Kiran Kumbhar's salutary coprophagy

Sanskrit is unusual in that it greatly affected Chinese, Arabic and European philology and linguistics. William Dalrymple's new book The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World highlights this. This has infuriated shitty Indian origin historians. One such, Kiran Kumbhar. a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Advanced Shitting on India, University of Pennsylvania, writes angrily in India Forum-

The Indocentric Road Taken

People should not be taking Indocentric road. They should shit on India while squatting in Pennsylvania.  

An ode to a “forgotten” India which needs to be given its rightful place in a Euro-American-centric globe

It is becoming China-centric. The Chinese aren't going to read shitty Indian historians. They may read Dalrymple because he is actually English and thus can write that language properly. It will be helpful to India for the Chinese to be reminded of what they owe to India. I don't suppose a lot of them read Victor Mair.  

ends up replacing one form of cultural supremacy with another.

Did you know Brahmins learn Sanskrit mantras? Also, many Brahmins have dicks. Thus Sanskrit is very evil.  

The obsession with an original centre of intellectual genius

as opposed to boring, modish, plagiarised shite of the sort this cretin specializes in 

ignores cross-cultural exchanges and knowledge produced out of labour.

only in the sense that it ignores the sodomization of trillions of Netan-Yahoos by the invisible cock of a Joe Biden who has flagrantly defied his constitutional duty to undergo gender reassignment surgery. Why did Dalrymple not mention this in his book? Is it because he is a FASCIST? 

BTW only knowledge produced out of this shitheads asshole was produced out of labour. 

Before Google Search, there was Tell Me Why. Author Arkady Leokum’s multi-volume American book series of that title, inaugurated in the 1960s, was a compilation of easy-to-understand answers to a large number of questions about the world. For decades the series was a common and reliable resource to many children and parents in the English-speaking world, who might have wanted to know “Why does the tiger have stripes?” or “How did the calendar begin?”

Kiran is ignoring cross-cultural exchanges across his own asshole. Why? Is it because of Joe Biden's invisible cock? Or is he a FASCIST?

In the late 1990s, by a stroke of luck, a consolidated volume titled The Big Book of Tell Me Why entered my life when I was about 12.

i.e. smarter than he is now.  

It was a thick tome – 600 pages chock-full with that intoxicating thing called knowledge – and I consulted it almost every day for years thereafter.

It was one of the cross-cultural changes occurring across his own asshole. Kiran found this very intoxicating. Was he also able to cram Dalrymple's book up his pooper? If not, why not?  

Today, the book’s contents are a distant memory for me, but there is one thing I still vividly remember: the thrill I’d experience whenever I encountered a mention of India in its pages. That feeling was really something else, a kind of innate childhood euphoria triggered by praise for “my” country and its people, especially its scientific past, in a glossy “international” book.

firmly lodged up the lad's rectum.  

The world has come a long way since the 1990s.

Kiran hasn't. Still, we can hope for a brighter future for his asshole which Joe Biden's invisible cock may leave dripping with cum so as to facilitate cross cultural exchanges. 

Folks across the world can access far more than just scattered titbits and cursory references to Indian ideas and intellectual achievements. Especially so this year, with the release of William Dalrymple’s book The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World, which bills itself as a comprehensive, magisterial story of India’s “often forgotten position as a […] civilisational engine at the heart of the ancient and early medieval worlds.”

It was completely forgotten by Indian shitheads who pretend to be historians or social science savants. 

My 1990s self would have found Dalrymple’s aims of focusing fully on the Indian story, and enlightening a still largely Euro-America-centric world about the arts, cultures, and sciences of people from the subcontinent, highly exciting.

When I was 12 I read Basham's 'the wonder that was India'. I suppose Dalrymple saw that there is still a market for Basham's book whereas there is none for, Basham's student, Romilla Thapar's shite.  

But in 2024, I am a child no more, and having read the book now as a scholar,

he couldn't have read it anytime before, even as a scholar, because it wasn't published till now. Kiran is truly as stupid as shit.  

I feel ambivalent about the ways in which Dalrymple has chosen to narrate the “Indian” story. Take, for instance, an emblematic statement on the first millennium CE, when, Dalrymple writes: “Indian religions, philosophies and sciences spread out in all directions across the Indosphere, like the shifting rays of a Sanskritic sun that sometimes penetrated surprisingly deeply into far distant recesses of the world around it.”

The Buddhists had abandoned Pali for Sanskrit which did reach Kyoto and Ulan Bator and Baghdad.  

Historians […] will no doubt cringe at the reduction of the majestic diversity of the subcontinent’s religions, philosophies and sciences, as well as languages, into a singular “Sanskritic” sun.

Modish Lefty historians will. Why has the great contribution of disabled Telugu Lesbians to the development of Chinese linguistics not been acknowledged?  

Those are some striking statements about what the author terms the “Indosphere” and the “Sanskritic sun”. Historians of science will be quick to recognise the parallels between “Indian” philosophies and sciences “spreading out” to distant recesses of the world, and the much-critiqued framework of “Western” science “diffusing out” to the global “periphery,” proposed in 1967 in a well-known Science article.

Western science has replaced everything else everywhere. No doubt, Kiran would prefer it if Indian IITs focused only on Vedic mathematics and the miraculous power of cow-dung.  

Furthermore, historians of South Asia who are cognisant of the centrality of caste in the region’s past and present, will no doubt cringe at the reduction of the majestic diversity of the subcontinent’s religions, philosophies and sciences, as well as languages, into a singular “Sanskritic” sun.

This cretin thinks only Brahmins knew Sanskrit and that they refused to let low castes study that language. Did you know Ambedkar had to go to study Sanskrit in Germany because Brahmin Viceroy, Rufus Isaacs, threatened to cut his head off if he did so in India?  

Finally, many scholars will exasperatedly recognise in that quote yet another instance of the ahistorical shrinking of the South Asian rainbow of peoples and cultures into the hackneyed “India” monochrome.

Many scholars may only very exasperatedly recognise that India is an actual nation state. There is no Lesbian Dalit Telugu nation with a vote at the UN.  

Dalrymple presents this book as his ode to a “forgotten” India which needs to be given its rightful place in a Euro-American-centric globe.

No. He presents his book to a readership he has built up over the years by doing a bit of research and writing good English and seeking to present an absorbing narrative to a middle brow audience which despises 'woke' shitheads pretending to be savants.  

But by describing that place to be the very centre of the premodern world, he ends up simply replacing one form of cultural and technoscientific supremacy with another.

Only in the mind of this shithead. We get that India couldn't have been that special because, currently, India is as poor as shit. Also, till recently, it was ruled by an Italian lady.  

Knowledge of the head and of the hand

The Marathi author P.L. Deshpande was known for

being a Brahmin and for having a dick. Thus, he was definitely a FASCIST.  

writing up biographical sketches of the striking individuals he would now and then encounter. One such personality was an elderly Parsi man, Pestonji Hubliwala. Starting as a worker in a railway workshop in late colonial India, Pestonji retired as an assistant foreman after three decades of diligent service. During his conversation (probably in the 1970s), with PL –as Deshpande was better known in literary circles as – the retired foreman wistfully recollected his work with the railway department, contrasting the colonial period with the post-independence era. PL labelled this, in jest, as the yearning of a generation of older Parsis for the “good old British days,” but his reproduction of Pestonji’s thoughts are telling. “In the railway workshop my white engineer bosses never thought twice before taking off their coats and shirts and getting their hands dirty on engines that needed repairs.

Their wives and daughters insisted on also taking off their dresses and their bras and panties.  

But the engineers nowadays, all these Subramaniams and Joshis and Kulkarnis..

i.e. Brahmins 

I tell you ... They are so scared to get their hands dirty. They have zero practical experience, these silly bespectacled fellows!”

Nehru had zero practical experience when he took power. India paid a corresponding price. Was this because he was a Brahmin and had a dick? No. It was because he was Indian, not a genuine Englishman like Dalrymple.  

It is unlikely that Pestonji was well-versed in radical anti-caste critique,

No. It is unlikely that he didn't understand what people like Ambedkar were saying.  

but his observation about South Asia’s elite caste groups (“Subramaniams,” etc) religiously keeping their distance from manual labour is a historical reality.

Whereas White plantation owners didn't maintain any such distance. It is a canard that they brought in Black slaves to pluck the cotton or cut the sugarcane.  

Equally true is how the elite everywhere write themselves into histories of knowledge to the exclusion of expertise produced by the non-elite.

If the 'non-elite' have some useful 'expertise' they soon rise into the ranks of the elite. Meanwhile, Kiran is doing manual labour by shitting on India at the University of Pennsylvania.  

The historian Patricia Fara contrasts ancient Greece’s “wealthy philosophers who thought profoundly about the Universe,” like Archimedes, with the “far greater number of people from lower social orders” that have largely been forgotten.

Cicero says he was of humble origin. He first rose to prominence for building a war machine. Moh Tzu, the great Chinese utilitarian philosopher, was an artisan by birth.  

Many aspects of knowledge-making and science, Fara says, originated from the latter groups: these were “people who used their expertise to keep themselves alive–miners who developed ore-refining techniques, farmers familiar with weather patterns, textile workers who relied on chemical reactions.”

Not to mention prostitutes spreading their legs. Fara, it is sad to say, was not one of the plebians she pretends to celebrate. 

