Abolitionism (animal rights)

[6] Abolitionists such as Steven Best and David Nibert argue, respectively, that embracing alliance politics and militant direct action for change (including civil disobedience, mass confrontation, etc), and transcending capitalism are integral to ending animal exploitation.

[1][2] The objective is to secure a moral and legal paradigm shift, whereby animals are no longer regarded as things to be owned and used.

[14] 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."

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.

"[7] 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.

[15][16] 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?

Although some people believe that changing the legal status of nonhuman sentient beings[19][20] 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.

[21][24][25] In 2007, the parliament of the Balearic Islands, an autonomous province of Spain, passed the world's first legislation granting legal rights to all great apes.