristics is completely irrelevant to the issue we wish to 
address; it would be like discussing the human capacity to compose 
wonderful musical works while discussing the atrocities of war.

That antispeciesism doesn't deny the cognitive peculiarities of human 
beings should be common ground for anyone who has even minimally 
addressed the issue. The opposite would be grotesque. What 
antispeciesism challenges is the use of those peculiarities to construct 
a hierarchy.

The dolphin navigates the dark seas with a sonar system unmatched by any 
human technology. The ant deposits chemical traces that constitute an 
extraordinarily complex collective communication system. The elephant 
processes grief. The crow plans. The octopus solves problems. 
Complexity, understood as adaptive, sensorial, and relational richness, 
is everywhere in living things. Human complexity is a complexity, not 
complexity itself. The fact that it is the only one we can directly 
experience does not make it the measure of all others. Just as the many 
and diverse human cultures are unique, and the many and diverse 
attitudes of individual humans are unique (and often those into which we 
are born and live until death), each of them, as anarchists, we should 
know, cannot be the yardstick by which to judge the others, much less to 
overpower them.

The same peculiarities the author invokes to distinguish us from other 
animals are those that have led us to build concentration camps for 
billions of animals, to collapse ecosystems, to the point of 
approaching, according to many scientists, the sixth mass extinction in 
planetary history (the first self-induced extinction in history, more 
severe than that which struck the dinosaurs and which could put an end 
to the speciation of large vertebrates). If human cognitive prerogative 
is the criterion of moral worth, then we must admit that that 
prerogative has demonstrated, at the very least, a dark side of abysmal 
proportions.

This isn't a criticism of human beings, obviously. It's about 
recognizing the consequences of this celebrated uniqueness and not 
allowing the ideological exploitation of a biological fact.

It's interesting to observe how the uniqueness of human characteristics 
is used in contrast to that of all animals, regardless of their species. 
It's an attitude not unlike nationalism, which makes a clear distinction 
between compatriots and foreigners, as if they were all equal and 
hailing from the same foreign country. This reveals that behind the 
defense of uniqueness lies only a clumsy attempt to draw a completely 
arbitrary line between us and them, and, on this basis, construct 
philosophical frameworks that are obviously poisonous at their root.

The newborn and the lamb

The author revisits the classic dilemma of the newborn versus the lamb: 
"If in an emergency situation you have to choose between saving a 
newborn or saving a lamb, who do you save?" He casually responds: "I 
save the newborn because he's human like me." The only person truly 
challenged by that question is the person who asks it thinking it's a 
valid and useful question. That said, the author's answer is honest. And 
that's exactly the crux of the matter.

No anti-speciesist would deny the general tendency to "prefer" or 
"favor" what resembles us, what is close to us, what is part of our 
emotional history. This preference is real, understandable, has partly 
biological roots, and, in certain contexts, is even legitimate. The 
problem arises when this instinctive preference is used to derive a 
universal moral justification for systematic oppression, something the 
author agrees with, but in claiming to be so, he falls into a gross and 
dangerous short circuit.

Moreover, the same logic that maintains that it's normal to defend what 
resembles or is close to me would lead to defending tribalism, 
nationalism, racism, competition, capitalism, etc.-that is, all those 
aberrations that, by constantly establishing the boundaries of what is 
considered similar and close, destroy or exploit the rest. The author 
himself knows this well, and when it comes to human groups, it's easy to 
recognize these are cognitive distortions, often fueled by the 
propaganda of power and used against us, horrors that progressive 
societies strive to overcome. But when it comes to animals, that same 
distortion is suddenly rehabilitated, ennobled, transformed into an 
ethical reasoning not without foundation. As if, by changing the 
subjects of our discussions, we were suddenly struck by such amnesia 
that we forget the philosophical and ethical framework that, as 
anarchists, moves us in a given direction.

