On the Road to Liberation

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

The Red Carpet

Francione, in Rain without Thunder, and whenever he speaks or writes on the topic, calls animal rightists “outsiders” to the legislative process. His reason is that animal rightists would not be taken seriously by contemporary legislators, and to be taken seriously, the activists would need to water down their activism.

This is a falsifiable claim. Consider the case of Austria. This country was one of the first to ban battery cages for hens. Such cages are consummately cruel. Typically they are made of wire, and stacked up to 20 high, imprisoning hens who lay eggs. Stacking that high means the birds poop and pee on those living below them through the wire floors. Their toenails, ordinarily kept trim by walking around, often grow around the wire of the cages, becoming entangled, in this environment where they never get to exercise outdoors, and breathe clean air. The stench makes human visitors gag, and so they often wear gas masks. The birds’ feathers are often lost and skin rubbed red raw from being stuffed often 5 to a cage whose dimensions offer the “floorspace” of a folded up newspaper. The birds are thus driven insane, and the noise is a horrid cacophony in their sentence to nearly always darkness. Often one bird, who would be the submissive one in a normal pecking order, passively starves or dies of dehydration in a corner of the cage, but is calculated to be “expendable” by the exploiters, who count pennies but not animal suffering. Veterinary care is confined to removing dead birds—but often not even that. And so on. Francione, in Rain without Thunder, makes it clear he would only abolish battery cages if a substitute fully respects hens’ freedom of movement (the complete respect for a given interest requirement which I discuss in “Animal Rights Law”). That’ll be the day, when legislators grant as much space as an animal-rights-governed animal sanctuary! At any rate, Austria banned the practice, and no doubt brought in confinement systems that are not quite what an animal rightist would ideally desire. The shortcoming is predictable, frankly, due to prevailing speciesism and capitalism. However, before this legal coup there was a press conference of all the animal protection groups in Austria, protesting the battery cages. Such a feat is unheard of in Francione’s home country, the USA, and my own of Canada. But that unity in the campaign contributed to its political success. Now some of these groups were animal rights groups.

Politicians are not dummies. They know that the animal rights groups are more radical than the campaign superficially suggests, and advocate the abolition of keeping hens for egg-laying altogether some day. But the politicians took these animal rights groups seriously, and these groups did not need to compromise their radicalism. These animal rightists did not hide or pretend to be something they are not. It would not be best for animals, these animal liberationists must have thought, to play the role of political outsiders. The politicians knew they represented part of an overwhelming spectrum of popular votes since the campaign electrified the nation through effective media usage. So Francione is dead wrong that groups need to compromise to achieve insider status. His calling for animal rights supporters to be political outsiders creates marginalization of these activists as a self-inflicted wound. Animal rights fundamentalists, astonishingly enough, are "self-marginalizers." Not just achieving "welfarist" legislation is key. It means a lot to have animal rights voices at the negotiating table, even if those voices are understood more than heard outright. Otherwise, as a logical feature of Francione's vision, it would be just traditional "welfarist" voices in the halls of political decision-making. Such voices see relatively minor dispensations to animals as their only due.

Apparently he is waiting for a red carpet to be laid out for him before he sets foot in a legislature to advocate laws to help animals. Yes, as he says, he only wants to be an “insider” if he does not lose his radicalism. He does not just mean radicalism in the above animal rights pragmatist sense of having a long-term goal of the eradication of speciesism. No, he means that he should comfortably be able to demand his version of “proto-rights” now, and be taken seriously by the politicos who run the country. But that cannot be for the foreseeable future, hence the abandonment of legislating as a futilitarian goal for the time being.

Let’s think on this a moment. What would it take for a legislature, or members of it, to take seriously Francione’s proto-rights measures? Why, they would have to be in favor of , or demonstrably open to being persuaded that, animals should receive 100% protection of this or that interest (such as freedom of movement in the example given above). Why, then they would have to be animal rights people, or just achingly on the cusp of becoming that, virtually waiting to be persuaded, because only animal rights people favor 100% respect of interests. Others agree that animals should be used “humanely,” and the animals’ usage (which I characterize as ill usage in “The Rights of Animal Persons”) takes a priority. This state of affairs in turn means that human interests (including profit-making ones) must take priority. Human interests taking priority is normally incompatible with 100% respecting of any given animals’ interest. It just works out that way since larger hen spaces cost humans money. That is why the legislators would need to be animal rightists (or wannabe animal rightists) not animal “welfarists”--in the speciesist sense where humans take priority--if the law-makers are to be genuinely and practically receptive to Francione's proto-rights for animals.

So Francione is waiting for the carpet to be rolled out by fellow animal rightists in the legislature, or wannabes. That is the inescapable logic of the situation. But that is not all. Francione is not talking just about preaching to the converted. He wants to change politicians’ minds. So if there is a minority of animal rights sympathizers in a legislature (and even that today is a remarkable political achievement), it is not they who pose a threat to Francione’s “insider status” being watered down. No, the concern is with those who disagree with animal rights who would not take animal rights seriously, and according to Francione, pragmatically require that he “water down” his stance. So he would still have to stay out of the legislature, because he would still “need” to water down his views given the minority status of animal rights in the legislature. That minority would not be enough to pass legislation, and he would have to deal with the animal-rights-hostile-or-indifferent majority of law-makers. What about one day, when there is a majority of animal rights politicians in the legislature? Why, then he could march in proudly, and the red carpet would be firmly waiting for him. Before then, there would presumably be no animal-protective legislation, by his lights, since under his leadership, there would not be any such vain “insider-status-seeking.” So up until whole animal interests can readily be protected, a far-flung day I might add, animals will get no legislative relief at all.

The red carpet he is waiting for would be red with the blood of animals whose lives would be that much more hellish because he is “waiting for the day” with his cronies. You can read about the Austria example in the second edition of In Defense of Animals, in the essay, “How Austria Achieved a Historic Breakthrough for Animals,” by Martin Balluch, a leading activist in the campaign. The Austrian ban and how it was won proves that Francione’s basic concern about insider status is dead wrong. (At least if the animal rights radicalism is to be logically defensible.) And the logic of Francione’s “waiting game” proves that animals will end up much more wrongly dead if people follow Francione’s example. The animals will not get legislative relief from the worst of vivisection, factory farming, and the like until “the day.” Well, I’m not waiting, and hope you will join me in my impatience with futilitarians, who in turn are so impatient for animal rights that they lose sight of the realities of our present situation.

FURTHER READING

A Selection of Related Articles

Sztybel, David. "Animal Rights Law: Fundamentalism versus Pragmatism". Journal for Critical Animal Studies 5 (1) (2007): 1-37.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Friday, January 11, 2008

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Monday, December 31, 2007

Monday, December 17, 2007

Thursday, December 13, 2007