Furries, The Highest Stage of Liberalism

By R E JONES

A popular outline establishing the historic significance of the furry fandom through a scientific Marxist-Leninist understanding.

• Language: English
• Publisher: R. E. JONES
• Release date: Aug 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781991170422

Book preview

Preface

‘Furries are the highest expression of Anglo-Saxon Western Liberalism and will manifest inevitably into its official historical legacy and culture as the first reflections of an emerging posthuman condition; the natural social and technological conclusion of liberal modernity.’

It is from this thesis, arrived late at night while ruminating in bed many months ago, I sought to explain and clarify the furry phenomenon so to predict the significance I believe it will soon take within the West. I trust this book will help readers understand my reasoning behind this, though unlike the book I factiously take this one’s tone and mode of analysis after, (Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism) this topic is, and will be, of overall little importance in matters of modern war or politics; instead, likely only ever being of real consequence to furries themselves (whose population will be large compared to now, but relative on the global scale, nil) and those who wish to capitalise on them. Those intelligent enough to comprehend this book in its entirety, I warn not to continue wasting time on these unimportant individual identity issues and instead look toward the real living movements that sublate the present state of things, as it will be far more rewarding than whatever further dwelling within the furry community would ever provide.

Having said this, the ultimately flippant and light-hearted tone that the topic of furries commonly elicits is what I’m pushing back on with this book. It’s no surprise such a response is provoked given the whimsical surface-level appearance furries possess, though there was always something deeper that I (and clearly others too, with their further secondary associations of bestiality or zoophilia) always intuitively felt existed within the furry phenomenon but couldn’t describe on an intellectual level until now. This fascination goes back to my primary and high school years (a lifetime ago), consistently seeing and hearing of furries online yet always finding any kind of related formal or serious discussion to be lacking. To even imply such a thing existed back then (2010-2018) is quite generous as the ‘discourse’ pertaining to furries among the initiated mainly only ever took two forms, those wishing to irreverently support them and their debauchery, or those vehemently opposing and looking to genocide (all in good ‘ironic’ fun). There is, of course, a third position now, that of general positive apathy, live and let live attitude - though I would contend such a position not only ignores any kind of critical or real insight into furrydom but subsequently will not be able to be upheld in any significant degree in the future, for furries will soon take the place of a protected group like gay or trans people, forcing most ordinary people in the West to eventually have strong opinions on the matter as consequence of the all-encompassing universalism imbued in the nature of liberal society.

I am aware the book does not present a welcoming nor easy introduction to the topic of furries, let alone the various philosophical, historical or political traditions which I draw on. It is assumed the reader already has some idea of what is meant when describing the phenomenon of furries, in addition to a rudimentary background in Western philosophical and political thought, as well as deriving history. See to the glossary or the internet if less versed on more advanced topics, though do not come into this book without any prior knowledge on said matters without then the expectation to do some heavy theoretical lifting oneself.

Finally, it should also be clarified that the following outlines of liberalism and general tone of this book is not one of negativity or contempt. I understand it will be hard for the overwhelmingly Western audience reading this (the Christian roots of the West being about converting others to their beliefs) to grasp the concept that I’m not trying to impart any kind of condemnation or judgement on these developments, but nevertheless, it is the case. Though I have obvious criticisms concerning liberal modernity and its excesses (of which inevitably come out in writing), the point of this book is primarily for understanding and predicting the development of furries within the West, not making any personal moralising claims on the matter. My own thoughts related to these topics will likely be expanded on in later writings or whatever future means of expression I decide to engage in, i.e. a fursuit perhaps, but to be clear - is not done within this book. I merely wrote this out of the sentiment that I had unearthed a fundamental truth and significance about furries which was currently not being discussed and would be betrayed if I did not share (via the necessarily intellectual means of writing).

On this, I hardly consider myself an author nor banal ‘expert’ on most topics discussed, being entirely self-taught in matters of philosophy, politics, history, etc., having often failed my English and related writing classes during high school (before dropping out in sixth form without completion of any NCEA or Cambridge credentials) and my main personal interest, as well as only prior formal field of study, actually lying in the lowlier arts of media and film - specifically directing and screenwriting via a polytechnic bachelor course until honourable voluntary expulsion as entering into the third year. As such, I give thanks to my family and friends, particularly my father whom I am most indebted in every sense, for providing me with the necessary support required in such a vain endeavour. Furthermore, expect many areas of the book to be blatantly partisan and, in having little respect for the majority of contemporary Western scholarly institutions and professors from which I’ve never learnt anything useful in my entire life, fortunately lacking the same snide veneer of academic objectivity many descending others would cowardly project.