For South Asia, Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

who is OBC, not Dalit 

distinguishes the privileged caste groups

like his own which exploits the fuck out of Dalits 

from the “productive castes”: “the Dalit–Bahujan masses” who established technologies like “leather processing, pot making, house construction technology and the technologies of food production, based on trial and error in their struggle for survival.”

Kiran is struggling to survive by pretending to care greatly about Dalit-Bahujan masses.  

The knowledge-makers Dalrymple chooses to typify as unknown and forgotten stars of South Asia are not the highly skilled and consistently neglected pot-makers or farmers,

or prostitutes 

but the very ubiquitous Archimedes’ of the subcontinent.

They weren't ubiquitous at all. India then, like India now, possessed few great intellects. 

In The Golden Road, it is Pestonji’s “bespectacled” version of science that predominates,

Kiran wears spectacles. He is not a medical researcher or a Doctor who has to get close to smelly patients. He is a pointless pratt of a Pundit.  His parents must be so proud. 

one where science is primarily a theoretical enterprise carried out by people poring over manuscripts and books with little need for the practical experience of getting one’s hands dirty.

Kiran is getting his hands very dirty extracting volumes of 'Tell me why' from his anus.  

The knowledge-makers Dalrymple chooses to typify as unknown and forgotten stars of South Asia are not the highly skilled and consistently neglected pot-makers or farmers, but the very ubiquitous Archimedes’ of the subcontinent: the Aryabhatas and Brahmaguptas.

Did you know Isaac Newton was an illiterate stone-mason? Einstein was a prostitute who operated a spinning wheel when her hands were not full of dick. That is why both are celebrated in the history of science.  

Considering the kinds of “literature, arts and the sciences” that occupy the bulk of this book, one might well come away believing that it was only Brahmans and adjacent privileged-caste groups who had the ability to conceptualise and create anything of value in South Asia.

No. One would come away with the belief that only smart peeps wholly dedicated to scholarly pursuits achieved great things in their fields. Similarly, when reading about the great mathematicians of our own times, we would understand that though everybody has some mathematical ability, almost all the great achievements made in that field are attributable to professional mathematicians not mechanics. This is a story about specialization on the basis of acquired or comparative advantage. 

To be sure, the kinds of pursuits that Dalrymple writes about, primarily maths and astronomy, are not trivial. However, an overwhelming focus on such a handful of sciences, recorded in some or the other form of writing mostly in Sanskrit, inadvertently ends up dismissing as trivial the numerous other forms of making knowledge and doing science that dotted the premodern South Asian world.

Very true. In my 'Golden Showers in the Gupta Age' I lift the veil on the contribution of Indic prostitutes to the techniques of pissing on people for a profit. Why has my book not found a publisher? Is it because I iz bleck?  

Such implicit bias in favour of “the knowledge of the head over that of the hand” – not that the latter is ever divorced from intellectual analysis – is a persistent problem in how histories of science have conventionally been imagined.

You can have useful 'histories of science' which focus on the discoveries of professional scientists or you could have useless books about prostitutes discovering new ways to piss on punters.  

It is the reason why for a long time women were mostly absent as actors in historical accounts of science and medicine,

because few were professional scientists or doctors.  

despite being skilled frontline healers and nurturing a tremendous repository of medical knowledge.

Agnodice went to Egypt to learn medicine. As a mid-wife she helped many Athenian women. She was acquitted of the charge of seeking to corrupt the morals of young women. This was because she could raise her tunic and show she had a hairy vagina, not a cock and balls.  

It is also the reason why the majority of South Asia’s people and communities – the “lower”-caste and “untouchable” Bahujans and Adivasis – are either a marginalised minority or completely absent in the region’s science histories: including, unfortunately, in The Golden Road.

Why is Kiran absent from the history of science? Is it because he is bleck? No. It is because he is stupid and useless.  

There is one tantalising moment when Dalrymple acknowledges what he considers the overwhelming visibility of Brahmans among the subcontinent’s immigrants to Southeast Asia, and notes that “many other non-literate Indian caste groups were also present and may have been predominant.” However, this potentially exciting analysis of the “varied diaspora rather than just the boatloads of literate Brahmins” is only a page long, based mostly on a DNA-based study.

Why does the history of the British in India concentrate on upper middle class folk and aristocrats rather than illiterate Irishmen like the 'Raja from Tipperary'? The answer is that their class could follow through, generation after generation, and thus their achievements acquired permanence. There may have been village Hampdens, or Srinivas Ramanujans, but they were not appreciated by their own class and left no legacies.  

More disappointingly, after making such a crucial revelation about the predominance of Bahujan caste groups in the diaspora, Dalrymple jumps right back into the Brahmanosphere: “Whatever their DNA contribution to the region, the Brahmins did bring with them from India three crucial gifts that proved irresistible right across the region: Sanskrit, the art of writing and the stories of the great Indian epics.”

There is no way of telling 'Brahmin' genes from those of 'Shramans'.  

That Sanskrit was a language only of the elites with its exclusivity strictly enforced,

unless you could pay a little money or threaten a Pundit or Monk or simply enslave the fellow and take him away with you 

and that the epics of Mahabharata and Ramayana prescribed violent actions in order to protect and pursue a caste-based social order, are contexts within South Asia that remain unexamined..

Many Indians eagerly emigrated to Jim Crow America precisely because 'violent action' had been taken against the indigenous people and slave population with the result that 'Boston Brahmins' had lots of money and the leisure with which to pursue STEM subject research.  

But these contexts are indispensable to in The Golden Road’s major themes, because when we account for the fact that the prejudices and oppressive laws of Sanskrit-literate elites were central to how “literature, arts, and the sciences” operated in the subcontinent, then the book’s major bold claim, that “Indian” influence across Asia was spread “not by the sword but by the sheer power of its ideas”, loses much of its sheen.

Kamala Harris and Vivek Ramaswamy have Iyer, that is Brahmin, genes. Even in Amrikaka, we are seeing an obscene type of Brahmin superiority! Trump should kindly take action. Deport those cunts! 

One-way traffic

For decades now,

soi-disant 

scholars have worked hard to lay to rest earlier ways of writing history,

They failed.  Vivek Ramaswamy rapidly gained fame, as he had previously rapidly gained a fortune, by vigorously excoriating the 'woke' Grievance Studies industry. 

wherein one group of people would be portrayed as a docile, passive recipient of some other group’s “superior” ideas and materials.

Nonsense! One group would be portrayed as eager to adopt what was 'best in class', wherever it might be from.  

A pertinent example is the so-called civilising mission of European colonists: both colonisers and sympathetic Euro-American scholars loved to proclaim that colonised Asian and African people were grateful recipients of Western science, medicine, democracy and so on.

Not RFK Jr. He isn't grateful at all for vaccinations and scientifically tested medicines.  I don't suppose he is a great fan of Democrats either. Kiran must be thrilled with his new Massa. 

Thankfully, over time, more rigorous scholars have painstakingly worked to show that entities like “Western science” are less Western or European and more global in character.

Only because Europe is part of the globe.  

They have taught us that a fuller historical picture of interactions between different cultures can be grasped not through a one-way transfer or “diffusion” framework, but only when we carefully “peel apart the onion layers of resistance, accommodation, participation, and appropriation” engaged in by the involved parties.

Why bother? It is obvious that shithole countries produce shitheads like Kiran. But they may also produce people keen to get ahead through 'Tardean mimetics'- i.e. imitating and then seeking to out-do the 'best in class'.  

Even though Dalrymple on occasion alludes to the presence of multi-way exchanges, even disinterest in some South Asian ideas, the evidence is eventually left out of his main thesis of Indocentrism.

The guy is writing a middle-brow book for a mass market. Kiran writes shit for fellow shitheads.  

The Golden Road, unfortunately, bypasses these decades-old trends in historical analysis.

Those were the decades when such analysis turned to shit and turned into a branch of Grievance Studies. 

Did you know that prostitutes in St. Petersburg whose labour produced the golden showers enjoyed by Trump have, even to this very date, not been identified and rewarded with Nobel and other such prizes? How is that fair?  

It throws light on earlier major blindspots in how South Asian history is generally imagined across the world,

it is easily enough imagined. The place turned to shit once the Muslims overran it. That's what happened to Byzantium and the Balkans.  

but it also itself overlooks a large amount of relevant historical evidence and argumentation that’s been around for decades.

There is no evidence. Shitting into your cupped hands and flinging your faeces about isn't 'argumentation' even if it gets you intellectual affirmative action.  

The glowing Eurocentric accounts of past historians are replaced in this book by a modest but nevertheless definitive Indocentrism: “India […] set the template for the way much of the world would think and express itself, and would significantly alter the trajectory of the history of a great swathe of mankind. For more than a thousand years it was a garden that issued the seeds that, once planted elsewhere, flowered in new, rich and unexpected ways.”

Stuff like Zen Buddhism or the seminar system which originates in German Indology.  

There are few layers of nuance in the book’s luscious servings of arguments, particularly when it comes to interactions of South Asians with people from Southeast Asia and the Arabic world. Even though Dalrymple on occasion alludes to the presence of multi-way exchanges, even disinterest in some South Asian ideas, the evidence is eventually left out of his main thesis of Indocentrism. He notes that casteism and “ideas of ritual impurity and elaborate bans on eating with members of different castes” were rejected by the communities in Southeast Asia, and specifically in Cambodia, women remained owners and disposers of property, “something from which the wider Indian Brahmanical tradition excluded them.”

