James Crump and Karin Hilpisch wrote the “Abolitionist Manifesto” at the Abolitionist Animal Rights blog. This is part three.

“III. Abolitionism is principled antispeciesism, which in turn is a moral imperative. Maintaining a moral imperative is not about being fundamentalist, fanatical, purist, absolutist, elitist, extremist. It is about being radically opposed to the corrupt instrumentalization of reason which pervades the new welfarist movement and which manifests itself in the way the latter has no moral baselines — no principles — and rules nothing out in advance. For the new welfarists, even incremental measures that radically negate animal rights (such as the promotion of “humane” animal use, working with institutional animal enslavers, and supporting speciesist welfare groups) have legitimate instrumental value. But an “animal rights” movement that doesn’t rule out — a priori — those things that conflict with principled antispeciesism and the status of animals as rightholders is not only a pseudo-animal rights movement: it is an expression of counterfeit moral responsiveness to animals.”"By contrast, abolitionism is a rights-inspired movement, which means it rules out — in advance — those things that conflict with antispeciesist, animal rights maxims because the latter are taken to be wrong in principle, in particular the promotion of meat and other animal products that were supposedly produced more “humanely” than others.”

This is where the manifesto starts to really take root. Key pieces:

• Animal Rights “is about being radically opposed to the corrupt instrumentalization of reason…”
• “abolitionism is a rights-inspired movement, which means it rules out… those things that conflict with antispeciesist, animal rights maxims because the latter are taken to be wrong in principle, in particular the promotion of meat and other animal products”

Still, however, the problem is that the definition of abolitionism is more of a negation of a contradictory movement (animal welfare) rather than an affirmative definition of its self. Abolitionism requires more and better definitions that are in no way related to other movements.

Sections: Vegan Theory
Topics: Abolitionist Manifesto, animal rights, animal welfare, Theory, Vegan