In 1949 Albert Einstein, writing for the Communist magazine Monthly Review, identified what he believed “constitutes the essence of the crisis of our time. It concerns the relationship of the individual to society. The individual has become more conscious than ever of his dependence on society. But he does not experience this dependence as a positive asset, as an organic tie, as a protective force, but rather as a threat to his natural rights, or even to his economic existence.” *
And then Albert goes on to cite capitalism as an “evil” because “Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of the smaller ones.” Has that happened? Sure. Think Ford Motor and other large factories; think steel mills; heck, think Amazon. Does the “increasing division” continue to happen? Definitely. But does that justify what Einstein seems to offer as a viable alternative that generates “a protective force,” that is not a “threat to his natural rights”? Oh! Wait! Did I tell you that the alternative he offers is socialism?
Socialism?
Are you surprised that one who escaped life under the Nazis had such an opinion? I certainly was. I had assumed that a man who fled a socialist (Nazi) country would have embraced the chaos and competition of capitalism with all its inequities—all those derived from freedom to be competitive that is indicative of “natural rights.” But twentieth-century Albert seemed to foreshadow so many twenty-first century Americans proclaiming the wonders of socialism. He believed that a socialist economy “supported by an educational system oriented toward social goals” is the panacea people need to escape the imbalances that occur under capitalism. Was he anticipating the current belief among so many young Americans that though past socialist societies led to impoverishment of the masses and to mass killings--democides, as R. J. Rummel calls them (148 million killed)—a revitalized socialism would be different? Did Einstein really believe as so many college students and financially comfortable tenured college faculty believe in our time that a new version of socialism will be just, fair, and peaceful, and will iron out the wrinkles in the economic cloth to provide unshakeable security for all?
In the context of the approximate 150 million people killed by socialist governments in his century, maybe the genius wasn’t such a genius, at least not in social matters. In the same essay that he writes about the individual’s “dependence on society” that “he [the iindividual] does not experience…as a positive asset…but rather as a threat,” Albert suggests that lumping all into the same social dough kneaded by the state will result in an equal distribution of the dough to all. He seems to have ignored the failures of collective farms under Stalin and the disincentive to work that socialist societies foster.
Does socialism decrease competition? In the general population, yes, but not in the political arena. Thus, the rise of dictators and oligarchs, some of who become modern incarnations of Caligula or the sycophantic retinue of the last three French kings. We don’t have to look hard to discover the inequities in wealth that such societies exhibit: The yachts of the Russian oligarchs don’t ferry the masses on pleasure cruises. The personal coffers of the few overflow with wealth. The average Russian can only shake his head and say in feckless resignation, “What can you do? This is Russia.” What could any commoner do in any past socialist regime do but shake his head in resignation.
Contradictions Abound, but People Ignore Them
It’s interesting to me that all of us harbor contradictions, even the supposed brightest among us. With Albert—and now with many young Americans and at least an old one named Bernie Sanders—the contradiction lies in proclaiming the benefits of socialism while knowing the evils of a socialist government like National Socialist German Workers' Party. Maybe Albert meant to argue that though Germany’s Nazis killed six million Jews and would have enslaved or killed him, it was just their brand of socialism that was bad. Maybe Albert escaped to live in a capitalist nation because he had no alternative. And maybe Albert would not run from a socialist government today as he did in 1932 the month before Hitler became Chancellor. But you and I both know that Albert would not have enjoyed adulation and a soft life in a university town under Hitler. “If socialism was so wonderful, Albert, why did you leave?”
If I could have talked to him before he died, I might have asked Einstein how he planned to separate human vice from human virtue in his proposed socialist utopia. Albert didn’t live through the whole of the twentieth century, but he lived through enough of it to see the millions of people killed by socialist governments led by Stalin and Hitler. Surely, he must have recognized that the struggle between individual and society was not new and that in a centralized society, any vices or pathologies in those who rule can have devastating effects on citizens. I ask, “Albert, can you say ‘shot while trying to leap over the Berlin Wall?”
