u/explorerofbells - originally from r/GenZhou
Hey comrades,
I’m a part of a discord server called Vegan Theory Club that’s run by mix of leftist tendencies. It’s a theory club that’s explicitly leftist and vegan, but we talk about more than just the book of the month.
We just started reading Eternal Treblinka - Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust by Charles Patterson, which we voted for. (Our last book was Kapital.) Right now is the perfect time to join!
We’d love to have you!
u/warender99 - originally from r/GenZhouI was originally on the side of the lab grown meat people, but I think anyone who reads this should also go read the 18 theses provided by op when I asked about it. Yall have the wrong ideas, and are garnering the entirely wrong message here. Please set aside your preconceived notions of what is being said here, and read the bit of theory they posted. It’s not too long, and quite an eye opening read. This is an education sub after all, so a bit of reading might suffice before we get all up in arms at one another.
u/courtneygoe - originally from r/GenZhouYou’re right, people with digestive issues should just be discarded when we move onto socialism because their diet contradicts your morality.
u/PaiosFranen - originally from r/GenZhouHow anyone can claim that veganism and marxism are not only compatible, but inseparable, is beyond me. Like what is there in material reality that necessitates veganism? If its about climate change then we simply need to go back to less intensive production methods like in the past. Animal consumption is as ancient as civilization, yet climate change is only a recent problem, so the 2 arent inseparable. Nothing material about this argument, its a purely idealistic one, coming from privileged imperial core kids demanding that the whole world follow their enlightened ways. Of course, how poor peasants in Afghanistan or Cambodia are supposed to have a heavily nutritious diet that they need for their heavy physical jobs without eating a single drop of meat, fish or milk, is never explained. Vegans literally need to take synthetic vitamin pills everyday to compensate for their lack of meat in the diet. How is that sustainable for global south comrades? This is complete idealistic utopianism. This type of vegans (the ones that pretend that everyone be like them) are the anarchists of ecologism.
u/courtneygoe - originally from r/GenZhouSo basically, some of them don’t believe it. Others just haven’t looked into it and it “seems” right to them.
u/PaiosFranen - originally from r/GenZhouYeah ofc, having to take pills everyday to survive is totally natural and presents no incovenients. Like imagine now that imperialism collapses and theres no B12 pills in the shops or they become extremely expensive. What then huh? Theyll have to choose between eating meat or death. These people truly believe the whole world is stocked with cheap B12 in all stores. Classic utopian petty bourgeois ideologues that Engels talked about in “Socialism Utopian and Scientific”
u/liftandsenditup - originally from r/GenZhouVeganism is fucking stupid, but you should also probably not be on that western bourgeoisie diet of meat with every meal. Most of the global south are not vegans, most of them eat a largely plant based diet however. There’s a middle ground you’re missing here. I rarely eat meat, but I take no vitamins at all and am pretty healthy. Arguing a diet that humans did not evolve to have is weird to me. Humans evolved as omnivores, not carnivores, and for most omnivorous creatures meat is a luxury that they rarely have access to.
u/PaiosFranen - originally from r/GenZhouWhen did i say you should eat meat with every meal? Please quote me
u/liftandsenditup - originally from r/GenZhouThis is being deceptive. You are defending the status quo against a popular criticism, unless you specifically state the diet you are arguing FOR, arguing against veganism is an implicit support of typical western diets, which features meat at every meal. People will have to make assumptions when your arguments are vague and that is your fault.
u/PaiosFranen - originally from r/GenZhouAlso your american centric assumptions are weakening your position even more. No, anglo diet is not the only western diet. I live in the mediterrenean area and we eat much less meat than you do. We eat a lot of carbohydrates (pasta, rice, beans, stuff like that mainly). We also eat meat but not on a daily basis, nowhere near that. In fact, many doctors have recognized the mediterrenean diet as a quite healthy one. Maybe you should learn more about the world outside America before making such accusations huh?