Women were owners and disposers of property in Brahminical India. That's how come Lord Buddha and Lord Mahavira could receive rich gifts from women- including gifts of land.  

But these ideas are not followed through, and The Golden Road remains largely about a one-way traffic of ideas and materials out of “India”.

Also it is written in English. Why not Telugu? Also, how come the author has a dick? Did you know that dicks cause RAPE? They should be banned immediately.  

Standing on the shoulders of others while offering them one

is wrong. You should shit on everything.  

If we take the Indocentrism with a fistful of salt, The Golden Road is a great, eminently readable book. My hope is that it will be the last of the great books in its genre.

Our hope is Kiran dies by gorging himself on his own shit.  Only thus can Grievance Studies articulate its protest against honkys with dicks who write great books. 

Irfan Habib & why Marxist historiography is shite.

How utterly ignorant of history does an Indian historian need to be? Judging by the case of Irfan Habib- very fucking ignorant indeed. In particular, the Indian historian needs to be incapable of understanding any and every economic phenomena or commercial process. This is why they are attracted to Marxism. The fact is for productivity to rise, classes have to cooperate. Class struggle is a recipe for stagnation if not conquest and subjugation.

Habib writes-

FOR all students of modern Indian history, the colonialization of the Indian economy under British rule must remain a theme of overriding importance.

Territory is colonized. The economy is not. Habib is saying that what is of overriding importance to his ilk is something which simply can't happen.  On the other hand, merchants based in City States were financing colonial projects three thousand years ago. Habib may have heard of the Phoenicians. However, it was the Venetians who pioneered modern capitalism and its Stato da Mar.

Some places- e.g. sugar growing Caribbean islands to which slaves were brought- may be said to have a colonial or extractive economy. However, India, by and large, does not fit that picture though one might point to tea plantations in Assam or indigo grown in Bihar. But these developments occurred after paramountcy was established. It did not motivate it. 

Here was the first,

not the first. The cash strapped Portuguese Crown had started selling its monopoly on the India trade to private parties on an annual basis from 1578 onward. Previously, free trade had been attempted but Portuguese investors were not enthuse. Later, the Portuguese tried to set up a East India Company on the model of that of the English and the Dutch. This too failed. My point is that what was happening had to do with English people being English, not Portuguese. The outcome would have been the same if the India trade had remained a Crown monopoly.  

the classic capitalist power

A classic capitalist power depends entirely on capital markets not on the whims of the Crown.  

creating, and transforming, the largest colony in the world.

Because the English were English, not because they were Capitalist. Holland was ahead in that respect. England prevailed because the English were less horny and prone to drunkenness. 

Marx was greatly interested in this phenomenon, and called attention to the roles of India as a source of primary accumulation of capital and as a market for the industries of the colonizing power.

Marx had shit for brains. He didn't get that the reason he and Engels were living in England was because the English were just better people than the Germans. Still, it is a fact that people whose profession it is to hate Capitalism prefer to do their hating in Capitalist countries.  

He studied, too, the destructive and the regenerative effects of British rule upon the Indian economy.

He read about it. To study it, he'd have had to go to India. Also he would have needed to understand how making money works. 

Since then, and especially since R C Dutt's splendid two volumes of Economic Hisfory at the beginning of the century, much has been written on the subject.

Rubbish has been written. Economics is about productivity. English administrators, judges, merchants, soldiers but most particularly their sailors, were highly productive. Indian princes couldn't be very productive because their brothers or nephews kept trying to stab them and also harems don't fuck themselves. 

Still, it must be said, the Indians did a great job making England's rule in India far less mutually profitable than was possible.  

Monographs on the various regions and on individual aspects of economy and administration during the period have naturally multiplied.

Because stupid people need to produce stupid shite to teach yet more stupid people.  

There is, indeed, now a danger that the major strands may be overshadowed by the minutiae that detailed research always turns up.

The major strand involves looking at why the Brits were more productive than their Indian counterparts. This meant that a district administered by a Brit yielded far less profit to him than an equally well administered district under native rule. This is because other Brits (and natives) weren't trying to kill the ICS officer or to steal the gold he had hoarded through all manners of extortion. Less risk and better cooperation and esprit de corps translates into higher productivity.  

A recent debate did much to focus interest back on some of the important issues of the main theme; and this paper is written with the same intention. An attempt is here made to offer (or, mostly, restate) a number of propositions about the process of colonialization of the Indian economy from 1757 to about 1900.

There was a process of establishing rule over the sub-continent. There was no 'colonization of the economy' or the bodies and minds of Indian people. On the other hand, it is true that Viceroy Sahib was personally involved in the incessant sodomization of the Indian peasants and workers. 

The primary method of' surplus-extraction throughout India had come to be the levy of land revenue on behalf of or, in. the name of, the Sovereign Ruler.

This was the primary method of paying for defence, law & order, and other such local public goods in all territory that had a government. 

This institution had come about not by "immemorial usage",

yes it had in every territory which had a government. How else does Habib think magistrates and militias were paid for?  

as British administrators were inclined to think, but as the result of a historical process which can be studied and which would appear to belie the theory of unchangeableness of pre-colonial societies.

in other words, it belies Marxist stupidity. The plain fact is Governance is costly. It uses up scarce resources. The territory must provide those resources unless it has strategic value or the ruler is stupid.  

Whatever its origins, it was now a cardinal principle of the Indian agrarian system, that land revenue should embrace the bulk of the surplus above the peasant's needs of subsistence.

No. This 'cardinal principle' exists only in this nutter's head. The plain fact is the peasant's standard of living depended on his productivity. At the margin this was below subsistence which is why there was exit- i.e. some peasants starved or quit being peasants. However, for Malthusian reasons the supply of labour tended to increase if Governance wasn't utterly shit. 

Pre-colonial Economy The way in which the claims to land revenue were assigned, that is, how this share of the surplus was distributed among members of the ruling class (by way of jagir as in the Mughal Empire) defined the basic elements of polity.

No. It was possible to extract revenue from some expanses of land. In others it was impossible. Much depended on who was doing the extraction and what they offered in exchange. Habib lives in a fairy tale word where some feudal bastard adopts a 'cardinal principle' such that the peasants are reduced to bare subsistence because they are too fucking stupid to run away. Then come the Capitalist and the peasants are sodomized incessantly by Viceroy Sahib as they perish miserably of hunger.  

Upon the expenditure of this vast surplus by the ruling class was based the urban economy of pre-colonial India, with its large craft production, large volume of long-distance trade and a considerable development of commercial capital.

Nope. India exported hand loom textiles. That's what made it worthwhile for Persian poet/administrators and Afghan soldiers of fortune, and then Armenian and European merchants to turn up. Some made their money and returned home. However, for Persians, Uzbegs, Afghans etc. home may not have been worth returning to. For the English, however, it was eminently so.  

Subordinate to the land revenue, and nominally forming a part of it, was a share in the surplus that went to a heterogeneous hereditary or semi-hereditary class of superior-right-holders over the land, to whom the Mughal clerks gave the convenient designation, zamindars.

Zamindars existed even where there were no Mughal clerks. If a magnate paid tribute and could be replaced relatively cheaply, he was to a lesser or greater extent a tax-farmer. If not, he was a Sovereign. This had been the case since time immemorial. 

Their nominal share varied from one-tenth of the land revenue in northern India and Bengal to one-fourth in Gujarat.

Some land was taxed. Some wasn't. Speaking generally, the writ of law ran to a greater extent in the former but not the latter territory. Habib thinks 'cardinal principles' can make a territory homogenous. But economics doesn't work that way.  

It might actually have amounted to more than these shares, but the recorded sale prices of zamindari rights suggest that the income expected from them was always very small compared to the land revenue paid on the same land.

Tax farmers take a commission. The real money was in the additional cesses (adwabs) they levied. This could lead them to sponsor and protect cottage industries, long distance trade, banking and other activities. But this was the case everywhere in the world. Food surpluses are fed to livestock and artisans who produce high vale to weight products which in turn make long distance trade profitable. Habib has no understanding of economic history. That's why he was a Marxist. 

One should remind oneself that cash nexus (payment of land revenue in cash by peasants) was quite general in India;

where there was a class of arbitrageurs- sure. But if they ran away or if trade routes were disrupted, people went back to barter or, in the villages, a traditional division of the harvest. Incidentally, the guys who do the harvesting, even now, get one ninth of the produce. There were similar deductions for other groups who provided essential services. Thus to say 'the Ruler took half the produce' is misleading. Moreover, there were good years and bad years. What was important was that the food surplus was turned into high value to weight commodities or finished goods. Economic decline was associated with falling productivity and innovation in this area. This could create a negative feedback loop whereby the opportunity cost of agricultural labour fell with the result that there was increased involution and thus, on average, stagnant or declining productivity.  

and that sales of zamindari; were quite common. 

Why? Precisely because of 'value discrepancy'- i.e. some other guy can get more out of the place by encouraging a particular local industry. That's why the EIC bought zamindaris when they first came to Bengal. Habib, being a Marxist, doesn't understand that in econ, only productivity matters and that productivity depends on working with trustworthy, efficient, people rather than worrying about who is going to stab you before your son or nephew manages to do so.  