Inequities Are Endemic to Mankind
Inequities are endemic to mankind; compromises are literally lifesavers because of them. Individuals have to compromise to exist as members of the societal unit; if they don’t, well, then Cain kills Abel. And as we all know, many Cains have killed many Abels. Yet, the inequities derived from individual freedom have made capitalist societies the centers of high-tech life and a greater longevity for more people than our species had known over almost all of its 200,000 to 300,000-year history.
The lure of socialism that snagged Albert in 1949 seems to be the promise of shared wealth, and that promise rests largely on the idea that wealth is limited. It isn’t. As I mentioned elsewhere, when I was in elementary school in western Pennsylvania’s bituminous coal country, my teacher told the class that we will soon run out of coal, oil, and natural gas, maybe as early as the 1970s. We didn’t run out of them as you know. And one of the reasons was the use of technologies developed by “greedy capitalists” and unknown in the 1950s: Longwall mining and fracking with directional drilling. Turns out that we have unused wealth just lying beneath us—with the only restriction on its use coming from an as yet undemonstrated claim that the world will warm to threatening temperatures, a dubious claim about imminent disaster that made New York ban fracking for the untold wealth lying in shales like the Marcellus and Utica.
Why Do Adults Have to Teach Kids to Share?
Unfortunately, regardless of society’s attempts to enforce a rule of sharing, individuals will be individuals with individual desires that conflict with the desires of other individuals. Albert doesn’t seem to have seen that even though he lived through two world wars and the Holocaust. He doesn’t seem to realize that his relatively cushy life of contemplating physics and hobnobbing with the wealthy and influential derived from the opportunities afforded in “selfish” capitalist societies. His contradiction makes me think of Bernie Sanders recently selling $95 seats for a conference on the glories of socialism and the degradation caused by capitalism. Yes, ninety-five dollar seats just to hear people go on and on and on about capitalism’s evils and socialism’s wonderful utopian lifestyles. Can anyone say “Russian oligarchs' yachts”?
Is This All a Matter of Envy?
Albert’s argument for socialism is that “private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands.” Think Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and those other ultra-wealthy people who have individually seemingly more money than some countries. Do you make that same argument? Does it bother you that Bill Gates or Elon Musk or Ted Turner have so much whereas you have to struggle to buy stuff you believe to be essential? Welcome to the real world. Does anyone think that dictators and oligarchs who rule socialist and communist societies have struggles equivalent to those of the commoner, or to use Albert’s word, worker?
The Contradiction in His Own Words
As I wrote above, we’re all a bit either hypocritical or contradictory. Albert finishes his essay with this: “A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to recent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?”
In fact, the demonstrable intrusions into individual liberty of the last few decades in America seem to indicate that as bureaucracy and centralization become stronger, individuals become weaker and more dependent. Does capitalism offer a counterweight? Not completely, but in its system individuals do have more opportunities to succeed than they do under a socialist centralization.
Backed by the Press, individuals do serve as a counterweight to government control. And that backing can come from a Press with either a Right or Left agenda. If the Press has an axe to grind because it disfavors the political party in power, it can root out corruption and expose efforts to control the populace. If the Press is neither rightest nor leftist, it, too, can ferret out the evils of a bureaucracy run wild, drunk on power. But in almost every socialist regime, if not every socialist regime, a free Press is anathema. Socialism ultimately takes control, and the Press becomes propaganda. Yet, history shows that in a capitalist system where competition is fundamental to society, the Press can act as an effective counterweight. Albert Einstein should have known that after observing a Press controlled by a socialist government that convinced the population that Jews were the cause of their woes, the very propaganda that led to Einstein’s fleeing Germany. He should have known that by reading Pravda or the very magazine for which he wrote his comments.
Social Goals Are Malleable
Yes, inequities are capitalism’s bane. But every effort to make everything human equal has failed because of the inmate desire to be “individual.” Should everyone receive the Nobel prize as Einstein did? Should every Little Leaguer receive a trophy? Should we keep score? In a perfect socialist world, there would be no recognition of individual achievement. In a perfect socialist world the “educated” would work “toward social goals,” to use Albert’s words.
