{"id":262572,"date":"2024-05-20T12:00:59","date_gmt":"2024-05-20T11:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=262572"},"modified":"2024-05-17T05:55:39","modified_gmt":"2024-05-17T04:55:39","slug":"einsteins-why-socialism-and-monthly-review-a-historical-introduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/05\/einsteins-why-socialism-and-monthly-review-a-historical-introduction\/","title":{"rendered":"Einstein\u2019s \u201cWhy Socialism?\u201d and \u2018Monthly Review\u2019: A Historical Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Albert Einstein (1959), charcoal and watercolor drawing by Alexander Dobkin. Dobkin (1908\u20131975) was an important painter of the mid-twentieth century American realist tradition along with other left-wing artists such as Jack Levine, Robert Gwathmey, Philip Evergood, and Raphael and Moses Soyer. A student and collaborator of the Mexican muralist Jose Clemente Orozco, his work is in the permanent collections of the Butler Art Institute, the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, and the Smithsonian Institution.<\/p><\/div>\n

May 2024 <\/em>– A Spring 1949 memorandum in the Federal Bureau of Investigation\u2019s \u201cAlbert Einstein File,\u201d part of the FBI\u2019s Vault<\/i> of documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, states:<\/p>\n

\n

Advised [by an agent in the field that] in April 1949, a circular was distributed in the Nashua, New Hampshire area, announcing a new magazine entitled \u201cMonthly Review,\u201d \u201can independent Socialist magazine.\u201d The first issue was dated to come out as the May 1949 edition. The first issue would contain articles by Albert Einstein\u2014\u201cWhy Socialism[?]<\/a>\u201d; Paul M. Sweezy\u2014\u201cRecent Development[s] in American capitalism\u201d; Otto Nathan\u2014\u201cTransition to Socialism in Poland\u201d; Leo Huberman\u2014\u201cSocialism and American Labor\u201d\u2026. Re: New York report, dated 3-15-51 Espionage-CH.1<\/sup><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The rest of the message is blacked out. Another memorandum that immediately follows in the FBI\u2019s Einstein file, and which is similarly redacted, reads:<\/p>\n

Advised the New York Office that the \u201cMonthly Review\u201d 66 Barrow Street, New York City, self-proclaimed \u201can independent Socialist magazine\u201d made its initial appearance in May of 1949. The first issue contained articles by Albert Einstein and others. This [investigative] report stated further that a study of the articles contained in a background check of the editors and contributors revealed that this magazine was Communist inspired and followed the approved Communist Party line\u2026. New York report, dated 1-30-50; Re: Internal Security.2<\/sup><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Albert Einstein, the world\u2019s most famous theoretical physicist and its most celebrated scientist, had fled Germany upon Adolf Hitler\u2019s rise, immigrating to the United States in 1933, where he became a citizen in 1940. Yet, for J. Edgar Hoover\u2019s FBI, Einstein remained a dangerous and Un-American figure, threatening the internal security of the United States by his very presence in the country. His publication in 1949 of an article titled \u201cWhy Socialism?<\/a>\u201d for the new periodical Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine<\/i> was thus viewed by the FBI as a direct confirmation of his strong \u201cCommunist sympathies.\u201d<\/p>\n

The FBI had opened its file on Einstein in 1932, when he was seeking to immigrate to the United States, with a long report by the Woman Patriot Corporation (WPC), which in its extreme anti-Communism, claimed that Einstein was inadmissible to the country. \u201cNot even Stalin himself<\/i>,\u201d the WPC charged, \u201cis affiliated with so many anarcho-communist international groups to promote\u2026world revolution and ultimate anarchy, as ALBERT EINSTEIN.\u201d3<\/sup><\/a> The FBI continued to collect everything it could on Einstein\u2019s numerous socialist connections for the remainder of his life.4<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Although Einstein famously sent a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt on August 2, 1939, on the possibility of developing an atomic bomb\u2014a letter that has often been seen as directly leading to the Manhattan Project\u2014the U.S. military declared him a security risk, and he was excluded from the development, and even knowledge, of the making of the atomic bomb during the Second World War, including the decision by President Harry S. Truman to drop it on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.5<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

In the late 1940s, the Red Scare associated with McCarthyism, named after U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, was already beginning. In April 1949, only a month before Einstein\u2019s \u201cWhy Socialism?\u201d was published in Monthly Review<\/i>, Life<\/i> magazine (Time<\/i> magazine\u2019s sister publication), included Einstein in a two-page photo spread of fifty leading \u201cDupes and Fellow Travelers\u201d of Communism in the country. The spread also included such celebrated figures as composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, actor Charlie Chaplin, poet Langston Hughes, playwright Lillian Hellman, U.S. Congressman Vito Marcantonio, American studies professor F. O. Matthiessen, playwright Arthur Miller, atomic physicist Philip Morrison, writer Dorothy Parker, and radio commentator J. Raymond Walsh. Former U.S. Vice President Henry A. Wallace was portrayed on the previous page as a \u201cstandout fellow traveler.\u201d6<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

No doubt adding to the FBI\u2019s fears and suspicions at the time, connected to the general anti-Communist hysteria, was the fact that Einstein\u2019s \u201cWhy Socialism?\u201d made one of the most succinct and powerful cases for socialism ever written. It is an essay that has stood the test of time, and which is far more celebrated worldwide today, seventy-five years later, than it was at the date of its publication.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this Sense, I Am a Socialist\u201d<\/h3>\n

Einstein in 1949 was no new initiate to socialism. In 1895, aged 16, he had moved to Switzerland to study at Zurich\u2019s Federal Polytechnic School.7<\/sup><\/a> For Einstein, 1905 was to be the \u201cmiraculous year,\u201d during which he received his PhD at the University of Zurich and published five breakthrough papers in theoretical physics (including his doctoral dissertation) that were to make him world famous. He was to be revered worldwide as a personification of human progress and creativity.<\/p>\n

But Einstein\u2019s creativity as a scientist and his universalism were never separate from his commitment to a more egalitarian society. He was a convinced socialist, connected to innumerable radical groups and causes, and a dedicated opponent of all forms of discrimination. After its opening in 1911, he spent a great deal of time hanging out at the Grand Caf\u00e9 ODEON in Zurich, which was a meeting place for Russian radicals, among them Alexandra Kollontai, and, later, V. I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky, along with numerous avant-garde cultural figures. He was undoubtedly caught up in the many fiery political-cultural discussions taking place there. Nor was his a timid socialism. He saw the need in certain historical circumstances for revolutions. On November 19, 1918, the day that Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated, Einstein famously posted on his classroom door: \u201cCLASS CANCELED: REVOLUTION.\u201d8<\/sup><\/a> A year later he wrote: \u201cI do advocate a planned economy\u2026in this sense I am a socialist.\u201d9<\/sup><\/a> In 1929, he stated: \u201cI honor Lenin as a man who completely sacrificed himself and devoted all his energy to the realization of social justice. I do not consider his methods practical, but one thing is certain: men of his type are the guardians and restorers of the conscience of humanity.\u201d10<\/sup><\/a> In a 1931 article, \u201cThe World as I See It,\u201d he wrote: \u201cI regard class distinctions as unjustified, and, in the last resort, based on force.\u201d11<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Although he subsequently was to distance himself from the Soviet character of the organization, Einstein, along with Bertrand Russell, Upton Sinclair, and other independent socialists, signed on to the broad stance of the International Congress Against Imperialist Wars in 1932.12<\/sup><\/a> In 1945, he declared: \u201cI am convinced\u2026that in a state with a socialist economy the prospects are better for the average individual to achieve the maximum degree of freedom that is compatible with the well-being of the community.\u201d13<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

As Einstein\u2019s close friend and associate Otto Nathan was to explain in Einstein on Peace<\/i> in 1960:<\/p>\n

Einstein was a socialist. He believed in socialism because, as a convinced equalitarian, he was opposed to the class division in capitalism and to the exploitation of man by man which he felt this system facilitated more ingeniously than any previous economic organization. He was a socialist because he was certain that a capitalist economy could not adequately perform for the welfare of all<\/i> people and that the economic anarchy of capitalism was the source of many evils in contemporary society. And, finally, he was a socialist because he was convinced that, under socialism, there was a greater possibility of attaining the maximum degree of freedom compatible with the public welfare than under any other system known to man.14<\/sup><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Albert Einstein Foundation and the Rise of McCarthyism in Higher Education<\/h3>\n

In 1933, Einstein joined the newly established Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Here he was to spend a great deal of time with Nathan, who was a visiting professor in the Princeton economics department and who, like Einstein himself, was a refugee from Nazi Germany. Nathan, a socialist economist, had received his doctorate in economics and law in Germany in 1921, and was an economic adviser in the Weimar government. In the United States, he had served in 1930\u201331 on President Herbert Hoover\u2019s Emergency Committee on Employment. He resigned his posts in Germany in 1933 and was hired as a visiting lecturer at Princeton in 1933\u201335, after which he taught at New York University from 1935\u201342, at Vassar from 1942\u201344, and at Howard University from 1946\u201352. Nathan lectured on Marxist economics to the Marxist Study Group at Vassar in the early 1940s. He worked closely with Einstein from 1933 until the latter\u2019s death in 1955, often also serving as a financial adviser. Einstein referred to him as his \u201cclosest friend\u201d and confidant. Nathan was sole executor and co-trustee (along with Einstein\u2019s secretary, Helen Dukas) of the Einstein estate. During their long collaboration, Einstein treated Nathan as his representative on political and educational issues, emphasizing their accord on all questions.15<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

For Einstein, a humane, progressive education was directly linked to the advancement of the socialist cause. In 1946\u201347, he was to play a prominent role, together with Nathan, in the founding of Brandeis University, originally conceived as a Jewish-based secular institution of higher learning that would also represent a new, broader conception of a free university. Here, Einstein\u2019s views of educational reform and radical social change were to come together. The founding of Brandeis was a response to the quota system in the U.S. Ivy League institutions, as well as almost all other colleges and universities, restricting the number of Jewish students, along with those of other minorities.16<\/sup><\/a> The original proposal for the new university was to name it after Einstein, but he declined and declared that it should be named instead after \u201ca great Jew who was also a great [native-born] American,\u201d which led to the naming of the university after former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.17<\/sup><\/a> Nevertheless, Einstein\u2019s support was crucial to get the new university off the ground. The main funding source for the institution of the new university was the Albert Einstein Foundation for Higher Learning, the board of which included Nathan. The chairman of the Foundation was S. Ralph Lazrus, a wealthy businessman with a progressive political outlook, who was tied to the department store chain Allied Stores and the Benrus Watch Company. Brandeis\u2019s Board of Trustees was chaired by George Alpert, a conservative Boston lawyer, president of the Boston and Maine Railroad, and a leading figure in Jewish philanthropy.18<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

