Animals can't talk: capitalism and contract law

[Middy]

Animals cannot talk. Actually I believe they can, however we cannot and never will be able to understand their language; this was proven by Wittgenstein around the turn of the last century with his 'black box' thought experiments and today is the basis for polyvocality and rhizomatics in Post Modernism, his line "If a lion could speak we could not understand him" is probably the best know expression of the idea; in anthropology it connects with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis; and John Lily's extensive study of dolphin language in the 1950s experimentally corroborated what Wittgenstein had already demonstrated theoretically.

More to the point, animals certainly cannot sign contracts; meanwhile, our society depends on contract law: contractualism is the basis of Liberalism, be it capitalistic or socialistic. Therefore, the question begs, how can animals possibly have any rights in a society founded on law and contract?

Anarchism, or if you prefer, theocracy (Acts 5:29, 'Submit only to Allah', etc), is the obvious vector of escape: a morality that does not depend on human law. Animals, children, often times foreigners, and also the severely disabled are caught in this no-man's-land: they cannot contract, they cannot give, or for that matter offer, informed consent. This leaves these halflings as either outcasts, or wards of some monarch, the state, their parents, or some other arbitrary and alien guarantor of rights.

Animals are and must inevitably be mistreated in law bound societies because they are not persons, and unlike children who will grow up, or the unconscious patient who may wake -- animals will never be persons and so will never become liberated so long as Liberalistic values are the totem around which our society is organized. Therefore, animal liberation is not compatible with capitalist and socialist society; animal liberation can never happen as long as Liberalism lasts.

[Chenli]

Animals clearly can 'talk', they just don't speak in our language. It's like saying a frenchman can't talk just because you don't understand him.

[Soulmate]

Although you have written an eloquent argument as to why animals will never be liberated, I disagree. As long as there are people out there that will fight to the death for animals, they will be liberated. Perhaps not in the sense that you are talking about, however, we will overcome all the obstacles in good time, hopefully in our lifetime. Think about autistic children that can't speak, someone is always there for them, just as we will always be there for our animal friends. Damned be the economic advantages that have chained our friends in cages and have done the most horrendous things to any sentient beiing. Also, the evil people that do even more horrific things to their loyal friends and manage to walk out of our courts without penalties. There is something drasticly wrong with this and we should make an example of these people to forwarn the future abuses.. Unfortunately it has not worked, sufficed to say that in child abuse cases, many abusers have gone free or with minor penalties, so what to do about animal abusers. I might be in serious trouble for saying this but I would "Kill them". They are totally useles to society and it would only be a matter of time before their crimes against animals will be crimes against humans, most likely children. So I do belive that animals will be liberated in time, with the right message.

[annb]

the question has been answered in FAQ 25. Not reading the FAQs is a violation of forum policy.

The summary is here:

In summary, contractarianism fails because a) it fails to accurately account for our actual, real-world moral acts and motives, b) it sanctions contractual arrangements that most people would see as unjust, c) it fails to account for the considerations we accord to individuals unable to enter into contracts, and d) it has some impractical consequences. Finally, there is a better foundation for ethics--the harm principle. It is simple, universalizable, devoid of ad hoc devices, and matches our real moral thinking.

http://www.animalliberationfront.com...ity1.htm#faq25

[Middy]

Originally Posted by Chenli

Animals clearly can 'talk', they just don't speak in our language. It's like saying a frenchman can't talk just because you don't understand him.

This is a difficult question because the Universe is linguistic; human languages are the third (at least) strata of language: the first is the inter-molecular: the DNA>RNA>protein strata, then the second is the inter-cellular: the endocrine/synaptic strata, and the third is the inter-personal: "Hello", "yes", ", "That is a window", etc. Although Noam Chomsky failed to show a universal human grammar, it is roughly possible to translate between French and English, in fact those two languages are very similar; and it is also sometimes possible for animals of different species to breed, however, if languages are a logic circuit, which they are, humans and lions can never talk, it is logically impossible, it would be a bit like 2+2=5. Therefore, a model like law, which is also a difference engine, is not a suitable platform for launching animal rights, it would be a bit like trying to run Fire Fox on a mechanical retail till. On the otherhand, if law is institutional: a language between social organ(elle)s, it could be a forth, super-human language strata, one that maybe could process animals?

Originally Posted by Soulmate

we will overcome all the obstacles in good time, hopefully in our lifetime.

It seems possible to me that our existence has no cause because in the future we will create the Universe to fix up our present uncomfortable causelessness, but generally I do not subscribe to inevitableisms. Frankly more likely it seems we will make the Earth unlivable in the next few decades. No living thing will survive, not even cock-roaches as they say, cock-roaches cannot live on Venus. But if anything survives it will be in domes and underground bunkers where animals may have a place in Matrix-like harvesters or if we get through those hard times they may dwell in parks? Though I'm skeptical that non-human animals will have much if any place in the more distant future.

Think about autistic children that can't speak, someone is always there for them, just as we will always be there for our animal friends.

