Laura Schleifer

Triple Helix: The Intertwining Strands of Biology, Ideology and Policy in the Neoliberal Revolution

Expanding the Critical Animal Studies Imagination; Essays in Solidarity and Total Liberation, 2024

At a time when the Capitalist construct of manufactured scarcity is colliding with ecological col... more At a time when the Capitalist construct of manufactured scarcity is colliding with ecological collapse-induced real material scarcity, how can veganarchism help move us into a post-scarcity future?

Ironically, manufactured scarcity and the irrational fear of scarcity has led Capitalist societies to hoard, over-consume, and overproduce to the point where we now face real shortages of life-sustaining natural resources via ecological collapse. A mass societal transition to veganarchism, i.e. the combining of anarchist forms of non-hierarchical self-governance and social organization with a mass transition to veganism, could address scarcity on multiple fronts: through ecological regeneration, the end of manufactured scarcity via hierarchical control of resources, and the healing of psychological drives caused by atomization, disenfranchisement, disempowerment and alienation that push people into productivism and consumerism, and into believing it could never be any other way because our "animal" nature means that without hierarchical systems of control, there would be even more scarcity due to unimpeded "dog-eat dog" competition for resources.

Inspired by Murray Bookchin's classic “Post-Scarcity Anarchism” and the concept of "Veganarchism" proposed by Brian Dominick in his seminal pamphlet “Animal Liberation and Social Revolution”, as well as by historical and contemporary anarchist movements for human, species, and earth liberation, this paper explores how combining anarchist visions of a non-hierarchical, directly democratic, egalitarian, ecological, mutual aid-based communalist society can be combined with a mass transition to plant-based food systems, interspecies sanctuaries for humans and other animals, an end to the legal and social construct of “ownership” of other individuals (of any species) or nature, and an overall transformation of our relationships with both our fellow humans and our fellow animals can move us from the current scarcity paradigm--of time, energy, ideas, imagination, conviction, purpose, and real psychological and material needs--to one of abundance in all of the above.

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Animal Liberation is Climate Justice

by Dan Fischer and Laura Schleifer

New Politics, 2022

From Phil Gasper's intro to the symposium: "In their contribution, Laura Schleifer and Daniel Fi... more From Phil Gasper's intro to the symposium:
"In their contribution, Laura Schleifer and Daniel Fischer focus on the question of animal agriculture, which is itself a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. While individual lifestyle changes will not solve the climate crisis, there is little doubt that creating a just and sustainable economy will require significant changes in how people in the world's richest countries live, including major changes in diet. Meat consumption on the level that currently takes place in the United States and similar countries is unsustainable. There are also strong health and ethical arguments for reducing or eliminating such consumption and radically changing the way in which humans treat the rest of the living world."
The online version contains this correction: "The printed version of this article mistakenly identified Yod as a member of the Haytap network."
https://newpol.org/issue_post/animal-liberation-is-climate-justice/

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Hierarchy's Hidden Link: How Domination within Human Society and of Nature Stems from the Human Domination of (Other) Animals, and How Free Nature Requires Freeing Animals

