Journal of Social PhilosophyEarly View ORIGINAL ARTICLEOpen Access Veganism as political solidarity: Beyond ‘ethical veganism’ Alasdair Cochrane, Corresponding Author Alasdair Cochrane a.cochrane@sheffield.ac.uk orcid.org/0000-0002-3112-7210 Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK Correspondence Alasdair Cochrane, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK. Email: a.cochrane@sheffield.ac.ukSearch for more papers by this authorMara-Daria Cojocaru, Mara-Daria Cojocaru Independent Scholar, London, UKSearch for more papers by this author Alasdair Cochrane, Corresponding Author Alasdair Cochrane a.cochrane@sheffield.ac.uk orcid.org/0000-0002-3112-7210 Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK Correspondence Alasdair Cochrane, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK. Email: a.cochrane@sheffield.ac.ukSearch for more papers by this authorMara-Daria Cojocaru, Mara-Daria Cojocaru Independent Scholar, London, UKSearch for more papers by this author First published: 27 February 2022 https://doi.org/10.1111/josp.12460AboutSectionsPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat 1 INTRODUCTION Veganism is commonly described as the attempt to avoid, as far as possible, the exploitation and consumption of animals and animal products. While some people choose the plant-based diet associated with veganism for health or other self-interested reasons, the majority of philosophical work on the topic has been devoted to discussion of the ethical justification of veganism (i.e., to ‘ethical veganism’). Some argue that it is a moral imperative if we take the rights or interests of animals seriously (e.g., Francione & Charlton, 2013; Mason & Singer, 1980). Others regard it as a necessity if we are to live up to our duties to live as sustainably as possible (Fox, 2000), or to minimize public health risks (Melina et al., 2016; Vyas, 2019; Walker et al., 2005). Still others hold that it is supported by religious and spiritual reasons (Kemmerer, 2012). These justifications are, of course, not mutually exclusive. And yet, others have questioned whether moral concern for animals really does entail a vegan diet (Davis, 2003 (on field deaths), but cf. Fischer & Lamey, 2018; Fischer, 2019 (on backyard chickens); Lamey, 2019, chap. 9, and Reese, 2018 (on cultured meat); or Milburn, 2015 (on pet food)). Still others have questioned the link between veganism and sustainability (Mackenzie, 2020). Furthermore, a small minority dismiss veganism because they reject the idea of our having moral duties to animals (Hsiao, 2017); while others accept moral duties to animals, but regard veganism as either too demanding (Schwitzgebel & Rust, 2014), as having certain harmful consequences in its own right (Mackenzie, 2020), not leading causally to the desired effects (Harris & Galvin, 2012; Kahn, 2021) or, in turn, leading to moral overreach (Mills, 2019). We argue that while these moral debates are important, they miss out a crucial feature of veganism: its political dimension. By referring to veganism as ‘political’ we primarily mean two things: that it addresses routine harms created by social structures and systems for which members of a political community are responsible in virtue of their connection to them; and that it is a form of activism to be conducted collectively, in solidarity, with others.1 1 For other accounts which speak explicitly of veganism as a political strategy or movement, see Giroux and Larue (2019), Gruen and Jones (2015), Roeder (2021) and Dickstein et al. (Forthcoming). While they each make important contributions to a political reformulation of veganism, none of these accounts proposes the focus on solidarity that we develop in this paper. In making our case, we offer what we call a ‘normative reconstruction’ of veganism: an account of veganism which draws on its real-world practice, while developing it in certain normatively desirable directions.2 2 Dutkiewicz and Dickstein (2021) might object that the term veganism should be solely ‘conduct-descriptive’: i.e., only used to describe the practice of abstaining from the consumption of animal products. While we understand their calls for parsimony, we nevertheless take it for granted that it is important to understand why certain agents adopt particular practices, as well as if they should. Furthermore, our reconstruction of veganism is faithful to the real-world understanding of veganism as a normative endeavor distinct from, say, the dietary practices of herbivorous animals. To be clear, then, our aim is not to provide a descriptive account aimed at capturing all existing practices of veganism. Instead, our normative reconstruction seeks to offer reasons for us (vegans and non-vegans alike) to recognize and embrace the political dimension of veganism. Crucially, this political account of veganism remains agnostic on questions concerning which ethical theory is true or what best explains the moral status of animals. Rather, it draws on the fact that support for the moral status of animals is widely accepted and now counts among the social values of most political communities, including those still exploiting animals systematically (Special Eurobarometer 442, n.d.; Jones et al., 2015; YouGov, 2019). In our view, an important role of veganism is thus not to vie for moral right(eous)ness, but to highlight the discrepancy between these values and our political practice. Indeed, we claim that for many vegans, the consumption and other choices they make need not follow from a fully worked-out ethical imperative. Instead, and drawing on the work of Scholz (2008), we argue that these are acts of solidarity with and on behalf of others to resist injustice. Furthermore, we claim that