Shift from Identity-Centered Justice to Harm-Centered Justice

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Maynard S. Clark

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Feb 17, 2026, 10:06:03 AM (2 days ago) Feb 17
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"Jesse Jackson dies."

I hear that at 7 am this morning.
Let me say this:

He needed to move more deeply into moral reasoning, NOT merely into politics for enabling those working with his stewardship group. When he advocated for workers in poultry and meat-processing plants, some of us found ourselves doing 'a long double-take' on the knee-jerk association with everything that appeared to be merely pro-labor and overlooked the massive harms those workers were causing to those who suffered from it, and were aware of that suffering while the harm was being done. https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/atc/6433.html

Jesse Jackson died this morning on February 17, 2026, at age 84, as widely reported by major news outlets including NBC and Reuters. His family said he passed away peacefully at home, surrounded by loved ones. Tributes have poured in from leaders and activists recognizing his decades of work in civil rights, economic justice, voting rights, and racial equality.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/jesse-jackson-civil-rights-leader-us-presidential-hopeful-dies-84-nbc-news-2026-02-17/

From a broad perspective, Jackson’s life was marked by:

Our reflection raises a deeper ethical point about the moral framing of activism.

From a conventional civil-rights and labor perspective, Jackson’s support for workers — including those in slaughterhouses or other hazardous industries — was seen as solidarity with people facing economic exploitation. Yet from an ethical vegan and ahimsa-centered viewpoint, supporting any industry predicated on systemic harm to sentient beings presents a conflict: defending the dignity and risk reduction for human workers can still indirectly uphold institutions that entail violence against nonhuman animals.

This suggests two (2) separate but related moral considerations:

  1. Human solidarity and risk reduction
    Standing with workers to improve their conditions — safer working environments, livable wages, nondiscriminatory hiring — can reduce human suffering.

  2. Abolition of harmful systems
    True nonviolence, in the ahimsa sense, points toward transforming or abolishing economic structures that require harm to sentient beings at any scale, rather than only improving conditions within those structures.

In movements that are primarily political or reformist, there’s often a focus on less harm rather than no harm. From an animal-liberation perspective, that can look like enabling transition rather than real transformation. Leaders like Jackson operated within political frameworks where incremental improvements were central — not radical abolition of all violent systems including industrial animal exploitation.

That’s a crucial philosophical distinction:

  • reformism tends to address symptoms within existing structures,
  • whereas absolutist nonviolence (ahimsa as we describe it) calls for replacing the underlying harms entirely.

Regarding his age and lifestyle — many religious leaders and activists do live longer than average, possibly due to lifestyle factors (less smoking, less substance abuse, community support, structured purpose), though concrete causal claims require careful public-health analysis. Nonetheless, reaching age 84 within a lifetime of intense public work and decades of a neurological disorder suggests resilience and sustained commitment under challenging personal health conditions.  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2026/feb/17/jesse-jackson-tributes-died-84-civil-rights-latest-news-updates

Integrating Ahimsa into a Universal Solidarity Framework  

To claim solidarity with all victims requires a moral expansion beyond category-based justice (race, class, nationality, occupation) into a principle-based ethic: opposition to avoidable harm wherever it occurs, and to whomever it occurs.

Here is how such an integration could be structured.

1. Shift from Identity-Centered Justice to Harm-Centered Justice

Many civil-rights frameworks focus on historically oppressed human groups. Ahimsa requires a broader criterion:

Herein, the morally relevant question is not who the victim is, but (1) whether the being can suffer and (2) whether the harm is avoidable.

This reframes justice from “protect this group” to “eliminate institutionalized violence.” Nonhuman animals, as sentient beings subjected to systemic killing, become morally visible within the same framework.

2. Distinguish Worker Protection from Industry Preservation

A leader can say, clearly and coherently:

  • No worker deserves dangerous, traumatic, or exploitative labor conditions.
  • No sentient being should be bred, confined, and killed for profit.
  • Therefore, society must transition both workers and industries toward nonviolent production.

This avoids the false dilemma that one must either defend slaughterhouse workers or oppose slaughterhouses. The consistent position is:

Protect the worker; replace the industry.