Duly, I am open to criticism of this work, provided it is done in a passionately human, sincere and good-faith way - and look forward to receiving any such reception during the coming months.

Robert Jones

August, 2022

CHAPTER I

Liberalism &

Posthumanism

The elevation of individual identity and expression above all else is the practical heart of liberalism that gives rise to the existence of furries. This inevitable posthumanism stems from the anthropological roots of liberalism based in 17th century Anglo-Saxon Enlightenment metaphysics and the developments that came within the rising urban city centres following industrial capitalist modernity.

René Descartes’s notorious assertion of, I think therefore I am was the ontological basis upon which Western Enlightenment philosophy could solidly rest, paving the way for liberalism to emerge as an intellectual movement. The statement definitively (for the Western Anglo-Saxon philosophical tradition) proved that the elevated individual subject existed through this higher rationalistic form, one disconnected from any collective way of being and its inherently indefinite emotional and spiritual human predispositions, and instead brazenly positioned toward the cold pursuit of logical absolute and consistent necessity.

From this gave rise to the fundamental negativity (as in constantly in a process of negation) and dismissal, stemming from radical Cartesian scepticism, of previous ways of being - now perversely based on how well one could justify their given traditions, history, heritage, customs, etc. judged solely from and according to the individuals own private standard, metaphysical absolute and essential God of what could robotically be made sense of within this universally boxed lens of ‘logic’ and ‘reason’.

Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke, Thomas Hobbes and James Madison would then expand from this theoretical way of being, outlining their following renewals and revelations into the coherent ideology, philosophy and civilizational way of being now known as liberalism; principally characterized [1] by the fixation on formal universal right, intersecting yet totalising rationalism and empiricism, advancement toward capitalist economic relations relevant through the MCM* circuit (referring to the Money (capital) – Commodity - Money* (profit) process fundamental to a capitalist mode of production) and later deviant social sublation, secularism, and an ever-expanding pursuit of liberation and freedom for the individual within a purely negative conception of freedom; the freedom from material, cultural, spiritual, etc. restraints, not positively targeted toward realising any particular and definite mode of being.

This ideology would accordingly derive, as well as in tandem, give meaning and sense to the objective social developments that would occur throughout industrial modernity to today. Though it should be stressed beforehand, by no means were these following historical events primarily caused by that of the necessitating or superior ideals of liberalism and its according tenants. The material world and its following laws requiring economic expansion and development of the productive forces of given societies expressed through the form of class struggle is always the primary mediating factor. Ideas merely give intellectual expression, meaning, and reflection to these arrangements in the relations and forces of production already objectively developing within the world itself.

I am only engaging in this history through a somewhat idealistic and generalised chronological form so to explain the emergence of furries in relation to the ideology of liberalism; making the point of negation and ultimate inevitability of posthumanism within liberal society more readily apparent and to not bog down this book (about furries) in a complete materialist analysis of the emergence of mercantilism, liberalism, secularism, feminism, post-modernism, etc. etc. of which there is already plenty in both the historical materialist Marxist and incidentally non-Marxist adjacent tradition. In this recognition, see this chapters’ (and beyond) following approach as backward in parts and undoubtedly missing the rigour, qualifying citations and dry acknowledgment of nuance that an academic paper or proper historical chronicle would have.

The first acts of negation under the emerging liberal modernity were religion, state and the family. To understand why this occurred, one must first look at the emergence of capitalism from mercantilism and prior feudalism within Central and Western Europe.

Feudal economies were predominately rural and agrarian, consisting of farms, mills, presses, breweries, lumber workshops and smitheries, all fundamentally working and living off the land with the exchange of commodities and trade only taking place in local markets with tight regulations on who can sell what, to whom and in what quantity within each feudal kingdom. Towns would engage in long-distance trade with other areas, but it would rarely extend beyond a regional level, with merchant traders having to work in tandem with local lords and other governmental officials to organise economic activity within the basis of each town, setting quality standards, prices, wages, etc. according primarily to their lords’ demands.

It was from this initial economic benefit that the sentiment of fleeing the countryside to the city (or towns at the time) began to emerge, first among the well-educated, highly skilled and increasingly wealthy craftsmen, artisans and merchants (important note for later when examining why furries are highly concentrated in STEM fields and are mainly found within cities) though later also peasants who would, in turn, form the economic basis by which these cities, from their concentrating wealth and economic development, would further develop and do away with these economic restrictions.

