CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

When DSA Members Talk About Animals

The Democratic Socialists of America boast a historically large membership with a range of views on a variety of subjects. I recently sought to interview some fellow members of the organization who are interested in reforming or abolishing animal exploitation, a cause which, sadly, receives scant attention across the political spectrum, including the left, where it fits most naturally. I’m very grateful for those who took the time to answer my questions about their views regarding nonhumans, how animal issues can be taken more seriously within DSA, and what plausible nonhuman policy they’d like every left-wing candidate to support.

Jishnu Guha-Majumdar is Assistant Professor in Political Theory at Butler University, with a focus on the relationship between animal and human liberation, and co-chair of the Central Indiana DSA chapter. He described himself as an abolitionist on the question of animal use, but he questioned the utility of the welfare-vs.-abolition framework, saying the real issue was whether reforms sustain or challenge core-system logics. Guha-Majumdar argued classical abolitionism, represented by thinkers like Tom Regan and Gary Francione, was very good at saying what we shouldn’t do to animals, but less good at outlining what a just society with animals would look like. For this, he turned to writers like Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka.

“The majority of DSA members don’t even think of animals rights issues as on the map of the organization, and so that will have to be a site of struggle,” Guha-Majumdar said. “A working group and/or issue-specific publication could be helpful, but it is important to understand what its goals are. I would argue there should be two: to provide a rallying point for pro-animal advocates in the organization to acknowledge each other and to come up with a relatively unified strategy for a DSA animal rights ‘line’ [and] to shift consciousness… about the way that the domination of animals is central to capitalism and that animals are subjects of solidarity.” He suggested there might be national-level reading groups on texts like Dinesh Wadiwel’s Animals and Capital.

Guha-Majumdar believed DSA candidates should support policies focused on altering the incentive structure of food production. He backed public funding for alternative-protein development, but thought an ideal platform would fully socialize the cultivated-meat industry, as author Jan Dutkiewicz recommended in a 2019 Jacobin article. Guha-Majumdar argued ideas like these, along with efforts to redirect farm subsidies away from........

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