We are trying to cure and treat autism. Should we also cure animals of animalism? Maybe brain surgery or gene therapy can make animals whole humans again?

(Veering off-topic a bit, autism is an interesting example because like the personality disorders, it is, in it's milder forms like Asperger's, no doubt caused by developing in the sensory and human-contact deprived conditions of modern society, it will only accelerate with modern alienation and therefore autism is the future of the human race.)

Damned be the economic advantages that have chained our friends in cages and have done the most horrendous things to any sentient beiing.

Capitalism, aka colonialism/imperialism, requires inequality and unequal distribution to generate its metabolic flows. Just as the brain and the emergent strata of mind have hijacked the body, capitalism is also a meta-organism with a mind of its own that has taken over the human species being. But I have reservations about social determinism ("have chained") and prefer to believe in a fundamental free-will.

Also, the evil people that do even more horrific things to their loyal friends and manage to walk out of our courts without penalties. There is something drasticly wrong with this and we should make an example of these people to forwarn the future abuses..

I hypothesize that capitalism and law are one and the same, that's why the thread is sub-titled: "capitalism and contract law". A 'dollar' is a contract minimalized of particulars into pure quantity. A bill of currency and a legal/political bill are fundamentally the same thing: liberal contract. Therefore it is contradictory to criticize capitalism ("Damned be the economic advantages that have chained") and then support legalism at the same time ("walk out of our courts without penalties").

Unfortunately it has not worked, sufficed to say that in child abuse cases, many abusers have gone free or with minor penalties, so what to do about animal abusers. I might be in serious trouble for saying this but I would "Kill them". They are totally useles to society and it would only be a matter of time before their crimes against animals will be crimes against humans, most likely children. So I do belive that animals will be liberated in time, with the right message.

What is child abuse? I'm sure you don't mean sexual intimacy with children because that's love and not abuse; I just ask because the rhetoric you use here sound eerily similar to that of groups like Absolute Zero or Wikisposure. Suffice it to say I do not favor killing animal abusers. Kill all killers, cage all cagers: talk about perpetuating a cycle of abuse --

Originally Posted by annb

the question has been answered in FAQ 25. Not reading the FAQs is a violation of forum policy.

FAQ 25 is the one you linked me in my intro thread. I agree with FAQ 25 and want to discuss it's broader implications...

• "John Rawls attempts to overcome this problem by supposing that the contractors must begin from an "initial position" in which they are not yet incarnated as beings and must form the contract in ignorance of their final incarnation. Thus, it is argued, since a given individual in the starting position does not know whether, for example, she will be incarnated as a rich woman or a poor woman, that individual will not form contracts that are based on such criteria. In response, one can begin to wonder at the lengths to which some will go in creating ad hoc adjustments to a deficient theory."

Rawl's position is a bit similar to that of the Freeman-on-the-Land or the Sovereignty movement's which try to save contractualism by removing the supposedly problematic parts and reduce it to its pure form. But contract is the problem. It's a duplicity, as soon as a contract is formed it becomes false because the will is always free and can never be ruled by a representation: your word, your sign, paper contracts, etc. This is why the FAQ goes on to mention ad hoc "adjustments": contract tries to make something fixed, but "all things are changing". Contract is not scientific. In science there are no rules. Nothing is firm and fixed. Any hypothesis or theory is only temporary, a throw up, until the next "ad hoc arrangement" comes along and lives with it or displaces it. Contract is never real; like money it is only paper. Therefore, contract, like capitalism and law, is always exploitative because it tries to put up an authority in the World where there can never really be one. Therefore, animal liberation necessarily can never happen by lawful means or inside liberalistic society.

Finally, there is a better foundation for ethics--the harm principle. It is simple, universalizable, devoid of ad hoc devices, and matches our real moral thinking.

Agree; sort of. All laws are stated in the positive, often starting "Whosoever shall...". Whereas "do no harm" is a negative. But as they say, no one can prove a negative, and equally, no one can do a negative, so "do no harm" seems to leave one immobile and ends with suicide (because harm comes inevitably with life); so I actually prefer the related line, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law".

[annb]

Quote:
Finally, there is a better foundation for ethics--the harm principle. It is simple, universalizable, devoid of ad hoc devices, and matches our real moral thinking.
Agree; sort of. All laws are stated in the positive, often starting "Whosoever shall...". Whereas "do no harm" is a negative. But as they say, no one can prove a negative, and equally, no one can do a negative, so "do no harm" seems to leave one immobile and ends with suicide (because harm comes inevitably with life); so I actually prefer the related line, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law".

Many laws are stated in the negative and tell us what not to do instead of what we should do. Laws merely come from someone's opinion of what should be the correct behavior, and instead of a moral basis they are often written so that they protects the money of the wealthy.

Studies show (I read one last week linked from the AOL home webpage) that the greater the desparity between the rich and the poor, the more laws will be written to protect the rich. As the desparity between rich and poor has increased in the United States so has the number of people in jail, which now leads the world in both categories.

