One of the great things about the Internet is that someone who has no real training or background in an area can write whatever they want about it. This is also, simultaneously, one of the worst things about the Internet. This observation is nothing new, but I’m reminded of the downside of it whenever I read blog entries like this one by Ryan McReynolds. Mired in the self-assured certitude that only the truly mistaken ever seem to possess, there are so many problems with McReynolds’s claims (it’d stretch the bounds of generosity to call what he writes an “argument”) that it is almost difficult to know exactly where to begin hacking away. That said, the overarching problem is that it is not clear that McReynolds has actually ever even gone to the trouble to read Francione — or if he did bother, he didn’t understand what he read. Overall, the entry reads largely like a quick term paper written by a bright but lazy student who wanted to make big claims to get that A, but who could only be bothered to Google the Sparknotes on the topic.
I realize that this is a heavy critique to lay at the doorstep of any author, but there is ample evidence to support my supposition. Most troublingly, McReynolds must rely on constructing straw men to make his argument. Though there any many like it, this paragraph is unique, only because it stands out as the pinnacle of confusion in what is otherwise a Himalayan-sized mountain range of befuddlement:
The problem, to me, seems to be that Francione treats the right not to be property as the end to seek, rather than seeking the actual welfare (in the broadest sense) of actual animals. But rights are abstractions. As Francione correctly states, rights are protections of interests. A right is a tool to protect an interest of an actual sentient being. That is, rights only exist to promote the welfare of rights holders. Promoting the right not to be property is absolutely in the interests of beings currently held as property. But it is not the only thing in their interests, and it is not necessary to ignore all of these other interests in the single-minded pursuit of that one.
This badly distorts the abolitionist approach; as such, I can only assume that McReynolds is either consciously distorting the abolitionist position, or that he’s never bothered to carefully read any of the work which he finds so objectionable. Either way, he’s shitting the bed here, and hopefully someone will be along soon to change his sheets. He’s floundering.
The primary issue with the quoted paragraph above is that Francione and other abolitionists do not say that the only interests that animals have are in not being regarded as property. This is nonsense, and absurd on its face. Instead, Francione argues that there is no way to guarantee any significant protection for animals as long as they are property. As long as animals are property, Francione argues, the interests of the property holder will always override the interests of the property. Thus, until we can overcome this barrier of the property status of animals, any reforms we make will ultimately fail to accord animals any true recognition as persons in the long run. This fundamental point that sits at the center of abolitionist theory is what McReynolds fails to understand most prominently, and his argument, poorly constructed as it is, falls in on itself over this central misunderstanding. Worse yet, this confusion raises a disturbing point. If, as he claims, he was once an “acolyte” of Francione, then he was a rather poor one, because he didn’t even really grasp a theorist he was, by his own admission, “defending” on his “various blogs, comments on others, and messages on forums.”
Going on with the troubling paragraph above, McReynolds calls rights “abstractions.” I can agree in some sense that yes, rights are abstractions, but they’re no more abstractions than any other part of our world that is mediated through the semiotic nature of human interaction. In this same sense, laws are abstractions, but no one suggests that their abstract nature makes them less compelling as a societal force. To be clear, the particular abstractions that we call laws happen to have rather non-abstract enforcement entities and institutions backing them. Try violating the abstraction of a law like robbing a grocery store at gunpoint in front of a police officer picking up some donuts, and you’ll understand very quickly how what McReynolds calls “abstractions” become real. Regardless, what McReynolds calls “abstractions” often have real impacts in the world, and calling something an abstraction and wishing it away as insignificant to make your insipid argument simpler does not make it so. Or, to put it another way, you can say that something isn’t real (which is, I think, what McReynolds is trying to say) but that doesn’t mean that your perception and reality jive. I’d be curious about whether or not McReynolds would like to give up some of the “abstractions” of rights that he enjoys, namely, the right to be free from bodily harm, and the right not to be the property of another. Almost certainly, he would not give them up, abstractions or not, because he recognizes them for what they are: vital guarantees that his interests cannot be violated without reason. Abolitionists seek to guarantee the same to animals. We believe that the best way to do it is through promoting ethical veganism, as this immediately and directly attacks the root cause of animal exploitation.
