Comradeship // Freechat

Three day old account asking for the creation of what has the -potential- to be a highly divisive, highly inflammatory community. I wish people would have a different attitude, one of lurking a bit in their new home, understanding its nature and waiting before seeking power and influence and change over it. I doubt OP is ill intentioned I just think "lurk more" is a good mantra.

Let me lay out some thinking.

Whereas:

1. Hexbear has an existing community around this already that is much larger than this one will ever be and as we are federated you can view and interact with that community and perhaps accomplish your goals?

2. Whereas the creation of that community on that site led to some of their most enduring struggle sessions and division (curiously their application asks applicants not to be racist, not to be homo or trans-phobic, and about animal liberation stuff, not a whiff about women's rights though even after their big post about misogyny problem, really kind of telling priorities in the western left but perhaps that's for another time). And whereas we have a meager 550 monthly users on lemmygrad total and further division of that is bad.

3. Whereas great Marxist theorists have written many more times as much on atheism, anti-theism, anti-religion, etc (compared to a few carefully mined quotes relating vaguely to this) and whereas despite this most Marxists and anti-imperialists almost certainly fall within the camp of not being offended by such content nor having a problem integrating it in their lives. But whereas such content was prohibited from becoming a community unto itself on lemmygrad to prevent strife, struggle sessions, disharmony, dis-unity, and division from the wider masses.

4. Whereas this by contrast would be much more divisive, tends to bring in a lot of problematic people (as with the atheism community in places) who are very dogmatic, inflammatory, hurtful, antagonistic (I'm thinking federated instances here) towards those who don't hold their view and tend to make such posts in great number which are unfriendly to those who don't hold their persuasion and would result in strife, dis-unity, division, and struggle that distracts from primary interests such as anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism. (And please let's be honest here, if we're going to say Muslims and Christians should feel welcome by not pushing the Dia-Mat hard in that direction and beating them over the head with it, it's equally if not more important given the amount of people who eat meat even compared to the religious/irreligious (greater) that we not create an unnecessary point of tension here and a point of division from the masses).

Theory-crafting in a dedicated community? I don't have an issue with that, I'm not freaking out about trying to connect veganism and Marxism. What I worry about is the memes, the casual posts, the rants, the venting about "carnists" and so on that stir up trouble and strife when things have been so relatively harmonious here compared to hexbear. Some of that is due to the vetting and requirements for membership, some credit is due to the admins and a lot of that I think is from discouraging anything too inflammatory that distracts from the uniting interest and goal here. I hope you can keep this in mind if you make such a community when setting rules.

Veganism is the way forward and we cannot ignore the enslavement, rape, torture and killing of other species for our own pleasure. I think many marxists are flawed when it comes to this.

Also, to whom it may concern. You are not a bear. Nor a chimp. Nor a lion. You are not forced at gunpoint to eat meat or animal products. You are a human being. We can have a perfectly healthy diet without it. Eating animal products is a choice. Exploiting other species is a choice.

I think there's a connection between the commodification of animals and worker exploitation. The slaughter industry is one of the most brutal and inhumane work environments in the imperial core, almost nothing compares to the conditions that workers are under. I don't think that's a coincidence.

This is based on vibes and not theory, though.

I think a Marxist exploitation would be interesting!

I think a materialist analysis of why veganism became popular, and why it was recent, would be interesting. There are, of course, related precedents in diet with religious vegetarianism (Buddhist, veg Hindu, etc) and minimizing unnecessary harm (Jainism, Quakers, certain middle eastern philosophies, etc). But veganism as we think of it is a modern phenomenon that emerged in a highly industrialized society of the imperial core.

I think the elephants in the room are industrialized agriculture, the end of famine conditions, and the social aspect of acquiring food from markets. Eating a modern vegan diet was not practicable before B12 vitamins and cheap staples. People that tried would eventually become malnourished. Re: famine conditions, if you have not had to think about the prospect of dying from a lack of food, you may spend more time thinking about where it comes from and how you might be more picky about it. And with the social component of markets, food is a consumer choice, an abstraction away from its production (complete with Marxist alienation), and not as much of a core social activity as are hunter gatherer activities or working a farm. Not eating animal products means a substitution of items bought at a market with no need to substantially change a budget. And when it's a consumer choice abstracted from production, when you learn about its production you will be more likely to be horrified.

So yeah things like that are interesting. They could also assist in understanding how one might understand the advancement of veganism dialectically, e.g. avoiding being chauvinist towards societies that haven't had the necessary productive and social prerequisites to have this perspective, being too busy dealing with imperialism and their own development. And how pushing for certain kinds of economic and food security may be a better way to spend a portion of one's advocacy budget. And why certain psychological barriers exist to adopting a vegan stance and how they might be addressed without a liberal approach.

Here are my thoughts. Not polished but hope they make sense:

Point 1: Most socieities in a smartphone phase have a contradiction between the bourgeoisie that exploits animals and vegan activists. Farm workers take part in this exploitation but they're not benefiting from it, they're also exploited in this slaughter-hell. Animals don't have a weight in this xontradiction because they can't really fight back their oppressors. The people in general buy animal products but I think they don't reall benefit from animal exploitation. Most people buy & use animal prod because they're used to and attached to them culturally-emotionally.

Point 2: People actually care about animals, they just can't change their habits. With each friend, I had at least a few convos on veganism. The most honest non-vegans tell me exactly that.

Point 3: People are speciesist because they exploit animals, not the other way around. Humans ate animals in the past because this helped them survive. Before veganism, I went "reducetarian" for health and environmental reasons. Only after that I went vegan.