this is a useful and fruitful way for individuals to conceive of veganism for (at least) three reasons. First, and this is the case made in the first part of the paper, it conceives of veganism as a form of activism, thus connecting it explicitly with its primary political end: to resist and overturn the oppression of non-human animals. Second, and this is the claim of the second part of the paper, it alters and expands the way we should conceive of the commitments of vegans. These can be grouped into commitments to other vegans, to non-human animals, to non-vegans, and to the political goal of veganism itself. And finally, and this is a point suggested throughout the paper, it means that some of the ethical debates around our duties to be vegan are rather beside the point. Drawing on Iris Marion Young (2003), we see our duties to overturn animal oppression as political and grounded in our ‘social connection’ to the injustice. Fundamentally, then, in our view, veganism connects widespread commitments regarding the moral status of animals to a duty to work toward the political and institutional transformations required to create societies without animal oppression; and hence toward societies without the label ‘veganism’. In other words, we regard veganism as a commitment to create societies in which individuals do not even need to consider whether they personally are morally obliged to avoid the exploitation and consumption of animals and animal products. 2 FROM ETHICAL TO POLITICAL VEGANISM Historically, ‘solidarity’ has not been closely associated with concern for the plight of animals, nor with activism on their behalf; and to our knowledge, until now it has not been linked to veganism in a comprehensive way.3 3 In animal studies circles, the language of ‘solidarity’ has been employed by individual scholars, like Coulter (2016, 2017) and Essen and Allen (2017), yet without talking about veganism per se. In practice, the term ‘solidarity’ has been used by the group Animal Rebellion, though in the context of, first, solidarity with Extinction Rebellion, and, second, solidarity with UK farmers. Instead, solidarity is usually associated with the fight for social justice: to resist various forms of human oppression, to aid other humans when struck by misfortune, or to build institutions of mutual support like health care or pensions. Moreover, various sociological and philosophical accounts of solidarity have made it out to be a primarily humanistic concept (e.g., Wilde, 2013; see Scholz, 2008 for an overview of the debate). In part, this is because the plight of animals has usually not been considered a cause of social justice. But it is also because most thinkers require there to be some political agency from the beneficiaries of solidaristic actions, which, for the purpose of this paper, we will accept to be lacking in non-human animals.4 4 Note that we are only accepting this lack of political agency in animals for the purposes of this paper. It is not a debate we can nor need to engage with here. For important claims that animals do have such agency, see Meijer (2013) and Donaldson and Kymlicka (2011). For an alternative take which denies such agency, see Pepper (2021). For a view which sees ‘more-than-human-solidarity’ as something directed toward but not enacted by non-human others, see Rock and Degeling (2015). If the animals oppressed by humans do not stand in solidarity with one another, nor with the humans who act on their behalf, is there any way in which the concept can be meaningfully employed in animal activism? We think it can, and demonstrate how through employment of social philosopher Sally Scholz's pioneering work on solidarity. In this section, we first introduce Scholz's understanding of political—as distinguished from social or civic—solidarity, as well as her distinction between solidarity ‘with’ and solidarity ‘on behalf of’ others. We will then show that veganism can and should be reconceptualised as a political fight for social justice and hence also as a solidaristic practice. The final section of this part asks how this reconceptualisation affects our moral duty to become vegan. 2.1 Scholz's solidarities In her work (Scholz, 2008), Scholz usefully identifies and distinguishes three forms of solidarity. ‘Social solidarity’ is the term she gives to those shared feelings of community which bind individuals together. As a descriptive term, whether those communities are morally good, bad or indifferent is unimportant—social solidarity may (or may not) exist among any group of individuals. ‘Civic solidarity’, on the other hand, refers to the institutional framework within a society to support vulnerable members within it. The primary examples of such civic solidarity are the welfare and healthcare systems that exist in many communities, and they are justified by a normative account of social justice and desert accepted by the wider community. Finally, ‘political solidarity’, which is the most important form of solidarity for this paper, refers to the shared commitment by a group of individuals to address and overturn some form of oppression, an example of an injustice that is “human in origin” (Scholz, 2008, pp. 54 & 205). It entails a range of subsidiary commitments, namely to join with others in activism, to victims, to the wider community, and to the goal. The main commitment is a candidate for acceptance by the wider community, and the related commitments are endorsed both by many but not necessarily all of those suffering from the oppression and by those who support them. The ‘solidary group’, then, usually consists of affected and affiliated individuals. Though she mentions vegetarianism as an example in 2008, Scholz later (Scholz, 