as they believe it is a form of animal exploitation. The word relates to the historical term
abolitionism—a social movement to end slavery or human ownership of other humans. Based on the way of evaluating welfare reforms, abolitionists can be either radical or pragmatic. While the former maintain that welfare reforms can only be dubiously described as moral improvements, the latter consider welfare reforms as moral improvements even when the conditions they permit are unjust.
Gary L. Francione, professor of law and philosophy at
Rutgers School of Law–Newark, argues from the abolitionist perspective that self-described animal-rights groups who pursue welfare concerns, such as
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, risk making the public feel comfortable about its use of animals. He calls such groups the "new welfarists", arguing that, though their aim is an end to animal use, the reforms they pursue are indistinguishable from reforms agreeable to traditional welfarists, who he says have no interest in abolishing animal use. He argues that reform campaigns entrench the property status of animals, and validate the view that animals simply need to be treated better. Instead, he writes, the public's view that animals can be used and consumed ought to be challenged. His position is that this should be done by promoting ethical
veganism. Others think that this should be done by creating a public debate in society. Philosopher
Steven Best of the
University of Texas at El Paso has been critical of Francione for his denunciation of militant
direct actions carried out by the underground animal liberation movement and organizations like the
Animal Liberation Front, which Best compares favorably to the "nineteenth-century-abolitionist movement" to end slavery, and also for placing the onus on individual consumers rather than powerful institutions such as corporations, the state and the mass media along with ignoring the "constraints imposed by poverty, class, and social conditioning." In this, he says that Francione "exculpates capitalism" and fails to "articulate a structural theory of oppression." The "vague, elitist, asocial 'vegan education' approach," Best argues, is no substitute for "direct action, mass confrontation, civil disobedience, alliance politics, and struggle for radical change." Sociologist
David Nibert of
Wittenberg University argues that attempting to create a vegan world under global
capitalism is unrealistic given that "tens of millions of animals are tortured and brutally killed every year to produce profits for twenty-first century elites, who hold investments in the corporate equivalents of Genghis Khan" and that any real and meaningful change will only come by transcending capitalism. He rhetorically asks, how can one hope to create some consumer base for this new vegan world when over a billion people live on less than a dollar a day? Nibert acknowledges that
post-capitalism on its own will not automatically end animal exploitation or bring about a more just world, but that it is a "necessary precondition" for such changes. New welfarists argue that there is no logical or practical contradiction between abolitionism and "welfarism". Welfarists think that they can be working toward abolition, but by gradual steps, pragmatically taking into account what most people can be realistically persuaded to do in the short as well as the long term, and reduce animal suffering as it is most urgent to relieve.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, for example, in addition to promoting local improvements in the treatment of animals, promote
vegetarianism. Although some people believe that changing the legal status of nonhuman
sentient beings is a first step in abolishing ownership or mistreatment, others argue that this will not succeed if the consuming public has not already begun to reduce or eliminate its exploitation of animals for food. == Personhood==