That means (1) advocating worker retraining programs, (2) economic transition plans, (2) plant-based food infrastructure investment, and (4) community redevelopment, rather than merely negotiating safer conditions inside a violent system.

3. Expand the Definition of “Neighbor”

Religious leaders, including those in the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr., often appealed to agape, beloved community, and universal moral concern. An ahimsa-integrated framework would ask:

  • If the moral circle expanded to include all races and classes,
  • Why stop at species?

The same logic that rejects racial hierarchy also rejects species hierarchy when both are used to justify exploitation.

4. Replace Incremental Harm Reduction with Structural Nonviolence

Reformist politics tends to aim for:

  • Safer slaughterhouses,
  • More regulated confinement,
  • “Humane” certification.

Ahimsa asks a different question:

Is the violence inherent to the structure?  Is this 'structural violence' that must be abolished?

If yes, then justice requires transition, not refinement.

A comprehensive leader would articulate a long-term abolitionist horizon while supporting short-term protections that reduce suffering during transition.

5. Integrate Public Health, Ecology, and Moral Clarity

Animal agriculture is linked to:

  • Worker injury and trauma,
  • Zoonotic disease risk,
  • Environmental degradation,
  • Chronic disease burdens.

An ahimsa-aligned leader could unify these under one principle:

Violence against animals reverberates into violence against workers, communities, and ecosystems.

Thus, ending systemic animal exploitation is not niche advocacy; it is an extension of public-health ethics, labor ethics, and ecological stewardship.

6. Speak Plainly About Moral Inconsistency

Many leaders defend marginalized humans while ignoring institutionalized animal killing. A morally rigorous approach would acknowledge that:

  • Solidarity that excludes the largest class of victims is incomplete.
  • Justice limited to one species is partial justice.

The tone need not be accusatory. It must be clear.

7. Envision a Nonviolent Economy

Practical integration requires policy imagination:

  • Subsidies redirected from animal agriculture to plant-based production,
  • Public investment in alternative proteins and regional crop diversity,
  • Guaranteed transition income for displaced workers,
  • Education reform that includes ethical reflection on human–animal relations.

This moves beyond protest politics into constructive redesign.

The Core Principle

A leader who truly claims solidarity with all victims must adopt a test:

If an institution depends on systematic harm to sentient beings, can it be morally justified?

If the answer is no, then moral leadership requires guiding society away from that institution — while ensuring no human is discarded in the process.

Ahimsa does not compete with labor justice or civil rights.

It completes them.

Integrating Ahimsa into a Universal Solidarity Framework

To claim solidarity with all victims requires a shift from group-based advocacy to principle-based ethics. Ahimsa — disciplined nonviolence toward all sentient life — provides the unifying foundation.

Below is a structured way such integration could occur.

1. Move from Identity Justice to Harm Justice

Traditional justice movements often focus on historically oppressed human groups. Ahimsa reframes the standard:

The decisive moral question is whether avoidable suffering is being imposed on a sentient being.

This shifts the axis from “Which group?” to “Is there systemic violence?”
Once harm is the criterion, species membership no longer determines moral consideration.

2. Separate Worker Protection from Industry Endorsement

A morally coherent leader can affirm three propositions simultaneously:

  1. No worker deserves hazardous, exploitative, or psychologically traumatizing labor.
  2. No sentient being should be bred, confined, and killed for profit.
  3. Therefore, society must transition both workers and industries toward nonviolent production.

The consistent stance is:

Defend the worker. Replace the violent structure.

This entails retraining, economic transition support, investment in plant-based food systems, and regional redevelopment — not permanent stabilization of harmful industries.

3. Expand the Moral Circle Without Losing Moral Clarity

Leaders inspired by universal love and dignity — such as Martin Luther King Jr. — argued that moral concern should transcend race and class. Ahimsa presses the next logical step:  A term, 'moral considerability', is deeply analyzed in the ethical and philosophical literature.

If arbitrary hierarchy is rejected among humans, it must also be rejected when used to justify systematic violence against nonhuman beings.

This is not dilution of civil rights; it is their extension.

