Beasts of Burden was first published in October 1999. The aim of the anonymous pamphlet was to initiate a debate between animal liberationists and revolutionaries – anarchists and communists (the author uses the term ‘communist’ repeatedly and means communism in its original sense: a stateless and classless society where people live together and ‘the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all’).

The development and maintenance of capitalism as a system that exploits humans is dependent upon the abuse of animals. Furthermore the movement that abolishes capitalism by changing the relations between humans – communism – also involves a fundamental transformation of the relations between humans and animals.