u/PaiosFranen - originally from r/GenZhouOh im being deceptive, not you by strawmanning my argument! Again, where did i say that an all meat diet is recommendable? Quote me genius. Let me guess, you are angry because i exposed your idealistic antimarxist ideology? Too bad, i dont care about your feelings, i only care about material reality, as all marxists should. What diet would be ideal? I dont know, maybe we could leave this question up to doctors, to people who dedicate their lifes to study this, instead of to random internet militant vegans who have studied 0 physiology and have 0 understanding of just how damn complex human metabolism and its relation to diet is. Or even easier, you can simply mind your own business and not impose your niche idealistic feeling based ideology on anyone else that doesnt want it. Anyway, now you can go back to strawmanning me.
u/courtneygoe - originally from r/GenZhouFun trivia about me: b12 supplements are a HUGE risk of gall bladder attack for me. Constant attacks leave you at risk of infection and needing it taken out as an emergency procedure. I didn’t even remember this other way going vegan could potentially kill me and people with similar health problems.
u/PaiosFranen - originally from r/GenZhouOof, that sucks man. Yeah the more arguments against veganism. Many vegans seriously dont know shit about potential side effects and complications from their diet lol
u/courtneygoe - originally from r/GenZhouNot to mention, babies exist and sometimes no one around can reliably produce milk. We will always need animal products. Leather is far superior to synthetics when it comes to sustainability for shoes and winter wear. If we can make lab grown leather, all the better. Let’s do that. But let’s do it when it doesn’t contribute more to climate doom than just raising cows.
u/PaiosFranen - originally from r/GenZhouGood argument. I myself needed cow milk as a baby since my mom barely produced any.
u/warender99 - originally from r/GenZhouI think you should read the literature they provided. It’s not too long and greatly clarifies what is being said as well as addressing all of your counterpoints. Seriously I did not go into it thinking it would change my views, but the fact is it is a well put together, solid argument that rejects idealist utopian veganism and analyzes it through the lense of historical materialism. What is funny about it is how well it addresses everything you are saying here. Same for me before I read it. You don’t have to agree with op, but at least do the homework. We are all about education here I should hope.
u/PaiosFranen - originally from r/GenZhouThanks for the suggestion, i may read it one day, although i have my doubts it will convince me. Class struggle is the basis for working class liberation according to historical materialism. Domestic animals arent capable of class struggle (no, Animal Farm doesnt count xD) so there is nothing in a historical materialist analysis that can determine their “liberation”. Also i have my doubts OP fully understands marxist theory, since iirc he wrote a comment saying something like “animal consumption is wrong because animal commodification is wrong”, which is nonsense. Commodification is the production of something not to use it, but to exchange it for money, to get money. Thus, animal consumption doesnt necessarily entail commodification if you are consuming it yourself. But anyway thanks for the recommendation comrade!
u/warender99 - originally from r/GenZhouHey I was the same way before reading it. I had your very same doubts, and seriously didn’t think there could be a good argument made. I have to say now that I was wrong. I certainly feel it makes a good case for itself. In any case it does a better job explaining itself than I could ever do here. Have a good day comrade!
u/Lord_M_G_Albo - originally from r/GenZhouThe highest vegan and vegetarian populations are at Asia-Pacific, East and North Africa. Even though few forbid animal consumption, many cultures across the history condemned killing of animals as impure and to be avoided as much as possible. In fact, taking away China, most of world meat consumption happen at Western countries. While it is true that vegan activism as we know it started among petite burgeois English people, to act as animal consumption has been a given in human history and across the world is very chauvinist - as if Third World inhabitants are savages living in “kill or to be killed” mood to survive, and only civilization can save them and give the conditions to stop consume meat.
u/courtneygoe - originally from r/GenZhouThey’re just as bad as anarchists, and honestly I think the really militant vegans are a three letter type deal. At least it started that way. Find a boogeyman other than capitalism, see who takes the bait and is distracted from something useful like Marxism.