Habib goes on to describe land tenure in India. He doesn't get that it wasn't that different from what obtained in Europe. There, as in India, the agriculture sector represented a constraint rather than a driver of growth. Manufacturing and Services (e.g. going in a ship to India and administering a District there) were what mattered. But there were economies of scope and scale and 'endogenous' factors to do with technological innovation and 'external economies' or 'network effects' with respect to which e the Indians, by and large, were bound to fall behind. On the other hand, they could get behind any totally crazy economic ideology- Gandhi-giri, Marxism, etc. 

This was the kind of economy

i.e. agrarian.  Did you know Brits came to India because they wanted to eat mangoes and coconuts? It wasn't the case that having the monopoly on bringing in Indian textiles, spices, etc. into England (a rich country) wasn't highly lucrative. 

of which the English became masters in Bengal and southern India during the decade and a half following the middle of the eighteenth century. They stepped into the shoes of the sovereign power by virtue of

beating the fuck out of Indian armies because they tended to be shit. 

acquisition of diwani (i.e. right to collect tax) in Bengal

the soon had to take over 'nizami' (administration) because Indians were shit at it.  

and jagirs in the Northern Circars and elsewhere. The legal forms which concealed these conquests

did you know that Governor General used to conceal his white skin and red whiskers behind a firman or the Emperor? Still, Habib is making a good point. When bailiffs appear and kick you out of your house they conceal what they are doing under the 'legal form' of a 'repossession order'. That's why a lot of homeless dudes don't know they are sleeping in the street. They think they are sleeping in their beds back in the house they own. I tell you these capitalists are very cunning! They are concealing the fact that they have lots of money by using the legal form of owning lots of property and having plenty of money in the bank. 

are not material except in so far as they provided rationalization for the main acquisition, the power to levy and collect land revenue and other taxes.

The Brits saw they could provide a better service for a cheaper price which is why it was worth spending some money acquiring particular territories. But this is what smart peeps do when they buy any type of property. I suppose what Habib means is 'the Brits said they came to rule over India because they wanted to wipe the bum of every Indian and to give them lots of cuddles, kisses and chocolates.' Kali Marx showed this was all a lie! The fuckers wanted to do well economically! Human beings should not have any such desire. They should protest against Scarcity till it takes the hint and fucks off. Then everybody will be rich.  

The East India Company, which obtained this power, was controlled by the great merchant-capitalists of the City of London.

When they started off, they weren't so great. There were plenty of richer merchants in India and China. But, they could do even better by working with the Brits though, since the Brits were just better at everything, obviously the fell behind in relative terms.  

These merchants had so far conducted a trade, based on the import of Indian piecegoods (muslin, calico, chintz), silk, indigo and spices, that was financed mainly by the export of treasure.

Gained from other types of overseas trade.  

Now, suddenly, they found in their conquests the ultimate bliss that every merchant dreams of: to be able to buy without having to pay, and yet be able to sell at the full price.

Indians started giving them stuff for free. It wasn't true that EIC had to provide those Indians with defence, law & order and so forth. Also, when the agent of the Company bought grain or horses or whatever and handed over some cash to an Indian, he hit the Indian dude on the head and stole back that money. My question is, why did John Company not sodomize the Indian while robbing him? Were they homophobic? 

Perhaps Habib thought that the Indian peasant handed over half their harvest to John Company who then took it to Engyland and sold it for the full price. Probably because Mughals changed their 'cardinal principle' to 'be utterly shit'. If only the Dalits had made it their cardinal principle to get Europe to send them lots of 'treasure', Dalits would have become very rich.  

This could be achieved by treating the entire revenues of the country as gross profits.

No it couldn't. John Company employed guys who were good at accountancy. They did not employ retarded Marxist nutters. Gross profit means Total Revenue minus total cost. Net profit has to take into account depreciation etc.  

From these the expenses necessary for maintaining government and army, and law and order-the costs of maintenance of the existing system of exploitation- had to be deducted in order to yield the net profits.

Which, as a percentage wasn't very much but, overall, this tended to fall relative to what it had been. Why? Risk fell because the Whites weren't constantly knifing each other or fucking vast harems of women. They were more productive. That's why India retained the British system of administration, justice, politics etc. Sadly, they tend to be much worse than what you find in England. 

These could, in turn, be invested for the purchase of Indian comnrodities, the so called 'investments'.

The Brits provided services to the Indians and got paid for it. They bought stuff with that money and sent that stuff to some other market where it could be sold more profitably. Rather than return with an empty ship, they would buy stuff from that place and sell it somewhere else. That's how trading companies work. Since the Brits were great sailors, a lot of the trade was carried in British ships. This also meant that British shipping brokers and insurers and merchant banks got a piece of the pie.  

The purchase of these colmmodities in conditions where the buyer had a monopoly and their sale in markets through-out, the world, further enlarged the profits before the 'tribute'--a word freely in use for it at the time-was finally received in England.

India, China, etc. had a system of tribute long before England itself had any such thing. But the Brits didn't have the monopsony (i.e. single buyer) on any commodity produced in India. Even with opium, the Princely States competed with the directly controlled opium growing districts. 

The revenues from the conquests dwarfed the amounts of bullion that had once financed English trade; and, accordingly, the exports of Indian commnodities underwent an enormous increase.

In other words, the Brits didn't loot India. They boosted its economic growth by finding lucrative export markets for its produce. Sadly, most Indians didn't want to become more productive. Some did- e.g. the Parsis or, initially, some of the Bengali bhadralok. They did very well indeed.  

British imports originating in 'East India' increased from -f 1.5 million ir 1750-51 to f 5.8 million in 1797-98, fromn 12 per cent of total British imports to 24 per cent. In contrast, the British exports to East India rose only from 6.4 per cent to 9 per cent of total British exports. 

But its exports of 'invisibles' increased. Providing governance to a foreign country is an 'invisible' export. The question is why Indians were so utterly shitty that a bunch of foreigners from a distant land proved to be superior rulers. The answer has to do with productivity. Worrying your son might knife you or feeling exhausted after fucking a large harem tends to reduce productivity.  

Unlike the later impcrialists, fighting for markets in the colonies,

A Marxist fairy-tale. Who the fuck wants an 'export market' in shithole countries where folk have scarcely a couple of cowrie shells to rub together? The fact is you can export stuff easily enough if you provide easy credit. The problem is collecting the debt.  

these pre-industrial conquerors were hunting for colonial commodities, which had the whole world as their market.

Nope. These guys were traders. They found they could run certain territories profitably. But they also had to hang on to some unprofitable territory for strategic reasons. Don't forget, the first 'World War' was between the English and the French in the eighteenth century. Capturing an island or a port on the Pacific or Indian Ocean could make a difference to the eventual outcome. 

Turning to the topic of Habib's own research, we find a fundamental error. Habib does not understand that all land-owners in England, America, etc. have to pay a property tax. Moreover, there may be restrictions on how much they may raise rents though, if they take over cultivation, this may not restrict their ability to raise their profits by investing in their property

Permanent Settlemlent, 1793 The source of the conquerors' profits, however, lay not in commerce, but in land revenue.

There was booty. There was loot. And there was also a profit on tax farming (Diwani) though this necessitated taking over the administration (Nizami) because the Indian administrators were shit. This was a profit on the supply of a service- viz. governance- but the Company did not become Sovereign. It remained a subject of the British King while also pretending to be an agent of the soi disant Mughal Emperor.  

Maximization of land revenue was necessary for the maximization of profits.

No. Maximizing land revenue would have cost too much. There are diminishing returns to extorting money out of the peasants and artisans and so forth. This is one reason many Indian ruled states were poorer and more horrible than the British administered areas.  

It was this that led to the unrelenting pressure upon the zamindars in Bengal and to the system of temporary revenue-farms auctioned to the highest bidders.

It was the opposite. Profit maximization means not maximizing land revenue. Moreover, profits have to be sustainable to have a capital value. John Company was not a profit or revenue maximiser. It was a satisficer seeking Capital Gains by increasing sustainability of revenue streams. It was by no means perfect but it was better than any rival. But a lot of this had to do with the Brits simply being better and thus more productive than others.  

The actual collection of revenue from the 'diwani lands' in Bengal was pushed up from Rs 64.5 lakhs in 1762-3, under the Nizamat, to Rs 147.0 lakhs in 1765-6, the first year of the Company's diwani' .

Diwani was taken in 1765, Tax was raised to squeeze out the less efficient intermediaries. This meant the state would be stronger. People need no longer fear Maratha raids or the depredations of the Sanyassis. Habib does not understand that if the Government has more money it can defend its territory and thus people are more secure. They need only pay the Government not the Government and the Bandit and the Invader. Still, Diwani wasn't enough. The Brits needed to take over the Nizamat (administration) because the Indians were stupid, corrupt, lazy and so utterly shit they slit their own throats repeatedly.  

And, according to another set of figures, the revenues of Bengal increased from Rs 2.26 crores, in 1765-6 to Rs 3.7 crores in 1778-9. 

Which is why Bengal ceased to be preyed upon. Naturally, Bengalis resented this. They are still very angry with Churchill for refusing to let Japan conquer their province.  

Such was the pressure that a famine which in 1769-70 carried off a third, of the cultivators of Bengal, caused no decline in revenue assessments.

Why the fuck would a famine cause revenue to fall? It would only be in subsequent years that real wages would rise and rents and profits would get squeezed.  

This tremendous pressure upon revenuepayers, peasants as well as zamindars, could not but create a crisis in Bengal; and it is this crisis that forms the background to the controversy among the English administrators, preceding the Permanent Settlement.

If the Brits had been lazy cunts, they'd have kept the Indian administration and gradually become as corrupt as the people they lived amongst. Indeed, this was the allegation guys like Burke and Sheridan were making back in Blighty. 

One group, represented by James Grant. argued that the land revenue could yet be considerably increased.20 The other, of which Cornwallis became the spokesman, saw that the terrifying results of the tribute so far extorted left no alternative, but to offer a compromise to the zamindars, whereby the Company might be protected against ta fall in its revenues, by resigning claims to any increase in land revenue beyond a figure now to be finally settled.

A.O Hume, the guy who set up the INC, understood that the Permanent Settlement had to go and taxes had to increase for Bengal to rise or, indeed, maintain its relative position. He thought English speaking Indians would be smart enough to understand this. Boy, was he wrong! What Indians like is corrupt dynasts with shit for brains.  

Still the Permanent Settlement created a class of loyal Hindu landlords. Ram Mohan Roy and Dwarkanath Tagore spent their own money to set up newspapers and to visit England to lobby for unrestricted European migration to India and an expansionary policy. Why? They knew only Whitey could protect them from the dagger of the Muslims. As for the Hindus or Sunnis of Awadh, they weren't too thrilled that the Nawab kept sending vast sums to Kerbala and Najaf. The plain fact is, the Brits wanted to expand the economy not waste money on their harem or getting into Heaven. This meant they had an incentive to provide good governance. Suddenly, India was off limits for invaders from across the Hindu Kush. By and by, the Pindari and the Thug and the endless wars of Princes came to an end. True, Indians still didn't want to do smart things. Still, and increasing number of them enjoyed a previously unexampled freedom of religion and security of person and property. Suddenly, stabbing your daddy or your uncle wasn't the usual method of inheriting property. John Company brought the steam powered mill, the railways, the electric telegraph and new cash crops like jute and indigo to India. Some Indians got very rich through commerce. Others rose in the Sciences and the learned professions. Finally, the Brits introduced representative government. Had the Indians not been stupid and lazy, the country could have become self-administering and self-garrisoning by the time India was admitted to the League of Nations. 

There is a theory that rich people only became rich by stealing from the poor. Look at Elon Musk. He has stolen money from every person who owns a Tesla. Some foolish people say that Musk gives them a car in exchange for their money. This is foolish. Did Musk create the atoms and molecules from which his cars are composed? No! It was the poor people who did that! As Kali Maa'rks said 'fart of nice proletarian caused Big Bang. Mind it kindly!' 

Colonial Base for Industrial Revolution At the cost of a short digression, a word on the role of the Indian tribute in the economy of England would not be out of order.

Why did Indian tribute to the Grand Moghul or the Peshwa or whatever not create the base for an industrial revolution? Was it because fart of the Indian proletarian was not causing nice nice Big Bang? I suppose so. Did you know that prior to British conquest of India, Indians were not having asshole? Viceroy's incessant sodomization of all natives caused assholes to appear on Indian anatomy. Only after that could proletarians demand the right to fart from evil IMF Neo-Liberal Washington Consensus. 

Taking the amount of the tribute to be about £4.70 million on the basis of sale prices, we find that it amounted to over 2 per cent of the British national income, estimated at C232 million for 1801."

But Britain had to send a lot of men, and ships and trade goods in order to earn that money. It also had to fight France at different locations across the globe. Meanwhile Indian Princes were fucking their harems or paying crores to get into Heaven while foreigners quietly took over more and more of the country.  

We must remember that the total rate of capital formation in Britain was probably no more than 7 per cent of the national income about this time;44 and this means that, at this crucial stage of the Industrial Revolution, India was furnishing an amount that was almost 30 per cent of the total national saving transformed into capital.

But, by this reckoning, the West Indies were supplying 120 percent of Britain's national saving because their trade with UK was about four times as great. What should be borne in mind is that British people invested money in factories instead of getting a larger harem or sending money to Jerusalem so as to buy a place in Heaven.  

The neglect of this factor in discussions of capital formation in England during this period is surprising.

Unless one knows- as a lot of Brits do- how that capital formation took place. Britain had a lot of high quality coal and found a way to use coal to provide steam power. Its people worked hard and the productivity gap between them and Indians steadily widened. But the 'great divergence' probably dated back to the thirteenth or fourteenth century.  

One would certainly have to assume a complete immobility of capital to suggest that this enormous accession of wealth in the hands of London merchants and nobobs did not directly or indirectly channel or divert capital into industry to any significant degree whatsoever.

Guys who knew about oceanic trade in commodities invested in that. Guys who knew about coal and steam power invested in that. One reason the Brits were doing a lot of investing is that they were kicking the ass of the French. As the Royal Navy's strength grew, the people no longer needed to fear an invasion.  

By 1800, England was on the threshold of completing the conquest of the cotton textile industry by the machine. During the next thirty years the extension of the machine to most other sectors was to be similarly accomplished, culminating in the construction of railways, a sector that was to dominate British economy during the 1830s and 1840s.

Indians played zero role in this. However, one reason Britain industrialized first is because of its pre-eminence in maritime matters. Commodities from all over the globe could be brought to the UK and used to produce high value added goods which could then be sent in the same ships to any part of the world.  

The need for capital not only continued, but increased.

What was increasing yet faster was the appetite of the British saver for shares in commercial enterprises. This is one reason British capital displaced Indian capital in the financing of the expansion of the Raj. But Indian capital could find a profitable outlet in an interior which Pax Britannica had made more secure.  

The annual rate of capital formation as a proportion of national income was maintained at about 7 per cent until 1830, whereafter it accelerated to reach 9 or 10 per cent.

Because of the railway boom. Productivity was rising as never before. As rates of return rise, people save and invest more.  

This capital could not yet entirely be generated by 'capitalist circulation', and needed continuing primary accumulation. As against the rate of 9 per cent of national income for total capital formation reached during 1821-31 to 1831-61, net domestic capital formation accounted for only 7.4 per cent of the national income. This meant that the pressure for tribute could not be relaxed.

If rich people want to get richer by saving and investing more this means the pressure on them to rob poor people increases. Did you know, when you put your money into Tesla shares, you will be under pressure to rob me. But, what is to stop you raping me while you rob me? Indeed, if you are evil enough to rob and rape a person just because that person is poor, you are bound to feel pressurised into decapitating me and shitting down my neck. That's just rude. Shame on you!

One might say, Habib was telling stupid lies for a political purpose. But what was that purpose? 

To sum up, it was during the second half of the nineteenth century that the modern Indian landlord was created and an alliance formed simultaneously between him and imperialism. 

This is nonsense. There was no difference between the earlier and later type of landlord. Moreover, in one third of the territory of India, there were landlords who were indistinguishable from their counterparts in British controlled territory. But, an Indian zamindar who married his daughter to a Nepali landlord would not consider that there was any great difference between them even though the Nepali had no 'allegiance' to 'Imperialism'. 

I suppose, Habib is saying 'boo to landlords! boo to kulaks! They are lickspittles of the King Emperor!' But why bother? Habib was 16 when India became independent. If you are going to tell a stupid lie, why not make it a relevant lie? Why not say 'Indian kulak is Zionist agent. Did you know Disraeli make Queen Victoria the Empress of India. Disraeli was Jewish. He secretly made alliance with the ancestors of all the kulaks you see around you today. Let us jihad their sorry asses!' 

Empires can protect minorities and keep contiguous territories with different religious majorities together. The Moghuls under Akbar and the Brits almost to the very end of their hegemony managed this. Habib does not understand that the end of Imperialism entailed Partition. Land reform could have happened under the Brits and, to some extent, did happen in Bengal after 1937. But it was no panacea. What was important was that productivity rise. 

British Imperialism's 'junior ally' was the Princes and the very big landlords who were not modern at all. Yet Habib writes-

The irreconcilable contradictions that emerged between imperialism and its junior ally, the landlords, on the one hand, and the bulk of the Indian people, including the bourgeoisie, the working class and the peasantry, on the other, laid the seeds of the struggle for national liberation.

The bourgeoisie- e.g. Jamnalal Bajaj or even Motilal Nehru- had sizable land holdings. They had no bone to pick with the zamindars. Nor did the 'industrial proletariat' who no longer had any connection with agriculture. As for 'national liberation', Mangal Pandey wanted it as did various landlords.  

The whole epoch that followed, spanning the first half of this century and ending with the withdrawal of British imperialism and the parting of the ways of the Indian bourgeoisie and the proletariat,

Previously, bourgeoisie was constantly sucking off proletariat. Peasants would get in on the action by sodomizing the bourgeoisie and giving it a reach-around. Sadly, once the Brits left, they became distant from each other.. Still, their wives were pleased.  

constituted the fourth and final stage of colonialism in India.

rule of Nehru dynasty? Habib could have little guessed it would be helmed, twenty years after he wrote this, by the daughter of an Italian Fascist.  

But it would undoubtedly need a revolution in India before the vestiges and survivals of colonialization are altogether removed.

Indira Gandhi showed that the State her dad inherited could slaughter Commies with vim and vigour. It could take a tougher line on Gandhians. When she returned to power, Buta Singh put the boot into the Gandhi Peace Foundation. Habib, who is still alive, learned nothing and forgot nothing. I suppose he is now cheering Chandrachud for restoring the minority status of his beloved Aligarh Muslim University. Nice guy, but maybe he'd have been less useless if he had understood that 'tijarat', commerce, is the foundation of 'imarat', that which it is worth building up. Prophet Muhammad was himself a merchant and Islam promoted commercial activity and economic development. It raised productivity. Marxism didn't. It created famine and lowered the material standard of living of the industrial proletariat. That was the history, this silly man should have learned. 

