# A brief defense of veganism against the left
#vegan #politics

Veganism is often criticized on anti-capitalist grounds for its adherents' adoption of plant-based consumption habits. In this telling, the trappings of a vegan lifestyle are just another instance of "consumerism": seeking identity and meaning by buying stuff. It is also supposed that these changes in consumer behavior are utterly useless in accomplishing the end goal of animal liberation: all that *really* matters is a revolution to abolish capitalism.[^individual]

I'm willing to grant these (highly questionable) claims if my interlocutor is arguing in good faith. We definitely *should* have a revolution, burn down all the farms, and establish a free society. And there definitely *are* vegans motivated by a consumer identity — some of them don't even care about nonhumans at all and adopt a plant-based diet for their health or something.

Once companies realized they could make a buck off it, veganism underwent a rapid recuperation. It's now presented as just another "dietary preference" to profit from, shorn of political content. Together with the [[green scare|https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Scare]], this has resulted in a decidedly liberal bent to the vegan movement.

Changing your diet and your vote is obviously insufficient to change the world.

Even so, I always come back to a thought experiment: imagine you live in a society where humans are farmed in the billions. In this world, nearly everyone eats human meat nearly every day. They wear clothing made of human hair and skin and adorn themselves with human bones and [[teeth|https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington%27s_teeth]]. Before a product is released to the general public, it must first be tested on human unpersons, who are then killed.

You desperately want to change this abominable state of affairs. You tell everyone who will listen how terrible the farms are. You smuggle out [[illegal|https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag]] footage proving what they do. You break into a laboratory and free the people being tortured there.

*Do you keep eating human meat?*

Do you proclaim the injustice of farming humans while picking pieces of them from between your teeth?


[^individual]: *Aside:* One of the most irritating things about leftists is their insistence that nothing one does as an individual matters. Once you get enough of them together, though, the quantity transforms them into a completely different thing whose actions actually have consequences.