The rise of the capitalist class in North America similarly was founded on terrible exploitation. Some enriched themselves through the killing of bea… - David Nibert

Humanity's systematic killing of other animals, as well as the subjugation of groups of humans, did not begin until males created weapons and began hunting other animals, approximately 50,000 years ago. The emergence of increasingly aggressive males, brandishing weapons, began to degrade the egalitarian nature of human societies, and the status of women and less powerful males began to decline. The corruption of human society was powerfully furthered 10,000 years ago, when humans began to capture and confine other animals and control their reproduction, and the consequences for human societal development were enormous and tragic.

An essential part of any successful plan for the promotion of global justice must be a campaign for the elimination of the practice of oppressing other animals, especially as sources of food. As we work for a democratic global economy, we must transform the system that uses increasingly precious land and water for profitable “meat” production into a truly "green" form of agriculture organized to provide nutritious plant-based food where it is needed throughout the world—and to parts of the world where many have few alternatives to exploiting animals. In a more just global economy, with that require much less land than is now used for "meat" production, land would be available to resettle millions trapped in urban squalor. Land also could be set aside as sanctuaries for other animals—with whom humans must learn to peacefully co-exist. Such change will take more than just a challenge to the animal industrial complex; it will require the development of a social-economic as it has developed across multiple fronts of social antagonism.

The capitalist system was and is not a benevolent social force created to best serve the needs of humans through the "marketplace," contrary to the propagandizing that has inundated at least the citizens in the West for a century and a half and that continues in educational systems and mass media today. Indeed, it would be impossible for an egalitarian, beneficial political-economic system to emerge from thousands of years of hypermasculine, violent, oppressive, and war-torn reality. In truth, capitalism, which morphed from the highly oppressive systems of "economic development" of the Eurasian past, simply represents a more sophisticated form of social relations in which the accumulation of wealth continues to result from exploitation, predation and violence.