These ‘town dwellers’ (as the word ‘bourgeois’ etymologically refers to in Old French) were the most economically and socially progressive people of their time, eventually organising guilds and national monarchs against their professedly backward feudal landlords, whose rent-seeking and arbitrary local regulations were restricting the further economic development and capital accumulation of their wider society and class through their aforementioned limiting of trade volume and terms.

By the 13th century, this class contradiction between feudal lords and the evermore rising and powerful merchant class would take definite form in events like the Magna Carta in 1215, Flemish Revolt in Flanders (1323-1328), The Ciompi in Spain, (1378-1382), The Peasants Revolt and the Jacquerie during The Hundred Years’ War between France and England (1337-1453), and later similar revolts in Germany (Peasants’ War of 1524-25); all denoting this emerging decline in feudal relations to more individually autonomous, economically free (in the classical liberal free market sense) and nationally centralised form of political-economy following the revolutionary role of the bourgeoise with the general transition to mercantilism by the 15th century.

Once within mercantilism (and especially so by the Industrial Revolution), cities had now become the more attractive option for most people, primarily for economic reasons but additionally because on a social level [2], they acted as an escape not only from the impositions of a given lord, but the family, culture, mores, tradition, heritage and customs present in the countryside one would previously have been born and tied to; with the individual now instead being able to enter into relations on a more contractually fresh basis, positively in line with the principles of formal individual consent as later reflected in Enlightenment liberal philosophy. Thus in turn we also see the negation and loss of significance placed on traditional familial relations as entering into modernity.

Continuing onto the state and religion, it was then the Protestant Reformation with the emergence of nation-states following concentrated political rule that would lead to their eventual sublation.

Under feudalism, monarchs had previously ruled over their given polities as formal sovereigns of all regional feudal vassals, though feudal lords nonetheless possessed near unbridled control over their lands and subjects. This political de-centralisation would change by the transition to mercantilism and later capitalism, with monarchs concentrating their power with large standing armies funded by their national bourgeoise so to allow for this transition to take place.

Proto-nationalistic sentiments would arise as the nation-state took form, mirroring overall societal loyalty shifting from ones feudal lord to a more national orientated perspective under the rule of a singularly dominating monarch, as the need for more centralised and internationally orientated trade and economic activity as the discovery of the New World and continual expansion of trade routes in Afro-Eurasia demanded.

Christianity, as expressed institutionally primarily through the Catholic Church, had dominated European civilisation for centuries beforehand, serving as both a common social object among people, as well as a way for lords, kings and monarchs to legitimate their class standing. This legitimation took on a qualitatively different form when exiting the late Middle Ages into mercantilism, however, eventually culminating in its own negation by this very change.

The teachings of the Catholic Church under the papal monarchy through her courts, religious law, priests and bureaucracy taught that monarchs and noble peoples were closer to God than ordinary people, aiding in legitimising the class relations of its time. By the time these relations had changed following the Protestant Reformation (which allowed monarchs to break from the Pope and confiscate church land and taxes for themselves) and the rise of more unified states, this arrangement of legitimacy would also change in turn, as seen through the new formally recognised theory of divine right, which in contrast to its previous teachings, maintained monarchs to hold supreme and absolute authority both politically and spiritually in relation to their state.

Henry VIII of England (1509-1547), James VI/I of Scotland and England (1567-1625), Louis XIV of France (1643-1715), Charles I and II of England (1625-1649 & 1649-1660) are all notable examples of monarchs explicitly using divine right to legitimise their rule; with the significance then them being in conflict with the now rising proto-liberal attitudes of parliamentarianism, individual rights, formally equal governance, etc. culminating, for example, in Britain with the English Civil War, Glorious Revolution and later the passage of the Bill of Rights in England then limiting monarchical power and expanding individual freedoms greater.

As such, by the 17th and 18th centuries, the economically limiting aspects of mercantilism against the now emerging globalisation and liberal thought would begin to unravel itself in the rest of the world, with the ties to monarchic and clerical relations upheld ideologically through religion then beginning to crumble.

