We are publishing this contribution in the context of the debate on
anti-speciesism that we have opened at the instigation of comrade MarcoCelentano. ---- We must say, however, that we do not share the reference
to historical materialism, in the sense given to it by Engels and Marx.
Beyond the individual citations, more or less shareable, the two German
intellectuals deluded themselves into believing that they could give
their scientific basis to communism by making it derive from the
development of productive forces that, with the harsh logic of facts,
would have led to the transformation of production relations. This
conception, they believed, would have led to the overcoming of other
socialist schools and, once they had taken power, to the establishment
of communism. This theory was applied in countries where Marxist parties
took power and everywhere there was an enormous development of
productive forces, accompanied by the suffocation of any autonomy of the
working class. Production relations have proven to be much more deeply
rooted than simple property relations, the very logic of economic
development has proven to be rooted in the capitalist production
relations themselves, based on the exploitation and plundering of the
environment. Experiments based on the conquest of political power have
led everywhere, sooner or later, to the restoration of bourgeois rule.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the pudding prepared by
Marxist cuisine has proven to be inedible.
The word "theory" comes from the Greek theorein, which means "to see, to
contemplate," and is traditionally based on the Aristotelian idea of a
truth that reveals itself as the subject's gaze on an object. In this
classical vision, the subject is disinterested, contemplating an object
that is other than itself.
Critical theory, on the other hand, reverses this perspective. The
adjective "critical" emphasizes the participation of the subject in the
formation of the object, revealing that knowledge is not a transcendent
entity, separate from life and things, but is part of the very things it
intends to describe. To know means to be involved: the subject is always
anchored to a body, and the body leads back to the materiality of
relationships. Critical theory is therefore a different way of saying
historical materialism, since it delves into the relationship between
knowledge and needs, giving knowledge a value intrinsically linked to
social life.
Critical theory developed as a response to the crises of the twentieth
century, in particular the rise of fascism and Nazism. It was developed
by the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, which from the 1920s
brought together philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, and
economists in a multidisciplinary approach. The Frankfurt School sought
new answers to a radical crisis of Western rationality: the inability of
this rationality to oppose fascism and, indeed, the fact that it had
partly favored it. It was therefore a question of understanding the link
between European irrationality and positivism, or technocratic
rationality, which had characterized the development of Europe up to
that point.
The criticism was also directed at Soviet Marxism, whose failure and
bureaucratic involution were interpreted as symptoms of the triumph of
instrumental reason, "a regressive germ" of Western civilization, since
it was limited to the realization of ends, without an internal purpose.
In this logic, reason becomes an instrument to achieve goals that it
does not define itself, reducing itself to a mere means.
This brings us to the theory of domination, developed by Adorno and
Horkheimer in Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947). They describe
domination as a constant of civilization, a human attempt to dominate
external and internal nature, building a subject master of himself and
the world. This subject, however, in order to dominate nature must also
dominate itself, repressing its own "impulses": but the discomfort of
civilization, contrary to what Freud meant, has an ultimately
self-destructive character.
Domination, in fact, implies reification, or the reduction of nature and
the human to manipulable objects. In the very act of denying his own
animality, man establishes a boundary between himself and the other, a
boundary that implies exclusion and alienation. Thus the dominating
subject excludes from himself categories such as women, other races,
childhood, madness - all relegated to the margins of rationality.
The process of reification finds its culmination in capitalism, in which
capital itself becomes the absolute end of society, transforming every
human purpose into a function of itself. Thus, the human being ends up
alienating himself, no longer being able to recognize himself in a
civilization that sees him as part of the social machine, where capital
is a shapeless, inhuman end, a black hole that absorbs, mystifies and
exploits and ultimately commodifies every "human" reality.
This dialectic highlights a practical, not theoretical, paradox. To
constitute itself as humanity, man must first deny itself as an entity
separate from the rest of living things. But humanity is not, nor has it
ever been, a real and separate subject: this material and symbolic
expulsion of the animal works instead to make human subjectivity as free
self-determination impossible.
The paradox is that only by realizing itself as a subject can humanity
overcome its own alienation and estrangement from animality inside and
outside of us. And only by abolishing private ownership of the means of
production can we self-determine, that is, become a collectivity capable
of freely relating to the rest of living things. In other words,
self-determination - the ability to "determine oneself" (autòs) - is the
prerequisite for our free relationship with the other.
Anti-speciesism requires this socialist presupposition. Only by
constituting oneself as a class can one abolish oneself as a "class."
Class is not something that can be deconstructed, but something that
must be materially abolished, because it prevents the constitution of
humanity as a collective subject. Human liberation is the prerequisite
for animal liberation; without socialism, without the negation of class,
true liberation is not possible. In this moment all oppressed
subjectivities find acceptance and the possibility of unfolding:
socialism and anti-speciesism constitute the terminus a quo and the
terminus ad quem of every possible emancipation, because they define the
material presupposition and the horizon of extra-human meaning in which
social life can unfold freely, without oppression and exploitation.
