6
" Just as humanity has extended this basic equal consideration to humans (including those who were once outside of our moral community), we must extend this basic equal consideration to animals if we are going to treat like cases alike. Animals are very clearly in possession of a subjective experience of their own lives. Anyone who lives with companion animals knows this is true. I live with two dogs and a cat, and I know that each of them has wants, moods, desires, and needs.10 They are not mere automatons, reacting machine-like to the stimuli around them as behaviorists would likely argue. Instead, they are beings that are aware of themselves, their environment, and those around them. "
― , Making A Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights
8
" What, then, is the solution to this moral schizophrenia we have about animals? According to Francione, we only have two choices: we either continue to treat animals as we are now, by inflicting suffering even for unnecessary ends and recognizing our commitment to humane treatment as a farce, or we can recognize that animals have a morally significant interest in not being subjected to unnecessary suffering, and change how we approach conflicts of animal and human interests. To do the latter, however, requires that we apply the principle of equal consideration to animals. This, Francione argues, is stunningly simple: in its most basic terms, we need to treat like cases alike. Though animals and humans are clearly different, they are alike in the sense that they both suffer and are both sentient. For this reason, we should extend the principle of equal consideration to animals. "
― , Making A Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights
11
" Challenging the earlier economists of his day, Marx was keen to show how the products of capitalism did not just magically appear, nor did they have inherent value. Instead, Marx wanted to show that the value derived from commodities was part of a specific kind of social relationship—one in which the labor power of workers added value to commodities. In this way, the notions of commodities and labor lie at the center of understanding how Marx viewed capitalist relationships as inherently exploitative, as the dominance of one class (the bourgeoisie, or the owners of the means of production) over another class (the proletariat, the working class, or those who have nothing to sell but their labor). Proletarians were lending labor power to the production process, transforming goods into saleable commodities, and receiving only part of the value generated in this process. To Marx, this was wholesale thievery; the expenditure of human effort to produce commodities was the actual expenditure of human life, of the limited time that any of us have on this planet, and it came at the expense of us realizing our actual nature as productive, creative beings that generated meaning through our labor. Marx believed deeply in the notion that humans were creative and that we could be positively world-transformative.Through our labor, we not only make the world, but we also express the best part of ourselves as a species. The hijacking of all of this for the productive ends of the bourgeoisie—for mere profit—was, to Marx, a horrible crime being perpetuated on the weaker by the stronger. "
― , Making A Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights
17
" In her book Tangled Routes: Women, Work, and Globalization on the Tomato Trail, Deborah Barndt examines the seemingly simple tomato from its historic and contemporary roots in Mexico all the way to its final consumption in fast-food outlets and grocery stores. What evolves in examining a product this way is a portrait that defies our simplistic notion of commodities. Rather than seeing a simple, straightforward line from the producer to the consumer, we begin to see a process of production that is tied in to politics, power, gender, technology, and environmental quality.The production of something we consider so basic and simple—a supermarket tomato—becomes a lesson in the dynamics of social power, cast over the course of several thousand miles. "
― , Making A Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights