Anonymous

Antinatalism as revolution

07/03/2009

http://archives-2001-2012.cmaq.net/fr/node/32288.html

[Translation from Greek] Original at http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=999931

Why should we, the proletarians, have children if they are taken by the capitalists to be killed metaphorically in work and by the militarists to be killed in reality as soldiers?

Antinatalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism) is a philosophy with a centuries-long history that is against the birth of new foetuses in the human society for ethical and philosophical reasons.

Antinatalists believe that the existence in life will necessarily cause a person to live negative experiences, and use two philosophical positions to support the idea that the birth of new humans is a bad thing:

1. The philosophy of Hedonism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonism) that says that the meaning of life is happiness.

2. The position that since the meaning of life is happiness, we shall not make other people unhappy.

Having in mind the above positions, and knowing that the existence in life necessarily causes a person to live experiences that are not satisfactory, antinatalists say that we ought to avoid procreation because by procreating we force our children to live negative experiences.

In this analysis, which has an anarchocommunist viewpoint, we will try to laconically express the position that the proletarian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proletariat) has an ethical responsibility to avoid procreation, for two reasons: firstly, because by procreating the children will be tortured in capitalism, and secondly because in that way new workers are created for the capitalists as well as and new soldiers for the militarists. Our aim is to attempt to answer the question: does antinatalism help the revolution? Is it, in essence, a revolutionary philosophy?

We begin with the axiom that the perfect and most satisfactory society is that built upon the ideals of anarchocommunism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_communism), a society that is in agreement with the basic propositions of Kropotkin. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kropotkin)

Since our society today is not anarchocommunist, the proletarian lives a life full of negative experiences: debt, hunger, imprisonment, and fighting the wars of the elite.

When the proletarian procreates, their children will almost certainly will become proletarians themselves and will have the same negative experiences as their parents. Therefore with the act of procreation the proletarian forces their children to live a life without satisfaction and full of sorrow. This, however, based on the positions of antinatalism, is something unethical. It is not right to force others to feel sadness.

Moreover, the proletarian if they are a conscious revolutionary has an ethical obligation to not assist the current capitalist system to preserve itself. The existence of new proletarians helps the self-preservation of capitalism, since they become new consumers, new workers, and new soldiers. In short, the birth of new children by proletarians is an act that further promotes capitalism.

In accordance with the above positions, therefore, the proletarian should not create new children, because in that way they force them to live a life in sadness and at the same time they surrender the children to the capitalists who are known to have no mercy and will use them for the continuing preservation of their unjust system (capitalism could not exist without a lot of proletarians).

Therefore we provided a possible answer to the question about the revolutionary properties of antinatalism, supporting the view that antinatalism is a revolutionary philosophy because it refuses to supply new proletarians to the capitalist machine, and we see that a possible act of resistance by the proletariat against the capitalist barbarism is the refusal to bring new proletarians in life.

Addendum:

It is not against the antinatalist philosophy to adopt children that already exist.

If we accept that unborn foetuses can feel suffering and pain, which is a source of unhappiness, then it would be difficult to accept abortion from an antinatalist perpective, since antinatalism is built upon the view that we should not force others to feel unhappiness. Contraception would probably be a great solution for sexually active antinatalists.

We do not claim that we have a complete or "correct" answer to the issue of the desirability of child-bearing by proletarians. We simply provide an answer to this issue from a viewpoint that mixes antinatalism with anarchocommunism (but is also compatible with the broad manifestations of class struggle).