This rebellion precipitating the transition from mercantilism to capitalism would intellectually give birth to The Enlightenment, theoretically justifying the dismissal of any notions of divine right or legitimacy through religion as opposed to the principles of tolerance for individual freedom and right of man, or later through the now mere concept of God (through the rational and empirical metaphysics as outlined in stemming from Descartes which sought to recontextualise the spirituality of religion to the sphere of practical philosophy, eventually then leading to abandonment philosophies) through the secularist consequences of the, if not outright atheistic [3], varying degrees of sceptic, freethinking, rationalist, pantheist, deistic, and materialist philosophers radically revolutionising and de-legitimising Orthodox understandings of God; as well as the real living movements and uprisings that undermined organised religious authorities and law that were the aforementioned English Civil War, American War of Independence and French Revolution following the Protestant Reformation.

All these revolutions shared the common progressive desire of the bourgeois classes to rid themselves from any previously hallowed royal limitations in continuance of the productive economic development of their societies, however now giving expression to this as the freeing of the individual from encroachment on their natural rights of personal liberty, freedom of association, ownership of property, equal opportunity, etc. (the French Revolution slogan of ‘Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité’ capturing this revolutionary liberal condition well).

Thus is explained the emergence of the negation between religion and people through either the formal declaration or informal development [4] of the separation of church and state, with John Locke advocating for this during The Enlightenment through social contract theory (a theory that accordingly builds off the Cartesian metaphysical position of the elevated individual rationally entering into relations with other men) and later Thomas Jefferson being the first to codify it in the First Amendment of the American Constitution, the execution of Louis XVI and radical rupture of the previously sanctified French monarchy with the establishment of a constitutional monarchy and declaration of the French First Republic, as well as the consolidation of parliamentary powers in England (with monarchs then needing consent from parliament to rule), later acquiring full sovereignty following the Glorious Revolution.

These historically great liberal strides in diminishing both intellectually and materially the significance religion or church could play in matters of state in civil society would subsequently inspire most contemporary liberal societies in the Anglosphere and Europe, hence why their populations (particularly youth) are increasingly influenced by a more secularist way of being; with furries cropping up as overwhelmingly Godless in then vogue reflection of these developments - with 44.36% atheist, 9.47% agnostic, 0.9% Satanist, 11% Pagan and 13.72% as ‘other’.

Finally, with the rise of more unified states following the monarchical centralisation of power from feudalism, proto-nationalistic movements and sentiment began to emerge as loyalties of society shifted from local familial and feudal bonds to a wider national level during the transition to mercantilism in the 16th century to then concrete nation-states as onward to capitalism.

The developing switch from simple commodity production to capitalist production based on continual capital accumulation (MCM*), instead of previously what was more or less simply socially required for economic reproduction, brought on the mercantilist economic relations promoting explicit imperialist, colonial and nationally one-sided trade policies through regulated governmental tariffs and subsidies which allowed the monarchical and bourgeois populations of Western and Central Europe to continue their profitable expansion of economic growth through increased and initially favourable trade conditions.

Said conditions were enforced through the new large-standing national-corporate armies (propped up by either bourgeois and or monarchical state support as seen with the English and Dutch East India Company(s)) and only made possible by the aforementioned national centralisation of power by monarchs through the now remarkably affluent bourgeois populations that had arisen from feudalisms decline across Central and Western Europe.

Although these state-backed national armies, companies and colonies would come to dominate the world, their wealth would come to clash against the monarchical ties whom they would have to share their various rents, profits and interests, the other rival imperialist nations and colonial trade partners whom they would more overtly frequently collide with (Anglo-Dutch Wars, Franco-Dutch Wars, French & Indian War, etc.), as well as the various currently standing political, legal, religious, and technical restrictions still imposing a level of restriction on trade and economic ties which had to be overturned to make way for the invading capitalist era of decentralised free trade, open markets and private property.

This would lead to more strictly scholastically true description of nationalistic sentiment arising, initially in the 18th century with France and America following the Declaration of Independence and French Revolution, though firmly rooted throughout the rest of the world by the 19th century following the various revolutions of 1848 throughout Europe removing monarchical structures and creating independent nation-states (a concept required for more efficient and stable economic trade to occur), in legitimation of the new emerging liberal forms and understandings of statehood and political economy.

Ergo, following the Enlightenments critique of mercantilist economy advocating for the reduction of state interference from trade and economic activity by virtue of the natural regulatory power of the invisible hand and non-zero-sum game economic notions allowing for formal national sovereignty to be upheld in trade, as well as the Industrial Revolutions advancements made in transportation from the 17th to 20th century (with the invention of trains, planes, automobiles, etc.) - the very economic conditions that gave rise to nationalism in the first place began to sublate themselves and wither away.

