Life and Times: Veganuaries – do they work? (2025)

The Life and Times column from the February 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is veganism weird? That’s the question the organisation behind Veganuary asked recently on their website as they urged people to go vegan for January and then, if possible, to carry on with it forever. Of course, their answer was no, it isn’t weird. In fact, they said, it’s ‘part of something huge’. And they had various celebrities on their site backing them, eg Joaquin Phoenix, Billy Eilish, Chris Packham, Sarah Pascoe. Their statement of intent was: ‘Our vision is simple; we want a vegan world. A world without animal farms and slaughterhouses. A world where food production does not decimate forest, pollute rivers and oceans, exacerbate climate change, and drive wild animal populations to extinctions’.

Animal welfare

This took me back many years to when I was a student and anything but a vegan or even vegetarian. I remembered being openly (and immaturely) contemptuous of a fellow student who was vegetarian. Little did I know that many years later I myself would decide to go vegetarian and then a long time after that – fairly recently in fact – vegan.

How did that happen? Well, I became a vegetarian when I found the idea of eating the flesh of another sentient being too difficult. Later – much later – when a vegan friend suggested I attend an online talk by a leading advocate of plant-based eating, the suffering dairy farming brought to animals was also brought home to me and I saw no alternative but to go the whole hog and move to veganism. The speaker, Dr Klaper, described as ‘an internationally recognized clinician, teacher and speaker on diet and health’, told us he had himself grown up on a dairy farm in the USA and that seemed to make his talk on ‘The Most Powerful Strategy for Healing People and the Planet’ all the more authentic. I also found it impressive in that he avoided being openly proselytising, simply sticking to simple facts in three key areas: animal cruelty, human health, and the environment. While the animal cruelty area was the one of most immediate interest to me, I also appreciated the case he put forward in the other two, even if I could think of some counter-arguments from opponents.

Veganism effective?

But what about Veganuary? It’s certainly possible that, if it does result in more people going vegan or vegetarian on a permanent basis or at least eating less meat or fish, it might lead to a reduction in the cruelty suffered by animals. But would it do much to lessen the hold of animal agriculture over the world’s food supply and reduce the raising and slaughtering of vast number of animals almost everywhere An argument often heard that says it wouldn’t, because the relative monopoly over food production held by a small number of big producers means that, even if they respond to a ‘market’ need to produce vegan ‘alternatives’ (as some of them are in fact doing), the effect of this will just be to increase their profits and investment power, so allowing them to produce meat and milk products more cheaply and more enticingly than before and thereby potentially increase animal suffering and exploitation.

And would an increase in veganism do much to solve the climate and environmental problems that the current system’s unbridled quest for ‘growth’ and profit has brought about? Some of the effects of what is happening were outlined in a recent article for the Earth/Food/Life project by Vicky Bond, animal welfare scientist and president of the US-based Humane League. She wrote:

‘Factory farming touches every aspect of our planet, from emitting massive amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to contaminating the groundwater, rivers, lakes, and streams we rely on for fresh water. Factory farms house animals in crowded and often filthy conditions, subjecting millions of cows, chickens, and pigs to the worst forms of abuse for the entirety of their short lives. Driven by the demand for cheap eggs, meat, and dairy, the animal agriculture industry has disastrous consequences for the planet’.

She went on to reveal that in 2024 animal agriculture accounted for almost a third of fresh water used globally and that, every day in the US, it withdrew 2 billion gallons of water from freshwater resources. One of the reasons she gave for this was the large quantities of water used by slaughterhouses both in electrified stun baths and in scalding tanks for feathering chickens. She went on: ‘Because this method of slaughter is so terrifying for chickens, they also use vast amounts of water to clean feces and vomit from the chickens’ bodies afterwards’ (tinyurl.com/5yz7crxf).

Feeding the beast

Yet it is clear that, even if there were a significant reduction in meat-eating and so in animal agriculture, as Bond would like, the environment would continue to be polluted and the climate would keep on warming owing to the demands of the economic system we live under, that untameable ‘beast’ of production for profit. Faced with the system’s need to feed the beast, our food choices would do little to contribute to stopping or reversing ecological deterioration or global warming.

It is decades too late now for me to apologise to that fellow student for ridiculing his choice of vegetarianism. Of course, I would if I could, since I feel that in a sense that we are ‘on the same side’. But, having said that, nothing in the Socialist Party’s case for a moneyless, marketless society of free access and voluntary cooperation demands adherence to any particular kind of diet. That is, and will always be, a matter of personal choice. But the fact is that, choice of diet apart, the Earth has sufficient resources to feed (and house and clothe) all its inhabitants to a highly comfortable level a number of times over, once we, the human species, decide to put our natural capacity for cooperation and collaboration to full use and apply those resources to make sure that all – whether they choose to be vegan, vegetarian or anything else – have enough healthy food to eat and the certainty of a decent, secure life. Failing this, under the existing worldwide system of production for profit and buying and selling, those who do not have money to buy will go hungry, very many more will lead insecure and highly stressed existences, human health will not be well safeguarded, and the ecosystem will continue to be in imminent danger of collapse.