The fact that I can choose not to jump into a river to save a stranger, 
preferring my life to his, does not automatically create a philosophical 
framework that justifies that stranger's death, much less his suffering, 
perhaps to obtain products I don't need. The distance between extreme 
emergency and everyday practice is immense, and hiding the latter behind 
the former is one of the oldest and least defensible rhetorics of power.

Speciesism, racism, sexism: the misunderstood analogies

The author states that he has difficulty equating speciesism with racism 
or sexism. He argues that in the case of human races, the distinctions 
are arbitrary (and, in fact, biological races do not exist), while the 
differences between species are scientifically established.

But this argument completely misunderstands the nature of the analogy. 
Anti-speciesism doesn't claim that biological differences between 
species don't exist. It claims that those differences don't justify the 
infliction of avoidable suffering. Just as anatomical differences 
between the sexes-which do exist-don't justify sexism. Just as 
phenotypic differences between populations-which do exist-don't justify 
racism.

The point is not the existence of the differences, but the logical leap 
that transforms them into a domain license.

The discriminations upon which customs and even abhorrent laws were once 
built (and some persist to this day) were also based on real, objective 
differences that today we might call arbitrary and irrelevant (such as 
skin color in racism or the presence of specific genitalia in sexism). 
Those real differences were (are) considered valid grounds for endorsing 
discrimination. Progressive work focuses precisely on destroying the 
validity of those grounds, not denying that differences exist. So we're 
talking about real differences, but it's foolish and unjust to consider 
them in order to justify the atrocities and suffering perpetrated 
against specific individuals.

The exact same thing happens to animals: biological difference is 
exploited to perpetrate atrocities and suffering that could otherwise be 
avoided. Here's the analogy.

Moreover, to give an idea of how arbitrary the value we give to these 
differences is, just think of the fate we reserve for some animals 
compared to others: in our society, it's legal and acceptable to 
slaughter a pig but not a dog. In the latter case, one commits an 
offence and is considered a psychopath. All this certainly doesn't 
happen for biological reasons.

Another important aspect to consider is that if the speciesism-racism 
analogy is rejected because species exist while races do not, it goes 
without saying that racism is wrong precisely because human races do not 
exist biologically. But this is a dangerously fragile foundation: if 
tomorrow a significant genetic difference between human races were 
discovered, should we reconsider slavery? Obviously not. But these are 
the dangers to which a society that relies on biological and scientific 
data for the solidity of its morality exposes itself. This is the danger 
of necessarily needing cultural supports and objective data to detect 
something that is evident even to a child's sensibilities.

To complete the analogy, racism, therefore, is wrong because the 
suffering of those who experience its effects is real and the domination 
is unjust, regardless of the existence or otherwise of biological 
categories and their nature. The same logic-real suffering is real, 
domination is unjust-applies to animals. Their nervous systems, their 
capacity to experience pain, fear, stress, attachment, and deprivation 
make them individuals capable of suffering discrimination and abuse: all 
of this is evident to everyone, and if we must rely on science because 
it has now completely replaced our human "feelings," it is also a fact 
scientifically documented with the same solidity as any biological data.

Capitalism as a lightning rod

One of the article's most elegant moments is the shift in 
responsibility: it is capitalism that is destroying the world, while 
"Using nature and animals for our sustenance, for food, or for the 
protection of our very lives cannot, in itself, be considered an abuse." 
This sentence deserves a thorough analysis.

Let's start from the incontrovertible assumption that eating meat in the 
contemporary world is not, for the vast majority of people, a matter of 
survival. It's a choice. Every day. Repeated several times a day. It's a 
choice that can be changed, and when changed, it immediately reduces the 
amount of suffering inflicted on the world. So, let's not hide behind 
our fingers and rule out the possibility that animal exploitation is a 
matter of sustenance, nutrition, or the protection of life. It's simply 
a privilege and the defense of a habit. This makes it an abuse.

Anti-speciesism does not advocate defending the lives of animals at the 
cost of one's own. Anyone, in need, for their own survival, could be 
driven to commit acts against another life. Consider those who have had 
to resort to cannibalism in extreme conditions, or those who must kill 
another human to defend their own life. These actions, while 
understandable, in no way set a standard outside the emergency contexts 
that generated them.

