Food Is, Still, Clearly Not a Human Right -

[Justin Schwartz]

> >But this quarrel over a "right to food" versus a "right to the means
> >of acquiring food" seems an absolutely sterile and empty debate to
> >me.
> >
> >Carrol
>
>^^^^^^^^^
>
>CB: It is a distinction without a difference for a materialist, which is to 
>say for a Marxist.

Well, I'm a materialist but not a Marxist, a term that I think is largely 
pointless and empty of meaning.

    It almost reminds of that distinction between " the right to  the 
pursuit of happiness" vs " the right to happiness".
>

Not at all in one way, very much in another. There can be no right to 
happiness. No one can guarantee you happiness. You may be rich and 
successful and still miserable. Perhaps the one you loves loves another, the 
sources of unhappiness are varied and ineradicable. But the right to 
"pursue" happiness is too weak. No one can take that away from you, not even 
in the Gulag. A right to means to attain happiness, that's something, and 
perhaps possible to guarantee. The distinction between a right to food and a 
right to means to get it is very much like this distinction.

jks

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