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Reply to Francione's
comment to „Abolitionism
versus reformism“
Straw man argument
Francione seems to be stuck in the tracks of the
“welfarism does not lead to abolition”-mantra without
being able to look left or right. He does not answer
most of my arguments and seems unable
to distinguish my position from classical welfarist
positions. Instead, he picks quotes from my essay,
puts all of them out of context, and refutes them,
i.e. he delivers what is called a “straw man argument”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man).
That becomes especially apparent, when he uses my
empirical examples of the battery cage ban campaign,
the wild animal circus ban campaign or the fur farm
ban campaign as if I had brought that up as examples
of welfare reforms leading to abolition. Instead,
I have used aspects of those examples in different
contexts to prove very specific points. For example,
I have used the cage ban to show that people can already
be convinced of something being unethical (battery
cages), but most will still do it (buy battery eggs),
if it is the norm and not doing it poses the slightest
difficulties. Whereas when the ban takes effect and
no battery eggs are available, suddenly everyone stops
buying battery eggs and nobody misses them. This observation
proves 2 points: Firstly, that mostly people do not
act on rational reasoning, and secondly, that the
system change (battery eggs no longer available) was
the far more efficient tactic to stop the consumption
of battery eggs than persuasion of single people.
As can be seen in this example, the ban was used
in a very specific way to argue for a very specific
point, and surely not to prove that welfare laws lead
to abolitionism or veganism, generally. That Francione
took my example as if it wanted to prove that, only
to refute that “straw man” by saying that laying hens
are still being exploited in barn egg farms, is exactly
what is meant with the above “straw man argument”
as an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation
of an opponent's position.
Similarly, I used the ban on wild animals in circuses
as an example of a system change against the resistance
of animal industries, which did change the behaviour
of all people 100%. Nobody in Austria is watching
wild animals in circuses anymore. To comment to that,
as Francione did, that people could still watch pigs
in circuses, is completely beside the point. The example
still stands for what I used it for, that a system
change changed the behaviour of people 100%, even
without them really realizing it, but 1-2 generations
later, the system change changed even peoples’ minds.
The example hence proves that such strategies work:
system change leads to behaviour change leads to mind
change (often generations later). So, it suggests
that such strategies can work in other areas too,
like for example substituting animal meat with in-vitro
meat. Whether people still go to circuses watching
pigs is totally beside the point and completely irrelevant
in this context.
A similar case can be made when Francione stresses
that a ban on “killing for no good reason” is no restriction
on the economic exploitation of nonhuman animals,
since anything that brings profits is considered a
good reason. That might well be so, but it was not
at all the point I was making by quoting those laws.
I quoted the laws as examples of animal laws, which
concern themselves over and above “humane” use or
“humane” killing with killing itself. The laws show
that coming from animal welfare positions, society
has moved on to banning at least under certain aspects
any kind of killing, never mind how “humane”. In Austria
that means for example that healthy stray animals
cannot be killed in shelters full stop. Even if that
costs society money. That, surely, goes beyond classic
animal welfare. Hence, those laws prove that, politically,
society has moved from unrestricted animal use beyond
animal welfare towards animal rights (while, obviously,
still being miles away from granting any rights to
nonhuman animals). Interestingly, Francione fails
to comment on the other examples I used of society
moving politically beyond animal welfare, like the
law saying animals are not things (civil law code),
the protection of life and wellbeing of animals as
cohabitants of humans (constitution) or the introduction
of animal solicitors (animal law).
I could go on with a lot more of such examples of
Francione taking points I made out of context to refute
them, but I think the point has been made. I will
rather move on to why I consider my ideas a new approach.
Humans are rather social than rational creatures
The central idea in my approach is the observation
that humans are much more social than rational creatures.
In everyday life on average, people try to merge into
society, behave correspondingly, and afterwards rationalize
their behaviour, i.e. find “rational” reasons why
they act as they act. This observation is so obvious
that it does not seem to merit quoting empirical support.
I assume Francione does not disagree.
So, while this fact does not need to concern us,
if we are thinking about ethical principles, for example
based on rational arguments leading to deontological
ethics, that changes when we are talking about how
to move society towards this ethical ideal. This,
now, is a very practical matter, where all measures
we take must be tested empirically on their consequences.
Nobody is able to theoretically predict which measure
will have what consequences in society. Hence, what
we need from this point onwards is psychology and
not philosophy.
And human psychology says that humans are far more
social than rational creatures. And that means for
the animal rights movement:
- Social entities like compassion, empathy and suffering
are very important factors to motivate humans to
change their behaviour. In contrast, abstract-rational
entities, like personhood or rights, are not.