The moral status of Lori Gruen & marrying goats

The moral status of a living, inanimate, or wholly imaginary thing is merely a matter of ipse dixit assertion or stipulation made for a particular purpose. It is important because it gives an indication of how a class of objects is likely to be treated by those who make or who are bound by the assertion. 

Thus, the puppy is punished when it is bad just as Daddy is punished if he snatches and tries to eat the last of the chocolate eclairs. But imaginary or incompossible things- e.g. vampires (unless they have a soul because of a Gypsy's curse)- may have a moral status for a particular purpose. The 'intension' of 'moral status' has a well defined 'extension' for that particular purpose though, no doubt, the purpose can change, or the knowledge base can change, and so the extension changes as well. Thus, for Buffy, Vampires are bad. She must slay them. The exception is Angel, the vampire with a soul, because he isn't really a vampire. But, once Spike gets 'chipped' and can no longer attack humans, he can become one of the good guys if he serves the purposes of the Scoobies. 

We understand all this by the time we are old enough to read Harry Potter or watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 

Lori Gruen, by employing cascading intensional fallacies, can write utter shite by ignoring this 'common knowledge' of ours

This is from her article in the Stanford Encylopaedia

The Moral Status of Animals
First published Tue Jul 1, 2003; substantive revision Mon Aug 12, 2024


Is there something distinctive about humanity that justifies the idea that humans have moral status while non-humans do not?

No. We say- 'this wine is bad. Pour it away' or 'this computer is fucking evil, mate. I'm going to take a fucking hammer to it.' If the boss makes a remark of this sort, you are careful to never buy bad wine or evil computers. Only a bad human would do so. You want to be a good human.  

Providing an answer to this question has become increasingly important among philosophers as well as those outside of philosophy who are interested in our treatment of non-human animals.

The answer is obvious. If I dislike something and want others to dislike it, I seek to give it an 'intersubjective' moral status as 'bad' or 'uncool' or the fucking moral equivalent of Hitler's genocide or Israel's treatment of cuddly terrorists from Hamas.  

For some, answering this question will enable us to better understand the nature of human beings and the proper scope of our moral obligations.

Human beings don't need a better understanding of this sort just as cats don't need to better understand what it is to be a cat. Chairs, on the other hand, would benefit from Doctoral research programs into why the Chair of the Department is so utterly shite.  

Some argue that there is an answer that can distinguish humans from the rest of the natural world.

Those who do so find it difficult to distinguish between their Mummy and a marmot. Clearly, we must provide such feeble minded people with safe spaces on Ivy League campuses where they can speculate on why it was that Karl Marx failed to distinguish between Mums and marmosets- unless, he actually did so and a properly Lacanian reading of the Grundrisse can clarify our reception of Marsupial Third Wave Feminism which, as Vagina Dentata Choothopadhyaya has noted, throws the Barbie to the Shrimp God. It is a direct consequence of epistemic failure in this regard that so many honky ho-bags voted for Trump instead of Kamala. 

Many of those who accept this answer are interested in justifying certain human practices towards non-humans—practices that cause pain, discomfort, suffering, and death.

They could be equally interested in justifying certain human practices to rocks, trees, planets, stars as well as imaginary or incompossible objects like flying unicorns.

The fact that many people are mad and prone to eat their own shit doesn't mean that Universities should grant tenure to cretins who 'justify' these practices. 

It is not the case that philosophy has a 'moral status' as something good or bad. It is merely stupid and useless. 

The fact is, it is utility itself which makes it useful to attribute 'moral status' to a class of objects. It is useful to say there is 'good' mathematics and 'bad' mathematics. But Philosophy is merely stupid and useless. 

This latter group

who have shit for brains because they think 'justifying' stuff matters in any context other than a court of justice or that of a protocol based enterprise or institution. But even then, the thing depends on the incentive matrix which itself arises out of utilitarian mechanism design. It is mere sophistry- i.e. rhetoric- to speak of a thing as indefeasible when it is eminently so. You may as well believe in claims that hookers will love you long time. 

expects that in answering the question in a particular way, humans will be justified

to whom? God? It is said that 12 just men- the lamed wufnik- justify the continued existence of Humanity to Jehovah. But they don't know each other or, indeed, what their own role is.  

in granting moral consideration to other humans that is neither required nor justified when considering non-human animals.

If these boring shitheads granted any moral consideration to us, they'd fucking kill themselves. The plain fact is, you don't need University Departments to indoctrinate crazy nuisances. They arise spontaneously. The plain fact is it is immoral to eat anything other than your own shit. Even rock salt has feelings. How would you like it if you were ground up and then used to coat the rim of a Margarita glass? 

In contrast to this view, an increasing number of philosophers have argued that while humans are different in a variety of ways from each other and other animals, these differences do not provide a philosophical defense for denying non-human animals moral consideration.

Why is Zelensky not providing a philosophical defence for his country? Why is he using guns and bullets to expel the invader and recover Ukrainian territory? 

What the basis of moral consideration is and what it amounts to has been the source of much disagreement.

Amongst morons. The plain fact is that you can show great deference and respect to your chair or to a cockroach or to anything else. There can be umpteen philosophical or theological or aesthetic defences for doing so. But you may still be as mad as a hatter.  

1. The Moral Considerability of Animals

To say that a being deserves moral consideration is to say

anything at all depending on the context and the intention of the speaker. Thus when somebody asks me to return money I borrowed from them, I say 'all beings- more particularly such flamingos as may be found at Lake Nakuru and which evince a desire to enter Punjabi politics as members of the Aaam Admi Party- deserve not just our moral consideration but also the donation of a crate of Jameson being delivered to me as a matter of urgency.' This statement of mine done not mean

that there is a moral claim that this being can make on those who can recognize such claims.

On the contrary, it only means that claims- even in law- may be utterly silly and inconsequential and yet stir up shitheads to furious debate.  

A morally considerable being is a being who can be wronged.

I like my chair. It has served me faithfully, these many years. I feel it is wronged when you sit on it- you big fatty, you.  

It is often thought that because only humans can recognize moral claims, it is only humans who are morally considerable.

Babies and lunatics are 'morally considerable'. But so are our dogs and cats and cattle and certain chattels- like my favourite chair.  

However, when we ask why we think human animals are the only types of beings that can be morally wronged,

we don't think any such thing. I can't morally wrong Mother Theresa even if I call her a whore or rape or kill her. No act of mine can touch her. You may say, 'The Pope could have morally wronged her by falsely accusing her of disobedience or lack of chastity.' But, this is not actually the case. The Pope would have done wrong but he lacked the capacity to morally or otherwise wrong Mother Theresa. Even if I believed that Christianity is a false religion and that the True God has consigned her to the depths of Hell, I can't say she has been wronged. All I can say is that I think the outcome unfair.

we begin to see that the class of beings able to recognize moral claims and the class of beings who can suffer moral wrongs are not co-extensive. A variety of types of morally relevant factors have been invoked to to justify who is morally considerable.

Which is like deciding who is worthy of being included in the telephone directory. The plain fact is I can get a phone for my cat or my chair and then they will have to be included in the directory. 

1.1 Speciesism

The view that only humans should be morally considered is sometimes referred to as “speciesism”.

Whereas the view that only chairs should be morally considered is sometimes referred to as equally stupid.  

In the 1970s, Richard Ryder coined this term while campaigning in Oxford to denote a ubiquitous type of human centered prejudice, which he thought was similar to racism.

Why does my cat not have the vote? It it coz it iz bleck?  

He objected to favoring one’s own species, while exploiting or harming members of other species.

He was harming or exploiting his students. They belonged to his own species.  

Peter Singer popularized the term and focused on the way speciesism, without moral justification, favors the interests of humans:

Speciesm, like other types of stupidity, can only harm humans, not cats or chairs.  

'the racist violates the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of his own race,

That's not a racist. That's just kin selective altruism. A racist thinks guys belonging to another race are inferior or that they can be safely attacked or exploited.  

when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race.

So, Nelson Mandela was a racist because the interests of his race clashed with that of the Whites in South Africa.  

Similarly the speciesist allows the interests of his own species to override the greater interests of members of other species. The pattern is the same in each case. (Singer 1974: 108)

No. The racist may not do shit for his own race , or indeed, he may actively harm it, while holding it to be superior to another race. He may have no opinion about whose interests override those of others. Indeed, few of us do. There is no point to such an exercise. 

The fact is, my interests override those of everybody else's for me. I may pretend that I greatly care about others but this is mere pretence. 

Discrimination based on race, like discrimination based on species is thought to be prejudicial, because these are not factors that matter when it comes to making moral claims.

Yes they are. Kamala Harris certainly made such claims on behalf of coloured peeps- more particularly those who have to sit down to pee. Similarly, when your typical Indian leftie says 'the dogs of the rich are fed delicious morsels of meat while us workers and peasants can't even afford daal.' Racist and Speciesist claims are common on the Left. Yet, the fact is, we think our cow or our cat is more important that some guy who wants to eat them. There is an 'uncorrelated asymmetry' which dictates a bourgeois strategy such that we protect what is our own or closer to us in 'oikeiosis' or better serves our interests. As Maynard Smith showed, bourgeois strategies are eusocial. Talking virtue signalling bollocks is useless.  

