In the current era in which anti-science ideology, disinformation and ‘the destruction of reason’ are again increasingly being utilized as key components of a broader anti-materialism which reinforces a transition from neoliberalism to neofascism in response to crises of capitalism, Albert Einstein’s ‘Why Socialism?’: The Enduring Relevance of His Classic Essay is timely. It brings to the fore the links between science and the struggle for justice, a rich meaningful life, and environmental sustainability of humanity and other species.
The book consists of an extended introduction by John Bellamy Foster entitled ‘Einstein’s ‘Why Socialism?’ and Monthly Review: A Historical Introduction’, Albert Einstein’s essay ‘Why Socialism?’, and an essay by John J. Simon entitled ‘Albert Einstein, Radical: A Political Profile’ which was previously published in Monthly Review in May 2005. While Einstein is universally considered one of the brilliant minds of the 20th Century, his socialism has been actively obscured. This book helps to rectify this mystification, demonstrating both that he was a lifetime socialist, made his socialist conception public, and took actions to advocate for socialism.
The book provides readers with a subtle demonstration that socialism generally, and Einstein’s socialism specifically, understands mind and body, individual and collective, and humanity and the rest of nature as dialectically related. Collectively, the essays in the book demonstrate that while Einstein’s scientific work was centered on the materiality of the universe and the dialectical unity of energy and matter, he understood the dialectical relationships of humans, their individual and collective work and thinking, and the rest of nature (although perhaps not in these exact terms). Further, the essays richly demonstrate that Einstein understood science as a process integral to, rather than as something abstracted from, social relations.
In the Introduction, Foster provides a brief history of Einstein’s belief and involvement in socialism from 1911 forward. This discussion is valuable in clearly demonstrating the potential for positive links between science, scientists, and advocacy for progressive social change. He puts Einstein’s escape from Nazi Germany and emigration to the US in the context of the post-World War II United States ‘red scare’ (which among other things targeted higher education), prevalent antisemitism and anti-Black racism, and legal ‘segregation’ (i.e., apartheid). Foster shows how Einstein saw education as ‘directly linked to the advancement of the socialist cause’ (18) and that while engaged in cutting-edge scientific research understandable by few, Einstein was also actively engaged in efforts to make educational opportunities available equitably to the many, including to oppressed groups historically excluded from such opportunities. By highlighting this, the book sends a strong message to scientists, and by extension to all scholars, that their roles as scientists and scholars can and should extend beyond the conduct of their own research.
Foster discusses Einstein’s active involvement in the founding of a university (Brandeis) which he hoped would be led by its faculty, promote independent scholarship, and be open and made accessible (including through scholarships) to all. Foster recounts the roles of additional socialists, including economist and Monthly Review co-founder Paul M. Sweezy, in trying to establish such an educational institution, and the bounds put on these efforts by corporate executives on the board of directors who were supportive of, or responsive to, the McCarthyism of the times. This discussion effectively demonstrates that ‘Einstein’s creativity as a scientist and his universalism were never separate from his commitment to a more egalitarian society’ (15). Further, this discussion is a potent and timely reminder that the struggles over educational content and access, and over the focus and findings of research, which are a key focus of the attempts at Gleichschaltung (‘bringing into line’) in the United States under the Trump regimen and elsewhere under increasingly neofascist regimes, and consequently also of progressive efforts to counter this, have a long history, and that scientists and scholars continue to have important roles in the struggle for socialism.
After summarizing Einstein’s essay and its reliance on thinkers including Karl Marx and Thorstein Veblen, Foster succinctly and productively engages with published scholarship which has ignored, downplayed or fully denied Einstein’s socialism. He focuses much of his critique on the collection Einstein on Peace, edited by David E. Rowe and Robert Shulman, which he appropriately characterizes as endeavoring to misleadingly ‘transform Einstein from a socialist into a liberal’ (38). Foster convincingly demonstrates the weakness of Rowe and Shulman’s (and by implication others’) efforts to reframe Einstein as a traditional liberal and ‘naïve moral philosopher’ and to dilute Einstein’s critiques of capitalism through their own supposedly ‘proper contextualization’ (38-40).
Foster demonstrates that Rowe and Schulman, while praising Einstein’s efforts to counter antisemitism, downplay his efforts to counter anti-Black racism, and to support socialist Black activists. They do not, for example, discuss that Einstein’s offer to testify at W.E.B. DuBois’ 1951 trial for advocating for a complete ban on nuclear weapons contributed to the dismissal of the case. Foster notes that Einstein on Peace did not draw attention to Einstein’s brief but important 1932 piece in DuBois’ journal The Crisis. In that piece Einstein critiqued US racism and the way this led many oppressed people to see themselves as ‘inferior,’ reflecting what today might be called internalized stigma. This discussion very effectively demonstrates the ways that some scholars, whether intentionally or through their own internalization of class, race or other blinders, serve the interests of capital by erasing aspects of history and the scholarly contributions and actions of socialists.
Foster highlights that Einstein, rather than writing a piece about why he personally became a socialist, instead wrote a general rationale for socialism. Einstein, in his essay, engages with core aspects of socialism in a subtle and convincing manner. He succinctly discusses the central role of violence in primary accumulation (without using either that term or the misnomer ‘primitive accumulation’). In the essay Einstein adopted a voice of calm reason, writing perhaps less for convinced socialists or Marxist scholars, and more for others who might be less convinced or less aware. Foster effectively positions Einstein’s essay neither as autobiography nor as charting new territory in Marxist scholarship, but rather as ‘a straightforward objective case for choosing a socialist path’ (33) framed at a high level of abstraction. In characterizing the essay thusly, Foster captures both the intent and the core value of Einstein’s essay. Further, Foster appropriately notes that the essay ‘took on a scientific character,’ (29) an important point which again emphasizes the potential for scientific reason, and for clear communication by scientists, to potently contribute to the struggle for an equitable, just and meaningful world.
