Why “Albert Einstein’s ‘Why Socialism?’”?

Yves here. I must confess to being ignorant of Einstein’s essay in the first issue of Monthly Review, Why Socialism? as well as how active he had been in politics and his critical role in the establishment of Brandeis University. I read the Walter Isaacson bio many years ago, and my dim recollection is that he did mention Einstein’s political leanings and that he had pulled in his sails during the McCarthy era. But in light of the discussion below, it seems Isaacson and many others left this important part of Einstein’s life on the cutting room floor.

Produced by Lynn Fries. Published by GPEnewsdocs

John Bellamy Foster reflects on the enduring relevance of Einstein’s “Why Socialism?” in this fourth segment of our series on ecology and materialism. Marx’s foundations of ecological materialism are blended with the work of natural scientists and the Greek philosopher Epicurus. Socialism, as a transformational project whose intellectual birthplace is materialism, had to be forcefully defended by Albert Einstein, the preeminent scientist of the 20th century. Bellamy Foster, discussing his Introduction to Einstein’s essay, explains the importance of Einstein’s contribution in the postwar context and into the present.

Series link to Parts 1-4 here. 

JOHN BELLAMY FOSTER: But all this was connected to a left where people like – Paul Sweezy and Leo Huberman, who started Monthly Review and Otto Nathan who was involved in the beginning and Einstein and Paul Robeson and W.E.B. Du Bois and Lillian Hellman – all of these people were connected in a common fight. And it wasn’t narrow. It was broad. It defended human rights, human freedom and democracy in the fullest sense. And argued on a materialist and humanist basis starting with an alliance rooted in the struggles of workers.

And this is something that we have to get back. We have to get back the kind of public intellectuals, real left intellectuals, Marxist intellectuals who are not just academics, writing academic articles in the name of Marxism on some abstruse concept. That’s valuable in a way, but you actually have to be involved as an organic intellectual – as Gramsci said – in the struggle, in education in the deepest sense. And in the hope for a new world because ultimately as Epicurus said “It’s up to us”.

LYNN FRIES: Hello and welcome. I ‘m Lynn Fries producer of Global Political Economy or GPEnewsdocs.

That opening short was a quick preview of what’s coming up in this segment. This is Part 4 of an ongoing conversation with John Bellamy Foster.

In Parts 1-3 John Bellamy Foster unpacked a seminal trilogy – ‘Marx’s Ecology’, ‘The Return Of Nature’, and ‘Breaking the Bonds of Fate’ – on a millennia-long struggle for human freedom in the long march from Epicurus, through Marx and into the present.

This then is the story of the more complete materialist philosophical view of nature and society that resulted from the synthetic development of materialist thinking from Epicurus’s materialism in the 3rd century BCE through Marx’s 19th century ecological materialism. So the more complete materialism by which Marx – who considered Epicurus’s philosophy as the birthplace of socialism- carried Epicurus’s fight from antiquity into a revolutionary challenge to capitalism in modern times.

At the end of Part 3, Bellamy Foster’s comments delved into the historical trajectory in which this more complete materialism underpinned humanity’s class struggles for a socialist future. The discussion then turned to Bellamy Foster’s Preface and Introduction to the 75th anniversary reprint of Einstein’s ‘Why Socialism?’ in which he gives Einstein a core role in the contemporary struggle for socialism.

So, I asked him to talk about that book – ‘Albert Einstein’s “Why Socialism?” The Enduring Relevance of His Classic Essay’. And specifically, the context in which Einstein and contemporary ‘real intellectuals’ – including the founders of Monthly Review – engaged in resisting the systematic suppression of the case for socialism under McCarthyism, and the challenges left to us.

John Bellamy Foster is editor of Monthly Review and Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon. He is a prolific author, co-author and editor. As well as today’s featured books and many others, he has authored ‘Capitalism in the Anthropocene’, ‘The Dialectics of Ecology’ and co-authored ‘The Robbery of Nature’ and ‘The Ecological Rift’. Bellamy Foster’s work has been awarded numerous distinctions. His book ‘The Return of Nature’ won the Deutscher Memorial Prize.

We go now to Part 4 and John Bellamy Foster’s comments on Einstein’s ‘Why Socialism?’.

BELLAMY FOSTER: Einstein wrote his famous essay ‘Why Socialism?’ for the first issue of Monthly Reviewin May 1949, Volume One, Number One. There’s been a lot of discussion about this because the essay ‘Why Socialism?’ has influenced so many people. It’s probably the single best introduction to socialist thinking in that number of words.

The history of Einstein, his biography isn’t really well known, I mean, especially the political aspects. But he was a socialist all of his life. And in Germany in the early 1930s, of course before Hitler’s rise, he used to give all sorts of lectures on science to working class meetings.