In January 1947, Paul M. Sweezy, one of the world\u2019s most prominent left economists, author of The Theory of Capitalist Development: Principles of Marxian Political Economy<\/i> (1942)\u2014who had just stepped down from his position as a professor of economics at Harvard\u2014submitted an eighty-seven-page report, titled A Plan for Brandeis University<\/i>, outlining a proposed structure for the new university.19<\/sup><\/a> The Sweezy plan was clearly commissioned by the Albert Einstein Foundation, emanating from Nathan as Einstein\u2019s representative. Nathan and his good friend, socialist labor journalist Leo Huberman, met almost daily while the former was teaching at New York University. As a result, Nathan had become acquainted with Sweezy, with whom Huberman had a strong friendship and a close working relationship.20<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Sweezy\u2019s Brandeis plan was aimed at creating a more open, accessible, and forward-looking university, unlike any then existing in the United States. It had \u201ctwo major premises.\u201d First, \u201cthe heart and soul of the university\u201d would be \u201cits faculty,\u201d who would govern the university themselves as the ultimate authority. All standards and incentives should be determined from within, rather than coming from without. Second, the university itself would be conceived as \u201ca community<\/i> of scholarship and learning.\u201d Sweezy indicated that the emphasis should be placed on establishing a first-rate small institution, commencing with a faculty of one hundred and a student body of around five hundred. The initial emphasis would be the social sciences and humanities, with the faculty organized into schools, not departments. He also underlined that priority be given to \u201cattracting qualified Negroes for both faculty and student body\u201d and that a certain number of scholarships offered by the university be set aside \u201cexclusively for Negro students.\u201d These proposals were all in line with the views of Nathan and Einstein, with Nathan putting forward a five-page outline of the structure of the new university with which the more extensive Sweezy plan dovetailed. A key critical work singled out in Sweezy\u2019s A Plan for Brandeis University<\/i> was Thorstein Veblen\u2019s The Higher Learning in America<\/i>.21<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

A conflict, however, was to arise between the Albert Einstein Foundation for Higher Learning and the Brandeis Board of Trustees over the Foundation\u2019s progressive academic plans. This was to come out into the open in the context of selecting a president for the new university. In search of a potential president, and with Einstein\u2019s support, Nathan went to London to meet with Harold Laski, no doubt encouraged by Huberman and Sweezy, both of whom had studied under Laski at the London School of Economics (LSE).22<\/sup><\/a> Laski, a former Harvard instructor, then for many years a professor at the LSE, and a member of the executive of the British Labour Party, was widely recognized as one of the world\u2019s leading political-economic thinkers. In 1939, Laski wrote an article, \u201cWhy I Am a Marxist,\u201d originally published in the United States in The Nation<\/i> and later reprinted in Monthly Review<\/i> upon his death in 1950. Responding to the Great Depression and the rise of Nazism, he declared: \u201cThe time has come for a central attack on the structure of capitalism. Nothing less than wholesale socialization can remedy the position. The alternative in all Western civilization\u2026is, I believe, a rapid drift to fascism.\u201d23<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Nathan and Einstein believed that Laski, as one of the leading Jewish thinkers in the world, committed to secular education and displaying strong socialist values, was the ideal choice for the president of Brandeis, able to shape the freer, more open, and more progressive university that they envisioned. Einstein, with the initial support of Alpert, and with what Einstein understood was the authorization of both the Board of Trustees and the Foundation (though this was to be questioned later), wrote to Laski, inviting him to consider taking up the position as president of Brandeis.24<\/sup><\/a> In his April 15, 1947, letter, Einstein said:<\/p>\n

Dear Mr. Laski,<\/p>\n

As you have learned from my friend, Mr. Otto Nathan, a few months ago, a very serious effort is being made here to found a new University which we feel has become necessary because of the quota system openly or subtly used by almost all American Colleges and Universities. We hope that the new institution will make it easier for young men and women of Jewish faith and of other minorities to obtain a first-class education. Similarly, we hope to make it possible for those scientists and scholars, who under present conditions suffer from grave discrimination, to find a place where they can teach and work. The University will be in Jewish hands, but we are determined to develop it into an institution which is enlivened by a free, modern spirit, which emphasizes, above all, independent scholarship and research and which does not know of discrimination for or against anybody because of sex, color, creed, national origin or political opinion. All decisions about education policies, about the organization of teaching and research will be in the hands of the faculty.<\/p>\n

The Board of Trustees has delegated to me the authority of selecting the first president of the University. This man would have the challenging task to help us in determining the basic foundation of the University and to select and organize the initial faculty upon whom so much depends. We all feel that among all living Jews you are the one man who, accepting the great challenge, would be most likely to succeed. Not only are you familiar with the United States and her academic institutions more intimately than many American educators, your reputation as an outstanding scholar is widespread throughout the country.<\/p>\n

I am writing, therefore, to ask you whether you would be prepared to consider such an invitation.25<\/sup><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Laski responded almost immediately to Einstein\u2019s offer, indicating that, unfortunately, for personal and family reasons, as well as his commitment to the struggle for socialism in Britain, he was unable to leave London, and therefore he could not accept the position.26<\/sup><\/a> However, despite Laski\u2019s letter declining the position, which had already been received, Alpert clearly saw the Laski offer as a potentially contentious issue, and a way of seizing control of the university\u2019s direction. The goal was to marginalize Nathan and Lazrus, and therefore Einstein, by nullifying the role of the Albert Einstein Foundation in the determination of the academic direction of the university. Thus, despite his initial support for the offer to Laski, Alpert now took the opposite tack. He suddenly claimed, though the charge was a dubious one with no clear evidence to support it, that Nathan and Lazrus (indirectly implicating Einstein himself) had exceeded their authority in making such an offer to Laski. Alpert denied that the Board of Directors of the Foundation had authorized the offer in a meeting, which he now declared had lacked a quorum.27<\/sup><\/a> More to the point, he insisted that the Laski choice was unacceptable because it reflected radical, \u201cUn-American\u201d politics. Einstein\u2019s response was to defend Nathan and Lazrus, and to make it clear that they had his full confidence and had acted in line with his own views. He emphasized that it was he himself who had written the letter to Laski after first getting the approval of Alpert, the Board of Trustees, and the Foundation. Einstein then severed his connection to Brandeis, arranging for the name of the Albert Einstein Foundation for Higher Learning to be changed to the Brandeis Foundation, with both Nathan and Lazarus resigning their positions.<\/p>\n

According to Alpert, whose remarks on the incident were highlighted by the New York Times<\/i> on June 23, 1947, under the headline \u201cLeft Bias Charged in University Row,\u201d Einstein\u2019s associates had \u201carrogated to themselves the shaping of academic policy\u201d aiming to give the university \u201ca radical political orientation,\u201d and \u201csurreptitiously\u201d making overtures to a \u201cthoroughly unacceptable choice.\u201d In Alpert\u2019s words, \u201cTo establish a Jewish-sponsored University and to place at its head a man utterly alien to American principles of democracy, tarred with the Communist brush, would have condemned the University to impotence from the start\u2026. On the issue of Americanism I cannot compromise.\u201d Other newspapers picked up the story, claiming that Laski was objectionable as an \u201cinternational socialist of record.\u201d28<\/sup><\/a> It was no mere coincidence that Alpert\u2019s political allegations were entirely in accord with the views of the National Council for American Education, a fervently anti-Communist organization founded in 1946 that launched McCarthyism in the universities. With the introduction of McCarthyite tactics, Alpert was declaring that it was unacceptable for any intellectual figure associated with socialist ideas to head a U.S. university.29<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Einstein was shocked at the red-scare tactics being used against him and his associates, as indicated in his draft response to Alpert\u2019s public statements. His actual public response, however, was restrained and to the point:<\/p>\n

The press statements which Mr. George Alpert and another member of the Board of Trustees of Brandeis University released on the occasion of the withdrawal of myself and of my friends, Professor Otto Nathan and Mr. S. Ralph Lazrus, have convinced me that it was none too early for us to sever a connection from which no good was to be expected from the community. My associates and myself had very reluctantly come to the conclusion that the type of academic institution in which we have been interested could not be accomplished under the existing circumstances and present leadership.30<\/sup><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As William Zuckerman wrote in the Jewish publication The American Hebrew<\/i>: \u201cMr. Alpert\u2019s statement is\u2026[that] of a narrow partisan reactionary politician behooving a member of the Un-American Activities Committee, not a president of a university named after the late Justice Brandeis.\u201d31<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

