Abolitionist Manifesto Examination Introduction

James Crump and Karin Hilpisch wrote the "Abolitionist Manifesto" at the Abolitionist Animal Rights blog. I will examine each part and add my thoughts.

The parts are:

"I. Animal liberation begins in our heads."
"II. Animal liberation will not merely be enhanced or safeguarded by certain moral relations between humans and nonhuman animals."
"III. Abolitionism is principled antispeciesism, which in turn is a moral imperative."
"IV. Animal welfare is informed by an instrumental view of animals and as such is firmly rooted in the property paradigm. A necessary prerequisite of animal liberation is thus the rejection of animal welfare and the corresponding adoption of a form of incrementalism that occurs within a rights-framework."
"V. Veganism is not merely another form of welfarism -- a "tool" for reducing animal suffering. Rather it is a moral imperative arising out of animals' right not to be used (as property)."
"VI. Nonparticipation in the speciesistic exploitation of animals is an axiom of the abolitionist movement -- as indeed it should be of any movement that purports to take animal interests seriously."
"VII. There are no different rules for theory and practice; critical theoretical thinking is not an "intellectual game", and consistency is not an "ivory tower" (which isn’t vegan, anyway). On the contrary, critical/theoretical thinking is a necessary prerequisite of effective activism such that activism that is not informed and normatively guided by theory is chaos -- or, in other words, new welfarism."
"VIII. Since abolitionism and new welfarism are incompatible paradigms, there is no point in actively participating in events like conferences that are organized by welfarists."
"IX. The belief that we should maintain relations with the new welfarist movement is based on the false assumption that we are merely one movement divided over strategy -- over the efficacy of campaign tactics."
"X. Abolitionist and welfarist frameworks inhabit conceptual spaces different from one another."
"XI. The new welfarists' claim that we should "transcend the dichotomy" between welfare and rights repudiates not only the significance of the most important strategic issue facing the animal rights movement but also the changes in our relations with nonhumans that are an indispensably necessary precondition of animal liberation."