- One of the most important aspects determining
human behaviour is their social environment. Humans
want to be well integrated into their society and
live in harmony with it.
- Humans have a strong need for social security,
i.e. they generally want that things stay as they
are and that change happens slowly and in a controlled
way.
The animal rights movement must adapt their political
campaigning strategies to these psychological facts.
That means, political campaigns must incorporate the
following aspects:
- Centre your campaign material on presenting suffering
and stimulate compassion and empathy in people.
Abstract-rational phrases using terms like rights
or personhood should play no significant role.
- The goal of the campaign should be presented to
the public in a way that it seems to them that if
it was achieved, a certain clearly distinguishable
aspect of suffering of animals will be totally alleviated.
- The aim of the campaign must be to change society,
the social system in which people live, and not
individual peoples’ minds.
- The campaign should not demand huge changes in
society. The goal must be realistic and should not
lead into the unknown. The whole development of
society must be slow and continuous, the changes
incremental.
There is only one enemy: animal industries
The many empirical examples I quote in my essay,
and the analysis there, clearly point towards the
fact that a system change in society only happens
through struggle, and this struggle is between the
animal rights movement and animal industries. This,
again, is a very new observation in the debate on
abolitionism versus reformism. A political struggle
like this is not a direct confrontation, but it has
a political dimension, i.e. politicians in power and
the public are watching it and will possibly intervene.
That means, this struggle is also a struggle for the
sympathy of the public. The more sympathy the animal
rights movement can raise on a certain issue, the
more radical their actions can be on this issue to
fight animal industries.
Since the struggle for veganism is therefore ultimately
a struggle to destroy animal industries, campaign
targets for realistic campaigns can be anything that
will lead to a weakening of those industries. Certain
animal welfare laws will not achieve that, certain
laws might achieve that, and many campaign targets
do not have to involve law changes at all, like campaigns
to close down certain businesses or to stop them trading
in certain products. What the campaign, if successful,
must achieve is that animal industries are weaker
and/or the system in society has changed to one where
animal products are more expensive or less available.
To make that point very clear, I stress it once more:
I think only those campaign targets move us towards
complete abolition, which either weaken animal industries
or make animal products more expensive or make animal
products less available. All other campaign targets,
while they might have their own merits, do not move
us towards abolition. These are the new criteria I
propose for choosing campaign targets. This is the
new approach.
Direct reply to the points raised by Francione
In the remainder, I will reply to Francione’s points,
which he raised in his comment.
Francione claims that animal welfare reform
does not lead to abolition, because all reforms
provide protection for animals only to the extent
that it is economically beneficial to animal industries.
While I agree that this might apply to many
reforms, it surely does not apply to all. The fur
farm ban is such an example. In what sense is the
ban on fur farming in ever more countries in Europe
economically beneficial to the fur farming industry?
Many farms go bankrupt. All Austrian farms have been
dismantled in 1998 and are long gone. The farmers
changed business. There is no empirical evidence to
suggest that this wave of fur farm bans should ever
stop. Austria, Switzerland, England, Wales, Scotland,
Croatia, Italy and partly Holland and Sweden have
such bans and more and more countries are considering
one. Clearly, the fur production industry in Europe
is on its way out. And there is no reason why Europe
should not ban the import of fur once there is an
EU-wide fur farm ban. It has happened with other animal
products already too, like with the import of dog,
cat or seal products, which were banned. That clearly
contradicts Francione’s conjecture.
Furthermore, many campaigns against department stores
selling fur have been successful. Many fur shops had
to close down, many stores stopped selling fur. Is
that economically beneficial to the fur industry?
Or consider the EU wide ban on the leghold trap.
Was that economically beneficial for animal industries?
Or look at some of the remarkable successes of the
Austrian environmental movement, of which I was part
of. In the late 1970ies, the movement achieved a ban
on nuclear power plants, although there was one already
existing, which had to be dismantled, and a number
were in planning. Was that economically beneficial?
Or when in 1984 altogether 10.000 activists occupied
the building site of a water power plant in Hainburg,
50 km East of Vienna, and after a long struggle the
plant was closed and today the area is a national
park. Economically beneficial? The government didn’t
think so and brought the army in to remove activists.
But eventually this tremendous struggle was won and
the national park established. Clearly against the
wishes of the industry. But the government succumbed
to the pressure of the movement, especially since
the movement had all the sympathy of the public. When
the government sent in the troops, 40.000 citizens
protested spontaneously in Vienna city centre. If
the environmental movement can win such struggles
against the industry and produce results that were
clearly detrimental and not beneficial to industries,
why should the animal rights movement apparently “in
principle” not be able to do that?