The reality is that “social goals” are fashionable. In the 1940s and 1950s in England, homosexuality was a crime. Alan Turing, whose computer helped to save England during the war, was subsequently punished by the very people he saved, motivating him to commit suicide. Today, ideas about sexual orientation are so different that any open objection to sexual preference meets with labeling, ostracism and even economic ruin. Social goals do change, so which goals would Einstein accept as the legitimate ends of education? It seemed all right for Germans to send Jews to concentration camps and Americans to place Japanese-Americans in camps during WWII. In what political system favored by Einstein is that suppression of individual rights ethical?
The Crisis of Our Time
I think a problem that troubles many individuals is that crisis Einstein mentions: The conflict between individual and group. Maybe he should have treated the subject as an analog of math, specifically the math of sets. Political entities are sets. In this analog, sets can be homogeneous or heterogeneous because we can include whatever we want to include in a given set. Within any set of people we can include members who are only loosely associated by artificial similarities. We impose the similarities as much as discover them. Einstein wanted people to form societies that simultaneously included centralized bureaucracies and free individuals, which under this analog, would make the set heterogeneous. Mathematically, that would be all right. Sets, as I just said, can include different entities. We get to choose what is in the set; Albert envisions a socialism that does not enslave. Was his dream society the product of one of his famous thought experiments (Gedankenexperiments)? Albert could take a lesson from another Nobel Laureate, Richard Feynman, who said, "It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong." So far, no experiment with socialism has matched the promise of its theory.
But the “math” of every historic socialist leader has been that all those in the “set” must be similar: Similar in philosophy, property, and subservience to the state. Socialism tolerates only homogeneous sets, not heterogeneous sets. Individuals lose their individuality in socialist societies unless they are members of the ruling class. Contradictory? Ironic? Laughable?
How could someone seen as one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century, a person who had to flee the evils of socialism, proclaim the merits of socialism? As I said, we all harbor contradictions.
The crisis of Albert’s time is still the crisis of our time. As western governments like those of Canada and the United States become increasingly more socialistic, their citizens will see more intrusions into their lives, more enslavement to the state bureaucracies.** And if the twenty-first century capitalist societies succumb to creeping socialism, to where will this century’s geniuses flee?
*Einstein, Albert. 1982. Ideas and Opinions. Trans. By Sonja Bargmann. Crown Publishers, Inc. New York. Based on Mein Weltbild, ED. by Carl Seelig.
**Mandates? Debt-spending? Oligarchic rule by agencies?
And then Albert goes on to cite capitalism as an “evil” because “Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of the smaller ones.” Has that happened? Sure. Think Ford Motor and other large factories; think steel mills; heck, think Amazon. Does the “increasing division” continue to happen? Definitely. But does that justify what Einstein seems to offer as a viable alternative that generates “a protective force,” that is not a “threat to his natural rights”? Oh! Wait! Did I tell you that the alternative he offers is socialism?
Socialism?
Are you surprised that one who escaped life under the Nazis had such an opinion? I certainly was. I had assumed that a man who fled a socialist (Nazi) country would have embraced the chaos and competition of capitalism with all its inequities—all those derived from freedom to be competitive that is indicative of “natural rights.” But twentieth-century Albert seemed to foreshadow so many twenty-first century Americans proclaiming the wonders of socialism. He believed that a socialist economy “supported by an educational system oriented toward social goals” is the panacea people need to escape the imbalances that occur under capitalism. Was he anticipating the current belief among so many young Americans that though past socialist societies led to impoverishment of the masses and to mass killings--democides, as R. J. Rummel calls them (148 million killed)—a revitalized socialism would be different? Did Einstein really believe as so many college students and financially comfortable tenured college faculty believe in our time that a new version of socialism will be just, fair, and peaceful, and will iron out the wrinkles in the economic cloth to provide unshakeable security for all?
In the context of the approximate 150 million people killed by socialist governments in his century, maybe the genius wasn’t such a genius, at least not in social matters. In the same essay that he writes about the individual’s “dependence on society” that “he [the iindividual] does not experience…as a positive asset…but rather as a threat,” Albert suggests that lumping all into the same social dough kneaded by the state will result in an equal distribution of the dough to all. He seems to have ignored the failures of collective farms under Stalin and the disincentive to work that socialist societies foster.
