Question

What are the implications of the shift away from veganism - and towards ill-defined, unstructured shit like "freeganism" - within the anarchist subculture?

Answer 1

I think being vegan is important because you can eliminate supporting industrial meat and dairy structures.

However, I think eating dumpstered meat and dairy bypasses that support, and it is free.  Stealing is still supporting those industries by creating a demand for those products.

I do not have a problem with eating meat or dairy, but I don't think anybody should buy anything.  Therefor I try to use Freeganism in all aspects, not just food related.

Comments

it is interesting to think about the question in connection to the one on the significance of money to capitalism.
http://anarchy101.org/428/how-fundamental-is-money-to-capitalism

Answer 2

not sure that veganism, or any of the cultural pieces of various tendencies of anarchists, have *that* much to do with anything.
Subcultures will find ways to distinguish themselves, and they will mostly be fads, and as such will gain and lose popularity (within the subculture) with dizzying rapidity.
the vegan crowd overlaps the anarchist crowd, but has never been entirely coterminous with it.
the relevance of any subcultural practices have to do with how much they encourage people to stop and pay attention to what "normal" is, and what "normal" 's implications are.
shifting from focusing on type-of-food to production-of-food is arguably a good change. and seems appropriate given the knee jerk attitude of many true believers in the vegan camp. not to say that vegans are alone in having true believers. TBs are everywhere.

Answer 3

The biggest difference I have seen when people or communities switch from being predomindantly vegan to freegan is the moral implications. Veganism has manifested itself, both within the anarchist subculture and outside of it, as a hardline moral decision - those that eat animal products are bad/evil, ignorant, not revolutionary enough, oppressive, etc. Therefore, those that don't consume such products are good, in-the-know, making the right decsions, and engaged in a struggle for all creatures. "Being Vegan" becomes more important than the actual decision to not eat meat/dairy/etc. Being vegan means being held up to a higher standard, and if you fall short, or choose to live otherwise may just get you ostracized or punished (read: pied).
In my experience Freeganism still has the bearer-of-truth attitude without the moralistic generalizations of those who aren't in-the-know. That probably has alot to do the the "ill-defined, unstructured"ness of it.
I like the idea of a way of eating that's definition is a bit more fluid, and left up the individual to whom it relates.

Comments

the problem with (the theory behind) eating as a strictly individual practice, is that sharing food is one of the few community-oriented arenas that we have left.
it's easy to say we should all just do as we feel right (and there is a way that that is obvious and unarguable), but the decisions we make do have an impact on each other... and that side of the argument gets less and less attention as capitalism makes us more and more atomized.

Answer 4

Hopefully, the shift away from veganism within the anarchist subculture implies a more general understanding that the specific things we buy, or do not buy, are not particularly indicative of our identity or effectiveness as anarchists.

Political veganism has often been an attempt to wage social war through consumer choice. In this capacity, it has been a failure. As long as capitalism exists, it will commodify non-human animals, just as it commodifies human beings. Adopting a particular diet is not a meaningful component to any strategy for promoting systemic collapse.

This critique is not leveled at veganism in general. It specifically applies to vegan discourse which attempts to relate diet to revolutionary identity, especially when that discourse explicitly or implicitly declares non-vegans to be "less anarchist" (or not anarchist at all). Deciding to avoid products that are the result of massive suffering is a reasonable and admirable lifestyle decision. Many anarchist vegans do not frame their dietary choices as revolutionary tactics, much less belittle other anarchists; my personal experience is that most don't.

However, I think the decreasing emphasis on veganism within anarchist circles indicates a positive tendency towards recognizing that "vote with your dollars" activism is not going to help us achieve a world WITHOUT dollars.