Point 4: When capitalism started to dominate, animal industry appeared. This industry is interested in preserving speciesism. That's why the bourgeoisie attacks animal rights activists so much. It even tries to ban anything that can push people towards veganism:

1. Suddenly, they care about product "misbranding". It's now "wrong" to call soy meat "meat". Shouldn't we ban saying "peanut butter" then?
2. Some Statesian States banned cell-cultured meat
3. Vegans are almost never depicted positively in Western sitcoms, cartoons and mass media
4. Bourgeois news websites spread anti-vegan misinformation. I'm bombarded by my relatives with bs articles saying "veganism either killed some baby of crazy raw vegan or science paper says veganism bad for health or actually not good for the environment". Some of the articles come from "respectable" sources like BBC or CNN
5. Right-wingers are almost universally anti-vegan

https://nationalaglawcenter.org/cell-cultured-meat-updates-state-bans-labeling-requirements-and-regulatory-clarifications/

Point 5: All vegans must support socialism. Socialism will eliminate the bourgeoisie but speciesism will stay for much longer. Under socialism, it will be easier to eliminate speciesism because proletarians have no (or little) material interest in animal exploitation. You can convince a socialist .gov to make steps towards veganism for environmental and health reasons. China already does that: https://www.nycfoodpolicy.org/food-policy-snapshot-china-five-year-agricultural-plan-cultivated-meat/ With this, veganism will stop being seen as a fringe thing. People always ask me how am I capable of living without so many products. All the alternative foods will answer this question. People will slowly adopt these foods and eventually speciesism will crumble.

I'm going to lock this thread because discussions are getting out of hand. The topic of veganism and animal exploitation has once again been proven to be a sore point for marxists lol.

I'm also a vegan tankie and would be glad to join.

My thoughts are that:

Eating meat is not antithetical to communism. Animal farming will continue to exist under communism

Coincidentally I did have an IRL conversation with an older comrade about this topic (I've been a vegan for 5 1/2 years now) and she told me to read a passage from Engels that he wrote about vegetarians (the part played by labour in the transition from ape to man) in dialectics of nature.

Thinking that I couldn't be the first to be a vegan communist to read this, I found this great blog: https://medium.com/@lilligroeneveld/challenging-friedrich-engels-about-veganism-2c17f303a269

Great read, basically sums up all the same thoughts I had and then some!

This is the 4th year I am a vegan. Before that for one year I was a vegetarian. Idk how to contribute to this, but I support you.

Although honestly I think there is nothing really we can do, when people are so numb emotionally, can't really raise this bar for or in others. I agree with the person who said: live life according to your values and influence people that way.

It's the same with homelessness or starvation, poverty. It's cool you save one and it it everything for that specific one, but it's all or nothing.

I'd maybe incentivise people who feel the weight of this to post things into the vegan community and share stuff that actually matters rather than just recipes.

Bottom line is that no change will come unless humanity realises that all of life on this planet, or maybe even in the universe is one organism (?) and we are (at least on earth) the responsible species to cater to all forms of life in this scenario, rather than just to our own selves or our species. Nonetheless this is just wishful thinking, or idealism or something so far in our evolution, that we can't even comprehend it yet, some may can't even see the point of it yet.

Honestly, I am not blaming other vegans, I understand the anger and shock, but wtf do you expect when we have not yet even came to the stage in our evolution as a whole that every one of us grows up to and is being educated to be a decent human being. Our concepts on life and what we do here in this lifetime are so primitive that I don't think you can convince yourself that you can reasonably expect people to not kill an other life form for very fucking obvious reasons, especially when there is absolutely and without a doubt no need to do so. All of us here experiences that we can't even fucking set a universal moral code yet, or unite humanity, or at least build socialism alrady globally, so expecting emotional and moral development that is not yet even present in human lifeform to extend to other lifeforms is I think just setting yourself up for failure.

This is the same primitive mindset that rules all other part of our life, that just wants to R word life in every way, no difference.

Whatever. Try to influence people by example, nothing else works anyways.

My thoughts are that is perfectly fine. About a year ago I started eating less meat myself and am transferring over to a more vegan diet. Grocery stores where I'm at are abysmal in terms of making decent dishes or the spices necessary so I end up growing a lot of my veggies and fruit when every season. cardboard shroomie farms had me switching a lot of my protein base with tofu and mushrooms like oysters and lions mane. I fucking love mushrooms.

I also think the whole "carnist" thing and any form of aggressive proselytization should be left at the door. What do I mean by aggressive? Well, I put "carnist" in quotes because I have first hand seen the bend that some people can have. To me, it is no different than purist leftcoms. Doctrine purity combined with a complete lack of knowledge of the conditions the person they're talking to is going through. I've seen the massive struggle sessions on Hexbear and the points darkcalling made ring true.

What's actually been the most helpful to me is an actual community that posts good recipes (once again, mushrooms), one that understands that people can and have struggled with transitioning diets and one that doesn't beat you over the head with insults and a general demeaning nature. If someone doesn't wish to switch to a vegan diet, that's a shame, but it's something that you should just accept in the sense of "Well, if they aren't interested in actually changing, what is the point of causing a flame-war on a unrelated or even tangently related topic?". Hexbear's Vegan community front, smack-center is already two inciteful, divisive shit. "Carnists are deeply unserious people". Once again, to me it's no different than a leftcom being like "Ah, the poor simply haven't actualized the potential of the intelligentsia for the revolution!".

In the same manner, I am really not fond of Christianity. Will I bash and attack Christians on here? No. I'll gladly talk about something I'm writing, or mention that it's good that proselytization of the young is put down like in China but I wont attack anyone specifically. If you want to make a community here that talks about the ills of animal exploitation, new recipes, theory-crafting, etc that is great and should be encouraged.

How about fixing this?

Be the change you want to be