Einstein effectively uses Veblen’s concept of a ‘predatory phase’ of human development to stress the exploitative essence of capitalism, to undercut conceptions of capitalism as eternal, and to highlight the intrinsic inability of capitalist ‘economic science’ to point or move towards richer human development. He denies that science by itself can constitute the path forward, saying that ‘[s]cience … cannot create ends and, even less, instill them in human beings; science at most, can supply the means by which to attain certain ends’ (52). Einstein argued for the inclusion of non-experts in societal decision-making, favoring a non-elitist, bottom-up participatory process. Here again, in a clear manner accessible to a wide readership, Einstein effectively argues for a role for science in socialist struggle that navigates around the Scylla and Charybdis of scientific elitism and one-sided conceptions of technologic solutions to socially created problems (such as the environmental destructiveness of capitalism) on the one hand, and irrational, anti-materialistic rejections of science and reason on the other.
In his essay, Einstein identifies the increasing alienation people experience as a result of capitalism’s alienated production and social relations, and the existential threats to humanity posed by nuclear war. Einstein exemplifies this with an anecdote about someone who asked ‘Why are you so deeply opposed to the disappearance of the human race?’ (53). Rather than advocating for existentialism or nihilism, Einstein derives from these concerns sound arguments for socialism, highlighting that each human is ‘at … the same time, a solitary being and a social being’ (54). Einstein characterizes ‘the crisis of our time’ as ‘the relationship of the individual to society’ in which humans experience social relations not ‘as a protective force, but rather as a threat’ (57) due to the ‘economic anarchy of capitalist society’ (58). He argues instead that humans can best meet minimum needs, develop ‘innate abilities’ (61) and ‘find meaning in life … only through devoting … [oneself] to society,’ (58) and through ensuring equitable, democratic social relations of production. In this argument, as throughout the essay, Einstein here engages very concisely with a wide range of issues central to many disciplines. While some specific points may be imprecise or touch on significant debates (e.g., such as referring to ‘innate abilities’ rather than universal human potential), the level of generality Einstein adopts allows him to make a compelling, widely accessible, case for socialism.
Simon’s essay discusses Einstein’s opposition to war credits to support Germany’s entry into World War I. Einstein (unlike many other scientists) refused to sign the Manifesto to the Civilized World which relied on racist, ethnonationalist and proto-fascist language to justify German militarism, and instead joined just three other scholars in signing an alternate manifesto opposing the war. Simon demonstrates that Einstein’s position was not that of a mainstream liberalism, nor even that of the German Social Democratic Party, but was in fact closer to that of Rosa Luxemburg and V.I. Lenin.
Both Foster and Simon briefly discuss how Einstein actively supported struggles for free, humane, progressive education. Both highlight that Einstein, while engaged in university teaching, also offered free, after-hours physics classes at the Marxist Workers School in Berlin in the 1930s and Simon recounts how Einstein ‘steadfastly refused to accept’ honorary degrees yet made one exception for a historically Black university. Einstein’s acceptance speech condemned US racism in which ‘equality and human dignity is limited to men of white skins’ (72). Simon points out that this speech was ignored by most media, valuably demonstrating how the socialism and anti-racism of scientists and others are often erased by elite media in the service of capital.
Simon’s piece highlights that Einstein was deeply committed ‘as were a number of other left-wing scientists, to mass education in the sciences as a tool against obscurantism and mystical pseudo-science, often used then – and again today – in aid of political and social reaction’ (80). The emphasis these essays place on the role of science and scientific education is vital now as forces of neofascism endeavor to undermine reason though defunding research, through the control of curricula, and through the promotion of various forms of irrationality.
The essays in this book bring out Einstein’s deep humility, anti-racism and socialist commitment. Simon’s essay recounts an interaction in which Einstein met with singer, actor and socialist activist Paul Robeson. When someone who had accompanied Robeson to the meeting commented to Einstein that it was an honor to be in the presence of a great man, Einstein replied ‘but it is you who have brought the great man.’ (79) By highlighting this poignant interaction, the book subtly makes the point that the accomplishments of scientists deserve perhaps as much but certainly no more respect than the contributions of those working constructively in other domains.
Of course, there are key ethical questions about science, its applications to capitalist and military production (such as the development of nuclear weapons), and the alignment of nuclear detonations with the onset of Anthropocene that are critical and are not deeply engaged with in this slender volume. Nor does the book engage with the philosophical and historical links between Einstein’s physics and the writings of Ernest Mach, Alexander Bogdanov, and V. I. Lenin. Another consideration about the dialectics of science is Christopher Caudwell’s critique of Einstein’s physics as still bourgeois and mechanistic, and as perhaps not centering Epicurus’s swerve. However, these issues are well discussed elsewhere by Helena Sheehan and others. Engaging deeply with these issues would have had additional value for scholars, but would also have had the disadvantage of undercutting Einstein’s goal of concisely conveying the importance of the movement towards socialism to a wide audience which this book very effectively centers.
Overall, this book demonstrates that Einstein had a conception so broad as to both prove the dialectical unity of matter and energy (a dialectic of nature independent of human agency), and to understand and act on the dialectical unity of the ‘natural’ and social sciences as articulating, via agency and historical contingency, with humanity’s systems of production and social relations and social metabolism with nature.
In our current time, Einstein’s essay, the breadth and totalizing scope of his life’s work, and the essays in this compelling book, serve as a strong call for both the voices of scientists, and for science, evidence, and reason, as vital counterweights to, and components of, a united front in opposition to rising neofascism and the destruction of reason, and in support of the essential need for a transition to socialism.