He came out of this whole tradition. He was really a coming out of a realist, materialist tradition philosophically. But he believed, like Marx, that science really came from the bottom. He tried to convey major scientific discoveries to working class audiences. Which is extraordinarily different than the way people think of Einstein.

He was always involved in socialist groups. He supported socialist movements and revolts in Germany. When he came to the United States he continued to support all left causes. He was really a strong fighter against racism. He was close to W.E. B. Du Bois and so on.

But what happened is, when I was looking at ‘Why Socialism?’ which was published in Volume One, Number One of Monthly Review, I had looked at it over the years and knew some of the history of it. But we decided to put out a little book on it and it required an introduction. And I had to do more historical research.

We knew a lot about ‘Why Socialism?’ from Einstein’s essay – his writing of ‘Why Socialism?’ from within Monthly Review. But I didn’t know some of the deep history and nobody else did either.

It all started with the attempt to create Brandeis University as a new kind of university. It was going to be a Jewish based university but it was secular and it was going to be under faculty control. Right then they had limits placed on minorities being admitted to all the institutions of higher education in the United States. And they decided to break that and to let minorities fully into this new university on a meritocratic basis. To make sure it did that they had a notion of education more from the bottom. It was a radical view of education.

Anyway, Einstein was very interested in this. And all the money came from the Einstein Foundation. There was an Einstein Foundation from Brandeis that was set up. Originally, they were going to name the university after Einstein but he refused. He said it should be named after a famous Jewish American. Because you know, he was an immigrant and so one of our more esteemed immigrants.He said it should be named after a famous American. And they decided on naming it after Louis Brandeis.

But it was funded by the Einstein Foundation and all the money was coming in because of Einstein’s name. But they also set up a separate board of trustees. Einstein and Einstein’s people sort of ran the foundation but the board of trustees was run by capitalist figures, people with money.

Einstein had this idea and he brought in Paul Sweezy who was a Marxist economist. I think he had just quit Harvard but he was a Harvard Marxist economist. He had been one of the founders of the Harvard Teachers Unions who’d been very involved in: How do you structure academics? Einstein brought Sweezy in partly because Einstein’s closest friend was a German economist called Otto Nathan, who was a socialist, a Marxist. And Otto Nathan was very close to Leo Huberman, who was close to Sweezy they knew each other.

And so they brought Sweezy in to write the plan for Einstein for Brandeis University was going to be a new kind of university. It really was, the Sweezy report, was incredible. It was putting control in hands of the faculty and boosting minorities in the institution, really, an open university.

And the Board of Trustees which was for accepting it started to turn against them. Einstein tried to bring in as president a famous Marxist thinker in Britain. There was just a big… basically the Cold War entered in and this was the beginning of McCarthyism in the universities. They accused Einstein, Nathan and the other people who were working with Einstein as being Reds. And saying they are subversive and un-American. Einstein withdrew from the foundation. The foundation name was changed to the Brandeis Foundation. He [Einstein] wouldn’t have anything to do with Brandeis University after that.

These people who were involved in this – Einstein, Otto Nathan, Leo Huberman and Paul Sweezy – they all got involved in the Henry Wallace campaign for president. Sweezy was the head of the New Hampshire campaign. And Huberman and Sweezy wrote the preamble to the progressive party political document. They were all deeply involved in it. Einstein was in pictures with Wallace. Einstein was very devoted to this. They were on the same wavelength and kind of working together.

When the campaign collapsed, when Wallace was defeated, they were all kind of depressed. F.O. Matthiessen, the great Harvard literary critic, offered some money to start Monthly Review. Matthiessen had also been engaged in helping with Brandeis University and the planning with Sweezy.

And so they all came together to start Monthly Review with Otto Nathan as one of the original editors and Einstein very much involved in it. And Einstein wrote ‘Why Socialism?’ for the first issue. This was really kind of fundamental.

His [Einstein’s] article is fundamental because it connects issues of human nature to the nature of society. And he explained things very much in terms of Marxist political economy in describing capitalism. And then he ties that to the need for social change and ends with education. Which is the priority. It has to be built on education.

It is really an extraordinary document, only about six pages long. I tried in the book to explain a lot of the details of how it happened. Like how Einstein used Veblen and Marx as the fundamentals for talking about human nature and human individuals and then moving to society.

It’s really an extraordinarily famous document, but never talked about in official circles in the United States. It’s sort of, Einstein is there but he’s treated as though he was simply a liberal. Which isn’t accurate.

