For those who could not attend, is there a way to get copies of the papers?
How about a summary of the conference?


On Tue, May 27, 2014 at 5:02 PM, Carrol Cox <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> The Amherst Conference was one of the best left conferences I have ever
> attended, and Dick Levins's paper in one of the conferences one of the best
> I have heard.
>
> But my octogenarian short-term memory fails me. At the end of his paper
> Dick
> laid down three wonderful propositions, and I can only remember the third
> of
> them. All three revolved around what I consider a key issue for
> contemporary
> soc8ialist activists: the scope and limits of theory. The third of his
> closing propositions was, "All theories are wrong." (he meant of course,
> _eventually_ proved wrong.) That is of crucial importance. But I can't
> remember the first two of the three.
>
> I hope I can be illuminated here.
>
> Carrol
>
> P.S. There is a new MRE book, selected writings of Rosa Luxemburg. The
> blurb
> for it calls her the most powerful socialist intellect since Marx himself &
> I tend to agree. In her day the Grudrisse was not available, but her
> remarks
> on "the final goal" are in the spirit of a wonderful aphorism from that
> work: "The anatomy of man is a key to the anatomy of the ape." Bertell
> Ollman catches up the import of this in his phrase, "Doing History
> Backwards
> as does sweezy in his phrase "the present as history," as does Mao when he
> remarks, "Marxists have no crystal ball." And this is consistent with the
> claim that all theories are _eventually_ wrong. We work with the best
> theory
> that we can carve out, but we (must) work with the awareness that
> eventually
> (the present as history) that theory will fail.
>