Food Is, Still, Clearly Not a Human Right - answers to you all

[Gordon Fitch]

Justin Schwartz:
>>> As a liberal (small l, not a Liberal Democrat a la NewDeal/Great 
>>  Society, a
>>> liberal who supports constitutional democracy and civil liberties), I
>>> represent that remark. I oppose this and every other class system. I 
>>  have
>>> never seen a persuasive argument from anyone, not you, not Marx, that
>>> liberal rights means that I am committed to the idea that some people
>>> should monopolize the means of production and exploit others. In fact, I
>>> think there is a right that workers have to control the means of 
>>  production
>>> andenjoy the fruirs thereof. Is that consistent with a class system?

Gordon:
> >It's inconsistent with liberalism.  If people have the liberal
> >rights of property as we have known them, then

Justin Schwartz:
> Stop right there. I reject liberal rights of property as we have known 
> them. I'm a socialist. I think there is no right to private ownership of 
> productive assets. The liberal rights I accept are the right to universal 
> suffrage, to vote and participate in representativbe govt, and extensive 
> civil and political liberties. Those say and imply nothing about what foirm 
> propert rights should take, and I think they should be socialist.  ...

Oh, okay.  So "liberalism" is whatever you say it is at any
given moment.  It's true that it will be very difficult for
me to practice any kind of logic on that sort of definition,
and it will also be safe from comparison with empirical data
since any inconvenient fact can be excluded _ad_hoc_.  But
let me know if you decide to let ol' "life, liberty and
property" Locke and his friends back in the boat any time
soon.  Theoretical though the old-time liberals may have been,
their emphasis on property was evidently right on the mark,
because we can see what rules the most liberal state of all
today; no corner of the earth is safe from its so masterful
defenders.

By the way, I reject the notion that practice precedes
theory.  Subjects that act always have some sort of theory
about what they're doing -- one might even locate a kind of
theory in the genetic material of microorganisms.  One can
certainly not talk about _democracy_ or _liberalism_ without
having a theory about what these words mean, and if they
point out merely some vague, ill-ordered collection of
phenomena, then talk about them will also be vague and
ill-ordered, and action subject to hijacking by clever
rhetoricians.  In the universe as I observe it, theory and
practice are two sides of willful activity which continually
feed into one another.  I don't understand how thought is
supposed to arise out of mindless stuff just happening to
happen.

-- Gordon