And there’s a book that has come out recently from Princeton, ‘Einstein On Politics’ where they try to look at ‘Why Socialism?’ and pretend that it’s simply liberal views. Like they say: Well, Einstein believed in democracy. So, he was a liberal, not a socialist, and things like that. And so I replied to those things showing how wrong and silly, misconceived they were.

There’s also an essay in the book by John Simon who also covers Einstein’s history. I mean, Einstein was fighting…you know, Paul Robeson was in the picture with Einstein and Wallace. And when W.E.B. Du Bois was being persecuted by the state for being a communist sympathizer or something like that. He was member of World Peace Committee and they said that made him a communist. They took him before the judge and Marco Antonio, who was the lawyer, told the judge: Well, we don’t really have any witnesses, but we have one character witness named Albert Einstein. And the judge immediately ended the trial. He wouldn’t let Einstein testify because it would be world news and it would destroy his career.

So Du Bois was persecuted by the state but got off. Which he should have been he was totally innocent and what he did wasn’t a crime anyway. It was just an ideological attack. But it was Einstein’s alliance with Du Bois that was so important. He wrote for Du Bois’ Crisis [magazine] when Du Bois was the editor. Einstein was a really strong opponent of racism in the United States and spoke out but only the black newspapers reported what he said.

At the end of ‘Why Socialism?’ Einstein says we need a planned economy. He says we have to have economic planning. But he in insists that, of course, we have to do this in a democratic manner. We have to solve those problems.

And that we have to make education on behalf of humanity, really a socialist education, has to be the key to the future because it encompasses all of humanity and emphasizes freedom within society and the necessity of that. That we can’t live as atomistic individuals or egoistic beings anymore that we have to be social individuals conscious of each other living in reciprocal relations and planning on the behalf of the welfare of humanity as a whole. That’s basically…those aren’t his words but that’s sort of where he ends up. And he ended up by saying that discussions on this topic are the most important thing in our current age.

And that’s why he supported the creation of Monthly Review in the middle of the McCarthy era. After that, McCarthyism actually got worse. And Einstein introduced the strategy of using the First Amendment. Originally, people had tried to use the First Amendment and had been put in prison. People who were being accused of being communists or communist sympathizers and so on and they were put in prison. And so then everybody was using the Fifth Amendment – which says you can’t testify against yourself – to protect themselves to stay out of prison.

But Einstein reinvigorated the use of the First Amendment. People coming out and defending their positions on that basis and that was easier for writers than for some other people accused. But the first to follow the Einstein strategy, these were all connected to each other. Paul Sweezy and Leo Huberman and Lillian Hellman were the first three to use the First Amendment in this stage to fight against McCarthyism. And they were very successful.

Sweezy – in Sweezy versus New Hampshire – had been called up before the New Hampshire Attorney General on the basis of the speech he gave at the University of New Hampshire, the course he gave. The Attorney General of New Hampshire demanded his lecture notes, Sweezy’s lecture notes. He wanted names of those who had been in the Progressive Party – because Sweezy had been the Chair of the Progressive Party in New Hampshire, the Wallace Group – and demanded that he give the names of communists and so on.

Sweezy refused to do any of these things on the basis of the First Amendment. He said that he wouldn’t turn over his lecture notes. He wouldn’t name names. And he defended people’s right to have what political views they had. That case then went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States. Then became the leading case on academic freedom. The Earl Warren Court defended Sweezy’s rights.

But all this was connected to a Left where people like – Paul Sweezy and Leo Huberman, who started Monthly Review and Otto Nathan who was involved in the beginning and Einstein and Paul Robeson and W.E.B. Du Bois and Lillian Hellman – all of these people were connected in a common fight. And it wasn’t narrow. It was broad. It defended human rights, human freedom and democracy in the fullest sense and argued on a materialist and humanist basis starting with an alliance rooted in the struggles of workers.

And this is something that we have to get back. We have to get back the kind of public intellectuals, real left intellectuals, Marxist intellectuals who are not just academics, writing academic articles in the name of Marxism under some abstruse concept. That’s valuable in a way, but you actually have to be involved as an organic intellectual – as Gramsci said – in the struggle, in education in the deepest sense and in the hope for a new world because ultimately, as Epicurus said: “It’s up to us”.

LYNN FRIES: With that concluding thought on Epicurus, we’ll leave it there. This has been a 4 Part Series featuring John Bellamy Foster discussing his trilogy– ‘Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature’, ‘The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology’ and ‘Breaking the Bonds of Fate: Epicurus and Marx’ featured in Parts 1-3. And from there, the enduring relevance of Einstein’s essay, ‘Why Socialism?’. Many thanks, to our guest John Bellamy Foster. And thank you for joining us.