2013) claims that it is impossible to have political solidarity with the non-human world, including animals. While animals may be the victims of oppression, they are unable to share in a commitment to overturn it. Presumably this is because animals lack the appropriate enculturation into, and conceptual understanding of, human politics to organize on behalf of one another with a view to overturning political institutions and seeking justice within them. For the purposes of this paper, we will agree with Scholz that this is currently the case. Importantly, though, this is not the end of the ‘solidarity with animals’ story for Scholz. She acknowledges that animal activists can and do have solidarity with each other. Moreover, she argues that solidarity on behalf of the oppressed animals whose lives they aim to improve is not just an option but may be ‘a hallmark of recognizing our social solidarity’ with these animals (Scholz, 2013, p. 82). While this is contingent upon the bonds that some humans have (or have not) formed with some animals, it is a clear acknowledgement that solidarity need not be anthropocentric. Furthermore, this understanding need not be paternalistic either if animals' perspectives feed into this activism in meaningful ways (more on this in Section 3.2). 2.2 Overturning animal oppression as a cause of social justice The key feature of Scholz's understanding of political solidarity, then, is that it entails a shared commitment to tackle a specific injustice that has an identifiable human cause.5 5 For the purposes of this paper we use the terms ‘injustice’ and ‘social injustice’ interchangeably. For Scholz, political solidarity is a form of ‘oppositional politics’ (Scholz, 2008, p. 34). As such, it is not the same as a humanitarian commitment to help those in need due to, say, a natural disaster. Instead, to be in political solidarity is to identify and pledge to tackle with others some specific oppression caused by particular social actors, institutions and structures. We argue that many vegans share exactly this kind of commitment and that it is one which is faithful to the origins of veganism in the west, through the concern with animal exploitation expressed by Donald Watson, the co-founder of the Vegan Society in the UK (Potts & Armstrong, 2018, p. 395). To that extent, our normative reconstruction speaks to veganism's heritage. For while it is true that, today, the commitments of vegans can differ widely, a traditional motivation relates to tackling the exploitation and oppression of animals. Indeed, the Vegan Society defines veganism as a “… way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals …” (The Vegan Society, n.d.). Furthermore, Deborah Kalte (2020, p. 11) has reviewed the empirical analysis of the motives and aims of vegans, and concluded that it “… demonstrates indeed that a vast majority of vegans is politically motivated and sees their vegan lifestyle as a means to induce change in society at large.” Veganism, then, is not just a lifestyle choice or an identity, but a form of activism toward social and political change. Just as bell hooks avoids declaring ‘I am a feminist’ and prefers ‘I advocate for feminism’ to signal concern for the collective and not just for oneself, so vegans can be regarded as ‘advocating for veganism’ (see Scholz, 2008, p. 61), meaning that they are collectively agitating for an end to animal oppression. Crucially, this commitment does admit disagreements about the precise meaning of ‘animal oppression’, its implications and the best strategies for tackling it (see for example Francione & Garner, 2010).6 6 Contrast our view here with Dickstein et al. (Forthcoming) who see veganism as connected to ‘total liberation’. In this sense, veganism as resistance to animal oppression is just like any other social justice movement. But like other movements, veganism also has certain shared core concerns. These would seem to entail widely shared moral commitments: an acknowledgement that animals (at any rate those who are sentient or phenomenally conscious) have a worth of their own which cannot be reduced to their value to human beings; and that such worth entails that moral agents have certain duties toward them. But veganism as political solidarity bridges moral commitments with commitments of a decidedly political nature: duties that relate to tackling the routinized violence, death and other harms visited upon animals for human benefit in structures for which people are collectively responsible. Furthermore, while veganism takes particular aim at how animals are bred, held and slaughtered in industrialized animal agriculture, all areas of society in which such harms are perpetrated—in the biomedical and pharmaceutical sector, in the pet business, in zoos, circuses and sport, and so on—come within its remit too. Of course, some might wonder if and how this commitment of vegans relates to social justice. Many regard veganism as driven by a personal compassion for animals, and thus quite different to a political commitment. By way of response, it is important to acknowledge that many political commitments can and do arise out of compassionate feelings.7 7 Compassion for animals has been crucial in the formation of animal protection organizations such as the RSPCA, Albert Schweitzer Foundation or Compassion in World Farming and are still among the main forces that drive public support for such work. In addition, people, of course, have been, and still are, motivated and inspired by ineffable, sometimes quasi-religious feelings, that produce insights that can transcend public justification or rational explanation. However, the crucial factor in whether a commitment is political and a cause of social justice comes