The Wallace Campaign and the Birth of Monthly Review<\/i><\/h3>\n

The failure in the repressive climate of the time to establish a new kind of open, democratic university dedicated to a more progressive vision, one with absolute control over the institution being exercised by the faculty, lacking racial discrimination in its admissions policies, and incorporating socialist values of equality, had a deep effect on Einstein. In 1948, in the midst of the anti-Communist hysteria that was then being directed against all left-wing movements in the country, including the radical-labor, civil rights, and left-academic forces that had formed a coalition during Roosevelt\u2019s New Deal, Einstein threw his support behind Wallace, the Progressive Party candidate in the presidential election. Wallace had the support of the radical forces that had provided much of the impetus for Roosevelt\u2019s New Deal. His campaign opposed the Cold War, supported international control of nuclear weapons, and backed civil rights and the rights of labor. A famous photo taken shortly before the official launching of he Progressive Party shows Einstein and Paul Robeson standing next to Wallace.32<\/sup><\/a> Huberman and Sweezy wrote the preamble to the Progressive Party platform, which was adopted at the Philadelphia Convention in July 1948. Sweezy was to take on the position of chairman of the Wallace campaign in New Hampshire.33<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Although garnering over a million votes, Wallace lost decisively in the election, partly due to the red-baiting campaign directed against him by the Democratic Party presidential candidate, then-President Truman.34<\/sup><\/a> In the wake of Wallace\u2019s disastrous defeat, Huberman, Sweezy, Nathan, and seemingly Einstein as well, concluded that a key reason for Wallace\u2019s dismal electoral showing was a failure to articulate a positive vision, which could only come from socialism. Einstein believed that Wallace was \u201cwithout doubt a liberal,\u201d not a socialist.35<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Under these circumstances, Huberman, Sweezy, and Nathan were convinced that what was needed in the United States was an independent socialist periodical that would provide the necessary political education and vision, even if this was only to be, in the context of the times, a mere \u201cholding action, a rearguard action.\u201d36<\/sup><\/a> Consequently, they began to work together to found what became Monthly Review<\/i>. They were helped by Matthiessen, who had worked with Sweezy in the 1930s in forming the Harvard Teacher\u2019s Union and was also an active supporter of Wallace. He provided the magazine with a critical $5,000 in each of its first three years.37<\/sup><\/a> Nathan was a silent member of the founding editorial team of the new magazine, not wanting to be on the masthead given the McCarthyite attacks already being directed at university professors. He wrote for the first two issues of Monthly Review<\/i> and was heavily involved in its planning and development. However, his role was gradually to recede in the initial year of publication. His most lasting contribution to Monthly Review<\/i> was to encourage Einstein to write for the first issue.38<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Hence, when the inaugural issue of Monthly Review<\/i> was published in May 1949, Huberman and Sweezy were listed as editors, while the four authors of articles in the issue (following two editorials) were Einstein, Sweezy, Huberman, and Nathan, in that order. It was Einstein\u2019s article in the first issue of Monthly Review<\/i> that took on the main task of articulating the meaning of socialism itself and drew the FBI\u2019s attention to the magazine.<\/p>\n

There was a longstanding tradition of major socialists publishing articles titled \u201cWhy I am a Socialist.\u201d39<\/sup><\/a> Nathan, with the support of Huberman and Sweezy, suggested to Einstein that he write an essay of this kind. Einstein, however, decided to adopt an entirely different format, not based on his own subjective views, but rather making a straightforward objective case for choosing a socialist path, leading to the very distinctive quality of \u201cWhy Socialism?,\u201d which took on a scientific character.40<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Einstein and the Objective Case for Socialism<\/h3>\n

Written with desperate brevity, Einstein\u2019s \u201cWhy Socialism?\u201d was just over six pages long. Although uniquely his own product, it showed the influence of two great socioeconomic thinkers: Veblen and Karl Marx. As C. Wright Mills famously wrote in an introduction to Veblen\u2019s The Theory of the Leisure Class<\/i>, \u201cThorstein Veblen is the best critic of America that America has produced.\u201d41<\/sup><\/a> In the 1940s, Veblen was one of Einstein\u2019s favorite authors. In 1944, Einstein wrote, \u201cI owe innumerable happy hours to the reading of [Bertrand] Russell\u2019s works, something which I cannot say of any other contemporary scientific writer, with the exception of Thorstein Veblen.\u201d42<\/sup><\/a> Einstein saw Marx as a great thinker, whom he ranked alongside Baruch Spinoza as an exponent of human freedom arising from the Jewish tradition. As he declared: \u201cEmbedded in the tradition of the Jewish people there is a love of justice and reason which must continue to work for the good of all nations now and in the future. In modern times this tradition has produced Spinoza and Karl Marx.\u201d43<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

The first half of \u201cWhy Socialism?\u201d was related to Veblen\u2019s views. Einstein commenced his essay with the question and answer: \u201cIs it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism? I believe for a number of reasons it is.\u201d He proceeded to explain that up to the present day \u201cnowhere have we overcome what Thorstein Veblen called \u2018the predatory phase\u2019 of human development.\u2026 Since the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development, economic science in its present state can throw little light on the socialist society of the future.\u201d44<\/sup><\/a> It was also the case that socialism was \u201cdirected towards a social-ethical end\u201d to which science, as normally understood, could contribute little. Hence, experts on current economic arrangements were not \u201cthe only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society.\u201d45<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Einstein\u2019s principal occupation at this time was the struggle for world peace in the face of the existential threat represented by nuclear weapons. The question of peace was directly connected to the relation of the individual to society. The typical individual in contemporary capitalism was so alienated and distraught by the dire circumstances then prevalent, both economic in origin and arising from the threat of war, so as frequently to question the very concept of humanity. As Einstein wrote, \u201cI recently discussed with an intelligent and well-disposed man the threat of another war, which in my opinion would seriously endanger the existence of mankind, and I remarked that only a supra-national organization would offer protection from danger. Thereupon my visitor, very calmly and coolly, said to me: \u2018Why are you so deeply opposed to the disappearance of the human race?\u2019\u201d46<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Nothing else, Einstein stated, so clearly pointed to the contemporary social and moral crisis: \u201cI am sure that as little as a century ago no one would have so lightly made a statement of this kind. It is the statement of a man who has striven in vain to attain an equilibrium within himself and has more or less lost hope of succeeding. It is the expression of a painful solitude and isolation from which so many people are suffering in these days. What is the cause? Is there a way out?\u201d47<\/sup><\/a> The very refusal to face up to the existential crisis facing humanity, going so far as to deny the importance of the continuation of human existence, dramatized the despair and alienation that was then, as now, rife, necessitating a search for a way out<\/i>.<\/p>\n

\u201cMan,\u201d Einstein observed in \u201cWhy Socialism?,\u201d \u201cis at one and the same time a solitary being and a social being.\u201d The character of the human being is thus a product of both individual and social drives, reflecting inward and outward forces.48<\/sup><\/a> Each person has both an inherited \u201cbiological constitution\u201d and a \u201ccultural constitution\u201d adopted from society, which together affect one\u2019s development. Nevertheless, individuals are able to influence their own lives to some extent by virtue of consciousness, communication, and the actions each chooses to take within the constraints presented by society, which is itself subject to change. \u201cThe social behavior of human beings may differ greatly, depending upon prevailing cultural patterns and the types of organization which predominate in society. It is on this that those who are striving to improve the lot of man may ground their hopes: human beings are not<\/i> condemned, because of their biological constitution, to annihilate each other or to be at the mercy of a cruel, self-inflicted fate.\u201d49<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

It was this strongly held conviction that led Einstein in his essay to address the structure of present-day society. The dependence of the individual on society today, he wrote, is such that the individual \u201cdoes not experience this dependence as\u2026an organic tie, as a protective force, but rather as a threat to his natural rights, or even to his economic existence.\u201d This is because the structure of society is such as to accentuate \u201cthe egotistical drives\u201d and at the same time to weaken the \u201csocial drives\u201d in the individual\u2019s makeup, \u201cwhich are by nature weaker,\u201d thus going against the insurmountable fact that \u201cman can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society.\u201d50<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Relying on Marx for much of his argument at this point, Einstein emphasized that while there is \u201ca huge community of producers\u201d in today\u2019s \u201ccapitalist society,\u201d the vast majority of these are deprived \u201cof the fruits of their collective labor,\u201d since \u201cthe entire productive capacity of society\u201d is \u201cfor the most part\u2026the private property of individuals.\u201d Here, he outlined \u201cfor the sake of simplicity\u201d (that is, at a high level of abstraction), the main characteristics of a capitalist class society. In such a system, \u201cthe \u2018workers\u2019\u2026[or] all those who do not share in the ownership of the means of production\u201d are compelled to sell their \u201clabor power\u201d to \u201cthe owner of the means of production.\u201d51<\/sup><\/a> The owner is thus in a position to appropriate the entire surplus (value) generated beyond what is first paid to the worker in order to meet the \u201cminimal needs\u201d of the latter. \u201cIt is important to understand,\u201d he wrote, \u201cthat even in theory the payment of the worker is not determined by the value of his product.\u201d52<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

The main contradictions of capitalist class society, according to Einstein, stemmed from its promotion of inequality. Rather than tending toward egalitarian conditions, \u201cprivate capital tends to become concentrated in few hands\u201d through the normal operation of the accumulation process, whereby \u201cthe formation of larger units of production\u201d occurs \u201cat the expense of smaller ones.\u201d This generates \u201can oligarchy of private capital\u201d that is so powerful that \u201cit cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized society.\u201d This is all the more the case since elected politicians and the parties to which they belong are \u201clargely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists\u201d who stand between the electorate and the greater part of the population. \u201cMoreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education),\u201d which mediate between those who rule the society and the population as a whole.53<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Capitalism, Einstein explained, is a system in which \u201cproduction is carried on for profit, not for use,\u201d leaving many underprivileged and underserved. The system is supported by \u201can army of unemployed,\u201d so that the worker is constantly fearful of being cast back into the reserve army of labor. New technological developments often result in workers being thrown out of work, thereby further enhancing the army of the unemployed and the relative power of the owners.54<\/sup><\/a> \u201cThe profit motive,\u201d together with unrestrained competition, are responsible for severe economic crises, a \u201chuge waste of labor,\u201d and the \u201ccrippling of the social consciousness of individuals.\u201d The last is \u201cthe worst evil of capitalism,\u201d since it allows society to be turned against the population. \u201cOur whole educational system\u201d cultivates such alienated values, and thus \u201csuffers from this evil.\u201d55<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI am convinced there is only one<\/i> way to eliminate these grave evils,\u201d Einstein declared, \u201cnamely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion\u201d in line with social, as well as individual, needs. \u201cThe education of the individual in addition, to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.\u201d56<\/sup><\/a> Here, we see the importance that he placed, as expressed in his letter to Laski, on the creation of an educational institution free of \u201cdiscrimination for or against anybody because of sex, color, creed, national origin, or political opinion\u201d\u2014one in which \u201call decisions about education policies, about the organization of teaching and research will be in the hands of the faculty,\u201d not boards of trustees filled with business magnates.<\/p>\n