It had now become less economically viable to engage in what was seen as protectionist nationalistic endeavours on both the state and individual level, at odds with the new highly interconnected globalisation and globalism (referring to the liberal universalist principles of ‘rules-based’ order promoting ‘democratic’ governance, free and open trade, human rights, multiculturalism, etc.) that had swept the world by the late 20th century following the end of the World and Cold War(s) [5] and the various revolutions of 1989 resulting in the fall of communism in Eastern and Central Europe and subsequent liberalisation across the world as entering into global liberal hegemony.

Francis Fukuyama, an American political economist and writer, famously declaring the, end of history in 1992 perfectly encapsulated this ideological universalism and apparent triumph of Western liberalism over any other kind of governmental and civilisational way of being felt at the time, of which still permeates among many today; hence the scandalous nature of contemporary figures like Trump or Boris Johnson (concerning Britain leaving the European Union), who ostensibly engage in backward nationalistic rhetoric and economic policies that go greatly against the liberal establishment and cosmopolitan sentiments built up and reflected within the Western world among their bourgeois (in the traditional urban dweller and later Marxist sense) populations following the increasing globality spawned by the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of the general Anglosphere and American unipolar liberal world order succeeding the end of World War 2.

With all these various sublations in the significance of religious, familial and nationalistic relations, the wider unspoken and sublime social web unifying people through the interconnection of these factors would lead to the impalpable angst that has since saturated the liberal West from its recognisable inception.

England’s Industrial Revolution and parliamentary land enclosures wholly destroyed what was left of the stable, familiar and traditional ways of living peasants had been accustomed to for centuries, with their landlessness giving rise to an unprecedented, though now deeply familiar, feeling of existential and economic insecurity.

The American Revolution paved the road for the declaration of a new nation (separated from the economically restricting impositions of mercantile British tariffs, tax and regulation) founded upon fresh Enlightenment ideals that would nonetheless bring about the expansionistic and uniquely void chaos that was the American frontier and contemporarily still the American spirit.

Lastly, the French Revolution overturned the codified hierarchies that had long allowed commoners to situate themselves in an ultimately meaningful and consistent social reality, with universal political rights and other intangible liberal declarations unable to fill the vacuum left behind by the loss of the Ancien Régime’s concrete social bonds.

These three revolutions were distinct forms of what ultimately amounted to the same apocalypse now colloquially referred to as modernity; or liberal modernity as more specifically done within this book – though more in reference to the superstructural base that still pervades Western countries despite the objective economic relations today being far from any classical liberal sense of the word. To quote a famous passage from the Communist Manifesto (1848) describing the estranged condition of their time well:

All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions are swept away. All new formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

This newfound collective alienation would shine a light onto something that would come to be called ‘the social question’ which had long been an object of contemplation for European humanist philosophers by the 19th century but would only acquire real-world relevance once the emerging socialist movement swept across the globe the following century in attempt to rediscover this lost sense of common sociality among people within their different polities.

However, moving from the negation of the collective sphere brought on by modernity that would then go on to take complicated and bloody root in different forms of history across the globe, liberalism within the Western world throughout the late 20th and early 21st century would subsequently expand into the individual sector - having now completely exhausted the wider collective sphere; expanding individual freedom, liberty and choice to an extraordinarily unparalleled level, forming the sociologically distinctive mark from which the Western world’s spiritual identity and conception of being would come to be distinguished from the East.

By the mid to late 20th century, this individual emancipation took recognizable shape within the Western and now wider Anglosphere [6] world through the rise in prominence of various feminist, racial, ethnic, sexual and gender liberation movements; all captured under the general category of LGBT+ politics today - with the further ascendancy of the New-Left and Postmodernism during the 1960s and 70s giving intellectual rationalisation to this rise of spiritual societal anarchy.

These further social developments would occur during this specific period onward as it was only following the inevitable negation of the conservative golden era of the 50s within the Western world tied to the United States, brought on by the establishment of the Bretton Woods system after World War 2 and its later decline into financial abstraction through fiat currency as the MCM* circuit would sublate itself, entering into a higher socialised mode of production, as evidenced with the global rate of profit being in overall decline since the 60s, no longer entirely focussed on profit accumulation but instead based on some wider social goal or aspect too, thus allowing the Western world to then continue its earnest social development toward liberal posthumanity.

Beginning with the feminist movements, the first and second waves of the late 19th century and further during the 1960s to 1990s are not too important, seeing as they were still primarily concerned with the relationship between women in relation to wider society, instead of women in the understanding of a purely atomised sense of