4. Replace Reformism with Structural Nonviolence

Reformism often seeks:

  • Safer facilities,
  • Better regulation,
  • “Humane” certification.

Ahimsa asks:

Is violence intrinsic to the institution itself?

If the answer is yes, justice requires transition, not refinement. Short-term harm reduction may be warranted, but it must serve a clearly articulated abolitionist horizon.

5. Integrate Public Health, Ecology, and Moral Consistency

Institutionalized animal exploitation is linked to:

  • Worker injury and trauma,
  • Zoonotic disease risk,
  • Environmental degradation,
  • Diet-related chronic illness.

An ahimsa-integrated leader would show that violence against animals radiates outward — into communities, ecosystems, and human bodies. Ending systemic animal harm is thus aligned with labor justice, environmental stewardship, and public health.

6. Address Inconsistency Directly but Calmly

Selective solidarity creates moral fragmentation. A leader committed to coherence would acknowledge:

  • Justice confined to one species is incomplete.
  • Solidarity that excludes the largest class of institutional victims lacks universality.

Clarity need not be hostile. It must simply be principled.

7. Design a Nonviolent Economic Transition

Integration of ahimsa requires constructive policy:

  • Redirect subsidies toward plant-based agriculture and food innovation,
  • Fund retraining programs for workers leaving animal-based industries,
  • Guarantee transitional income support,
  • Include ethical reflection on human–animal relations in education.

This moves activism from protest to redesign.

Earlier Framework Restated with Structured Headings

Reformist Politics vs. Principle-Based Nonviolence

Many leaders operate within political reform frameworks. These frameworks often reduce harm but do not question whether the underlying structure should exist. Ahimsa introduces a structural test: if an institution depends on avoidable violence toward sentient beings, it must ultimately be replaced.

Protecting Human Dignity While Opposing Systemic Animal Harm

Solidarity with workers need not imply endorsement of the industry. A coherent ethical stance defends workers’ safety and economic stability while pursuing a transition away from industries built on killing.

Universal Solidarity as a Consistency Test

If one claims solidarity with all victims, one must define “victim” by capacity to suffer, not by species or political category. This creates moral continuity across civil rights, labor rights, environmental ethics, and animal liberation.

Ahimsa as Completion, Not Competition

Ahimsa does not undermine labor justice or civil-rights advocacy.
It completes them by removing the last category of institutionalized violence that reformist politics often leaves untouched.

Maynard

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Maynard S. Clark, MS (Management: Research Administration)---Maynar...@GMail.com Google Voice (617-615-9672) 
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“Moral considerability” in normative ethics

“Moral considerability” is a technical term in normative ethics referring to the set of beings whose interests must be taken into account for their own sake in moral deliberation.

Below is a structured unpacking of how the term functions in the literature.

1. Core Definition

A being is morally considerable if his or her interests count morally — that is, if what happens to that being can be right or wrong because of its impact on that being.

This is distinct from:

  • Moral agency (the capacity to make moral judgments),
  • Moral responsibility (accountability for actions).

Infants, for example, are morally considerable even though they are not moral agents.

2. The Central Question

The foundational philosophical question is:

What properties make a being morally considerable?

Common candidates in the literature include:

  • Sentience (capacity to feel pain and pleasure),
  • Consciousness,
  • Rationality,
  • Autonomy,
  • Membership in a moral community,
  • Being alive,
  • Possessing interests.

3. Sentience as the Dominant Criterion

Many contemporary ethicists argue that sentience is the most defensible threshold.

The reasoning:

  • If a being can suffer, then suffering matters.
  • If suffering matters, that being has morally relevant interests.
  • Therefore, that being is morally considerable.
While often associated in contemporary ethics with Peter Singer, the criterion of moral inclusion based on the capacity to suffer traces at least to Jeremy Bentham and is anticipated in earlier moral sentiment and compassion-based traditions.**

4. Rights-Based Expansion

A different approach, associated with Tom Regan, grounds moral considerability in being a “subject-of-a-life” — possessing beliefs, desires, perception, memory, and a sense of the future. Under this view, many nonhuman animals qualify as rights-bearers.