Howard Moss

Pathfinders: Regreened and pleasant land (2025)

The Pathfinders Column from the February 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

In what may be an omen of the new Trump incumbency, Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket underwent a ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly’ last month. In a similarly unpromising start to the MAGA 2.0 regime, large areas of Los Angeles also underwent their own version of a rapid disassembly as winter wild fires raged along the beachfronts and through the Hollywood hills. When even millionaire celebs’ houses are burning down, you know the world is in crisis.

The LA fires were particularly devastating because of the ‘weather whiplash’ effect. Global warming is disrupting weather systems and rainfall patterns, making wet events in Southern California wetter, and dry events longer. Heavy rain a year or so back resulted in a profusion of new foliage, which then dried out during the subsequent and prolonged drought, creating a mass of kindling just waiting for the next lightning strike or discarded cigarette butt (tinyurl.com/vp6fd9jv).

This weather whiplash effect is being felt around the world, leading in many places to increasing floods and desertification, aided and abetted by human activity including deforestation, industrial farming and overgrazing, soil degradation, building, mining and pollution. It’s estimated that 25 percent of global land will be under threat by 2050. The Gobi desert in Mongolia and China is expanding by around 6,000 square kilometres a year, causing tens of thousands of migrants to flee to the cities. The Sahara, a desert the size of the United States, is advancing by around 48 km a year, exacerbating land conflicts in already poverty-stricken areas. The Thar desert in north-west India, for centuries held back by the natural barrier of the Aravalli mountains, is now blowing dust storms across croplands and into cities as the government have failed to prevent illegal mining of those same mountains.

Capitalism, which cares nothing for consequences, is the real ‘tragedy of the commons’, in which Earth’s common resources are owned and controlled privately and for private gain, to the impoverishment of all. In socialism, where resources would be commonly owned and managed, this unnecessary tragedy could be shunted into reverse. We don’t even need new technology to do it. We can simply apply ancient techniques used by the Egyptians and the Inca to create artificial water-harvesting structures to regreen the land.

Some of this is already happening. One famous regreening project is in the Sahel, the wide strip of semi-desert that borders the southern edge of the Sahara. Contrary to popular belief, it does rain in the Sahara, but rarely, and the water runs off the dry and impermeable ground in violent flash floods, leaving nothing behind. But since 2007, locals have been digging crescent-shaped depressions in the ground to catch the run-off, with deep sinkholes to permeate the sub-soil. The result has been a return of trees – a natural barrier to Saharan dust storms – and lush vegetation. The ‘Great Green Wall’ project runs right across Africa from coast to coast, involves 22 countries, and aims to restore 100 million hectares of marginal land by 2030 (youtu.be/udaihhReGAA).

Look online for stories about regreening deserts. They’re everywhere. Take Ethiopia, birthplace of coffee and once a ‘garden of Eden’ with at least 66 percent forest and woodland cover, reduced by human activity to 3.1 percent by 1982. It stopped raining and the wells dried up, causing droughts and biblical famines. But local community projects have been building micro-watersheds consisting of terraces, deep trenches, check dams and percolation ponds. Since these started, 13 streams have returned, of which 6 now flow throughout the year. Project lead Tony Renaudo put it plainly: ‘If you give nature a chance it will heal itself’ (youtu.be/RBP2uRQk5pQ).

China’s Kubuqi desert project is one of the world’s most successful, where desertification expanding at a rate of 10,000 km2 per year in 2000 has been reversed, leading to a re-greening of 2,000 km2 annually, using only local rainfall.

Also in China, the Loess Plateau had been stripped bare by overcropping and overgrazing, causing soil erosion, flooding, desertification and dust storms. The 35,000 km2 project was explained to local volunteers this way: you need to ‘dress’ the landscape – the hilltops need to wear hats (trees), the hills need to wear belts (terraces), and the valleys need shoes (dams). They regreened the entire area in a decade.

In India, monsoons come for just 3 months, giving farmers a fleeting window to produce just one annual crop, before 9 months of drought. The Paani Foundation project in India’s Maharashtra region hosts an annual Watercup competition to see which village can install the most water-harvesting structures within 45 days. Thousands of villages have participated since 2016, replenishing the water table in just one season and saving an estimated 145 billion gallons of water in 4 years, enabling 2 or more crops a year, creating food security, and ending migration to cities.

The Arvari river in north-west India had been dry for 60 years, with monsoon water simply running off the dry earth. In 1986 they started building water-harvesting crescents as in the Sahel, and by 1995 had restored the river year-round. They’ve since done the same thing with four more dry river systems (youtu.be/Tpozw1CAxmU).

Saudi Arabia has used subterranean water for crop irrigation but this is not sustainable as low rainfall can’t replenish the water table. The west-coast Al Baydha project, begun in 2010, built dams, channels and ditches to direct the floodwater into long-term storage areas, with the result that local vegetation was able to survive a 30-month drought without artificial irrigation (youtu.be/D6Kz_OcOgvE).

These and many other projects are being done now, not thanks to capitalism but in spite of it. What they mostly require is simply the cooperative labour of vast numbers of local people who understand what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. It’s a tantalising foretaste of what socialism could achieve on a world scale, once the barriers of private ownership and profit-seeking are torn down, and more of us start rolling our sleeves up.

