Hello! We are SO close to getting the videos for the conference up. 
There have just been a few technical problems delaying things, but I 
expect them up within the next few weeks at the lastest. I will be sure 
to post a link to them to this list-serv as soon as they're ready!

I was at a different session during the much-acclaimed Levins talk so I 
haven't yet seen it myself...

Sigrid

Sigrid Schmalzer
Associate Professor, History Department
Director, Social Thought & Political Economy Program
UMass Amherst

On 5/27/2014 9:44 PM, Charles Schwartz wrote:
> I do not often engage in the philosophical debates on this list (good 
> or bad as they might be) but I must respond - as one octogenarian to 
> another - that I greatly appreciate what Carrol offered in his P.S.
>
> Charlie
>
> On May 27, 2014, at 5:02 PM, Carrol Cox 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.