\u201cA planned economy,\u201d Einstein insisted, \u201cis not yet socialism.\u201d It does not necessarily mean the end of \u201cthe enslavement of the individual.\u201d The actual achievement of socialism meant addressing crucial issues such as the questions of extending rather than limiting democracy, combating bureaucracy, and protecting the rights of the individual. He ended his article by referring to Monthly Review<\/i>, the founding of which he strongly backed: \u201cClarity about the aims and problems of socialism is of greatest significance in our age of transition. Since, under present circumstances, free and unhindered discussion of these problems has come under a powerful taboo, I consider the foundation of this magazine to be an important public service.\u201d57<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

The \u201cpowerful taboo\u201d was the McCarthyism then dominating the entire discourse of U.S. society. Einstein himself had felt its force directly in his attempts to create a new, freer university in Brandeis that fell prey to charges of Un-Americanism; in his role in the Wallace campaign, which led to his being castigated as a \u201cdupe and follow traveler\u201d of Communism; and in the witch-hunt style attacks on many of the socialists and radicals with whom he was most closely associated. Although Einstein\u2019s world reputation and status made him virtually untouchable, this was not true of the other authors who wrote for the first issue of Monthly Review<\/i>. Huberman, Sweezy, and Nathan, were all to be called up before the McCarthyite inquisition and threatened with prison for their refusal to name names and cooperate, resting their cases on the First Amendment, as famously recommended by Einstein.58<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWhy Socialism?\u201d or \u201cWhy Liberalism?\u201d<\/h3>\n

Such is the power of Einstein\u2019s name and the force of his views that even today, seventy-five years after the publication of \u201cWhy Socialism<\/a>?,\u201d efforts are being made to deny or downplay his commitment to socialism, and to argue that \u201cWhy Socialism?\u201d was of little importance, did not say what it seemed to say, was contradicted by his own intellectual development, and has no real significance for our times. Most biographical treatments of Einstein simply ignore his politics altogether as of little consequence.59<\/sup><\/a> In reality, this has to do with the inconvenient fact that Einstein was a political radical, often seen as a tribune of the left.<\/p>\n

However, in recent years, interest in Einstein\u2019s political views has greatly increased as a result of Fred Jerome\u2019s publication in 2002 of The Einstein File<\/i>, which recorded the FBI\u2019s pursuit of him for his left political views. In 2007, authors David E. Rowe and Robert Schulmann, both noted Einstein scholars, published the edited collection Einstein on Politics<\/i> with Princeton University Press. The book was quickly recognized as an invaluable resource, bringing together materials from numerous sources, some of them previously unpublished. Rowe and Schulmann not only provided a general introduction but also extensive commentary on the various items included in their collection.<\/p>\n

The most obvious deficiency of the Rowe and Schulmann book was the exclusion of Einstein\u2019s many treatments of racism outside the questions of Judaism, Zionism, Israel, and Palestine. \u201cOnly after the [Second World War],\u201d they wrote, did Einstein begin \u201cto speak out more insistently about the enduring legacy of slavery manifested in white America\u2019s feelings of superiority toward blacks.\u201d Here, though, they were forced to qualify this by acknowledging that Einstein had written on racism in the United States as early as 1931\u201332, while nonetheless leaving out the crucial fact that the key article referred to was written for The Crisis<\/i> magazine under the editorship of none other than W. E. B. Du Bois.60<\/sup><\/a> Only Robeson, not Du Bois, appears in Roe and Schulmann\u2019s account of Einstein\u2019s politics\u2014and even then, Robeson is mentioned only in relation to the famous photograph of him with Einstein and Wallace.61<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Yet, there is another, more subtle deficiency in Einstein on Politics<\/i>, related to the political agenda of the book, which is designed to transform Einstein from a socialist into a liberal. Here, Rowe and Schulmann seek to turn Einstein\u2019s most famous statement on socialism, \u201cWhy Socialism?,\u201d inside-out. Indeed, Einstein\u2019s \u201cWhy Socialism?,\u201d Rowe and Schulmann claim, despite its title, was actually not a case for socialism at all, but rather for a kind of left-liberalism. Implicit in this is the idea that \u201cWhy Socialism?\u201d should have been entitled \u201cWhy Liberalism?\u201d Thus, they sharply criticize Nathan, Einstein\u2019s closest friend and confidant and the executor\/trustee of his estate, for completely misunderstanding Einstein in describing him as a socialist.62<\/sup><\/a> \u201cWhy Socialism?,\u201d we are led to believe, may appear to be making a case for socialism, but this is soon dispelled if \u201cproperly contextualized<\/span>.\u201d63<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

One part of this \u201cproper contextualization<\/i>,\u201d apparently, derives from the observation that Einstein was frequently critical of the Soviet Union, and had indicated in a letter that some Bolshevik theories were \u201cridiculous\u201d\u2014as if this in itself meant the wholesale rejection of socialism.64<\/sup><\/a> Moreover, a \u201cproper contextualization<\/i>\u201d<\/span> of \u201cWhy Socialism?,\u201d the editors of Einstein on Politics<\/i> implausibly argue, includes the recognition that in criticizing \u201cthe oligarchy of capital,\u201d Einstein\u2019s intention was, in their words, \u201cnot so much to advance socialism as an economic system but to advocate a planned economy as a significant instrument for achieving social-ethical ends.\u201d Here they circumvent Einstein\u2019s own clearly stated view that a planned economy was a necessary<\/i>, \u201csocialistic\u201d first step, if not a sufficient<\/i> one, in the overall process of the creation of complete socialism.65<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Because Einstein believed in human rights and democracy, it is oddly presumed by the editors of Einstein on Politics<\/i>, that he could not, therefore, have been a socialist. Thus, we are told that his arguments in \u201cWhy Socialism?\u201d against \u201cincome inequality and the exploitation of the economically vulnerable,\u201d which he attributed to the capitalist system, if \u201cproperly contextualized<\/i>,\u201d could be seen as falling \u201cwithin the traditional liberal goal of self-realization of the individual,\u201d concerned with democratic rights\u2014rather than constituting, as Einstein himself thought, arguments for democratic socialism.66<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Turning to the question of intellectuals and the working class, the defenders of a \u201cproper contextualization<\/i>\u201d<\/span> of Einstein\u2019s politics proclaim that as an intellectual, he had no direct experience with working-class conditions or with the working class itself, and thus necessarily \u201cplaced his faith in appeals to reason by a liberal intelligentsia\u201d\u2014as if faith in appeals to reason by a socialist intelligentsia<\/i> were simply out of reach to him.67<\/sup><\/a> Although Einstein was not directly connected to the working class, he was surrounded by socialists, many of whom were.<\/p>\n

In a further attempt to turn Einstein\u2019s politics inside-out, Nathan\u2019s straightforward declaration that Einstein was a socialist because of the his deep commitment to egalitarianism is subjected to a fierce attack by Rowe and Schulmann. They claim that Nathan, despite his close friendship with Einstein, mistook the real character of the great man, who was actually prone to a \u201cfervent elitism.\u201d68<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Finally, it is subtly suggested that a \u201cproper contextualization<\/i>\u201d<\/span> of Einstein\u2019s views in \u201cWhy Socialism?\u201d would see him as a na\u00efve \u201cmoral philosopher,\u201d unable to find his way in the real world of politics, leading to his utopian advocacy of a socialist future while belying his own innate liberal tendencies.69<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Not only is Einstein (together with Nathan) subjected in this way to Rowe and Schulmann\u2019s \u201cproper contextualization<\/i>,\u201d but so is the publication in which \u201cWhy Socialism?\u201d appeared, Monthly Review<\/i>. Rowe and Schulmann allege that the editors of Monthly Review<\/i>, Huberman and Sweezy (and Nathan behind the scenes) \u201ctried to appropriate\u201d Einstein for their own leftist ends by publishing \u201cWhy Socialism?\u201d \u201cwith great fanfare\u201d in May 1949. Yet, far from \u201cgreat fanfare,\u201d the only<\/i> comment on Einstein or his article by anyone in the inaugural issue of Monthly Review<\/i> in which his article appeared was a single line identifying the author: \u201cAlbert Einstein is the world-famous physicist.\u201d70<\/sup><\/a> His article was neither given top billing inside the magazine, since it followed two major editorials, nor was it highlighted on the cover. Rather than appropriating him \u201cwith great fanfare,\u201d the editors of Monthly Review<\/i> might be reasonably criticized for having understated the signal importance of Einstein\u2019s essay.<\/p>\n

The sense that the distinguished editors of Einstein on Politics<\/i> would no doubt like to convey is that Einstein was far from being a willing participant in all of this. Such a view, however, is belied by his close relations to Nathan; his indirect connections to Sweezy in the planning of Brandeis; the leading roles that Huberman, Sweezy, and Einstein all played in the Wallace campaign; and the final paragraph of his article indicating strong support for the new magazine.<\/p>\n

Not content with the above charges, Rowe and Schulmann go on to declare, as if to cast aspersions on the further \u201cappropriation\u201d of his essay, that the Einstein article had been reprinted by Monthly Review<\/i> \u201cevery year\u201d over its history. Yet, over the monthly magazine\u2019s then fifty-eight years of publication, at the time that Rose and Schulmann were writing, the Einstein article had only been reprinted in its pages eight times, approximately once every seven years.71<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

The Constant Political Struggle for Socialism<\/h3>\n

Einstein\u2019s advocacy of socialism was entirely at one with his positions on education, racism, colonialism, and peace. The red-baiting in relation to his plans for Brandeis University, his socialist commitments, and his letter to Laski has continued into this century.72<\/sup><\/a> Yet, in general, Brandeis has preferred to play down the political conflict, presenting Einstein as simply a magnanimous figure involved in the founding of the university and implying his continual support in order to better use his name.73<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Einstein almost always politely declined offers from universities for honorary degrees, not only because these were so numerous, but also because he was uncomfortable with the nature of higher education in the United States.74<\/sup><\/a> But when offered such an honorary degree by the first president of Brandeis, Abram L. Sachar, in May 1953, he did not send his usual polite response, but angrily explained that \u201cWhat happened in the stage of preparation of Brandeis University was not caused by a misunderstanding,\u201d but was deceptive and unconscionable \u201cand cannot be made good any more.\u201d In an earlier reply in July 1949 to an overture from Sachar, he referred to \u201cthe untrustiness and untruthfulness of certain of the Board of Trustees\u201d that had led to his severing all connections with the university.75<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Yet, while Einstein deplored the way universities in the United States, including Brandeis, were governed by business and elitist political interests, he was willing to accept such an honorary degree in 1946 from the small, historically Black, Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, which, when chartered in 1854, was the first institution of its kind. In his speech on that occasion, as reported in the Baltimore Afro-American<\/i> (the mainstream press in general ignored his speech), Einstein said: \u201cMy trip to this institution was on behalf of a worthwhile cause. There is separation of colored people from white people in the United States. That separation [segregation] is not a disease of colored people. It is a disease of white people. I do not intend to be quiet about it.\u201d In a closely related article in January 1946 on \u201cThe Negro Question,\u201d Einstein declared: \u201cThe social outlook of Americans\u2026their sense of equality and human dignity is limited to men of white skins\u2026. The more I feel an American, the more this situation pains me. I can escape complicity in it only by speaking out.\u201d In response to a nationwide wave of lynching that year, he joined Robeson as co-chair of the American Crusade to End Lynching, despite the FBI\u2019s characterization of it as a Communist-front organization.76<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