Almost any ethical system used to write laws would be better than "protect the wealth of the rich".

[coco]

Originally Posted by Middy

What is child abuse? I'm sure you don't mean sexual intimacy with children because that's love and not abuse;

What??? I don't want to go off topic with a debate about this but I can't let it go. Of course child abuse can include sexual abuse. Any sexual intimicacy from an adult with a child is abuse.

[Middy]

Originally Posted by annb

Many laws are stated in the negative and tell us what not to do instead of what we should do.

I think I'm wrong. Eight of the Ten Commandments are negative. Quite a few of the Articles of the Constitution and Amendments are in the negative, and I've found many nots and withouts in statute law.

Laws merely come from someone's opinion of what should be the correct behavior, and instead of a moral basis they are often written so that they protects the money of the wealthy.

Agree, law exists to defend the usurper. Though the "come from" part is very subtle and complex. Mary Croft's How I Clobbered Every Bureaucratic Cash-Confiscatory Agency Known to Man argues somewhat persuasively that the only crime is impeding the flow of commerce and goes on to show how even murder is really a fiscal crime. However, cash money is only paper, and also not the only form of wealth and power.

The so-called elites do not know what exactly they want or what is in their interest or how to maintain it and hence paranoid they throw punches quite randomly and are constantly being overthrown like Louis XVI or Jeffrey Skilling.

There is also some reason to be cynical about this model where economy drives and structures society and moral values, because of course that will also apply to one's own values. For example: animal liberation is only an economic policy, machines are more productive than animal labor, vegetarianism is more efficient than animal husbandry, anti-animal testing supports all sorts of leech charity economies. Similarly animal liberation can be read as a fake liberation movement, similar to drugs liberation, one that diverts the angry middle-class youth from attacking and making real and significant changes to the institutional structures and their own psychologies.

Originally Posted by coco

What??? I don't want to go off topic with a debate about this but I can't let it go. Of course child abuse can include sexual abuse. Any sexual intimicacy from an adult with a child is abuse.

• "If desire is repressed, it is because every position of desire, no matter how small, is capable of calling into question the established order of a society: not that desire is asocial, on the contrary. But it is explosive; there is no desiring-machine capable of being assembled without demolishing entire social sectors.... desire is revolutionary in its essence -- desire! ... and no society can tolerate a position of real desire without its structures of exploitation, servitude, and hierarchy being compromised."
  
  Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
  
  "...the organs of reproduction (and production, too) are first and foremost assigned a place and function in the social order.... One result ... of such assignment -- but not the one directly aimed at -- is that sexual relations [of some kinds] are discouraged. But the "taboo" forbidding sexual relations between [some persons] is merely an after-effect ... of the primary assignment of place and function to specific collectively invested organs within the community."
  
  Eugene Holland

With serial child-sexual-abuse, child prostitution, and child pornography, are children and sexuality the problematic common denominators, or is mass industrial-technological society and capitalism the problem? A predatory society that manufactures desire and consumption eats up everything; child-killers are manufactured like so many Toyotas. Serial killers and serial abusers are a huge problem in mass manufactured society, this is not being made-up by the media. Unfortunately, mass-murderers are being category mistaked with the 'gentlest lovers of all' by the media, creating a surreal sexual-terrorist out of what is mostly harmless crushes and at worst mild eccentricity, usually amounting to watching The Little Mermaid together five-hundred times.

When people say pedophilia is wrong because there is no informed consent, in fact they are defending capitalism (specifically contract) because all interpersonal relations in capitalism, sexual or otherwise, must be mediated through the capitalist instruments; the only sexual relationship permitted under capitalism is prostitution; whether or not money changes hands, it is still within the matrix of exchangism. Capitalism can only conceive of any non-contract relationship as resource exploitation, hence non-contractual sex (in fact all sex) is deemed exploitative. Pedophilia-taboo is an ideological by-product of the contract law that maintains the superstructure of capitalism.

The totem against which we generate our taboo matrix, the really important organizer of flows of desire: the axiom: is capitalism. This checker-board matrix of sexual relations which are taboo versus Halal looks very much like a kin-naming scheme in a tribal society. Sexual taboos also look very similarly to the dietary taboos in Leviticus. Deterritorialized from its tribal objects, but not from the instinctual animal reactions, modern sexuality is free to build new sex objects out of any of the things it finds already laying around -- provided the morals of capitalism are not breached. This is why the liberal perspective is to tolerate prostitution and pornography which both conform to the commodity model, despite the fact that they are obviously exploitative and degrading; meanwhile condemning pedophilia because the relationship does not conform to legal contractualism: informed consent.

Children are not the only ones subjugated under contract law. Millions of animals are slaughtered everyday on the basis that animals have no legal voice. Could anything be more obvious than that animals do not want to be slaughtered and eaten? Contract law is not sufficient to accommodate non-agents. Children and animals will never qualify as agents, we need to look otherwheres than the ideology of capitalism to liberate these groups from the exploitation they are presently suffering.


PS I'm pro-bestiality of course.