Speciesist actions and attitudes are prejudicial because there is no prima facie reason for preferring the interests of beings belonging to the species group to which one also belongs over the interests of those who don’t.

Only in the sense that there is no reason to wipe your own arse rather than go around wiping the arses of everybody else.  

That humans are considered to be members of the species Homo sapiens — humans share a genetic make-up and a distinctive physiology, we all emerge from a human pregnancy — is unimportant from the moral point of view.

Only if that point of view thinks it immoral that people don't wipe other people's arses while being scrupulous in so doing when it comes to their own arse or that of their baby.  

Species membership is morally irrelevant, a bit of luck that is no more morally interesting than being born in Malaysia or Canada.

Or the fact that your arse is attached to your body and, if you don't wipe it, will smell like shit and soil your underwear. The plain fact is, morality- notions of good and bad, virtue and vice- have evolved to serve a useful purpose- e.g. inculcating good habits, like keeping your bum clean rather than stinking up the place wherever you go.  

It thus cannot serve as the basis for a view that holds that our species deserves moral consideration that is not owed to members of other species.

Peter Singer wipes his own bum. Why does he not wipe the bum of various wallabies? Is it coz he is a Speciesist?  

As Oscar Horta (2022) and others have noted, speciesism is not only an individual attitude that some humans hold, but is a “collective phenomenon” that springs from ideological commitments that are generated within and shape institutions and social structures.

Ideological commitments are what prevents Horta from coming to wipe my bum, though he wipes his own bum and, no doubt, those of various Spanish burros.  

Since membership in a species category is largely socially determined,

Very true. Did you know that Queen Victoria elevated a giraffe to the House of Lords? True, the giraffe had previously been received in the best social circles, still, it did raise eyebrows at that time because the giraffe looked a bit Jewy. 

analyzing the meanings of category membership can help illuminate further problems with speciesism.

Nothing can illuminate the dung-heap that is the mind of these shitheads. 

The social meanings of categories structure not only the institutions we operate within but also how we conceptualize ourselves and our world.

No one knows the 'social meaning' of anything though, no doubt, they can ascribe one to whatever they like. Is the institution of marriage one which creates a Heaven, or a Hell, on Earth? Different people may have a different view, or the same people may have different views at various times.  

Humans have developed moral systems as well as a wide range of other valuable practices, and by creating these systems, we separate the human from the rest of the animal kingdom.

Very true. Our species developed moral systems and then decided it was moral to eat omelettes. This caused us to condemn hens to laying eggs. Why were they not permitted to pursue careers in Actuarial Science instead? The answer, obviously, has to do with Neo-Liberalism.  

But the category “human” itself is morally contested.

only in the sense that the practice of eating your own shit is morally contested.  

Some argue, for example, that racism is not simply, or even primarily about discrimination and prejudice, but rather a mechanism of dehumanizing blackness so as to provide the conditions that make humans white (see Fanon 1967; Jackson 2020; Kim 2015; Ko & Ko 2017).

Fanon was a soldier in the Second World War. He very well knew that White Jews had been more thoroughly 'dehumanized' by Vichy nutters than those of African heritage. Admittedly, this was because there was a notion that us darkies like plucking cotton or cutting cane in return for some nice bananas or watermelons. 

According to this line of thought, speciesism isn’t focused on discrimination or prejudice but is a central tool for creating human (and white) supremacy or exceptionalism.

Which is why, if you don't want to be thought of as a Nazi, you should marry a goat.  

Why 'reflective equilibrium' is mere magical thinking

Justice is about justiciability which is restricted and generally protocol bound. Where this is the case, there is an 'interpretation' of existing principles or rules. Interpretations are epistemic and change as the knowledge base changes. Moreover, because of impredicativity, unicity or naturality may be lacking. Finally, it should be noted, Knowledge is a disequilibrium phenomenon driven by cognitive dissonance.

Social Choice theorists and other such shitheads indulged in cascading intensional fallacies while ignoring the importance of 'interpretation' and the 'far from equilibrium' nature of knowledge systems. 

 A case in point is Rawl's reflective equilibrium which refers to 'the mutual adjustment of principles and judgments in the light of relevant argument and theory'. This just means that there is no pressure to alter either accepted principles or judgments under given circumstances. 

The problem here is that principles can be interpreted in different ways such that, ceteris paribus, the same judgment is made by different people or different judgments are made by the same person. In other words, 'reflective equilibrium' is 'anything goes'. After all, when our interpretation of a principle or a judgment changes, it is not the case that the principle or judgement has itself changed. This is because interpretations are 'epistemic' and based on our knowledge base. Neither principles, not judgments are. However, unless principles can be shown to be independent of each other, or no new principle can be shown to subsume two or more existing principles, then 'mutual adjustment' with judgments is not efficient. In other words, the process of arriving at it could be streamlined. This means, if there is 'utility' in having principles, then there is more utility in rejecting an existing cozy little 'mutual adjustment' so as to get better judgments. This is particularly important because of 'Knightian Uncertainty'. Unanticipated states of the world require principles of more general import or application. This can be seen in the evolution of case law where a particular principle is given a more general interpretation such that it subsumes certain other principles or reduces their scope such that they designate a type or category. In other words, they serve a descriptive function or are mere 'terms of art'. 

Different jurisdictions may have different principles, yet because interpretation changes as the knowledge base changes, judgments may converge. But this isn't Rawls's 'reflective equilibrium'. It is a case of different jurisdictions competing with each other for fear of falling behind economically or engendering a political or social backlash. 

Carl Knight, in an article for the Stanford Encyclopaedia, asserts

If you believe that conduct in some case is right or wrong, you have a moral judgment or intuition.

Not necessarily. Your judgment might be aesthetic, or a matter of social convention or wholly strategic or self-serving.  

Perhaps you have many such judgments about different cases. You might, nevertheless, consider that judgments alone do not justify the moral views they express.

You might nevertheless consider yourself to be a pussy cat chasing mice on the rings of Uranus.  

You and your moral interlocutors might be concerned that “what we actually accept is fraught with idiosyncrasy and vulnerable to vagaries of history and personality” (Elgin 1996: 108) or displays “irregularities and distortions” (Rawls 1971: 48).

You might also be teaching worthless shite to imbeciles. Meanwhile kids you were at skool with, who did STEM subjects, are making the world a better place. 

John Rawls proposed to address these

stupid 

concerns through the

even more stupid 

method of reflective equilibrium. We first ensure that our judgments are considered, being made in circumstances appropriate for moral deliberation.

But those circumstances may only arise by reason of some immoral or repugnant asymmetry of power or influence. 'Judge not lest ye be judged' is a sound enough maxim.  

We are then to consider general principles that might accommodate our set of considered judgments—and more than that, explain and extend them.

What better 'general principle' is there than 'judge not' ? The proper reflective equilibrium for any person who reflects upon their own inequities or relative ignorance, is one which seeks greater understanding, not more and more 'moral intuitions' which, at bottom, tend to be foolish, mischievous, or otherwise repugnant.  

On the standard wide reflective equilibrium, we are to consider

'all possible descriptions to which one might plausibly conform one’s judgments together with all relevant philosophical arguments for them. (Rawls 1971: 49)'

'All possible descriptions' is an 'intension' whose extension is epistemic, impredicative and, because of Knightian Uncertainty, unknowable. Nobody can 'conform' with what is unknowable. This is the intensional fallacy writ large. The same holds for 'all relevant philosophical arguments'. 

This requires that we reflect on a wide range of principles, arguments, and theories.

Which is like saying 'we must conform with what we would want to conform with were we omniscient Gods. This requires us to chop off our own heads and shove those heads so far up our poopers that they reappear on top of our necks. Just keep doing this till you gain the power to create a nice new multiverse of your own.'] 

Equilibrium is reached where principles and judgments have been revised such that they agree with each other.

One could speak of Judge Hercules who achieves 'harmonious construction'. But, he is omniscient. We aren't. All we can do is make provisional judgments when we have to while recognizing that all principles are defeasible and sublatable- i.e. they will be replaced by something better as our knowledge base expands or our Structural Causal Models improve. 

In short, the method of reflective equilibrium is the mutual adjustment of principles and judgments in the light of relevant argument and theory.

But that 'relevant argument and theory' must be the one provided by smart peeps who didn't waste their time teaching or studying useless shite. Even there, the 'regret minimizing' strategy would be to hedge your bets and experiment a little at the margin. In other words, don't apply the judgment in all cases. See what happens when it isn't done.  

Reflective equilibrium is the dominant method in moral and political philosophy (McPherson 2015: 652; Anderson 2015; de Maagt 2017: 444).

Because both turned to stupid shit long ago. The great thing about the intensional fallacy is that it provides an algorithmic method to crank our more and more virtue signalling nonsense under the rubric of scholarship.  

Its advocates suggest that “it is the only rational game in town for the moral theorist” or “the only defensible method” (DePaul 1993: 6; Scanlon 2003: 149; see also Freeman 2007: 35–36; Floyd 2017: 377–378).

If you are stupid but want to teach shit, it is rational to embrace the intensional fallacy. But you can make more money teaching people how to levitate.  

Though often endorsed, it is far more frequently used. Wherever a philosopher presents principles, motivated by arguments and examples, they are likely to be using the method.