We have to conclude that many campaign targets have
already been reached, which seriously undermined the
economy of animal industries. It was proven to work.
There is no reason why such step by step successes
should not one day wipe animal industries from the
face of the Earth and open up the path to veganism.
Maybe Francione should make a prediction on the basis
of his theory, which can be tested empirically: which
kind of animal law, short of complete abolition of
all animal use, he considers impossible to achieve
through the incremental reform approach? We had a
regulation on animals in circuses, this was substituted
by a ban on wild animals in circuses. Does Francione
think the next step, a ban on all animals in circuses,
will be impossible? I.e. if we achieve such a ban,
Francione’s theory is falsified? Or does he expect
such a complete ban to be achievable, but a following
ban on, say, animals in zoos never will be? We need
such a concrete statement to be able to test his theory
empirically. Which animal law, exactly, can never
be achieved? At which stage will the reform process
have to stop? From some of Francione’s writing you
get the impression that he considers any law impossible
that actually is economically damaging to animal industries.
But the fur farm ban is already a clear counter-example
to that conjecture!
Francione claims that the laying hen cage
ban did not reduce the number of laying hens in Austria.
He quotes from a website from statistics Austria.
My data of a 35% reduction in laying hens are coming
directly from an enquiry with the laying hen producers
association. In order to find the reason for that
discrepancy, I have tracked down the guy, who produced
the figure Francione is referring to from statistics
Austria. He said that the egg production was calculated
from the number of hens and an average eggs-per-hen
factor. The number of hens he got from the “quality
poultry association”. When I contacted them, they
said they have the number of laying hens from the
local district municipalities, where the laying hen
farms are registered. When I pointed that out to the
laying hen producers association, they told me that
many of the battery farms, which have closed down
due to the ban, have empty battery sheds, but have
not told their local municipalities that they are
empty. They are still registered. So the statistics
Francione is quoting from still include battery farms,
which in reality have already closed down. So, the
figure of a 35% reduction in laying hens is the accurate
one.
Francione claims that there has never been
proper vegan campaigning, in contrast, that
animal welfare reforms have been around for 200 years,
and that shows they do not work. I have answered this
in my essay already. In brief: there has been, and
still is, a lot of vegan campaigning. In Austria since
130 years. It is obviously never enough, but it has
been done, for a very long time, and still it did
not have any results on a global scale. I personally,
for example, have co-founded the Austrian vegan society
(www.vegan.at) and
have been investing a lot of time in vegan outreach.
Consumption of animal products per head is still at
an all time high. Further, especially in Austria the
movement has put a lot of time and energy in the recent
years into trying to persuade the public to stop buying
fur, with little effect: the sales increased. Only
hard hitting confrontational campaigns against department
stores were able to remove fur from their shelves.
I see no empirical evidence why the approach of persuading
one person after the other to change their behaviour
should ever work on a large scale. For no movement
in history it has ever worked, all movements had to
go through a phase of struggle and direct confrontation
with the political enemy. The animal rights movement
surely will be no exception. Imagine the anti-slavery
movement as doing nothing but trying to persuade one
slave owner after the other through friendly talk
to voluntarily stop using slaves. What a ludicrous
idea! This is what escaped slave and anti-slavery
activist Frederick Douglass meant when he wrote “you
can’t have rain without thunder” and “If there is
no struggle, there is no progress”. Those in power
concede nothing without a struggle.
In contrast, there has been only very little direct,
confrontational political campaigning for change,
not just not for 200 years, but only for less than
20 years. And the results of those campaigns are remarkable,
like fur farm bans, fur shop closures and many other
examples I quote in my essay. Clearly, the evidence
is that confrontational political campaigns for system
change show results, whereas vegan outreach campaigns
show basically none.
Francione goes on to suggest that if all money donated
to animal welfare was put into vegan outreach, some
results surely would have been achieved. I have given
all the evidence in my essay that this would not have
been the case, and even if people had changed their
mind, they mostly would not act upon it, like in the
example of people being against battery farming but
still buying battery eggs. But Francione further overlooks
the fact that if those rich animal welfare societies
with their donations were to use that money for other
purposes than it has been given to them for, they
would soon loose all support. So, Francione’s dream
of billions being spent on vegan outreach would be
nothing but a brief firework, followed by silence.
No change whatsoever would be the consequence.