In 1951, the federal government indicted Du Bois, then chairman of the Peace Information Center based in the United States, along with four other officers of the Center, for failing to register as \u201cforeign agents.\u201d The Peace Information Center was charged with having circulated the Stockholm Appeal of 1950 of the World Peace Council, which was classified by U.S. authorities as a Soviet-front organization.77<\/sup><\/a> The Stockholm Appeal was aimed at banning nuclear weapons and was signed by several million people. In federal court, Du Bois was defended by the fiery radical attorney and congressman, Marcantonio.78<\/sup><\/a> Einstein had agreed to testify on Du Bois\u2019s behalf, but Marcantonio, in order to achieve the maximum effect, held back this information until the last moment\u2014when he was about to call the defense witnesses. As Du Bois\u2019s wife, Shirley Graham Du Bois, recalled that day in court:<\/p>\n

The prosecution rested its case during the morning of November 20\u2026. Marcantonio\u2026told the judge that only one defense witness was to be presented, Dr. Du Bois. [But] Marcantonio added casually to the judge, \u201cDr. Albert Einstein has offered to appear as a character witness for Dr. Du Bois.\u201d Judge [Matthew F.] McGuire fixed Marcantonio with a long look, and then adjourned the court for lunch. When court resumed, Judge McGuire\u2026granted the motion for acquittal.79<\/sup><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It was clear that the international publicity that would have ensued from putting Einstein on the witness stand in defense of Du Bois was too much for the judge, who dismissed the case on lack of evidence, even before Einstein could take the stand.80<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Einstein deplored U.S. imperialism. As he wrote to the Queen Mother of Belgium, Elisabeth, in 1955: \u201cI cannot rid myself of the thought that this, the last of my fatherlands, has invented for its own use a new kind of colonialism, one that is less conspicuous than the colonialism of old Europe. It achieves domination of other countries by investing American capital abroad, which makes those countries firmly dependent on the United States. Anyone who opposes this policy or its implications is treated as an enemy of the United States.\u201d He firmly believed that the United States was principally responsible for the tragedy of the Korean War.81<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Einstein\u2019s well-known commitment to Zionism is often used as a way of denying or circumventing his radical and socialist views. A Time<\/i> article titled \u201cEinstein\u2019s Complicated Relationship to Judaism\u201d by Samuel Graydon, published on December 19, 2023, in the midst of the continuing Israeli war on Gaza, claimed that Einstein was an out-and-out Zionist and \u201covercame his instinctive objections to the nationalist element inherent in the movement\u2014that is the creation of a Jewish state.\u201d This, however, is a myth created almost immediately upon his death, designed to hide the truth.82<\/sup><\/a> Rather than explore the issue fully, which would raise difficult questions, the Time<\/i> article quickly deviated into the details of Einstein\u2019s immigration to the United States and his supposed patriotic Americanism, despite the McCarthyite attacks on him, linking this fabled Americanism with his \u201ccommitment to the Zionist cause,\u201d on which, we are told, he \u201cdid not waver in his later years.\u201d83<\/sup><\/a> In fact, Einstein was consistently opposed to the creation of a \u201cJewish state\u201d in Israel, arguing instead for a \u201cbinational\u201d state including both Jews and Palestinians, and thus was what has been referred to as a \u201ccultural Zionist\u201d as opposed to \u201cpolitical Zionist.\u201d He argued that Jewish immigration should be limited to what was compatible with the peaceful integration of Jews and Palestinians in a common homeland.84<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Completely missing from the Time<\/i> article was any reference to the December 8, 1948, letter to the New York Times<\/i>, signed by Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Sidney Hook, Seymour Melman, and other Jewish intellectuals, warning of the rise in Israel of Menachem Begin\u2019s Herut (\u201cFreedom\u201d) Party, the progenitor of today\u2019s Likud under Benjamin Netanyahu. The letter by Einstein and his cosignatories characterized Begin\u2019s Freedom Party as \u201ca political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties.\u201d85<\/sup><\/a> The near total destruction of Gaza by the Israeli Defense Forces following Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, 2023, leading, as of April 2024, to more than a hundred thousand casualties, including more than thirty thousand deaths\u2014most of them women, children and other noncombatants\u2014with many times that number facing starvation, has brought renewed worldwide attention to Einstein\u2019s warning on the evolution of the Israeli state.86<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Einstein\u2019s principal concern in his later years was the threat of human annihilation due to nuclear weapons. In 1946, he became chair of the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists (ECAS). Other than Einstein, all of the committee members had worked on the development of the atomic bomb. Many were Nobel Prize recipients. Yet, the FBI was to list the ECAS as a Communist-front group, because of its efforts to remove atomic development from the military and put it under international control at a time when the United States still had a monopoly on nuclear weapons.87<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

On March 1, 1954, the United States carried out a disastrous hydrogen bomb test, code named \u201cCastle Bravo,\u201d on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Intended to be an explosion with a yield of six megatons, it turned out, due to an error in calculation by the scientists involved, to be the largest nuclear explosion ever conducted by the United States, amounting to fifteen megatons\u2014one thousand times the explosive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The fallout extended over eleven thousand square kilometers, falling on the Marshallese populations of the inhabited atolls and on a Japanese fishing boat eighty-two miles away, outside the official danger zone. When the boat, Lucky Dragon<\/i>, made its way back to Japan, it was discovered that the fishermen were suffering from radiation sickness. News of this quickly reached Einstein and deeply affected him. Although the Eisenhower administration tried to hide the full extent of the disaster for a year, scientists began asking questions and providing their own data, forcing the administration to release much of its information. The result was enormous worldwide concern about the dangers of nuclear fallout from above-ground nuclear testing, along with the nuclear arms race in general. This was to lead to the massive struggle of scientists and citizens over the following years to enact the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, signed in 1963, marking the first great success of the modern environmental movement, which started with concerns over atmospheric nuclear testing.88<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Einstein\u2019s last signed statement in April 1955, only days before his death, was in support of what has become known as the \u201cRussell-Einstein Manifesto,\u201d which declared that \u201cthe best authorities are unanimous in saying that a war with H-bombs might quite possibly put an end to the human race. It is feared that if many H-bombs are used there will be universal death\u2026. We urge the governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly, that their purposes cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them, consequently, to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them.\u201d89<\/sup><\/a> As Einstein stated in \u201cWhy Socialism?,\u201d the attempt to find a \u201cway out\u201d from the threat of human extinction leads in the direction of socialism.<\/p>\n

