The following literature review is part of a series for World Vegan Month. Other essays can be accessed by visiting the essays catalog.
Bob Torres. 2006. Making a Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights. Oakland, CA: AK Press.
Remember Vegan Freak Radio? Today’s vegan research is a publication by VFR host, Bob Torres. Torres takes a sociological, anti-capitalist approach to problematize speciesism. The first part of the book situates Nonhuman Animal exploitation in the Marxian critique of capitalism, that is, the labor of other animals is exploited and their bodies commoditized.
The real value in the piece is his placement of the Nonhuman Animal rights movement within capitalism. Advocacy groups become rather cozy with exploitative industries as they professionalize. As a result, they begin to craft reforms and abandon liberatory goals. This is a relationship that is mutually beneficial for non-profits and industries, but does nothing for Nonhuman Animals.
Torres calls this the animal rights industrial complex and argues that activists cannot “buy the revolution.” That is, activists cannot simply “vote” vegan with their dollars, buying vegan products or donating to large charities, and expect to create the structural shift needed to eradicate the root of oppression.
For that matter, Torres challenges the ideological control these large organizations have over “common sense” advocacy. Rather than determining if strategies are beneficial to Nonhuman Animals, the movement tends to judge their utility based on their ability to fundraise. Successful fundraising keeps organizations in business, but it is not likely to liberate, as it requires a substantial compromising of our values and goals. Torres takes an anarchist approach, insisting that an egalitarian social structure which does not delegate rule to a few privileged elites will be essential to achieving true liberation.
Readers can learn more about the Nonhuman Animal rights industrial complex and its consequences for anti-speciesism in my 2016 publication, A Rational Approach to Animal Rights.
This essay was originally published on The Academic Activist Vegan on November 28, 2013.
