Why Socialism? Albert Einstein 1948
- This topic has 6 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 4 years ago by
.
-
Posts
-
No doubt some of you already know this – I found it a good read.
Yes, it’s good. Sort of reviewed in the April 2005 Socialist Standard:
The American SLP wrote to Einstein. Don’t know if he replied
http://www.deleonism.org/text/ae000003.htm
Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for Einstein to go off the rails, as this snippet from the December 1950 Socialist Standard “Sense and Nonsense” column shows:
Einstein out of his Depth
“The intelligence and character of the masses are unquestionably lower than the intelligence and character of the few who produce something valuable for the community.”
“We should not make the mistake of blaming Capitalism for all existing social and political evils. . . . Socialism . . . might more easily lead to wars than Capitalism because it represents a still greater concentration of power.”
(From “Out of my Later Years” by Albert Einstein, Quoted in Daily Mail, 13/11/50.)
More on Einstein and Socialism from the January 1931 Socialist Standard. The article hints that he was a supporter of the Labour Party which was then in government:
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2016/01/einstein-discusses-socialism-1931.html
Yes, thanks for the extra context ALB. Unfortunately too many people expect too much from those they see as at a ‘higher level’ in some area or another – because they are an ‘expert’ at something, whatever it is, they are expected to say the right thing about whatever they are writing or discussing, forgetting that they are also just people with their own – maybe skewed – ideas and opinions.
Einstein (quoted by ALB) “The intelligence and character of the masses are unquestionably lower than the intelligence and character of the few who produce something valuable for the community.”
Yes, Einstein was a bog-standard ‘materialist’ (as Marx pointed out their key political trait in his Theses on Feuerbach), who later rejected his own work in physics, because his theory of relativity undermined ‘materialism’, as many other physicists soon realised.
Our political choice in physics is either ‘elite knowledge’ or ‘democratic epistemology’.
All ‘materialists’, without fail, choose ‘elite knowledge’. Like Einstein, given a choice between ‘mass activity’ or ‘elite reflection’, when determining ‘truth’ in ‘nature’, the ‘materialists’ will choose ‘elite reflection’.
Marx pointed this out in 1845.
Bourgeois physics caught up in 1915.
‘Materialists’ in 2020? Still faithful to the elite.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.