Einstein\u2019s commitment to socialism did not rest simply on the socialization of the means of production and the creation of a planned economy. Rather, he believed that \u201cSocialism\u2026requires that concentrated power be under the effective control of the citizenry, so that the planned economy benefits the entire population\u2026. Only constant political struggle and vigilance can create and maintain such a condition.\u201d Indeed, \u201cto tire in that struggle\u201d for democracy and human rights, which could only be achieved fully under socialism, \u201cwould mean the ruin of society.\u201d90<\/sup><\/a> To the last, Einstein considered himself, in his own words, a political \u201crevolutionary\u2026a fire-belching Vesuvius,\u201d struggling on behalf of a common humanity.91<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Notes:<\/h3>\n
    \n
  1. \u21a9<\/a> Federal Bureau of Investigation, Albert Einstein<\/a><\/cite>, Part 8 of 14 (originally numbered 6 of 9) (n.d.), 45 (1002), vault.fbi.gov; Fred Jerome, The Einstein File<\/cite> (New York: St. Martin\u2019s Press, 2002), 114\u201315.<\/li>\n
  2. \u21a9<\/a> Federal Bureau of Investigation, Albert Einstein<\/a><\/cite>, Part 8 of 14 (originally numbered 6 of 9) (n.d.), 46 (1003); Fred Jerome, The Einstein File<\/cite> (New York: St. Martin\u2019s Press, 2002), 114\u201315.<\/li>\n
  3. \u21a9<\/a> FBI, Albert Einstein<\/cite>, Part 1 of 14 (originally numbered 1 of 9) (n.d.), 14; Jerome, The Einstein File<\/cite>, 7.<\/li>\n
  4. \u21a9<\/a> Einstein\u2019s FBI file continued to refer to his article \u201cWhy Socialism?\u201d into the 1950s, relying on information from the anti-Communist American Business Consultants Incorporated, and their newsletter, Counter Attack<\/cite>. FBI, Albert Einstein<\/cite>, Part 9 of 14 (originally numbered 6 of 9) (n.d.), 82 (1149).<\/li>\n
  5. \u21a9<\/a> Albert Einstein to Franklin D. Roosevelt, August 2, 1939 (letter originally drafted by Leo Szilard in consultation with Einstein and sent to Roosevelt over Einstein\u2019s signature), The Manhattan Project: An Interactive History, U.S. Department of Energy, osti.gov; Silvan S. Schweber, Einstein and Oppenheimer<\/cite> (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2008), 42\u201346; David E. Rowe and Robert Schulmann, introduction to Einstein on Politics<\/cite>, David E. Rowe and Robert Schulmann, eds. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 40\u201341. As Fred Jerome writes: \u201cEinstein blamed the atomic bombings of Japan on Truman\u2019s anti Soviet foreign policy\u2026. He told an interviewer from the Sunday Express <\/cite>of London that if FDR had lived through the war, Hiroshima never would have been bombed\u201d (Jerome, The Einstein File<\/cite>, 56). Einstein\u2019s view of the use of the atomic bomb on Japan as the first step in the Cold War was shared by many other scientists at the time, notably the British Nobel prizewinning nuclear physicist P. M. S. Blackett. See P. M. S. Blackett, Fear, War, and the Bomb <\/cite>(New York: McGraw Hill, 1949), 131\u201339.<\/li>\n
  6. \u21a9<\/a> \u201cRed Visitors Cause Rumpus\/The Russians Get a Big Hand from U.S. Friends\/Dupes and Fellow Travelers Dress Up Communist Fronts,\u201d Life <\/cite>26, no. 14 (April 4, 1949), 39\u201343; Jerome, The Einstein File<\/cite>, 107. Atomic physicist Morrison was to write a regular column on science for Monthly Review <\/cite>in the 1950s and early \u201960s. Radio commentator Walsh was a former Harvard economics instructor and a friend of Sweezy\u2019s who wrote for Monthly Review <\/cite>in the 1950s.<\/li>\n
  7. \u21a9<\/a> John J. Simon, \u201cAlbert Einstein, Radical<\/a>,\u201d Monthly Review <\/cite>57, no. 1 (May 2005): 1\u20132; \u201cA Coffee House with History<\/a>,\u201d ODEON Zurich, odeon.ch; Ronald W. Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times <\/cite>(New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1984), 22.<\/li>\n
  8. \u21a9<\/a> Simon, \u201cAlbert Einstein, Radical,\u201d 2.<\/li>\n
  9. \u21a9<\/a> Einstein quoted in Rowe and Schulmann, introduction to Einstein on Politics<\/cite>, 47.<\/li>\n
  10. \u21a9<\/a> Einstein quoted in Lewis S. Feuer, Einstein and the Generations of Science <\/cite>(New York: Basic Books, 1974), 25; Albert Einstein, \u201cOn the Fifth Anniversary of Lenin\u2019s Death (January 6, 1929),\u201d in Einstein on Politics<\/cite>, 413. In writing to Hedwig and Max Born in 1920, Einstein had indicated \u201cI must confess to you that the Bolsheviks do not seem bad to me, however ridiculous their theories.\u201d He was particularly impressed by a 1918 work by Karl Radek, whom he saw as an able political figure who knew \u201chis business.\u201d Albert Einstein to Hedwig and Max Born, January 27, 1920, in Einstein on Politics<\/cite>, 410. Radek later died in Joseph Stalin\u2019s purges.<\/li>\n
  11. \u21a9<\/a> Albert Einstein, \u201cThe World as I See It\u201d in Ideas and Opinions<\/cite> (New York: Crown Publishing, 1954), 8.<\/li>\n
  12. \u21a9<\/a> Otto Nathan and Heinz Norden, eds., Einstein on Peace<\/cite> (New York: Schoken Books, 1960), 180; Rowe and Schulmann, editorial comment in Einstein on Politics<\/cite>, 425\u201327; Albert Einstein to Victor Margueritte, October 19, 1932, in Einstein on Politics<\/cite>, 427\u201328.<\/li>\n
  13. \u21a9<\/a> Albert Einstein, \u201cIs There Room for Individual Freedom in a Socialist State?\u201d in Einstein on Politics<\/cite>, 437.<\/li>\n
  14. \u21a9<\/a> Nathan and Norden, introduction to Einstein on Peace<\/cite>, viii.<\/li>\n
  15. \u21a9<\/a> Ronald D. Patkus, \u201cThe Morris and Adele Bergreen Albert Einstein Collection at Vassar College<\/a>,\u201d Vassar Encyclopedia <\/cite>(2005), Archives and Special Collection Library, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York; advertisement, Vassar Miscellany News<\/cite>, no. 40, March 24, 1943; \u201cOtto Nathan Dead at 93,\u201d Jewish Telegraphic Agency<\/cite>, February 3, 1987; Otto Nathan, \u201cR\u00e9sum\u00e9 of Dr. Otto Nathan, ca. 1936<\/a>,\u201d W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312), Series 1A, Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries; Fred Jerome, Einstein on Israel and Zionism <\/cite>(New York: St. Martin\u2019s Press, 2009), 262. In a 1953 letter from Einstein to Brandeis President Abram L. Sachar quoted by Silvan S. Schweber, Einstein refers to his \u201cclosest friend,\u201d which in context clearly meant Nathan. Stephen S. Schweber, Einstein and Oppenheimer <\/cite>(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2008), 132. See also Jerome, The Einstein File<\/cite>, 311.<\/li>\n
  16. \u21a9<\/a> Renee Walsh, \u201cEarly Documents of the Formation of Brandeis University<\/a>,\u201d Robert D. Farber University Archive and Special Collections, Brandeis University Library, n.d.; Susan H. Greenberg, \u201cIntellectuals at the Gate, interview with Mark Oppenheimer, Inside Higher Education<\/cite>, September 21, 2022.<\/li>\n
  17. \u21a9<\/a> Silvan S. Schweber, \u201cAlbert Einstein and the Founding of Brandeis University\u201d in Revising the Foundations of Relativistic Physics<\/cite>, A. Ashtekar et al., eds. (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003), 616.<\/li>\n
  18. \u21a9<\/a> Schweber, Einstein and Oppenheimer,<\/cite> 112, 117\u201318.<\/li>\n
  19. \u21a9<\/a> Paul M. Sweezy, The Theory of Capitalist Development<\/a><\/cite> (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1942, 1972). On Sweezy, see John Bellamy Foster, \u201cThe Commitment of an Intellectual: Paul M. Sweezy<\/a> (1910\u20132004),\u201d Monthly Review <\/cite>56, no. 5 (October 2004): 5\u201339.<\/li>\n
  20. \u21a9<\/a> Paul M. Sweezy, oral history interview by Andrew Skotnes, 1986\u20131987, Columbia Center for Oral History, Columbia University Libraries, 5: 143\u201344. Harry Magdoff, who was closely associated with Monthly Review <\/cite>almost from the beginning, was also well-acquainted with Nathan, who visited him at his home (Fred Magdoff, personal communication).<\/li>\n
  21. \u21a9<\/a> Paul M. Sweezy, A Plan for Brandeis University<\/cite>, January 1947, 2\u201310, 18, 44, 87, Albert Einstein Archives<\/a> (40-461), Hebrew University of Jerusalem, albert-einstein.huji.ac.il; Otto Nathan, An Outline of Policy for Brandeis University<\/cite>, November 9, 1946, Albert Einstein Archives<\/a> (40-427), Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Schweber, Einstein and Oppenheimer<\/cite>, 345; Schweber, \u201cAlbert Einstein and the Founding of Brandeis University,\u201d in Ashtekar et al., eds., Revising the Foundations of Relativistic Physics<\/cite>, 623; Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning in America<\/cite> (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1965). Nathan\u2019s five-page outline was closely related to the eighty-seven-page Sweezy plan.<\/li>\n
  22. \u21a9<\/a> Schweber, Einstein and Oppenheimer<\/cite>, 119, 122; Leo Huberman and Paul M. Sweezy, \u201cHarold J. Laski<\/a>,\u201d Monthly Review <\/cite>2, no. 1 (May 1950): 5\u20136.<\/li>\n
  23. \u21a9<\/a> Harold J. Laski, \u201cWhy I Am a Marxist<\/a>,\u201d Monthly Review <\/cite>2, no. 3 (July 1950): 81.<\/li>\n
  24. \u21a9<\/a> Schweber, Einstein and Oppenheimer<\/cite>, 122\u201324. In his letter, Laski referred to Nathan, whom he had recently met, as a \u201cgood friend.\u201d<\/li>\n
  25. \u21a9<\/a> Albert Einstein to Harold J. Laski<\/a>, April 16, 1947, Harold Joseph Laski Papers, Inventory No. 26.4, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam. In referring in his letter to Laski to \u201cdoes not know of discrimination for or against anybody because of sex, color, creed national origin or political opinion,\u201d Einstein was using almost the exact same language as employed by Nathan in his An Outline of Policy for Brandeis University<\/cite>, while the Sweezy Plan was also almost identical in its wording. See Nathan, An Outline of Policy for Brandeis University<\/cite>, 1; Sweezy, A Plan for Brandeis University<\/cite>, 3.<\/li>\n
