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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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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