The domination of nature by man stems from the domination of human by human." (Bookchin, 1982). W... more The domination of nature by man stems from the domination of human by human." (Bookchin, 1982). With that declaration, Murray Bookchin stated a foundational tenet of his theory of social ecology: the idea that it was hierarchy within human society that led to human domination over the rest of nature. At the time and place when Bookchin's magnum opus The Ecology of Freedom was published, this idea stood against the current strain of thought. Appearing just twelve years after Earth Day launched the modern U.S. "environmental" movement in 1970, Bookchin's thesis starkly contrasted the neo-Malthusianism sweeping the nation and heralding the bleak advent of neoliberalism. Two decades earlier, the student revolts had commenced with a clear anti-Capitalist bent sparked by "Frankfurt School" scholar Herbert Marcuse's influential work One Dimensional Man (1964) , which warned of Capitalist evils beyond labor exploitation, such as the psychological and ecological impacts of consumerism in all sectors of society and the earth itself. However, a few years later that analysis was being eroded, first by the appearance of ecologist, zoologist and eugenicist Garrett Hardin's The Tragedy of the Commons (1968), which claimed that hierarchical control of nature is necessary because without it, the masses of "humans" would greedily try to hoard it all for themselves; and second by Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb (1968), which shifted blame for the growing ecological crisis from Capitalism to "overpopulation", implying that an impoverished Global South citizen had equal or greater responsibility for ecological destruction as a multinational corporation CEO. In the following decades, the misanthropic and at times pro-corporatist bent of the "environmental" movement only intensified, from the eco-fascistic tendencies in certain deep ecology factions, to the consumerist and subtly eugenicist influences in many natural foods/medicine communities that have revealed themselves in the Covid-era, to "Green Capitalist" corporate ventures, to the "environmental" organizations that attempted to influence environmental offenders through collaboration and even buying shares in their companies. For decades, "environmentalists" avoided relating their "cause" to Capitalism, the class system, human oppression, or inequality. Individual consumers were admonished to consume more responsibly, but the larger power dynamics remained obscured. Only recently have social and environmental movements within the U.S. and beyond begun converging. Facing apocalyptic climate collapse and potential human extinction, awareness is growing that our ecological crisis is not separate from our predatory economic system and structural oppression. Calls within the U.S. for a "Green New Deal" and even "eco-Socialism" have become mainstream, especially among generations too young to have been bombarded with Cold War-era anti-socialist/anticommunist propaganda. A majority of young Americans now identify as Socialist (Elk, 2018), and climate justice movements are pushing for various forms of eco-Socialism. Additionally, rising racial justice movements and the influence of intersectionality, a term Black feminist legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw created to describe how various forms of human oppression intersect and overlap, has greatly increased awareness of how race, class, gender, age, ability and nationality intersect with ecological issues. Media decentralization has also helped raise awareness of how different populations

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Hierarchy's Hidden Link: How Domination within Human Society and of Nature Stems from the Human Domination of (Other) Animals, and How Free Nature Requires Freeing Animals

The domination of nature by man stems from the domination of human by human." (Bookchin, 1982). W... more The domination of nature by man stems from the domination of human by human." (Bookchin, 1982). With that declaration, Murray Bookchin stated a foundational tenet of his theory of social ecology: the idea that it was hierarchy within human society that led to human domination over the rest of nature. At the time and place when Bookchin's magnum opus The Ecology of Freedom was published, this idea stood against the current strain of thought. Appearing just twelve years after Earth Day launched the modern U.S. "environmental" movement in 1970, Bookchin's thesis starkly contrasted the neo-Malthusianism sweeping the nation and heralding the bleak advent of neoliberalism. Two decades earlier, the student revolts had commenced with a clear anti-Capitalist bent sparked by "Frankfurt School" scholar Herbert Marcuse's influential work One Dimensional Man (1964) , which warned of Capitalist evils beyond labor exploitation, such as the psychological and ecological impacts of consumerism in all sectors of society and the earth itself. However, a few years later that analysis was being eroded, first by the appearance of ecologist, zoologist and eugenicist Garrett Hardin's The Tragedy of the Commons (1968), which claimed that hierarchical control of nature is necessary because without it, the masses of "humans" would greedily try to hoard it all for themselves; and second by Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb (1968), which shifted blame for the growing ecological crisis from Capitalism to "overpopulation", implying that an impoverished Global South citizen had equal or greater responsibility for ecological destruction as a multinational corporation CEO. In the following decades, the misanthropic and at times pro-corporatist bent of the "environmental" movement only intensified, from the eco-fascistic tendencies in certain deep ecology factions, to the consumerist and subtly eugenicist influences in many natural foods/medicine communities that have revealed themselves in the Covid-era, to "Green Capitalist" corporate ventures, to the "environmental" organizations that attempted to influence environmental offenders through collaboration and even buying shares in their companies. For decades, "environmentalists" avoided relating their "cause" to Capitalism, the class system, human oppression, or inequality. Individual consumers were admonished to consume more responsibly, but the larger power dynamics remained obscured. Only recently have social and environmental movements within the U.S. and beyond begun converging. Facing apocalyptic climate collapse and potential human extinction, awareness is growing that our ecological crisis is not separate from our predatory economic system and structural oppression. Calls within the U.S. for a "Green New Deal" and even "eco-Socialism" have become mainstream, especially among generations too young to have been bombarded with Cold War-era anti-socialist/anticommunist propaganda. A majority of young Americans now identify as Socialist (Elk, 2018), and climate justice movements are pushing for various forms of eco-Socialism. Additionally, rising racial justice movements and the influence of intersectionality, a term Black feminist legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw created to describe how various forms of human oppression intersect and overlap, has greatly increased awareness of how race, class, gender, age, ability and nationality intersect with ecological issues. Media decentralization has also helped raise awareness of how different populations

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