down to its focus on oppression caused by particular human social actors, institutions and structures. This is what differentiates a humanitarian concern for the victims of some unexpected weather event, say, from a commitment to hold a state to account for its failure to rescue, shelter and look after those same victims. While both may be grounded in compassion, it is the failure of state institutions which makes the latter commitment explicitly political. In this light, our normative reconstruction of veganism is unequivocally political. For on our understanding, the primary concern of veganism is not with isolated acts of cruelty perpetrated against animals, or by the suffering, say, of a malnourished wild animal. Instead, it is with the routine and systemic harms which society visits upon animals. Put simply, veganism recognizes, confronts and seeks to overturn the structures and systems which support and facilitate the exploitation of animals (see Scholz, 2008, p. 194). It is for this reason that vegans choose to boycott the products which those systems of oppression produce (Dickstein et al. Forthcoming). Indeed, the personal rejection of such products represents an acknowledgment of their own ‘social connection’ to these wider systems of injustice (Young, 2003). For while it is corporations, political institutions, and economic and social structures rather than cruel individuals who primarily facilitate these harms against animals, we are all inevitably entwined with the oppressive practices which support them. In this light, it seems clear that the commitment to overturn animal oppression is both political and a commitment of social justice. 2.3 Duties to be vegan: From moral to political Understanding animal oppression as a social justice cause that calls for political solidarity has important implications for current ethical debates about veganism. Take, for example, the objection that veganism is ‘futile’ given that we can never completely disentangle ourselves from the exploitation of animals. Such critics often point to the harmful effects of vegan products: even vegetables are usually grown with cow manure and entail the death of animals through working the field; non-leather shoes can be made from non-biodegradable plastics with short life-spans; avocado production involves the use of migratory beekeeping; and so on (Gruen & Jones, 2015). But on a political understanding of veganism, there is no shame in failing to be ‘morally pure’. The commitment is to join with others to tackle oppression in a way that makes the world a better, if never perfect, place. So, while it is true that negatively impacting some animals is unavoidable in the world in which we live, the world in which we live is not the one we must live with forever. Crucially, on our understanding, veganism is the attempt to join with others to move to a world without the routinized exploitation of animals. Relatedly, arguments admonishing veganism because it is seen to entail supposedly absurd commitments to eradicate all animal suffering (think ‘the problem of predation’, think ‘wild animal suffering’) also miss the mark.8 8 These debates look at animal suffering tout court, and not just the forms of suffering that humans directly cause. Some conclude that people concerned with animal suffering might have much more to do than abstaining from consuming animal products or working toward the end of animal use in scientific experiments (e.g., Horta, 2010; MacMahan, 2015). For on a politically solidaristic understanding of veganism, the commitment is to end injustices perpetrated by humans, not by other animals on other animals (if you can call that an injustice in the first place), nor those of a more metaphysical nature (if that is what you can call “calculated” offspring mortality). To reiterate, on our understanding, veganism is not about a claim to moral purity or perfection, but a commitment to overturning the oppression of animals by humans. Of course, there may well be other good reasons (whether moral, political or both) to tackle wild animal suffering which has not been caused by humans (Horta, 2017), but our claim is that they are not entailed by veganism as political solidarity. But what of the view that veganism is ‘causally impotent’? Here the objection is that one individual's dietary choices cannot change anything for animals (Budolfson, 2019; Harris & Galvin, 2012; Kahn, 2021). Such arguments reduce the practice to a question of the likely impact of one's own immediate personal choices. As such, these views often also conclude that there is little point in taking any individual action for collective gain, including, for example, casting a vote. After all, one particular ballot is highly unlikely to make any political difference (see Nefsky, 2019). While some (Norcross, 2020) have questioned whether such acts really are causally impotent, a response grounded in our social connection to injustice offers a different approach. We argue that these acts should neither be assessed solely in terms of the costs and benefits to one individual, nor in terms of the likely impact from just one agent. For when we reframe these practices as political acts, performed in conjunction with others, their rationale makes much more sense. The relevant issue is not whether an individual has a duty to perform some specific act; rather, it is whether they should join with others to pursue some collective goal, such as tackling injustice (see Schlozman et al., 1995). Of course, some might object that this response leaves the original problem in place: why should any individual join with others to pursue such a goal when their own decision will not make any decisive difference to the success of the