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It has been claimed that Marx completely lacked respect for
animals, thinking of them as inferior
beings. Lawrence Wilde argues that,
on the contrary, Marx had a respectful
attitude towards animals and non-human
nature in general. Marx’s
attitude to the non-human is intrinsic
to his humanistic outlook, grounded
in an understanding of the human
essence, for which maltreatment
of animals is contrary to a communistic
vision. Wilde approaches the question
of Marx’s attitude to animals
and nature within the wider context
of Marx’s ethics.
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Source:
This article was originally published
in Capital & Class, Issue no.72,
Autumn '00 , and is reproduced here
with the author's permission as
per Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
Licence 2.0.
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Biographical information
Lawrence Wilde
is Professor of Political Theory
at Nottingham Trent University,
and Chair of the Political Studies
Association Marxism Specialist Group,
amongst many other bodies. He has
published widely on Marx, ethics
and radical politics and is widely
recognised as an authority on ethical
problems of Marxism. His published
works include Ethical Marxism
and its Radical Critics (1998),
Erich Fromm and the Quest For
Solidarity (2004), Modern
European Socialism (1994) and
Marx and Contradiction
(1989).
See also: Ethical
Marxism and its Radical Critics,
Logic:
Dialectic and contradiction,
Lawrence
Wilde's profile at Nottingham Trent
University
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