If thedistinction between humans and animals is minimised, it is no longer possibleto clearly determine who the subject of liberation is, and the object ofliberation suddenly becomes an unclear catch-all category ranging from humansto pigs and chickens, and even worms.
We do notminimise any differences: The human-animal distinction actually plays adecisive role in determining the revolutionary subject. The working class isthe subject of its own liberation, partly due to its position in the socialrelations of production and partly because it possesses the necessary humancapacities.
However,human wage workers and non-human animals have in common the fact that they facethe ruling class as exploited, dominated and suffering beings. Of course, thefunction of workers and animals in the capitalist production process differsqualitatively, and the roles they can play in the struggle against the rulingclass are completely different. Unlike animals, human workers can organise inself-defence, plan strikes and demonstrations, and envisage a liberatedsociety. Above all, unlike animals, they have the ability to analyse the socialconditions that cause them to be exploited and dominated, and on this basisdetermine concrete steps towards organising their own liberation.
Non-humananimals, by contrast, can strive to resist the torture they undergo in somecases, but because they lack the capacities mentioned above, they can only bethe object of liberation from social exploitation. And they must be liberated. Anyone who aspires to create a world without exploitation, domination, andsocially produced suffering is compelled to include animals in this endeavour. This is because, firstly, animals are also exploited in the capitalistproduction process, albeit in a qualitatively different way from human wageworkers, and—all the socio-historically developed differences between humansand animals notwithstanding—they share with humans the capacity to suffer as aresult of this exploitation. Secondly, animal production today, at least in thecapitalist centres, is objectively irrational, due, among other factors, to thesocial and ecological damage it causes.
Becausesocial relations of exploitation and domination define capitalism, ourstrategic emphasis is on animals appropriated by the animal industry asinstruments and objects of labour—such as pigs—for slaughter or breeding. However, as we have argued elsewhere, the overarching need is for anon-capitalist system of food production which takes the characteristics andreproductive needs of nature into account to the greatest extent possible. Inthis sense, liberation should include not only those animals with the capacityto experience joy and suffering, but also those that, although lacking thiscapacity, play an important role in maintaining the biodiversity of ecosystems.In both cases, we can say with Rosa Luxemburg that someone who in hurrying tocarry out an important task, crushes a poor worm underfoot through roughcarelessness, is guilty of a crime.