Francione claims that it is unclear how anyone
should move ideologically from welfare to rights,
since those ideas are so fundamentally different.
I have dealt with that question in detail in my essay.
Philosophically, yes, there is a
big gulf between the two, but psychologically
there is a continuum. We all know that from our own
experience. Who was animal rights minded from birth?
Most people change from eating meat and having a diffuse
sense of empathy and compassion, and being opposed
to unnecessary suffering (without thinking too much
about what that means), to animal rights and veganism.
We find that ever so often while street campaigning.
People see pictures of horrendous cruelty, e.g. during
animal transport, and their compassion moves them
to act, to find out more and to become vegan. This
is the norm. I would challenge Francione to explain
how it could happen otherwise? It is a very rare occasion
that a person becomes vegan after hearing theoretical
animal rights philosophical arguments. Its suffering
and the feeling of compassion that moves people, i.e.
animal welfare, to turn to animal rights. That’s because
humans are social and rather not rational animals.
Francione says that veganism is no sacrifice
and that anyone convinced of animal rights
will easily be and stay vegan. So, convincing people
one by one is the key. Maybe as a university professor,
in a big city and an academic environment, being well
paid, and being imbedded in a social movement, it
is easy. Indeed, I feel it is easy for me too, since
I have been faithfully vegan for more than 20 years
without a problem, mostly because my social environment
is vegan. But it is more than obvious that this does
not apply to everybody, as I have pointed out in my
essay.
Lets look at an example. I suppose Francione agrees
that driving cars is ethically problematic. After
all, cars not just seriously pollute the environment,
they destroy the countryside due to the demand for
tarmac-roads, they contribute to climate change, they
kill an endless amount of animals including humans
every year and they are one of the primary reasons
for the damaging trade in oil. Hence, it would be
clearly ethically better not to drive a car. I agree.
But I still do. And, I guess, Francione does too.
I drive a car, because it would be such an energy
consuming lifestyle not to. But I would be immediately
ready to stop driving a car, if car driving was banned,
i.e. if all others stopped as well. If they do not
stop and only I do, then I would not feel that my
sacrifice of not using one would be worth the effort.
So, if the system changed and it became easy to live
without a car, I would be the first one to join that
move and be very happy about it. Why should that be
any different for most people regarding system changes
towards veganism?
Lastly, Francione claims that animal industries
only satisfy consumer demand. Without demand, investors
will quickly move elsewhere, in other words:
animal industries are no enemy of the animal rights
movement, they only do what is being asked of them.
Ask of them something else, they will swiftly oblige.
Francione could not be more wrong on that. I have
had a lot of experience with the struggle against
animal industries, and it is clear that they have
a very strong interest in selling animal products.
They will do anything to create that demand. In fact,
in Europe governments buy a lot of meat and milk from
farmers only to throw it away, so that the farms can
survive (one more reason why the boycott aspect of
veganism is negligible: any one person turning vegan
does not change the amount of animals being used and
killed at all). The animal farming lobby is politically
unbelievably powerful. When avian flue reduced the
amount of chicken meat being bought by a large percentage,
it was governments, who just bought the meat and burned
it, until the food scare was over.
There are many examples of when animal industries
were gone, consumer “demand” was gone, like with the
ban on wild animal circuses, or when pate fois gras
or rabbit meat was taken from the shelves in all supermarkets,
or when battery eggs or fur was not being sold anymore.
Animal industries cannot change to other products.
They can only go bankrupt. The trade on the other
hand can change, they do not care what they sell,
and politicians can change, if they feel being driven
towards that. But for animal industries, fighting
the animal rights movement is like fighting for survival.
And these industries have much more financial power
to advertise for their products and create demands,
than the animal rights movement could counter that
with vegan propaganda. So, at first animal industries
have to be killed, then the change to veganism and
animal rights will come by itself.
Miscellaneous
Francione says that he does not endorse any
incremental welfare reform at all today.
In 1996, when he wrote his book “Rain without thunder”,
a passage in chapter 7, where he discusses 5 criteria
of how to decide whether a new animal law can be considered
abolitionist or reformist, makes it sound differently.
On page 208 of the paperback version of the book,
he brings an example of a new law to show how these
criteria apply. The example involves reducing the
number of hens in the battery cage by 2 to give them
more space in the cage. He concludes that this law
would be reformist. Then, on page 210, he adds literally:
"Assume that a prohibition abolishes the battery
cage entirely and replaces it with a rearing system
that accommodates all of the hen's interests in freedom
of movement and thereby fully recognizes the interest
of the hen in bodily integrity. Such a prohibition
ends a particular form of exploitation that has violated
a particular noninstitutional interest that we have
now decided to respect. But this sort of substitution
differs considerably from that in which 2 hens are
merely removed from the cage: although we have not
yet abolished the institutionalized exploitation,
the substitution eliminates the exploitation involved
in the confinement system through a full recognition
of the interest of the hens in their freedom of movement."