Does socialism decrease competition? In the general population, yes, but not in the political arena. Thus, the rise of dictators and oligarchs, some of who become modern incarnations of Caligula or the sycophantic retinue of the last three French kings. We don’t have to look hard to discover the inequities in wealth that such societies exhibit: The yachts of the Russian oligarchs don’t ferry the masses on pleasure cruises. The personal coffers of the few overflow with wealth. The average Russian can only shake his head and say in feckless resignation, “What can you do? This is Russia.” What could any commoner do in any past socialist regime do but shake his head in resignation.
Contradictions Abound, but People Ignore Them
It’s interesting to me that all of us harbor contradictions, even the supposed brightest among us. With Albert—and now with many young Americans and at least an old one named Bernie Sanders—the contradiction lies in proclaiming the benefits of socialism while knowing the evils of a socialist government like National Socialist German Workers' Party. Maybe Albert meant to argue that though Germany’s Nazis killed six million Jews and would have enslaved or killed him, it was just their brand of socialism that was bad. Maybe Albert escaped to live in a capitalist nation because he had no alternative. And maybe Albert would not run from a socialist government today as he did in 1932 the month before Hitler became Chancellor. But you and I both know that Albert would not have enjoyed adulation and a soft life in a university town under Hitler. “If socialism was so wonderful, Albert, why did you leave?”
If I could have talked to him before he died, I might have asked Einstein how he planned to separate human vice from human virtue in his proposed socialist utopia. Albert didn’t live through the whole of the twentieth century, but he lived through enough of it to see the millions of people killed by socialist governments led by Stalin and Hitler. Surely, he must have recognized that the struggle between individual and society was not new and that in a centralized society, any vices or pathologies in those who rule can have devastating effects on citizens. I ask, “Albert, can you say ‘shot while trying to leap over the Berlin Wall?”
Inequities Are Endemic to Mankind
Inequities are endemic to mankind; compromises are literally lifesavers because of them. Individuals have to compromise to exist as members of the societal unit; if they don’t, well, then Cain kills Abel. And as we all know, many Cains have killed many Abels. Yet, the inequities derived from individual freedom have made capitalist societies the centers of high-tech life and a greater longevity for more people than our species had known over almost all of its 200,000 to 300,000-year history.
The lure of socialism that snagged Albert in 1949 seems to be the promise of shared wealth, and that promise rests largely on the idea that wealth is limited. It isn’t. As I mentioned elsewhere, when I was in elementary school in western Pennsylvania’s bituminous coal country, my teacher told the class that we will soon run out of coal, oil, and natural gas, maybe as early as the 1970s. We didn’t run out of them as you know. And one of the reasons was the use of technologies developed by “greedy capitalists” and unknown in the 1950s: Longwall mining and fracking with directional drilling. Turns out that we have unused wealth just lying beneath us—with the only restriction on its use coming from an as yet undemonstrated claim that the world will warm to threatening temperatures, a dubious claim about imminent disaster that made New York ban fracking for the untold wealth lying in shales like the Marcellus and Utica.
Why Do Adults Have to Teach Kids to Share?
Unfortunately, regardless of society’s attempts to enforce a rule of sharing, individuals will be individuals with individual desires that conflict with the desires of other individuals. Albert doesn’t seem to have seen that even though he lived through two world wars and the Holocaust. He doesn’t seem to realize that his relatively cushy life of contemplating physics and hobnobbing with the wealthy and influential derived from the opportunities afforded in “selfish” capitalist societies. His contradiction makes me think of Bernie Sanders recently selling $95 seats for a conference on the glories of socialism and the degradation caused by capitalism. Yes, ninety-five dollar seats just to hear people go on and on and on about capitalism’s evils and socialism’s wonderful utopian lifestyles. Can anyone say “Russian oligarchs' yachts”?
Is This All a Matter of Envy?
Albert’s argument for socialism is that “private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands.” Think Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and those other ultra-wealthy people who have individually seemingly more money than some countries. Do you make that same argument? Does it bother you that Bill Gates or Elon Musk or Ted Turner have so much whereas you have to struggle to buy stuff you believe to be essential? Welcome to the real world. Does anyone think that dictators and oligarchs who rule socialist and communist societies have struggles equivalent to those of the commoner, or to use Albert’s word, worker?
