I have combined all the chapters of the three volumes of my Autobiography in a single file, which I am now slowly proof-reading and correcting. This will take a while -- the bloody thing is eight hundred pages long -- but when I am finally finished, I shall post the entire file on box.net, so that anyone interested in it need not download a chapter at a time.
Meanwhile, I must get ready for a conference in Seattle at which I shall be speaking next week. The conference is the third A. A. Berle Center conference, located in the law school of Seattle University, a Catholic university in Seattle. Most of the twenty speakers are professors of law, and the theme of the conference -- hardly surprising considering the Berle connection -- is The Theory of the Firm. Professor Charles O'Kelley, the Director of the Center, invited me to present my paper, "The Future of Socialism." I shall be very interested to see what sort of reception it gets. It will be a nice opportunity for Susie to see her son, Jon, his wife, and their two sons. Jon helps to run an organization called The Children's Alliance that has for some years now been doing very effective advocacy work on behalf of children's needs and interests. He also sits on the board of the local newspaper of Seattle's homeless.
So, what is the future of socialism?
ReplyDeleteWhatever it is, Anglo-American Catholic lawyers are probably the best people to define, identify and implement it.
ReplyDeleteThe question that I have is: what would a socialist world look like?
ReplyDelete(sorry, I didn't mean to post that last thing without adding more...)
ReplyDeleteI had a long discussion tonight about the question of the nature of justice a la Plato's Republic and the problem I have is twofold: I can't identify the goal of man/polis and I can't even determine that asking the question about justice in terms of an end is even the right way to go about addressing the issue of the best way to live.
Conrad, true socialists would probably be master scholars of the works of Plato and other philosophers both ancient and modern. They would hold lengthy discussions on these subjects with other philosophers, allowing access to those who were ignorant of the body of knowledge, as long as those ones were eager to know and respect official interpretations of it. Any action taken by the people at large would be measured by comparison to Plato et al., and the socialists would be far too busy with their studies to waste any time taking other actions.
ReplyDeleteActually, the paper is on box.net, if you are interested. I have circulated the paper and shall be presenting a brief update focused on the events of the past three years.
ReplyDeleteOh, yes, American Catholic lawyers and Albert Schweitzer, of course.
ReplyDelete