After this, he never writes something like “but I
still do not consider such a ban of cages an abolitionist
step”. Instead, he does not mention the whole example
anymore. It sounds as if Francione did think in 1996
that there are abolitionist animal laws (like the
cage ban), why, otherwise, set criteria for when this
is the case, and bring the cage ban as a positive
example?
Francione also claims that a hen in a free
range rearing system fares no better in her individual
life quality than a hen in a battery cage.
Firstly, I say very clearly that I find free range
farming animal abuse for many reasons, and I do not
endorse it. I think veganism is the only ethical option.
But having said that, it is rather ludicrous to suggest
that a hen in a free range system suffers equally
to a hen in a battery cage. While it is true that
the killing of male chicks and the transport of spent
hens to the slaughterhouse and the slaughter itself
are no different between the two production systems,
there are very significant differences as
well. At least in Austria, a free range hen
is not debeaked, not force molted, has much more space
to move in the barn than in a cage, has a nest for
herself with nesting material, a pole high up to roost
on, natural floor to scratch and dust bathe in, and
a roof covered outside area during snow cover. Free
range hens in Austria have often unlimited
access to outside pastures. They do not get
their wings clipped, hence they can fly off if they
like as far as they want to, sit in the sun or sit
on a tree. And sometimes they do. And come back in
the evening. There is no cannibalism in free range
hen systems in Austria. It is frankly quite ridiculous
to compare this situation for the individual hen with
being crammed 5 to a bare, tiny wire cage in a stuffy,
windowless shed.
To say battery systems and free range systems are
equal for the hens is like saying 24 hour lock-down
and open prison systems are the same for inmates.
Ask them, whether that is true, even if both means
being locked up and if both is immoral (to subject
animal rights activists to it, for example).
But, how the individual hen fares, as much as it
is of importance to her, is of no importance for the
global political picture. What counts is whether the
production system is much more expensive for the same
product. This is the political reason why a campaign
to force animal industries to produce only free range
eggs, is a campaign towards the abolition of hen exploitation.
And Francione has not commented on the following
additional arguments I made against the purist abolitionist
approach:
- Worldwide, more than 2000 activists have been
locked up in prison cells for their animal rights
actions so far, because they have broken speciesist
laws. From the ethical point of view, their incarceration
is unjust and a breach of their right to freedom.
A number of groups therefore support those prisoners,
but not just individually, also with political campaigns.
People are asked to sign petitions to improve the
prison system, like ban isolation cells and allow
for vegan food provisions. Those groups, albeit
they disapprove of locking up animal activists altogether,
have decided that they would rather campaign for
a realistic goal that might be achieved and that
will improve the lot for the prisoners. Such campaigning
must be called reformist and not abolitionist by
any standards, but nevertheless, radical abolitionists
will not disapprove. Nobody asks, surprisingly,
whether such campaigns do not legitimize incarceration
of animal activists in the minds of the public,
and whether their success in achieving better prison
conditions will not serve to strengthen the habit
in society to lock up activists, who have liberated
animals.
- In principle, using film material that shows particularly
shocking animal abuse, must be called reformist
propaganda. After all, those pictures suggest that
keeping these animals without the cruelty is alright.
That means, those pictures do not question animal
use, but animal abuse. By rejecting such films,
though, the movement would be stripped off the most
powerful weapon in the propaganda wars. In reality,
since there is a psychological continuum from animal
welfare to animal rights, those films actually do
produce vegans and animal rights activists.
- Reformist campaigns bring successes. The last
10 years of reform campaigning in Austria produced
a formidable list of such successes, which clearly
make the Austrian animal law the best in the world.
But successes are the lifeblood of activism, because
activism costs energy and to sustain activism for
long, you must be highly motivated. If you can see
that your activism actually changes society that
boosts morale and your motivation to stay active
rises. But for vegan outreach, there is no similar
feeling of success. Many people, who did turn vegan,
fall back to consuming animal products. And society
at large does not seem to change at all – after
130 years of such campaigns. It is extremely unlikely,
psychologically, that a significant amount of activists
can sustain friendly vegan outreach without recognizable
successes for a very long time.
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