The Zoological Marx

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay explores the ways that Marxian categories of alienation, labor, and class can strengthen critiques of human exploitation of other animals. Marxist insights are valuable in particular because they point our attention to the structural dimensions of oppression, which are not always theorized explicitly in mainstream animal ethics. Thinking about animals as a class, with common interests and common suffering, enables us to see suffering and exploitation as results of a larger system, not particular acts of cruelty. This structural analysis can strengthen animal ethics, which often focuses on the qualities of individual animals that give them value and the human actions that cause animal suffering. Thus, even though Marx does not directly address animals at length, or even especially positively, a zoological reading of his work illuminates the ways and reasons animals experience alienation and the ways that humans might help to liberate them.