  26. \u21a9<\/a> Schweber, Einstein and Oppenheimer<\/cite>, 124.<\/li>\n
  27. \u21a9<\/a> Schweber, Einstein and Oppenheimer<\/cite>, 123, 347.<\/li>\n
  28. \u21a9<\/a> \u201cLeft Bias Charged in University Row,\u201d New York Times<\/cite>, June 23, 1947; Schweber, Einstein and Oppenheimer<\/cite>, 125\u201332.<\/li>\n
  29. \u21a9<\/a> \u201cGroup Accuses 76 Faculty Members of Red Leanings<\/a>,\u201d Harvard Crimson<\/cite>, March 10, 1949; Ben W. Heineman Jr., \u201cThe University in the McCarthy Era<\/a>,\u201d Harvard Crimson<\/cite>, June 17, 1965.<\/li>\n
  30. \u21a9<\/a> Einstein quoted in Schweber, Einstein and Oppenheimer<\/cite>, 129.<\/li>\n
  31. \u21a9<\/a> Schweber, Einstein and Oppenheimer<\/cite>, 128\u201330. Alpert and the first president of Brandeis, Sachar, entered into a power struggle over who was to control the university shortly after Sachar was appointed and Alpert was driven from the board. Schweber, Einstein and Oppenheimer<\/cite>, 130\u201331.<\/li>\n
  32. \u21a9<\/a> Photo of Henry Wallace, Albert Einstein, Frank Kingdon, and Paul Robeson<\/a>, Wikimedia Commons, commons.wikimedia.org.<\/li>\n
  33. \u21a9<\/a> Karl M. Schmidt, Henry A Wallace: Quixotic Crusade, 1948 <\/cite>(Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1960), 190\u201391. Harry Magdoff, who was to become coeditor of the magazine with Huberman\u2019s death, wrote the small business section of the Progressive Party platform.
    \nSweezy, by virtue of his role in the Wallace campaign and also due to a lecture that he had delivered at the University of New Hampshire, was subpoenaed by the New Hampshire Attorney General in 1954, and was given contempt of court charges when he refused to name the names of members of the Progressive Party, the Communist party, or to turn over his lecture notes. He based his defense (as had Leo Huberman when called before McCarthy\u2019s own committee) on the First Amendment, following a strategy advanced by Einstein in 1953. Sweezy\u2019s case, Sweezy v. New Hampshire, was finally decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in a landmark 1957 decision. John J. Simon, \u201c    Sweezy v. New Hampshire<\/a>,\u201d Monthly Review <\/cite>51, no. 11 (April 2000): 35\u201337.<\/li>\n
  34. \u21a9<\/a> Peter Kuznick, \u201cUndoing the New Deal: Truman\u2019s Cold War Buries Wallace and the Left,\u201d The Real News Network, December 7, 2017.<\/li>\n
  35. \u21a9<\/a> Albert Einstein to John Dudzic, March 8, 1948, in Einstein on Politics<\/cite>, 454. Einstein complained about the watering down of the concept of liberalism, which historically had had a very definite meaning in European political discourse, but had become everything and nothing with Roosevelt\u2019s use of it as a label for the New Deal. Einstein\u2019s misgivings were later confirmed by Wallace\u2019s statements on \u201cprogressive capitalism\u201d and \u201cliberalism\u201d in two pieces published in Monthly Review <\/cite>in 1950: Henry A. Wallace, \u201cWhat Is Progressive Capitalism?<\/a>,\u201d Monthly Review <\/cite>1, no. 12 (April 1950): 390\u201394; Henry A. Wallace, \u201cNeeded: Cooperation Between the U.S. and the USSR in a Strong UN<\/a>,\u201d Monthly Review <\/cite>2, no. 1 (May 1950): 7\u201310. See also I. F. Stone, \u201cProblems of the Progressive Party<\/a>,\u201d Monthly Review <\/cite>1, no. 12 (April 1950): 379\u201389.<\/li>\n
  36. \u21a9<\/a> Sweezy oral history interview by Skotnes, 5: 143\u201344; \u201cInterview with Paul M. Sweezy<\/a>,\u201d Monthly Review <\/cite>51, no. 1 (May 1999): 32; John J. Simon, \u201cPaul Sweezy<\/a>,\u201d Guardian<\/cite>, March 4, 2004.<\/li>\n
  37. \u21a9<\/a> Christopher Phelps, \u201cIntroduction: A Socialist Magazine in the American Century<\/a>,\u201d Monthly Review <\/cite>51, no. 1 (May 1999): 2\u20133.<\/li>\n
  38. \u21a9<\/a> Sweezy, oral history interview, 5: 143\u201344; Simon, \u201cAlbert Einstein, Radical,\u201d 8. Otto Nathan and Paul A. Baran, a central figure in MR<\/cite>\u2019s history, entered into a personal dispute that affected Nathan\u2019s relations with Huberman as well, much to his dismay, resulting in a distancing of Nathan from the magazine following its foundation. Sweezy, oral history interview, 5: 144; Robert W. McChesney, \u201cThe Monthly Review<\/cite> Story: 1949\u20131984<\/a>,\u201d MR Online, May 6, 2007.<\/li>\n
  39. \u21a9<\/a> An example of this is Scott Nearing, \u201cWhy I Believe in Socialism<\/a>,\u201d Monthly Review <\/cite>1, no. 2 (June 1949): 44\u201350.<\/li>\n
  40. \u21a9<\/a> As John J. Simon noted, as a result of these connections, Einstein was viewed as \u201cpart of the extended MR<\/cite> [Monthly Review<\/cite>] family\u201d (Simon, \u201cSweezy v. New Hampshire,\u201d 36).<\/li>\n
  41. \u21a9<\/a> Wright Mills, introduction to Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class <\/cite>(New York: Mentor, 1953), vi.<\/li>\n
  42. \u21a9<\/a> Albert Einstein, \u201cRemarks on Bertrand Russell\u2019s Theory of Knowledge,\u201d in The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell<\/cite>, Paul A. Schilpp, ed. (Evanston, Illinois: Library of Living Philosophers, 1944), 279. Einstein\u2019s interest in Thorstein Veblen was likely sparked by his acquaintance with the mathematician Ostwald Veblen, who was a colleague of his at Princeton University and who was Veblen\u2019s nephew. William T. Ganley, \u201cA Note on the Intellectual Connection Between Albert Einstein and Thorstein Veblen,\u201d Journal of Economic Issues <\/cite>31, no. 1 (March 1997): 245\u201351.<\/li>\n
  43. \u21a9<\/a> Albert Einstein, \u201cThe Jewish Community\u201d in Ideas and Opinions<\/cite>, 174. In another statement he referred to Moses, Spinoza, and Marx. See Einstein, Ideas and Opinions<\/cite>, 195.<\/li>\n
  44. \u21a9<\/a> Einstein\u2019s statement that nowhere were there to be found societies outside the \u201cpredatory phase\u201d was an admission that complete socialism existed nowhere at the time.<\/li>\n
  45. \u21a9<\/a> Albert Einstein, \u201cWhy Socialism?<\/a>,\u201d Monthly Review <\/cite>1, no. 1 (May 1949): 9\u201310.<\/li>\n
  46. \u21a9<\/a> Einstein, \u201cWhy Socialism?,\u201d 10.<\/li>\n
  47. \u21a9<\/a> Einstein, \u201cWhy Socialism?,\u201d 10. Besides \u201cWhy Socialism?,\u201d Einstein also mentioned in \u201cOn Freedom\u201d in 1940 the view of \u201csomeone who approves, as a goal, the extirpation of the human race from the earth.\u201d This is something, he added, that \u201cone cannot refute\u2026on rational grounds,\u201d since it removes the basis for rational discussion. Albert Einstein, \u201cOn Freedom,\u201d in Ideas and Opinions<\/cite>, 31\u201332.<\/li>\n
  48. \u21a9<\/a> Einstein does not tell us what he means by social drives, but there is ample reason to suppose he was intrigued by Veblen\u2019s argument in The Instinct of Workmanship<\/cite>. Veblen emphasized that what were often called \u201cinstincts\u201d were really \u201ctropismatic\u201d drives, arising purely from biological constitutions, which constituted part of human psychology, but which, from a social psychological standpoint, were ultimately less important than the social drives, or social \u201cinstincts.\u201d Veblen emphasized three primary social drives, constituting the positive elements of human cultural evolution, which he called \u201cthe instinct of workmanship\u201d (standing for productive drives), \u201cthe parental bent\u201d (reproductive drives), and \u201cidle curiosity\u201d (drives related to the pursuit of knowledge and science). In his view, these social drives were often \u201ccontaminated,\u201d going against each other, leading to contradictory and ultimately insupportable forms such as the \u201cpredatory\u201d and \u201cpecuniary\u201d phases of culture that set individuals against society by accentuating \u201cexploit,\u201d \u201cemulation,\u201d and egoism. Thorstein Veblen, The Instinct of Workmanship <\/cite>(New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1914), 1\u20138, 42\u201344, 157, 175, 205; Thorstein Veblen, The Place of Science in Modern Civilization<\/cite> (New York: Russell and Russell, 1961), 395; C. E. Ayres, \u201cVeblen\u2019s Theory of Instincts Reconsidered,\u201d in Thorstein Veblen: A Critical Reappraisal <\/cite>(Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1958), 28\u201329.<\/li>\n
  49. \u21a9<\/a> Einstein, \u201cWhy Socialism?,\u201d 12.<\/li>\n
  50. \u21a9<\/a> Einstein, \u201cWhy Socialism?,\u201d 10\u201312.<\/li>\n
  51. \u21a9<\/a> Marx regarded the distinction between labor and labor power<\/cite>, to which Einstein refers here, to be one of the most key elements of his political-economic critique. See Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Correspondence <\/cite>(Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), 180\u201381.<\/li>\n
  52. \u21a9<\/a> Einstein, \u201cWhy Socialism?,\u201d 12\u201313. See also Albert Einstein, \u201cThoughts on the World Economic Crisis,\u201d (ca. 1930) in Einstein on Politics<\/cite>, 415.<\/li>\n
  53. \u21a9<\/a> See also Einstein, \u201cIs There Room for Individual Freedom in a Socialist State?\u201d in Einstein on Politics<\/cite>, 437.<\/li>\n
  54. \u21a9<\/a> The reserve army of labor, the role of revolutions in technology in constantly reproducing it, and the associated concentration and centralization of capital\u2014propositions that Einstein relies on here\u2014are all treated by Marx in Chapter 25 of the first volume of Capital<\/cite>. See Karl Marx, Capital<\/cite>, vol. 1 (London: Penguin, 1976), 762\u2013870.<\/li>\n
  55. \u21a9<\/a> Einstein, \u201cWhy Socialism?,\u201d 13\u201314.<\/li>\n
  56. \u21a9<\/a> Einstein, \u201cWhy Socialism?,\u201d 14.<\/li>\n
  57. \u21a9<\/a> Einstein, \u201cWhy Socialism?,\u201d 14\u201315.<\/li>\n