5. Moral Circle Expansion

Historically, moral considerability has expanded:

  • Tribe → Nation → Race → All humans → (increasingly argued) All sentient beings.

This expansion argument parallels civil-rights reasoning often associated with figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., though King himself did not systematically theorize animal ethics.

The philosophical extension asks:
If arbitrary characteristics (race, class) cannot exclude humans from moral considerability (or 'standing' - worthiness for our consideration), can species membership alone justify exclusion?

6. Strong vs. Weak Considerability

Philosophers distinguish between:

  • Weak moral considerability
    A being’s interests count, but may be easily overridden.

  • Strong moral considerability
    A being’s fundamental interests (e.g., not suffering, not being killed) cannot be overridden for trivial gains.

Much debate concerns where nonhuman animals fall on this spectrum.

7. Application to Institutional Violence

When applied to slaughterhouses:

  • If chickens are sentient,
  • And sentience grounds moral considerability,
  • Then their suffering and killing are morally relevant harms.

[There is FAR more at issue than the RSIs of the workers, although the Sitz im leben or 'seat in life' of the protestors may have framed their protest that way.]

Thus, any advocacy framework that centers only on worker suffering but omits the animals’ suffering reflects a partial application of moral considerability.

The philosophical tension you are pointing to can be framed precisely as:

A solidarity ethic that includes workers but excludes animals is operating with a restricted account of moral considerability.

8. The Structural Question

The deeper question becomes:

Is it coherent to claim "universal solidarity" while limiting moral considerability to humans?

Philosophically, once sentience is accepted as morally relevant, species-based exclusion becomes difficult to defend without appealing to arbitrary hierarchy.

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** While often associated in contemporary ethics with Peter Singer, the criterion of moral inclusion based on the capacity to suffer traces at least to Jeremy Bentham and is anticipated in earlier moral sentiment and compassion-based traditions.

'capacity to suffer'

The “capacity to suffer” criterion did not originate with Peter Singer. Singer popularized and systematized it in late-20th-century analytic philosophy, but the core idea has a much longer lineage.

Here is the deeper history.

1. Jeremy Bentham: The Classic Formulation

The most frequently cited early formulation comes from Jeremy Bentham in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789):

“The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”

Bentham’s move was revolutionary because he:

  • Detached moral standing from rationality,
  • Rejected linguistic capacity as a criterion,
  • Grounded inclusion in sentience.

This is the conceptual ancestor of Singer’s position.

2. Earlier Moral Sentiment Traditions

Before Bentham, strands of moral philosophy already linked moral concern to vulnerability and suffering:

  • David Hume emphasized sympathy as a basis of moral judgment.
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that pity (compassion for suffering beings) precedes rational calculation.

These thinkers did not fully articulate animal rights theory, but they established suffering as morally salient.

3. Arthur Schopenhauer: Compassion as Foundation

Arthur Schopenhauer (19th century) placed compassion for suffering at the center of ethics and explicitly condemned cruelty to animals. He argued that moral action arises from recognition of another’s suffering as morally real.

This anticipates both modern animal ethics and ahimsa-inflected frameworks.

4. Eastern Traditions and Ahimsa

Long before European utilitarianism, traditions rooted in ahimsa — particularly in Jain, Buddhist, and certain Hindu philosophies — treated the capacity to suffer as morally decisive. While not framed in modern analytic language, the principle was clear:

  • Sentient beings are capable of suffering.
  • Causing suffering is morally corrupting.
  • Nonviolence is therefore obligatory.

The criterion is functional rather than species-based.

5. Peter Singer’s Distinct Contribution

Singer’s originality lies not in inventing the criterion, but in:

  • Embedding it within contemporary utilitarianism,
  • Framing speciesism as a structural rationale for structural harms and analogous to other forms of classism (racism and sexism),
  • Applying the principle rigorously to modern industrial animal agriculture.

His book Animal Liberation (1975) crystallized Bentham’s insight into a systematic critique of contemporary institutions.

Speciesism (a term preceding Singer, cf. Richard Ryder, et al.) mirrors the justificatory structure found in various forms of social and other 'classism' (racism and sexism): it treats an irrelevant characteristic (social, economic, biological) as sufficient grounds for systemic subordination and institutionalized harm.

