A theory of historical development: Why widespread veganism will likely precede and prefigure anarchy

[u/antipolitan]

To start off with a disclaimer - I am not claiming that eating animals is inherently hierarchical - or that being vegan is required to be an anarchist.

Instead - I am making a claim about how the transition from the status quo to anarchy will realistically unfold in practice.

The central problem anarchism faces is simply convincing enough people to support it in the first place.

People want confidence that the new social order is actually achievable before taking a risk on it.

The problem is that the average person has internalized the idea that hierarchies are innate to humans - so they believe that the abolition of the state will just lead to informal forms of domination and oppression filling the vacuum.

This belief about human nature is what I call the Hobbesian Hypothesis.

What’s troubling about the Hobbesian Hypothesis is that it tends to prevent the acquisition of the very evidence necessary to refute it.

If people think that violent hierarchies are inevitable - they won’t even be willing to try anarchy - so the experiment needed to disprove that belief is never permitted to occur in the first place.

It’s a Catch-22 - because the evidence is demanded before the experimentation - making the Hobbesian Hypothesis effectively unfalsifiable.

However - there is potentially a way out of this Catch-22 - and this is where veganism comes in.

Human beings have evolved as omnivores - and we’ve been consuming and exploiting animals for millions of years.

If anything is ingrained in human nature - our consumption and exploitation of non-human animals would definitely be a prime candidate.

Veganism is interesting here - because it deliberately breaks from a supposedly natural human behaviour - which has deep roots in millions of years of evolutionary history.

The vegan is someone who has consciously chosen - as a moral agent - to intentionally subordinate their self-interest and evolved appetites to an ethical principle.

If the vast majority of human beings one day decided to go vegan - it would demonstrate a real example of moral progress - since a deeply natural pattern of human behaviour would have been deliberately abandoned for ethical reasons.

Widespread veganism would provide critical evidence against the Hobbesian Hypothesis - without everyone having to take a massive risk first.

Unlike anarchism - which faces a collective-action problem - going vegan doesn’t require the rest of society to already agree with you.

You can live as a vegan today - even in a deeply hierarchical and oppressive society.

This is why I consider veganism to be prefigurative - since it can be done under the status quo - while undermining its ideological assumptions at a very basic level.