That said, capitalism is certainly partly responsible for, among other 
things, the intensive exploitation of animals. But it isn't the source 
of that problem, or any other radical problem; rather, it is a concrete 
manifestation of how certain economies and potentates operate. Anarchism 
often forgets this fact and clings to the prolific and valid anarchist 
philosophy of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as if it were 
the reservoir of all anarchist reasoning, when in reality it is a 
specific interpretation tied to that specific period.

It almost seems as if, with profit abolished and the means of production 
socialized, humanity could finally awaken to a reality of 
self-determination, freedom, and equality. This won't happen. The roots 
of our slavery, inequality, and domination lie in a soil that existed 
millennia before the global market, let alone capitalism, and, I fear, 
will survive its collapse. This is why capitalism is a symptom, not the 
disease.

Thus, reducing problems to "it's capitalism" risks drastically 
impoverishing the understanding of the problems and their solutions.

In any case, capitalism is a devastating symptom and must be addressed 
within the context of animal welfare, not as a replacement. And to talk 
about capitalism, we must also, and above all, talk about those who 
support it by purchasing, consuming, and investing. Multinationals don't 
produce by magic or as a hobby: they produce because there is demand and 
buyers. The individual is the driving force of capitalism. The 
individual who acts is part of the system, not an external spectator. So 
there's something profoundly ironic in accusing capitalism of destroying 
animals and nature, while arguing for maintaining the consumer practices 
that capitalist industry requires, or perhaps even arguing for them to 
become more ethical and moderate.

All this becomes even more absurd considering that, even leaving aside 
the ethical question, animal products consume more land and produce more 
pollution for the same amount of calories and nutrients. Today, in a 
world collapsing precisely for these reasons, steak represents a 
privilege that spits in the face not only of the individual sacrificed 
for that irreplaceable flavor, but also of all climate migrants and the 
millions of deaths caused by pollution every year, becoming one of the 
greatest emblems of the most brazen and cruel predatory capitalism.

Unidirectional moral action and its hidden hypocrisy

The author acknowledges that the fight for animal liberation is a noble 
task, but adds: it is a one-way moral action, possible only by virtue of 
our uniqueness. We are the ones who can be the voice of the voiceless.

It's worth starting by saying that all animals have a voice, but we are 
the ones who are deaf. When an animal can experience emotions such as 
fear, anguish, and pain, as well as joy, a desire to play, and 
affection, reducing everything to their supposed lack of ethical choices 
and calling it unidirectionality is misleading and specious. Precisely 
because of the uniqueness of each species, it must be understood that 
other species function differently, and therefore it is our duty to 
acknowledge our blindness to certain social mechanisms of other species. 
Morality and ethics change radically even within human cultures and 
differ from individual to individual. Completely dismissing the 
existence of ethics in the animal kingdom is an arrogant and, indeed, 
speciesist assumption that also goes against most ethological literature.

Furthermore, let's take a moment to put this statement into its real 
context: a system in which every year hundreds of billions of land 
animals, and hundreds of billions of marine animals, are segregated, 
forced to reproduce, and slaughtered at a rate of forty thousand per 
second, in systematically brutal conditions, transforming individuals 
into products, all to prevent them from giving up their habit of a 
certain flavor. This is the context in which we reflect, with 
satisfaction, on the fact that we have the moral prerogative to ask 
ourselves if perhaps we're exaggerating a bit.

Unidirectional moral action is the precise consequence of a relationship 
of absolute power, in which one species holds total control over the 
life and death of all others because it has that power, and celebrates 
itself by theorizing that perhaps it would be best to exercise that 
power with a modicum of moderation. The comparison with colonialism is 
all too easy: the power with which industrial societies dominated (and 
dominate) individuals in uncivilized communities was celebrated as proof 
of the justice of that domination. If we're talking about humans, it's 
clear that that power must be destroyed. If we're talking about animals, 
however, we're talking about "unidirectional moral action." It's no 
coincidence that certain communities were wiped out, deported, and 
enslaved by colonialism precisely because individuals were seen as beasts.

