Conceptualising animal exploitation in capitalism
Getting terminology straight
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3832933 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Christian Stache (0000-0003-0985-0178, Independent scholar, Germany, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 44 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 401-421 |
| Publication date | 2020-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Capital & Class (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0309-8168 • E-ISSN: 2041-0980 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0309816819884697 |
| OpenAlex | W2983608346 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 12 |
| References cited | 15 |
In the last three decades, the interchange between Marxism and critical human-animalism has gratifyingly picked up. Scholars use Marxist categories to analyse and criticise the exploitation and oppression of animals in capitalism. But the application of Marx's original concepts often rests on fragile analogies and judgements. To conceptualise the exploitation of animals accurately and substantiate the common class struggle for humans and animals theoretically, the present article serves to get the terminology straight with respect to four interrelated topics. First, the common charge against Marx's theory to build on a human-animal dualism is refuted by showing that he understands the relationship between humans and animals as a historical materialist, socio-practical and dialectical differentiation. Second, based on a relational understanding of the capitalist mode of production, I argue that animals are not wage labourers, slaves or super-exploited commodities. Rather, as nature in general, they are super-exploited and despotically oppressed by the capitalist class. This capital-animal relation turns animals into private property and means of production at the hands of capital. It also has significant consequences for a value theory of animal labour. Animals, third, do not create value or surplus value and they do not produce commodities. They produce products and these as well as their labour are appropriated by capital for free. Finally, fourth, I defend the transfer of the concept of alienation to animals in general. But animal alienation has to be derived from the form of social labour as in the human case and it has to include the estrangement from body and life as well due to the special form of animal exploitation in capitalism
Alienation · Capital (architecture) · Capitalism · Capitalist mode of production · Dialectic · Dualism · Economics · Epistemology · Historical materialism · Labor theory of value · Marxist philosophy · Materialism · Mode of production · Neoclassical economics · Oppression · Political science · Production (economics) · Relations of production · Sociology · Surplus value · Terminology · Value (mathematics) · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Law · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism
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Convivial Heritage
| Unique citing works | 12 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2026 (7) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 10 |