cause? In our view, such a duty can be helpfully cashed out by Iris Marion Young's (2006) ‘social connection model’ of political responsibility. Put simply, any of us who is ‘connected’ to an injustice bears some responsibility for overturning it—even if we cannot and should not be ‘blamed’ for that injustice. To refuse to tackle animal oppression and leave the fight to others would be to renege on our social responsibilities (see Tuck, 2008). Young is keen to distinguish this understanding from ‘liability’ models of responsibility which seek to identify—and blame—individual perpetrators of injustice. For her (Young, 2003, p. 3) this neglects the realities of ‘structural injustice’: “… many harms, wrongs, and injustices have no isolatable perpetrator; they result from the participation of millions of people and institutions.” Crucially, many structural injustices are sustained by routine, legal and normal social practices. The oppression of animals certainly seems to live up to Young's picture of structural injustice: their breeding and slaughter is routine, legal and subsidized by states, and our consumption of their flesh is socially ‘normal’, with diets that avoid such products requiring special labels (veganism, vegetarianism, etc.) to distinguish them (Matsuoka & Sorenson, 2014). Furthermore, given the ways in which animal exploitation is so deeply embedded in our societies—animal ingredients can be found in everything from plastic bags, to make-up, to cars, to banknotes and so on—it is also clear that all of us have some connection and thus responsibility for it. However, while such social connection might mean we all have a duty to overturn injustice in the abstract, what does this mean for any of us in reality? Again, Young's model is helpful here. She argues that each of our concrete duties can in part be determined by three factors (Young, 2003): our particular connection to the injustice, our power to do something about it, and our privilege (fleshed out by how much we have benefited from the injustices). In other words, the concrete duties that arise out of our abstract duty to overturn injustice against animals are differentiated. Powerful corporations who run and profit from industrial farming and the politicians who support and subsidize their work, for example, obviously have special and very demanding responsibilities to cease and redirect their resources and energies. Our duties as individuals will obviously differ from this, and since we also have different levels of connection, power and privilege, they will also differ from each other in various ways. And yet, Young is clear that where individuals have the power to do so, “joining in collective action with others” is an imperative (Young, 2003, p. 5). Furthermore, boycotts and consumer action—as well as more conventional ‘state-centred activism’—are crucial ways of discharging one's responsibilities (Young, 2003, p. 6). On this basis, then, while we cannot point to any universal moral obligation to join with others in veganism, we can be confident that it is an imperative for those of us who are wealthy and privileged enough to not be unduly burdened by such activism, and who enjoy easy access to products (healthy food, medicines, clothes and more) which are not derived from animals. But is not this social connection model impossibly demanding? For Scholz (2008, p. 254), no individual can be morally compelled to take up each and every cause of injustice given the demandingness of the obligations that they entail (see also Mills, 2019 on veganism and ‘moral overreach’). And in recent work on veganism, Bob Fischer (2019) arrives at a similar conclusion: people must have a reasonable amount of discretion in the moral projects that they pursue. It is certainly true that there is a lot of injustice in contemporary societies; and it is also true that requiring everyone to take up activism to tackle them all would be incredibly demanding. And yet, injustices do not just provide opportunities for us to pick certain goals in order to define our identities and ways of life; instead, and much more fundamentally, they entail individuals not receiving what they are owed. As such, they are particularly grave wrongs which demand collective and political responses (Miller, 2017). Hence, Rawls's claim (Rawls, 1999, pp. 293–294) that we each have a duty to maintain institutions of justice and build them where they do not exist should not be taken lightly—even though it is very demanding. Importantly, support for animal welfare and animal rights have become social values in the societies that still exploit animals (Special Eurobarometer 442, n.d.; Jones et al., 2015; YouGov, 2019). For these reasons, then, practices that lie at the heart of veganism—like the abstention from consuming animal products or the demands for animal-free and human relevant science—are not just duties for minorities with very particular conceptions of the good life. 3 POLITICAL SOLIDARITY AND THE COMMITMENTS OF VEGANISM So far, we have argued that veganism can be thought of as a form of political solidarity. Vegans share a commitment with each other and on behalf of animals to resist and overturn animal oppression. But solidarity is more than some shared theoretical commitment to tackling injustice. After all, we would not call a group of individuals who share the same political commitments but do nothing about them as ‘in solidarity’. Indeed, many conceptualisations (Prainsack & Buyx, 2012, p. 346; Rippe, 1998, p. 356; Scholz, 2008, p. 11) understand solidarity to always entail certain positive duties to others. More specifically, Scholz argues (Scholz, 2008, p. 78) that when an individu
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