I escaped the Reddit regime a little while ago. I consider myself a marxist-leninist-MZT. Vegetarian and vegan for a few years. I've a lot of thoughts on how marxism and veganism are connected. Never wrote them down. I'd like to start smth like a club for marxist vegans to develop our own proletarian theory. Most vegan theory I found is either openly bourgeois (Francione is a literal TERF) or revisionist (anti-China, anarchist, libertarian). How about fixing this?
I think a Marxist exploitation would be interesting!
I think a materialist analysis of why veganism became popular, and why it was recent, would be interesting. There are, of course, related precedents in diet with religious vegetarianism (Buddhist, veg Hindu, etc) and minimizing unnecessary harm (Jainism, Quakers, certain middle eastern philosophies, etc). But veganism as we think of it is a modern phenomenon that emerged in a highly industrialized society of the imperial core.
I think the elephants in the room are industrialized agriculture, the end of famine conditions, and the social aspect of acquiring food from markets. Eating a modern vegan diet was not practicable before B12 vitamins and cheap staples. People that tried would eventually become malnourished. Re: famine conditions, if you have not had to think about the prospect of dying from a lack of food, you may spend more time thinking about where it comes from and how you might be more picky about it. And with the social component of markets, food is a consumer choice, an abstraction away from its production (complete with Marxist alienation), and not as much of a core social activity as are hunter gatherer activities or working a farm. Not eating animal products means a substitution of items bought at a market with no need to substantially change a budget. And when it's a consumer choice abstracted from production, when you learn about its production you will be more likely to be horrified.
So yeah things like that are interesting. They could also assist in understanding how one might understand the advancement of veganism dialectically, e.g. avoiding being chauvinist towards societies that haven't had the necessary productive and social prerequisites to have this perspective, being too busy dealing with imperialism and their own development. And how pushing for certain kinds of economic and food security may be a better way to spend a portion of one's advocacy budget. And why certain psychological barriers exist to adopting a vegan stance and how they might be addressed without a liberal approach.
That’s a nice summary, although I don’t agree with all points you made (namely that being vegan increases the cost of food) but this will be highly dependent on where you live in the world and wont be materially feasible for everyone currently. I’ll dare say that legumes are probably cheaper than meat almost everywhere in the world though.
I think one obvious reason as you stated is that veganism and probably animal liberation theory could not become as widespread before the material condition for realizing it were widely available. I think B12 synthesis was achieved in the 1940’s so a fully vegan diet would have probably been complicated before that. Warm clothes would also be more complicated (disclaimer: I’m not that versed in clothing so there might have been other ways than fur that did not involve petroleum based materials)
On your point of food security there is actually a project named Food Empowerment Project that tries to advocate for food security through plant-based agriculture and also advocates for farm workers right, it’s based in the USA however.
Hi! I think I said the opposite about budget (it doesn't make substantial changes to one), though it's a common false trope that going vegan is expensive so I can understand why you'd be on the lookout for it.
Re: geographical variation, yes of course, which is one of the valuable parts of looking for material grounding. A bombed out place with food insecurity may both prevent a vegan from avoiding animal products to survive and will impact what people will focus on and prioritize. I don't think it's coincidental that the modern movement of veganism emerged and took off in the imperial core where food is subsidized without being undermined by imperialism and workers, on average, receive a greater level of purchasing power for their labor than those in imperialized countries (due to imperialism).
For warm clothes, the possibility of making that devoid of animal products preceded veganism by a long period of time. Waxed canvas clothing was popular among those with access to it (sailors, those who worked outdoors in cold and wet conditions) and thick cotton garments like flannels (which didn't always have wool) were similarly popular. Both were only made popular through changes in production, of course, but they were fairly popular hundreds of years ago in parys of the world. But if you were in the far north and could not import cotton and oil, these were not options.
Re: food security, that looks like a nice project! My thinking on food security was that its increase promotes veganism itself, it is a material basis for veganism even if the security itself is not explicitly vegan. Most vegans are converts, they started out non-vegan with non-vegan parents and became exposed to and convinced by materials against consuming animal products. I think the propensity to be convinced would be positively impacted by the relative availability of food, and particularly vegan food, so that it can be thought of as a consumption choice among others.
Ah sorry, I misunderstood what you were trying to say about budget. Thanks for the info regarding the clothing!
Of course!
This is exactly the kind of discussion around veganism I'd love to see more. Too often it gets incorrectly reduced into an awfully restrictive diet.
In some ways my mostly vegan (sometimes vegetarian) diet is more varied than it was before. The flavour and prominence of meat was doing a lot of the heavy lifting in most meals. When you 'lose' that, you soon find better ways to flavour the plant side of things and that opens a lot of culinary doors.
It only feels restrictive because most restaurants cater to meat eaters first and foremost. That, and because e.g. ready meals are 'for some reason' filled with unnecessary meat products (some of the other comments touch on what those reasons might be).
I'm glad!