  58. \u21a9<\/a> Einstein, \u201cWhy Socialism?,\u201d 15. All three of the original founders of Monthly Review<\/cite>, Sweezy, Huberman, and Nathan were caught up in the McCarthyite inquisition of the 1950s. In addition to Sweezy\u2019s battle, which took him to the U.S. Supreme Court, Huberman was called before McCarthy\u2019s own Senate committee. Nathan had his U.S. passport revoked for two and a half years. He was also subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Along with others, such as Paul Robeson and Arthur Miller, he was charged with contempt of court for failure to cooperate. All three (Huberman, Sweezy, and Nathan) stood on the First Amendment, as Einstein had recommended, and refused to name names. Leo Huberman, \u201cA Challenge to the Book Burners<\/a> (July 14, 1953),\u201d Monthly Review <\/cite>5, no. 4 (August 1953): 158\u201373; Geoffrey Ryan, \u201cUn-American Activities,\u201d Index on Censorship <\/cite>2, no. 3 (September 1973): 90\u201391; Jerome, The Einstein File<\/cite>, 249.<\/li>\n
  59. \u21a9<\/a> See the well-known biography by Ronald Clark, in which Einstein\u2019s politics, aside from Zionism, are scarcely visible. Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times<\/cite>.<\/li>\n
  60. \u21a9<\/a> Rowe and Schulmann, introduction to Einstein on Politics<\/cite>, 55; Fred Jerome and Rodger Taylor, Einstein on Race and Racism <\/cite>(New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 8\u201310, 135\u201336; Maria Popova, \u201cAlbert Einstein\u2019s Little-Known Correspondence with W. E. B. Du Bois About Equality and Radical Justice,\u201d The Marginalian<\/a><\/cite>, January 6, 2015.<\/li>\n
  61. \u21a9<\/a> Rowe and Schulmann, editorial comment in Einstein on Politics<\/cite>, 479.<\/li>\n
  62. \u21a9<\/a> Rowe and Schulmann, introduction to Einstein on Politics<\/cite>, 47\u201348, 50.<\/li>\n
  63. \u21a9<\/a> Rowe and Schulmann, editorial comment in Einstein on Politics<\/cite>, 408.<\/li>\n
  64. \u21a9<\/a> Einstein, \u201cIs There Room for Individual Freedom in a Socialist State?\u201d in Einstein on Politics<\/cite>, 437. Einstein always argued that complete socialism, in the sense in which he understood it, was not to be found in any existing state. Einstein to John Dudzic, March 8, 1948, in Einstein on Politics<\/cite>, 454.<\/li>\n
  65. \u21a9<\/a> Rowe and Schulmann, introduction to Einstein on Politics<\/cite>, 48; Einstein, \u201cIs There Room for Individual Freedom in a Socialist State?\u201d in Einstein on Politics<\/cite>,<\/li>\n
  66. \u21a9<\/a> Rowe and Schulmann, introduction to Einstein on Politics<\/cite>, 48\u201349.<\/li>\n
  67. \u21a9<\/a> Rowe and Schulmann, introduction to Einstein on Politics<\/cite>, Claims that Einstein had lacked contact with the working class can easily be exaggerated. See his 1930 lecture to the Marxist Workers School in Berlin. Albert Einstein, \u201c\u2018Causality\u2019: Lecture at the Marxist Workers School 1930 (Private Notes by Karl Korsch),\u201d translated by Sascha Freyberg and Joost Kircz, Marxism and the Sciences 3, no. 1 (Winter 2024): 207\u201332.<\/li>\n
  68. \u21a9<\/a> Rowe and Schulmann, introduction to Einstein on Politics<\/cite>, 50, 407.<\/li>\n
  69. \u21a9<\/a> Rowe and Schulmann, introduction to Einstein on Politics<\/cite>, 51.<\/li>\n
  70. \u21a9<\/a> Editorial identification of author, Einstein, \u201cWhy Socialism?,\u201d 9; Rowe and Schulmann, introduction to Einstein on Politics<\/cite>, 47.<\/li>\n
  71. \u21a9<\/a> Rowe and Schulmann, editorial comment in Einstein on Politics<\/cite>, 438.<\/li>\n
  72. \u21a9<\/a> An example of this is to be found in Arthur H. Reis Jr., \u201cThe Albert Einstein Involvement,\u201d Brandeis Review: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition<\/cite> (1998), 60\u201361.<\/li>\n
  73. \u21a9<\/a> See Walsh, \u201cEarly Documents of the Formation of Brandeis University.\u201d<\/li>\n
  74. \u21a9<\/a> Much of Einstein\u2019s general outlook on the United States was undoubtedly similar to Veblen\u2019s in his 1918 The Higher Learning in America<\/cite>, with its strong critique of the \u201cgoverning boards\u201d of the universities. Veblen, The Higher Learning in America<\/cite>, 59\u201384. Sweezy had no doubt included a reference to Veblen\u2019s work in his Brandeis plan in support of his own criticisms of such governing boards. See Sweezy, A Plan for Brandeis University<\/cite>, 18<\/li>\n
  75. \u21a9<\/a> Reis, \u201cThe Albert Einstein Involvement,\u201d 61. Einstein had early on opposed the appointment of Sachar as president of Brandeis, as pushed at that time by Israel Goldstein, then chairman of both the Albert Einstein Foundation and the Board of Trustees. In the course of the dispute, Goldstein resigned both positions and was replaced by Lazrus as chairman of the Foundation and Alpert as chairman of the Board of Trustees.<\/li>\n
  76. \u21a9<\/a> Jerome and Taylor, Einstein on Race and Racism<\/cite>, 88\u201394, 139\u201342; Simon, \u201cAlbert Einstein, Radical,\u201d 6\u20137; Fred Jerome, The Einstein File<\/cite>, 79\u201385.<\/li>\n
  77. \u21a9<\/a> Jerome and Taylor, Einstein on Race and Racism<\/cite>, 119\u201320.<\/li>\n
  78. \u21a9<\/a> On Marcantonio, see John J. Simon, \u201cRebel in the House: The Life and Times of Vito Marcantonio<\/a>,\u201d Monthly Review <\/cite>57, no. 11 (April 2006): 24\u201346; Richard Sasuly, \u201cVito Marcantonio: The People\u2019s Politician,\u201d in American Radicals<\/cite>, Harvey Goldberg, ed. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1957), 145\u201359.<\/li>\n
  79. \u21a9<\/a> Shirley Graham Du Bois quoted in Jerome and Taylor, Einstein on Race and Racism<\/cite>, 121.<\/li>\n
  80. \u21a9<\/a> Jerome and Taylor, Einstein on Race and Racism<\/cite>, 119\u201321; Simon, \u201cAlbert Einstein, Radical,\u201d 10\u201311. On W. E. B. Du Bois\u2019s views on U.S. capitalism in the 1950s, see W. E. B. Du Bois, \u201cNegroes and the Crisis of Capitalism in the U.S.<\/a>,\u201d Monthly Review <\/cite>4, no. 12 (April 1953): 478\u201385.<\/li>\n
  81. \u21a9<\/a> Albert Einstein to the Queen Mother of Belgium, January 2, 1955, in Einstein on Peace<\/cite>, 615\u201316; Albert Einstein to Eugene Rabinowitch, January 5, 1951, in Einstein on Peace<\/cite>, 553. There is little doubt that Einstein was familiar with major critical analyses of the Korean War. Monthly Review<\/cite> published assessments of the war from the outset. I. F. Stone\u2019s The Hidden History of the Korean War<\/cite>, launching Monthly Review Press, was published in 1952. The following year Einstein became a charter subscriber to Stone\u2019s F. Stone Weekly<\/cite>. Simon, \u201cAlbert Einstein, Radical,\u201d 9.<\/li>\n
  82. \u21a9<\/a> Fred Jerome, Einstein on Israel and Zionism<\/cite> (New York: St. Martin\u2019s Press, 2009), 225\u201332.<\/li>\n
  83. \u21a9<\/a> Samuel Graydon, \u201cEinstein\u2019s Complicated Relationship to Judaism<\/a>,\u201d Time<\/cite>, December 19, 2023.<\/li>\n
  84. \u21a9<\/a> Albert Einstein, \u201cOur Debt to Zionism,\u201d in Einstein on Politics<\/cite>, 301; Albert Einstein, \u201cTestimony at a Hearing of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, January 11, 1946,\u201d in Einstein on Politics<\/cite>, 344\u201345; Jerome, Einstein on Israel and Zionism<\/cite>, 4, 29\u201330.<\/cite><\/li>\n
  85. \u21a9<\/a> Yorgos Mitralis, \u201cWhen Einstein Called \u2018Fascists\u2019 Those Who Rule Israel for the Last 44 Years,\u201d Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt, October 31, 2023; Isidore Abramowitz, Hannah Arendt, Abraham Brick, Jessurun Cardozo, Albert Einstein et al., Letter to the New York Times<\/cite>, December 4, 1948, marxists.org.<\/li>\n
  86. \u21a9<\/a> \u201cIsrael-Gaza War in Maps and Charts: Live Tracker<\/a>,\u201d Al Jazeera<\/cite>, accessed April 5, 2024.<\/li>\n
  87. \u21a9<\/a> Jerome, The Einstein File<\/cite>, 62\u201368; \u201cDear Professor Einstein: The Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists in Post-War America<\/a>,\u201d Oregon State University archives, scarc.library.oregonstate.edu.<\/li>\n
  88. \u21a9<\/a> John Bellamy Foster, The Return of Nature<\/a><\/cite> (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2020), 502\u20133; Einstein on Peace<\/cite>, 590, 593, 605.<\/li>\n
  89. \u21a9<\/a> Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, et al., \u201cRussell-Einstein Manifesto,\u201d in Einstein on Peace<\/cite>, 632\u201335.<\/li>\n
  90. \u21a9<\/a> Einstein, \u201cIs There Room for Individual Freedom in a Socialist State?\u201d in Einstein on Politics<\/cite>, 438; Einstein, \u201cHuman Rights (February 20, 1954),\u201d in Einstein on Politics<\/cite>, 497.<\/li>\n
  91. \u21a9<\/a> Steven Schultz, \u201cNewly Discovered Diary Chronicles Einstein\u2019s Last Years<\/a>,\u201d Princeton Weekly Bulletin<\/cite> 93, no. 25, April 26, 2004; Simon, \u201cAlbert Einstein, Radical,\u201d 12.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    _________________________________________________<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

    Volume 76, Number 01 (May 2024)<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a> John Bellamy Foster is a North American professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and editor of the <\/span><\/em>Monthly Review<\/span>. He writes about political economy of capitalism and economic crisis, ecology and ecological crisis, and Marxist theory.<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Go to Original – monthlyreview.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Albert Einstein, the world\u2019s most famous physicist and celebrated scientist, had fled Nazi Germany for the US where he became a citizen in 1940. But for the FBI Einstein remained a dangerous and Un-American figure, threatening the security of the US by his very presence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":262574,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[907,121,2574,260,642,870,874,70],"class_list":["post-262572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-communism","tag-einstein","tag-fbi","tag-history","tag-literature","tag-reviews","tag-socialism","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262572"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":262577,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262572\/revisions\/262577"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}