6. Why the “Capacity to Suffer” Standard Persists

The argument remains powerful because:

  • It avoids arbitrary boundaries (intelligence, language competency, species membership).
  • It tracks what gives harm its moral weight.
  • It applies consistently across humans and nonhumans.

If suffering is morally undesirable (e.g. "bad"), and a being can suffer (needlessly), then that being’s suffering matters morally.

The challenge, of course, lies in how far the implications extend — especially regarding killing versus suffering, and whether painless killing violates morally considerable interests.

*** The term Sitz im Leben (German for “setting in life” or “life-situation”, used in biblical and historical criticism to describe the social context in which a text or movement arises, refers to the lived situation that shapes what is seen as salient, urgent, or morally primary.
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But dietary veganism (even "veganism for the animals") is practiced by non-Marxists.

And many of those dietary vegans do much to structurally better the ecological and historical condition of nonhumans.

Dietary veganism is practiced across ideological boundaries. Many non-Marxist vegans contribute materially to structural ecological improvement and historical redress for nonhuman beings, not by endorsing a particular economic theory, but by withdrawing participation from institutions of systematic harm.

Dietary veganism — including veganism grounded explicitly in concern for animals — is not conceptually dependent on Marxism, nor on any particular economic theory. Its moral foundation can arise from multiple, independent traditions.

1. Veganism Is Not Intrinsically Marxist

The structural critique of speciesism is sometimes articulated in Marxian language (e.g., “industrial complex,” “commodification,” “alienation”). But one need not adopt Marxist metaphysics, class theory, semantic habits, or "historical materialism" to conclude:

  1. Sentient beings have morally considerable interests.
  2. Institutionalized killing for palate preference is unjustifiable.
  3. Economic systems can and should be restructured toward nonviolence.

  • A rights theorist in the lineage of Tom Regan,
  • a utilitarian in the lineage shared by Peter Singer,
  • a natural-law thinker,
  • a virtue ethicist,
  • or a religious adherent grounded in ahimsa
may all converge on dietary veganism without sharing political ideology.

2. Structural Effects Without Structural Theory

One need not embrace structural Marxism to produce structural change.

When individuals:

  • Withdraw economic demand from animal agriculture,
  • Support plant-based agriculture,
  • Invest in alternative proteins,
  • Normalize nonviolent consumption,

they alter supply chains, capital allocation, and cultural expectations.

  • Markets shift.
  • Subsidy politics shift.
  • Cultural baselines shift.

These are structural consequences generated by decentralized moral agency.

3. Moral Agency Precedes Economic Theory

The core motivation for many dietary vegans is simple and pre-theoretical:

Causing avoidable suffering is wrong.

From that premise, dietary practice follows.

This does not require:

  • A theory of surplus value,
  • A theory of class struggle,
  • Or an anti-capitalist framework.

It requires only recognition of moral considerability and consistency.

4. Ecological and Historical Impact

Non-Marxist vegans contribute structurally by:

  • Reducing demand for land-intensive animal agriculture,
  • Reducing methane and nitrous oxide emissions,
  • Decreasing water use,
  • Weakening incentives for habitat destruction,
  • Interrupting historical patterns of domestication-based domination.

These effects occur regardless of the practitioner’s political vocabulary.

One can participate in market economies while redirecting them toward nonviolent ends.

5. Plural Foundations, Convergent Outcome

Dietary veganism can arise from:

  • Utilitarian suffering-minimization,
  • Rights-based inviolability,
  • Virtue ethics (compassion, temperance),
  • Religious nonviolence,
  • Public-health prudence,
  • Ecological stewardship.

These frameworks differ philosophically but converge practically.

6. Structural Critique Without Ideological Capture

It is possible to say:

Speciesism functions structurally within institutions.

Without saying:

Only a Marxist analysis can diagnose or remedy it.

Structural harm does not require Marxist explanation; it requires institutional analysis. Many liberal, religious, conservative, or libertarian thinkers can acknowledge institutionalized violence without subscribing to Marx.


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