Leaving aside that one troubling paragraph, additional problems abound throughout the piece. McReynolds claims that the failures of welfarist activism cannot be laid at the feet of welfarism itself, but, instead, are the result of poor vegan outreach. There are two massive problems with this argument. First, this suggests that McReynolds doesn’t even fully believe in the value of welfarist reform in the long term as a tool of reducing the enslavement and subsequent consumption of animals. To this, he looks to veganism. If veganism is the way to reduce consumption most effectively, we should throw our weight behind promoting that, rather than working with industry to find ways to abuse animals ever-so-less horribly. Second, the increase in the consumption of animal products since the dawn of the modern welfare movement proves that the incrementalist agenda that underlies much of the logic of modern welfarism is just simply wrong. If, as many proponents of welfarist measures claim, welfarist measures will help society to see the inherent value of animals as beings in their own right, we should expect to see a concomitant reduction in the consumption of animals and animal products as welfare reforms grow. Yet, instead of the expected reduction, every year posts an increase in the number of dead. This basic fact proves what Francione has been arguing for at least a decade and a half at this point: that welfare reforms simply cement the property status of animals, and in doing so, they condemn more and more animals to lives of incredible horror year after year. Critics who are incapable of thinking through the systemic nature of these problems often allege that this is an issue of “purity” or “ideology.” Most simply put, it is not. It is recognizing the roots of the problem, and formulating a response that hits at those roots most effectively. (I explore the systemic nature of this economic and cultural exploitation of animals in my book, Making A Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Righs.)
The final nail in the coffin of regulationist/welfarist ideology that no welfarist ever is prepared to discuss is the problem of globalization. Let’s assume as a hypothetical that the United States becomes the single largest proponent of animal welfare standards in the world tomorrow, instituting (through abstractions called “laws”) the very best standards for animal care and “husbandry” that are decades ahead of the rest of the world. The result would be that animal agriculture would almost immediately offshore even more of its production to countries with fewer or no regulations, where they would exploit and use animals for profit just as they do here, right now. Not only is this possible, it is happening today as more and more firms offshore various facets of animal agricultural production for cost-savings. During the time I was studying for my degree in agricultural science, I learned that the agricultural industry is one that operates on incredibly thin margins. I also learned that the industry is highly adaptable, and is always looking for new technological or economic solutions to the challenge of extracting more surplus value from the animals they own. Given these points, the central weakness of welfarist propaganda again rears its hideous head: welfare reforms do not and cannot cut to the heart of the problem, because they do not challenge the essential barriers to animals having a full and complete recognition of their interests. They simply delay recognition of the core problem, and convince people of something that the industry is longing for: an assertion that their products are somehow “humane.”
In the end, I’ve read only one decent critique of Francione’s ideas from a regulationist perspective, and that comes from Professor Cass Sunstein, who not only apparently took the time to read Francione (after all, he was reviewing the book), but who also went to the trouble to formulate a response that took his position seriously. (For what it might be worth, I don’t agree with Sunstein, and if you want to know his argument, look it up, since I’m already getting a bit long in the tooth with this entry.) Sadly, McReynolds could not be troubled to perform even the most obvious kinds of due diligence with his own argument, despite having once been a self-proclaimed “acolyte.” Instead of giving the abolitionist perspective the serious thought it deserves, McReynolds would rather defend activism that by his own admission does nothing to stem the tide of animals being killed for human consumption, activism that not only does not strike at the roots of the problem, but which also colludes with exploiters. (What any animal rights organization has to do with Whole Foods — a company that profits obscenely from selling dead animals — is beyond my comprehension, but these are the organizations which, presumably, McReynolds would now support.) What we need is an effective vegan movement to promote widespread, long-term societal change in the status of animals, not a set of so-called “activists” who fail to believe even in the persuasiveness of their own arguments about the moral worth of animals.
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