We are animals

When talking about the uniqueness of human beings, it is worth 
remembering some data.

Homo sapiens shares a higher percentage of DNA with bonobos and 
chimpanzees than the African and Indian elephants do. Taxonomically and 
biologically, we are one of the five great apes. Our anatomy, in 
fact-clawsless, with flat teeth, a weak jaw that can move laterally, a 
long intestine, weak stomach acid, large amounts of ptyalin in our 
saliva to break down starches, extensive color vision, an opposable 
thumb, an instinctive aversion to carcasses, etc.-is that of a 
frugivorous primate that has developed omnivorous abilities through 
adaptation, not of a predator by nature.

The discovery of mirror neurons revealed that our biology is literally 
designed to resonate with the experiences of others: when we observe 
someone experiencing pain, the same neural areas activate in us. 
Empathy, studies have shown, is a primary biological function shared by 
many species.

When we modify this empathic capacity, becoming moved by the sight of a 
beaten dog and remaining indifferent to a caged pig, we are not 
exercising sophisticated moral judgment. We are undergoing a cognitive 
distortion produced by culture, habit, and economic interest. It is an 
induced cognitive state in which natural perceptions of abhorrence of 
suffering are suspended and arbitrarily directed for convenience.

Humans today are cultural animals, of course, but culture also has the 
power to stifle our species' instinctive tendency toward sharing and 
empathy. This is how reactionary propaganda like racism and even 
speciesism work. If we don't understand these mechanisms, celebrating 
the cultural uniqueness of humankind is like celebrating the purchase of 
a powerful car without realizing that by driving it, we're running over 
other people and will eventually crash into a wall.

It cannot be ignored that before the agricultural revolution, for 
hundreds of thousands of years (since the existence of Homo sapiens, and 
millions of years if we consider the genus Homo), and therefore for more 
than 90% of our life on this planet, the primary drivers of our survival 
were derived solely from our biology and therefore from instinctive 
mechanisms such as empathy and cooperation. We were fully aware of the 
environment in which we moved, in a harmonious relationship with both 
nature and its own psychophysical needs, just like any other living 
being. It's no wonder that, in this context, it was never necessary to 
invent laws, hierarchies, domination, economics, or competition. These 
emerged after the sedentary nature and rules of civilization began to 
pollute our relationship with nature. In this process, it was crucial to 
build a cultural framework that made domination and domestication 
acceptable, both human and animal.

Anarchism against borders but not those of species

The author concludes by stating that "anarchism is a theory of human 
freedom." This statement deserves both historical contextualization and 
philosophical challenge.

Anarchist thought has had the ability, throughout history, to 
progressively broaden its moral horizons: from revolutions against noble 
power to abolitionism, from feminism to anti-racism, from 
anti-colonialism to radical ecology. At every stage, there was someone 
who said: this is a fight for X, we can't extend it to Y. And, each 
time, history has shown that this resistance was not the expression of a 
principle, but of a privilege that was feared to be lost. For example, 
it is not uncommon to encounter great misogynist anarchist philosophers 
precisely because they were products of their time and their cognitive 
system of belonging.

The expansion of the moral sphere is the engine of ethical progress, and 
every resistance to that expansion always has the same logical 
structure: "these people are different from us, our moral categories do 
not apply to them."

Animals will never organize into unions. They won't write manifestos. 
They won't participate in assemblies. At least not in ways that humans 
would recognize as such. It's part of their uniqueness, different from 
ours, and it varies from species to species.

The plight of farmed and slaughtered animals is the plight of every 
being entirely dependent on the will of others to avoid oppression or 
death. This is no reason to exclude them from our moral considerations: 
it is the strongest reason there is to include them.