The Contradiction in His Own Words
As I wrote above, we’re all a bit either hypocritical or contradictory. Albert finishes his essay with this: “A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to recent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?”
In fact, the demonstrable intrusions into individual liberty of the last few decades in America seem to indicate that as bureaucracy and centralization become stronger, individuals become weaker and more dependent. Does capitalism offer a counterweight? Not completely, but in its system individuals do have more opportunities to succeed than they do under a socialist centralization.
Backed by the Press, individuals do serve as a counterweight to government control. And that backing can come from a Press with either a Right or Left agenda. If the Press has an axe to grind because it disfavors the political party in power, it can root out corruption and expose efforts to control the populace. If the Press is neither rightest nor leftist, it, too, can ferret out the evils of a bureaucracy run wild, drunk on power. But in almost every socialist regime, if not every socialist regime, a free Press is anathema. Socialism ultimately takes control, and the Press becomes propaganda. Yet, history shows that in a capitalist system where competition is fundamental to society, the Press can act as an effective counterweight. Albert Einstein should have known that after observing a Press controlled by a socialist government that convinced the population that Jews were the cause of their woes, the very propaganda that led to Einstein’s fleeing Germany. He should have known that by reading Pravda or the very magazine for which he wrote his comments.
Social Goals Are Malleable
Yes, inequities are capitalism’s bane. But every effort to make everything human equal has failed because of the inmate desire to be “individual.” Should everyone receive the Nobel prize as Einstein did? Should every Little Leaguer receive a trophy? Should we keep score? In a perfect socialist world, there would be no recognition of individual achievement. In a perfect socialist world the “educated” would work “toward social goals,” to use Albert’s words.
The reality is that “social goals” are fashionable. In the 1940s and 1950s in England, homosexuality was a crime. Alan Turing, whose computer helped to save England during the war, was subsequently punished by the very people he saved, motivating him to commit suicide. Today, ideas about sexual orientation are so different that any open objection to sexual preference meets with labeling, ostracism and even economic ruin. Social goals do change, so which goals would Einstein accept as the legitimate ends of education? It seemed all right for Germans to send Jews to concentration camps and Americans to place Japanese-Americans in camps during WWII. In what political system favored by Einstein is that suppression of individual rights ethical?
The Crisis of Our Time
I think a problem that troubles many individuals is that crisis Einstein mentions: The conflict between individual and group. Maybe he should have treated the subject as an analog of math, specifically the math of sets. Political entities are sets. In this analog, sets can be homogeneous or heterogeneous because we can include whatever we want to include in a given set. Within any set of people we can include members who are only loosely associated by artificial similarities. We impose the similarities as much as discover them. Einstein wanted people to form societies that simultaneously included centralized bureaucracies and free individuals, which under this analog, would make the set heterogeneous. Mathematically, that would be all right. Sets, as I just said, can include different entities. We get to choose what is in the set; Albert envisions a socialism that does not enslave. Was his dream society the product of one of his famous thought experiments (Gedankenexperiments)? Albert could take a lesson from another Nobel Laureate, Richard Feynman, who said, "It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong." So far, no experiment with socialism has matched the promise of its theory.
But the “math” of every historic socialist leader has been that all those in the “set” must be similar: Similar in philosophy, property, and subservience to the state. Socialism tolerates only homogeneous sets, not heterogeneous sets. Individuals lose their individuality in socialist societies unless they are members of the ruling class. Contradictory? Ironic? Laughable?
How could someone seen as one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century, a person who had to flee the evils of socialism, proclaim the merits of socialism? As I said, we all harbor contradictions.
The crisis of Albert’s time is still the crisis of our time. As western governments like those of Canada and the United States become increasingly more socialistic, their citizens will see more intrusions into their lives, more enslavement to the state bureaucracies.** And if the twenty-first century capitalist societies succumb to creeping socialism, to where will this century’s geniuses flee?
*Einstein, Albert. 1982. Ideas and Opinions. Trans. By Sonja Bargmann. Crown Publishers, Inc. New York. Based on Mein Weltbild, ED. by Carl Seelig.
**Mandates? Debt-spending? Oligarchic rule by agencies?
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