u/PaiosFranen - originally from r/GenZhouLiterally yes. Its a shame because i have some vegan friends IRL and theyre not like this. Id say most vegans arent, they simply accept that they do it for strictly ethical reasons and arent trying to impose it on everyone they know. These people give a bad image to all vegans, which isnt fair.
u/courtneygoe - originally from r/GenZhou100 percent agree. I’d die if forced to go vegan; the death would be slow and incredibly painful. I can’t even eat rice without being in agony later. I also can’t digest most vegetables. It’s funny because I also rarely eat meat. Militant vegans, if sincere, just aren’t being realistic. We want to take EVERYONE with us into the communist future, we don’t want to leave people behind because the stress of capitalism ruined their GI tract.
u/PaiosFranen - originally from r/GenZhouDamn thats horrible man, im very sorry for you comrade ;( Yeah militant vegans are the worst. I geniunely think they are misandric, like these people will attack and beat up farmers to “liberate” their “animal comrades”. Like how do you reach that point and not think “hmmm maybe this way is not the right one”. Anyway dont worry comrade, we wont allow these ultras to leave you behind. We will all march together towards communism!
u/courtneygoe - originally from r/GenZhouI love this sub, thank you comrade!
u/warender99 - originally from r/GenZhouSeriously, read the provided material. It makes a way better argument than the one made here. This isn’t a bourgeois morality argument, and the 18 theses addresses those.
u/warender99 - originally from r/GenZhouThere is absolutely no morality in this argument, I suppose aside from the general moral judgment that the end of the world is bad. Just read the literature, it does a way better job than I could. If you are here to educate yourself, like I am, you could certainly gain from a reading of it.
u/A-V-A-Weyland - originally from r/GenZhouIt isn’t that difficult to replace “worker” with “animal” and have it make sense by association. They’re still aiming for an ideal. As long as humans live on this planet they will always occupy land that used to be pristine nature. We can’t all go live underground or in space and make our planet a natural habitat. They take the ideals to the extreme and are unwilling to make incremental steps towards improvement.
Sustainability is a spectrum. But if you’re taking the theory you talked about to its logical conclusion then the end goal is to have people be completely separated from nature. Even putting down a solar panel would take precious light away from whatever wanted to grow beneath it. You changing your mind on the lab-grown meat just means you’re moving from reality to the ideal. Ideals will always win out over reality. Ideals don’t provide us with the tools required to achieve them though. We will have to work within the limits of our reality and develop in such a way that we leave our species and the world that we call home better behind than we found it.
u/warender99 - originally from r/GenZhouQuite the contrary. Lab grown meat is the ideal, you are the one living in the idealist framework of solutions. The very planet we live on is dying, quite rapidly, in no small part because of large scale animal production. Lab grown meat has no feasible way to replace that before it is far too late. The amount of material required for that to ever go large scale is far beyond our capabilities in the time limit we have, especially when it wouldn’t even supplant the meat industry if we started today. What we have in front of us is something actively destroying the planet, and your proposed solution doesn’t solve that problem. If we were to overthrown the capitalists tomorrow, we would immediately need to demolish the meat/animal product industry for the sake of the planet we live on.
The natural consequence of this is that people, especially those in the imperial core, would need to stop consuming the byproducts of animals. There is nothing about history or even our biology as some have tried to state that necessitates the consumption of animal products. We have long since figured out how to do vegan diets and maintain our health. You do not have to take supplements to be vegan, it just requires a bit of planning to avoid. This isn’t in and of itself a rejection of the future possibility of lab grown meat nor an argument against it. I’m not currently a vegan, nor do I share their morals, but I have to admit that they have a point here. There is little argument, aside from ideological ones, to continue the exploitation of animals in a socialist society. Proposing science fiction alternatives is quite like the earlier made elon musk analogy. Certainly lab grown meat could be something explored in the future, but it is currently in infancy and we don’t have that kind of time.