An individual's inability-presumed or otherwise-to make moral or ethical 
choices is clearly not an adequate yardstick for deciding whether to 
apply our ethical and moral guidelines to them as well. Otherwise, we 
might consider it acceptable, for example, that human individuals in a 
vegetative state or with cognitive disabilities should be excluded for 
the same reasons.

Furthermore, thinking that human freedom can be independent of the 
freedom of other species and natural mechanisms is one of the most 
blatant and poisonous forms of anthropocentrism, which excludes the rest 
of living things from the mechanisms of human life, especially social 
and moral ones. It is a form of segregation that will never lead to any 
true liberation and will condemn us to a future in which we will always 
be at war with a part of ourselves: nature and our animal nature.

Consistency as a compass, choice as responsibility

The author concedes, toward the end, that it is "legitimate and 
possible-without declaring oneself anti-speciesist-to fight against 
factory farming, to challenge animal experimentation, and to adopt 
compassionate lifestyles." It's a generous concession. And it's also a 
sign that something in the reasoning doesn't add up.

If I acknowledge that factory farming is wrong, I must ask myself why. 
If the answer is "because it causes unnecessary suffering," then I have 
already adopted the central tenet of antispeciesism: that I am not 
indifferent to animal suffering because it has moral relevance and our 
interest in food convenience does not automatically justify it. At that 
point, the question is not whether to be antispeciesist in the abstract, 
but whether to be consistent in practice.

Consistency is the most honest measure of a value system and requires 
constant self-improvement. It's neither honest nor helpful to invoke a 
critique of capitalism while willingly funding one of the most 
devastating industries. One cannot profess a "non-anthropocentric 
humanism" and then systematically exclude animal welfare from every 
ethical and practical consideration when this conflicts with habits one 
refuses to give up.

Anti-speciesism doesn't demand perfection. It demands awareness, like 
any other philosophy that aims to end injustice. It demands that we stop 
pretending that the suffering inflicted on billions of sentient beings 
every day is an inevitable consequence of our nature, rather than the 
result of cultural choices we can reconsider.

Rather than appeal to that thinker, refer to that philosophy, or rely on 
the results of that scientific research, perhaps we need to appeal to 
human empathy and start feeling again. No one is born racist, but many 
become so thanks to a certain culture, to targeted propaganda with 
specific goals. Well, no one is born speciesist; yet, we all become so 
because we're exposed to very similar propaganda. Anyone given the 
choice of whether to harm or not would choose not to. For example, 
anyone driving a car who came across a hedgehog on the road would try to 
avoid it. If someone didn't do so, but rather targeted it, deliberately 
running over it, what would we think of them, their morals, their 
cognitive complexity?

The answer is obvious, but if we talk about eating habits, then 
something happens that clouds all our uniqueness, just as it does with 
all other forms of discrimination. We find ourselves denying that 
squashing that hedgehog is an abuse; we promote the idea that avoiding 
it is beyond our moral and ethical sphere; we even defend the actions 
that cause death and suffering, that consume and pollute the earth. 
Paradoxically, even in an anarchic context.

We are all born into a capitalist, nationalist, sexist, and racist 
world. The anarchist has seen beyond the propaganda that seeks to 
normalize these horrors and has chosen to destroy them, first within 
himself and then externally, even renouncing the privilege that a 
certain type of world grants to some. The anti-speciesist has done the 
same. It is the same process of deconstruction by which an individual 
ceases to accept that another living being is exploited and killed to 
maintain his own privilege. That this form of privilege to the detriment 
of other individuals is ignored or even justified in an anarchist 
context sounds paradoxical and profoundly anachronistic.

I believe it's important to constantly ask ourselves what kind of 
anarchy we want, represent, and build. Here we're asking: do we really 
want an anarchy that ignores or even justifies the suffering of a living 
being capable of suffering?

Massimo Geloni

https://umanitanova.org/antispecismo-per-far-cessare-ogni-ingiustizia-risposta-critica-allarticolo-una-specie-speciale/
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