ABSTRACT
In this chapter, an attempt is made to clarify the relationship between Marx's social theory and animal welfare. Accordingly, this part of the book is organised under three subheadings that explain the main features of Marx's approach to the animal issue. Under the title of ‘Is Marx Anthropocentrist and Speciesist? Or What Does Marx Theory of Species Being Tell Us?’ it is claimed that a Marxian understanding of the human-animal relationship within the context of the nature-human-animal dialectic refutes the hypotheses claiming that Marx's theory is anthropocentrist and speciesist. In the second subtitle, Human Labor as an Ontological Basis for Animal-Human Dialectic, the importance of Marx's dialectical approach in which he takes human labour as an ontological and historical category is discussed in detail in order to understand the aspects of today's animal poverty. In line with the arguments put forward in the first subheading, in the last subheading entitled Historical Break From Human Labor In Terms of the Human-animal Dialectic, it is explained how the role of human labour has been changed as the founding subject in the human-animal dialectic after the emergence of class-based societies in history. The importance of the state of human alienation, which has emerged as result of the separation of humans from their own labour due to the conversion of the means of production to private ownership, in the human-animal dialectic is another issue that is explained under this last subheading.
