Still, it remains an important - sometimes seemingly the only - means of resistance against the capitalist property system, and merits support as we simultaneously work toward building political alliances on a global scale and in an unprecedentedly broad and inclusive way.
The pluralist and contextualist approach central to our position absorbs the partial value and validity of vegan abolitionism, but without the debilitating dogmatism and disabling rejection of effective tactics simply because they do not conform to an ancient code or utopian ideal that only serves to strengthen oppression and to reassure oppressors they have nothing to fear from an "opposition" movement.[7] It abandons single-issue fetishism and the complacency of class and racial privilege in favor of diversity, solidarity, and bridge-building with those most economically disadvantaged and politically marginalized. Only in this way, can the profound importance of veganism and animal rights be recognized and respected by a social majority; only in alliance with other struggles can its revolutionary potential be realized.
In the consumerist and privatized lifestyle form promoted by Franciombes, however, veganism is the opiate of the people, and Murray Bookchin's polemic against apolitical "lifestyle anarchism" can be fruitfully applied to the vaporous lifestyle veganism championed by Franciombes and others.[8]
We endorse a form of abolition that (1) defends the use of high-pressure direct action tactics, along with illegal raids, rescues, and sabotage attacks; (2) views capitalism as an inherently irrational, exploitative, and destructive system, and sees the state as a corrupt tool whose function is to advance the economic and military interests of the corporate domination system and to repress opposition to its agenda; (3) has a broad, critical understanding of how different forms of oppression are interrelated, seeing human animal, nonhuman animal, and earth liberation as inseparable projects; and, thus, (4) promotes an anti-capitalist alliance politics with other rights, justice, and liberation movements who share the common goal of dismantling all systems of hierarchical domination and rebuilding societies through decentralization and democratization processes.[9]
VI.
We form this new group out of the need for a radical social approach to veganism and animal rights that transcends bourgeois liberalism; the need for a global Left that renounces speciesism and all other ancient and lingering prejudices and forms of oppression; the need for post-hierarchical worldviews and democratic and ecological societies; and the need for total liberation and revolutionary transformation.
Forget Francione ...
We must link the liberation of other animals to human and Earth liberation, and build a revolutionary movement strong enough to vanquish capitalist hegemony and to remake society without the crushing loadstones of anthropocentrism, speciesism, patriarchy, racism, classism, statism, heterosexism, ableism, and every other pernicious form of hierarchical domination. Humanity may not succeed in this endeavor, but it is one that we must undertake. It is no longer the classical choice between "revolution or barbarism," but now that of revolution or ecological collapse and mass extinction.
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