Paddy Shannon

Material World: Socialist ideas on the Internet (2025)

The Material World column from the February 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

As we all know, the internet has virtues and vices. One of its virtues is that it allows ideas and information to be exchanged among people, often in different parts of the world, with an ease that would have been impossible in pre-internet days. So we, in the Socialist Party, can more readily than ever find out about other individuals or organisations who have come to similar conclusions to ours and share, or are close to sharing, our views on the system we live in and the need to replace it with a different kind of system. We are talking here about a society of free and equal access to all goods and services with no buying and selling or wages and salaries and with the technology and the abundant resources of the planet used to satisfy needs and not for profit-making ends. An example of such like-mindedness is to be found on the Facebook site called ‘A Group Where We Are All Active Against Capitalism’. It carries its own self-description:

’This group exists to support the abolition of the power of capital through the transformation of the means of production from private to social ownership. This will only be achieved by the working class emancipating ourselves world wide.

The revolutionary reconstitution will also involve the ending of wage labour and all elements of capitalism as the global proletariat (the working class within capitalism) lays the basis for a sustainable future for humanity.

That transition to a socialist/Communist/cooperative world will eliminate all the horrors associated with the Imperialist period including military conflicts and ecological destruction.

The replacement for such barbarism will be a stateless, classless, moneyless society based on free association and production and distribution according to need.

We are open to all individuals and organisations who are in broad agreement with that position. We actively seek to host contributions that are in accord with that position from any source.

For the avoidance of doubt we will not carry posts that support any existing or proposed nation state.

Neither will we carry posts supporting the historic or continuing theory and practice of state capitalist entities such as the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China or similar regimes.

Forward to an end to capitalism!’

It would be hard to find a closer likeness to our own position and aspirations. And this being the case, one might expect the posts on the site to be largely supportive of its objectives or at least asking honest questions of those. Yet this is by no means always what one finds. Rarely, in fact, do those posts contain clear mention of aspirations like the end of wage labour and ‘stateless, classless and moneyless’ social arrangements.

What is to be found on the whole are the kind of reformist calls for various improvements to what already exists that regularly come from those on the left who (mistakenly in our view) call themselves socialists or communists. So there are plenty of references to, for example, state ownership of industry, more ‘rights’ for workers, laws to favour trade unions, better health care, higher taxes for the rich, etc., etc. Calls, in other words, for more crumbs from the table, for a more benign form of capitalism. And mixed in with them we also often find support for, or defence of, states or regimes within capitalism that are somehow deemed to be ‘progressive’ (eg, Cuba, China, Vietnam). Any posts that challenge this tend to elicit the response that yes, in reality and ideally we want the same thing as you, but that’s likely to be a long way off and we need to improve things as much as possible ‘in the meantime’. So they are deaf to the obvious reality that if you put off the demand for socialism, you continue to put off socialism itself.

Maoist mythology

A prime example was to be found on that site in a recent post entitled ‘Is Maoism Marxist?’ and providing a link to an article written by Steve Leigh from a website called ‘A Marxist View of Current Events’. Leigh, who describes himself as ‘a member of Seattle Revolutionary Socialists and Firebrand, national organization of Marxists, 50 year socialist organizer’, begins by asking ‘What is our relationship to Maoism?’ and ‘What Maoist ideas, if any, have merit?’. He goes on to outline the history of Mao Zedong’s gradual rise to political prominence in China from the late 1920s onwards leading to his eventual takeover in the late 1940s and then authoritarian rule of the country till his death in 1976. Much of what the writer has to say actually makes good sense – for example that Maoism was a form of Stalinism which, via its economic policies, caused ‘widespread famines’ (the ‘Great Leap Forward’) and, in its oppression of those who were not held to be in conformity with Maoist doctrine, practised mass persecution and killings of its supposed enemies (the ‘Cultural Revolution’).

The writer also criticises Mao and Maoism for putting forward the idea that ‘socialism’ can be developed and achieved in a single country and has to be imposed on workers by a revolutionary leadership rather than workers establishing it democratically themselves. But he then goes hopelessly awry in declaring that ‘the Chinese revolution had many positive aspects to it’ (tell that to its millions of victims) and that ‘all of these things are towering historical accomplishments’. Clearly some of the mythology of China under Mao being in some sense positive and having something to do with socialism has stuck with Steve Leigh, as it has with many others on the Left.

The reality is that, rhetoric apart, China under Mao and subsequent regimes have been anti-socialist dictatorships bearing no relation whatever to the society of voluntary cooperation, democratic organisation and economic equality via free access to all goods and services which the Socialist Party stands for and consistently advocates and that the website which gives access to this article declares that it too endorses. So why, one might ask, does such a website, which says it will not carry ‘posts supporting the historic or continuing theory and practice of state capitalist entities such as the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China or similar regimes’ give a platform to articles like this. Of course, a free exchange of ideas from all sides is entirely desirable, but why carry without any attempt at response ideas or material that do nothing to promote – and indeed even contradict – the aspirations it claims to stand for?

Howard Moss