Abolishing class, freeing oneself from the instrumental relations of
capital, means creating a world that allows free relations, and thus
redefining the boundary between human and non-human. Theory and culture
depend on this practical moment: without a revolution in the relations
of production, it is not possible to rethink humanity. Any attempt at
refoundation without a material basis would be reduced to mere speculation.
Abolishing the master reification of the concept of species means in
turn opening the horizon of culture to the unthought, converting the
other from civilization to horror and fascination for what is wild and
shapeless, in an open process of new, not yet defined relationships.
Even solutions such as "primitivism" and "transhumanism", which
apparently challenge established boundaries, fail to resolve the issue
at its root. Primitivism imagines that this process of separation from
the rest of living beings is in itself destructive, but ignores that
distinction is precisely the prerequisite for a relationship with the
other. Separation has allowed humanity to constitute itself as a
subject, an indispensable condition for articulating an authentic
relationship. Where there is fusion, in fact, there is no other, but
only an undifferentiated confusion. It is distinction that makes
dialogue and relationship possible.
Likewise, the techno-scientific utopia, with its image of a hybrid
subject, does not offer a real alternative, since the hybrid subject
does not establish a relationship with the other but, once again, slides
towards a new form of indistinction. The challenge is not to erase this
separation between human and non-human, but to articulate it in a
non-hierarchical and non-violent form. Civilization, in its historically
destructive form, has imposed a separation, but the solution is not to
eliminate it, but to transform it into a non-dominating relationship,
capable of integrating the other without canceling it.
This perspective requires a different rationality, inclusive and
non-destructive, capable of recognizing the animality denied to the
heart of the human and of establishing a symbiotic and dialogical
relationship with the rest of living beings.
It is important to emphasize that reason is always objective, that is,
it is a form of collective life, it is not a function of the human mind.
It emerges, it is structured starting from a practical context, it is
the set of our relationships, including the relationships we have with
ourselves, and the rest of nature. The deception of instrumental
rationality (the modern "subjective" rationality that denies the
existence of objective, natural, divine ends, etc. and translates
knowledge into method) is that it instead creates a world of real
relationships in which the human ends up being entangled, incapable of
acting autonomously and ultimately, in the triumphant mechanism of
capitalist techno-science, dissolved as a free subject.
Ultimately, only if class is abolished and humanity is freed from the
sphere of capitalist production, it becomes possible to extinguish that
anthropocentric concept of humanity as a subject separated from nature.
Engels observes that, in socialism, humanity for the first time truly
becomes itself, managing to distinguish itself from the rest of living
beings no longer through partial and instrumental ends, but real ones
izing itself as universal. However, this realization does not imply a
dominion over that which is other than itself; indeed, Engels argues
that socialism also represents the moment in which the human being
learns, through what he calls "the revenge of nature on man," to
renegotiate his relationship with it.
This "revenge of nature" is the result of the use of technology as if it
were separate from nature itself. In the illusion of being independent
from nature, the human being creates the conditions for an ecological
crisis that forces him to recognize his own interdependence. Precisely
through this crisis, Engels argues, humanity learns to see nature as
that from which it comes, developing an awareness of belonging that
allows it to perceive itself as part of a greater whole.
This double movement, in which humanity constitutes itself as a
universal subject but, at the same time, negotiates its relationship
with the living, is an essential element of dialectical materialism.
Dialectics does not aim to erase the distinction between human and
nature, but to transform it into a relationship in which humans can
recognize themselves as part of a whole, abandoning the logic of
domination and alienation.
This perspective, based on social liberation, is the basis for political
anti-speciesism, which is not satisfied with individual or moral
liberation, but aims to transform the system at its roots. Only through
socialism is it possible to renegotiate our position in living things
and therefore lay the foundations for a different society, in which the
very concept of humanity is reconciled with the rest of living things,
overcoming the logic of domination and alienation.
Political anti-speciesism thus appears as an extension of critical
theory, capable of challenging the hierarchies imposed not only between
human beings but between humanity and other forms of life. This
anti-speciesism does not promote a return to archaic forms of society or
an indistinct fusion with nature, but a profound transformation of human
civilization, in which humanity is realized as part of a network of
non-dominating relationships, capable of negotiating with the other
without canceling it.
In this framework, the very idea of progress takes on a new meaning: no
longer as the conquest and exploitation of nature, but as the
construction of an ecological and social community based on balance and
mutual respect. A post-capitalist society, founded on free and
non-alienating production relations, a conception of civilization that
is authentically universal, supportive and inclusive.
Marco Maurizi
https://umanitanova.org/teoria-critica-e-antispecismo-politico/
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