In their book The Robbery of Nature, John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark summarize, investigate, and interpret the ecological analysis of Karl Marx. Integral to such an investigation is an examination of how Marx viewed nonhuman animals.^[1] In similar investigations, contemporary animal-rights scholars have concluded that Marx's analysis was “speciesist”^[2], a loaded term describing the belief in human superiority over animals. Foster and Clark demonstrate that the claims of animal-rights scholars that Marx justifies animal suffering are incorrect, but they do not sufficiently defend Marx against criticisms that his naturalistic humanism displays speciesist tendencies.

It is important to first understand which concepts the term “speciesism” refers to. Foster and Clark find issue with an extremely broad definition of speciesism that includes “any differentiation between the human species from other animal species” (Foster & Clark 131). I would argue that this is largely a strawman; rather, the significance of the differentiation is the issue. As such, one definition of speciesism is that it is the dualist belief that humans should be considered more morally valuable than animals. Speciesism in this case usually relies on beliefs of consciousness and suffering. A notable belief is René Descartes's “animal-machine”, a reduction of animal capacities and experiences to machines; i.e. animals have no consciousness at all. A second definition adds the criterion that such a value judgment is only speciesist when it is used to justify animal suffering, particularly their mass exploitation.

Before directly addressing animal-rights scholars' critiques, Foster and Clark begin with two general criticisms. First, they argue that labeling Marx as speciesist relies on “taking a handful of sentences from one or two texts out of context, and ignore[s] Marx's wider arguments and his intellectual corpus as a whole” (Foster & Clark 131–132). To this end, Foster and Clark support their defense of Marx by contextualizing his statements within his theoretical lineage; though this is mostly effective, there are notable exceptions where they attempt to mask the gaps in Marx's writings with theory from related philosophers. Second, Foster and Clark also note that “Marx's discussions of animals were primarily historical, materialist, and natural-scientific in orientation… not directed at issues of moral philosophy, as is the case for most of their critics” (Foster & Clark 132). Though this is somewhat true, it would be misleading to imply that Marx's critique of political economy did not have a significant moral dimension. Normative assessments of capitalism require moral assessments; in particular, Marx's humanism emphasized the moral necessity of ensuring that humans reached their social potential. If Marx did not make similar moral assessments when discussing the treatment of animals under capitalism, then it would be a glaring omission that could communicate a belief in the moral superiority of humans. Nevertheless, Marx's focus means that his analysis will not include a deep investigation into the moral value of animals; his views on animals will be integrated into his writings.

The animal-rights scholars who label Marx as speciesist (using varying definitions) do so for two main reasons, both of which Foster and Clark reject. The first major assertion by animal-rights scholars is that, through his humanist ontology, Marx presented a dualist perspective—perhaps even a Cartesian dualist perspective—that degraded the depositions of animals. They claim this is particularly evident in his theory of alienated labor, which Renzo Llorente marks as “predicated on a division between human and nonhuman animals” (Foster & Clark 131). If this assertion is true, it would only fulfill the first, more general definition of speciesism. The second major assertion is that Marx presented animals as possessing mere instrumental value rather than intrinsic moral value akin to humans. If this assertion is true, it would fulfill the second, more specific definition of speciesism.

Let us investigate the first assertion. How can it be that, in the words of ecosocialist Ted Benton, “humanism equals speciesism” (Foster & Clark 131)? To uplift humans through a doctrine of humanism, Marx necessarily had to differentiate between humans and other animals. A main difference came in the processes of their productive power. Foster and Clark detail how Marx was influenced by philosophers like Reimarus and Feuerbach in his conception of drives, which are present in all animals, but unique in humans in that their drives are self-conscious. In Capital, Marx writes, “a bee would put many a human architect to shame by the construction of its honeycomb cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is that the architect builds the cell in his mind before he constructs it in wax” (Foster & Clark 138). From this, Marx argues that the alienation of labor is the removal of this self-consciousness from the productive process; in the 1844 Manuscripts, Marx writes, “Estranged labor reverses the relationship so that man, just because he is a conscious being, makes his life activity, his being (Wesen), a mere means for his existence” (Marx, Early Writings 328). Alienation, therefore, reduces human drives to the level of animals.

I would argue that integral to Marx's humanism is a dualism that ontologically separates humans from animals at a fundamental level (self-consciousness). I wouldn't go as far as to say, like Benton does, that this “cuts away the ontological basis for … a critical analysis of forms of suffering shared by both animals and humans” (Foster & Clark 131). Marx does establish commonalities in more basic drives, and this can potentially extend to commonalities in pleasure and pain. It is also important to note that this kind of a dualist view does not preclude a naturalist view. This is seen in Marx, who grounds his theory of human consciousness in a natural framework; in the 1844 Manuscripts, Marx writes, “As a natural being and as a living natural being he [man] is on the one hand equipped with natural powers, with vital powers, he is an active natural being; these powers exist in him as dispositions and capacities, as drives. On the other hand, as a natural, corporeal, sensuous, objective being he is a suffering, conditioned and limited being, like animals and plants” (Marx, Early Writings 390). Though humans may have more complex desires, they “arise through a corporeal organization that unites humanity with the rest of life” (Foster & Clark 138). This explains why Marx asserts that a “fully developed humanism equals naturalism” (Foster & Clark 131).