No. Nobody can use this method just as nobody can levitate. Still, one might change or 're-word' principles to make them sound less stupid or out of date. Thus instead of the sound Kantian principle that Niggers are stupid and thus we should ignore what they say, we might have a principle of epistemic eligibility such that only Niggers who repeat our brand of stupid shite are deemed worthy of listening to. 

They are adjusting their principles—and with luck, their readers’—to the judgments suggested by the arguments and examples. Alternatively they might “bite the bullet” by adjusting initially discordant judgments to accommodate otherwise appealing principles. Either way, they are usually describing a process of reflective equilibrium, with principles adjusted to judgments or vice versa.

No. They are merely making feasible adjustments. Reflective equilibrium requires infeasible adjustment of a sort which can only be made 'at the end of mathematical time'.  

Reflective equilibrium is a formal expression of standard methodological practice in moral and political philosophy. 

Which is why both have turned to shit.  

While the distinction between judgments and principles may intuitively correspond to that between the particular and the general,

[p]eople have considered judgments at all levels of generality, from those about particular situations and institutions up through broad standards and first principles to formal and abstract conditions on moral conceptions. (Rawls 1974: 8)

People have always thought that judgments should be made by judges who mention, in the 'ratio', what principle has been applied. People think that even judges, when not in court, merely have opinions or make decisions which they may or may not be able to justify by appealing to any particular principle. 

A Society is considered to be well functioning when very few people ever have to appear before a Court of Law. As for 'moral philosophers', they are merely a glorified type of child minder for young people who aren't yet mature enough to get a job and start a family. 

A first distinction is, then, that while principles necessarily generalize to more than one case (List & Valentini 2016; Slavny et al. 2021), judgments may be either general or particular.

It is perfectly possible to have a principle which applies in one and only one case. This is like the 'halacha vein morin kein' by which it was permissible for Phinehas to slay Zimri & Kosbi. However knowledge of this law forbids the very action it would otherwise dictate. As for judgments, they may simply be ineffective or futile.  

A second distinction is that judgments express an agent’s moral outlook

they may do. They may not. But anything at all may express moral outlook. I do it with farts.  

while principles are candidate representations of that outlook

That may be true of 'moral principles'. But that would be only be a small subset of one's principles. Moreover, one's moral principles may be overriden by other principles. Thus I might think it immoral to kill yet, as a member of a Jury, return a guilty verdict in a Capital case. 

What is missing from this account is the importance of 'interpretation'. Principles are interpreted in a particular way to get a particular judgment.  Why won't these shitheads admit this obvious truth?

In mathematics, interpretation is the process of giving meaning to mathematical expressions, such as symbols and formulas. The value that is assigned to an expression is called the interpretation of that expression. If there is a science of law or a 'Moral Science' then there is a deontic logic which has a mathematical representation. It is possible there is a canonical- i.e. unique and non-arbitrary (i.e. 'natural')- representation. But we know it won't be complete or include its own 'meta-language' or interpretation. Thus by the results of Godel, Tarski, Turing etc., this 'reflective equilibrium' is gibberish. 

In reflective equilibrium, judgments are the views actually held by the moral deliberator

but, speaking generally, they are inchoate. Moreover, one may change the interpretation even of one's own past judgments. Interpretation much more than principles or views or values, are essentially epistemic. They are bound to change as our knowledge base changes or our Structural Causal Models improve. Knowledge is a disequilibrium phenomenon. It is driven by cognitive dissonance. Pedants and Pundits may want to pretend otherwise. But we piss on their heads. 

while a “scheme of principles represents their moral conception and characterizes their moral sensibility” (Rawls 1974: 7; see also Rawls 1971: 48).

No such 'scheme' has ever existed any more that there has been a 'scheme' according to which the timing and smelliness of our farts has been pre-established.  

This section examines judgments, while the next considers principles.

1.1 Considered Judgments

The method of reflective equilibrium starts with judgments.

We make decisions. We have opinions. Judges make judgments. A protocol bound profession may require competent authorities to give something similar. In either case, the thing is defeasible. If a judgment is supported by a justification, then it may serve to create a 'public signal' which supports a superior Aumann correlated equilibria.  

An initial question is which of these judgments should be allowed entry to the process.

All- by Rawls's previous stipulation. If even one is left out, there is no equilibrium. 

An obvious position with some appeal is to allow any judgments or intuitions. A permissive view says that

[o]ur “intuitions” are simply opinions; our philosophical theories are the same. Some are commonsensical, some are sophisticated; some are particular, some general; some are more firmly held, some less. But they are all opinions, and a reasonable goal for a philosopher is to bring them into equilibrium … If our official theories disagree with what we cannot help thinking outside the philosophy room, then no real equilibrium has been reached. (Lewis 1983: x; cf. Goodman 1965: 63–64)

Moreover, any possible intuition must be included. But many possible intuitions are currently unknowable.  

This might seem cavalier, but we are at the moment only discussing the starting point of the method. If reflective equilibrium does its job,

it can't. The thing isn't feasible. 

our initial judgments may be transformed, and will at any rate cohere with theoretical considerations.

If we knew everything we may indeed be able to 'judge as gods' but, this may involve not judging at all 

The mainstream view, by contrast, suggests that only considered judgments should be used in reflective equilibrium. These are “those judgments in which our moral capacities are least likely to be displayed without distortion” (Rawls 1971: 47).

Sadly, we know that the 'considered judgments' of our finest spiritual, moral, and judicial minds have been shit. They were creatures of a more ignorant and bigoted age. But, our kids are now old enough to say the same of us.  

We should (1) be capable of reaching the right decision (e.g., be reasonably well informed),

sadly nobody knows if they have this capability 

(2) be in circumstances where we can do so (e.g., not be scared or upset), and

You can be scared and upset and yet make the right call.  

(3) be motivated to do so (e.g., not stand to gain or lose from the results of our deliberations).

Again, motivation may not matter.  

In short, we should have the ability, opportunity, and desire to make the right decision (Rawls 1971: 48).

So, to make the right decisions we should be such that we couldn't not make the right decisions. This is a very important discovery. We can all levitate simply by being the sort of people who can't not levitate.  

In moral and political philosophy, the judgments used in reflective equilibrium are usually these Rawlsian considered judgments.

Just as, in levitation, the levitational technique used is that which ensures levitation occurs. 

I

1.2 The Confidence Constraint

Rawls proposes that “we can discard those judgments made with hesitation, or in which we have little confidence” (Rawls 1971: 47).

But that is itself a judgment. The problem with discarding it is that some very useful judgments too have to be discarded. Knowledge, as I said, is a disequilibrium phenomenon. In this case you are driven to do more research so as to have greater confidence in the 'key-stone' judgment. But, it may turn out our hesitation or lack of confidence is wrong-headed.  

In other words, considered judgments are subject to a confidence constraint. 

No. All judgments are defeasible. Confidence is irrelevant. We know in advance that it is misplaced in some particular which may or may not be very important indeed.  

Relatedly, Rawls frequently refers to considered judgments as “convictions” (e.g., Rawls 1971: 19–21, 45, 48, 53, 246, 318–320, 447, 520, 580).

Our convictions may not be 'considered' while we ourselves may not be convinced by a judgment which is useful or, indeed, vital.  

The confidence constraint extends to revisions of judgments, which must be made “with conviction and confidence” (Rawls 1974: 8). A more modest version of the confidence constraint is a compromise between the ideal of accounting for all judgments and practical limitations (Scanlon 2003: 144).

Why compromise with nonsense? Some people tend to be confident and optimistic. It is a personal trait. If you are speaking of 'confidence intervals', that is an empirical matter and relates to what can be treated as fact rather than an unsupported supposition.  

1.3 The Epistemic Constraint

Considered judgments, even those that satisfy the confidence constraint, are not limited as to their content. One might have the ability, opportunity, and desire to make the right decision, yet make a grossly mistaken decision, and be confident in it (see Sternberg [ed.] 2002). This may motivate an epistemic constraint. 

Or it may not. If it is important to make the judgment, we just do it already while admitting it may be wrong or not supported by any discoverable facts.  

A modest version would exclude judgments that are logically inconsistent or founded on empirical error.

But we may be wrong about it being logically inconsistent or based on false information.  

A more ambitious constraint excludes any unjustified or unwarranted beliefs (Kelly & McGrath 2010).

We don't know what is unwarranted. What we have are provisional beliefs. At some future point, it is likely they will be considered unjustified.  

For example, Gerald Gaus comments that “clearly unjustified beliefs are, if anything, epistemic liabilities,” approvingly quoting Quine and Ullian’s suggestion that “insofar as we are rational, we will drop a belief when we have in vain tried to find evidence for it” (Gaus 1996: 86; Quine & Ullian 1970: 16).

Not if it is useful. Plenty of people find it useful to believe in a kind and loving God.  

Friends of reflective equilibrium largely reject such a constraint. The basic complaint is that it makes epistemological determinations in advance of the reflective process where these are rather the proper upshot of that process. Reflective equilibrium can be viewed as a negative method, i.e., as what we’re left with when we decide that positive criteria for epistemic success cannot be laid out prior to fully considering our substantive topics (Walden 2013: 255). On this view, what counts as justification, warrant, or consistency should be decided with all relevant theory on the table as part of the process of reflective equilibrium and is not prescribed by the method itself.

Very true. It is only while levitating that you should consider how you came to levitate or why this has suddenly become possible for a creature without wings.  

Rawls, it seems, was as big a fraud as the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. But the Maharishi died a billionaire.