Although Foster and Clark successfully demonstrate Marx adopts naturalism, his conception of animals concerningly approaches the Cartesian animal-machine. Marx describes animals as producing “only when immediate physical need compels them to do so, while man produces even when he is free from physical need and truly produces only in freedom from such need” (Marx, Early Writings 329). Benton is right that, functionally, the animal-machine and Marx's animal are the same (Foster & Clark 131). However, they differ in internal process (mechanisms vs drives)—does this mean they differ in moral value? This is the fundamental question of animal-rights scholars' second assertion, and I would argue that such differentiation requires further evidence. To separate Marx's value of animals from Decartes's, Foster and Clark cite Capital, where Marx writes, “Descartes in defining animals as mere machines, saw with the eyes of the period of manufacture. The medieval view, on the other hand, was that animals were assistants to man” (Foster & Clark 141). Here, Marx details a historical materialist perspective to the view of animals. But if the medieval view is meant to be the superior option—this seems likely due to Marx's disdain for Descartes in The Holy Family (Foster and Clark 335)—then the value of animals is still instrumental. Animals are valuable in their assistance of production for humans; animal welfare is only valuable in that it helps increase human welfare.

Foster and Clark fail to adequately understand that naturalism does not preclude speciesism because naturalism does not require nature being intrinsically valuable. This is demonstrated in Foster and Clark's attempt to defend Marx from animal-rights criticisms of his statement in the 1844 Manuscripts that “nature too, taken abstractly, for itself, and rigidly separated from man, is nothing for man” (Foster & Clark 134). Ascribing the quote to Marx's Epicurean influence, Foster and Clark successfully place the quote within Marx's naturalism. But they fail to address the larger criticism that this quote demonstrates an anthropocentric framing of nature's, and thereby animals', value; they merely show that Marx viewing animals as instrumentally valuable is not certain. Marx may describe Epicurus as viewing “the world is my friend” (Foster & Clark 133), but would the world be valuable if it was our enemy?

Foster and Clark counter this with the concept of alienated speciesism. Marx argues that connection with nature is essential for the satisfaction of needs—nature is instrumentally valuable—because, like other animals, humans are natural beings. As such, alienation from one's labor is also alienation from nature and other natural beings. The flipside of this phenomenon is that this creates a disunity between animals and humans that justifies the abuse and exploitation of the former by the latter—this is referred to by Bradley J. Macdonald as “alienated speciesism” (Foster & Clark 132). But despite Foster and Clark's implications to the contrary, this cause of animal suffering is not detailed in Marx's writing; rather, alienated speciesism was both coined and formulated by animal-rights scholars, albeit influenced by his ideas. Marx himself remained focused on human rather than animal suffering, which may reveal his ethical priorities.

Foster and Clark cite Marx's observations of the pollution of the fish's water in The German Ideology, which seems to be hinting at intrinsic moral value at first glance. Marx and Engels write, “The ‘essence’ of the fish is its ‘being’, water … The ‘essence’ of the freshwater fish is the water of a river. But the latter ceases to be the "essence" of the fish and is no longer a suitable medium of existence as soon as the river is made to serve industry, as soon as it is polluted… or as soon as its water is diverted” (Foster and Clark 140). But this is, ironically, a quote taken out of context. Marx and Engels are arguing against Feuerbach, who used the example of the fish in water to claim “That which is my essence is my being” (Feuerbach, part 2, 27), which Marx and Engels frame as an assertion of the “acceptance… of existing reality” (Marx & Engels, Collected Works Vol. 5, 58). Marx and Engels criticize Feuerbach for not using a human example, then use his example of the fish as a rhetorical device to demonstrate the reach of industrial capitalism. This is not evidence of any view of intrinsic value; at best, it is evidence of their awareness of some level of commonality between the treatment of animals and humans under capitalism. Not to mention, the passage was first added by Engels, an inconvenient fact that Foster and Clark hide in a footnote (Foster and Clark 334).

Where Foster and Clark succeed in demonstrating intrinsic moral value is in their citation of Marx describing the conditions of selectively bred animals in factory farms. In his notes on Léonce de Lavergne from either 1865 or 1866 (International Institute of Social History, Marx-Engels Archives B_106), Marx marked this system as “Disgusting!”, a “system of prison cells for the animals” that results in “serious deterioration of life force” (Foster & Clark 148). Here, and only here, do Foster and Clark find an instance that unequivocally demonstrates Marx believed in the intrinsic worth of animal welfare. Why was the concept of animal suffering only seen in an obscure note as opposed to being a major element of Marx's theory? It could be because he was a philosopher of praxis; animals were not the target audience for his writings, so no social change could come about from thoroughly detailing their exploitation. It's also important to remember that the animal rights movement as we know it today did not exist in Marx's time. His contemporaries were figures like Charles Darwin, who conceived of the foundational idea of evolution by natural selection. Though there were evolutionary ideas prior to Origin of Species, ideas which Foster and Clark claim Marx incorporated into his work (Foster & Clark 142), it would be foolish not to recognize that animal rights theory has progressed significantly since Marx's time.

So was Marx speciesist? I believe that the evidence provided by Foster and Clark demonstrates that he did become aware of animal suffering and had a belief, albeit an underdeveloped belief, in the intrinsic moral value of animals. However, Marx did seem to view animal consciousness as fundamentally less advanced than human consciousness, which certainly influenced his ethics. But with various competing definitions—some more reasonable than others—I'm not convinced this is a worthwhile question. Instead, we should focus on the underlying concern: who (or what) is included when we are fighting for liberation from capitalism, and why? This question is fundamental to critical theories of capitalism, and we cannot ignore it because it is difficult to answer. What is clear is that the answer is not only found in Marx.