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Einstein and socialism
In his review of the book Einstein and Oppenheimer: The Meaning of Genius (Physics Today, April 2009, page 60), Robert Schulmann accuses the book’s author, Silvan Schweber, of the “jarring misinterpretation” of referring to Albert Einstein as a socialist in later life. If Schulmann meant to deny that Einstein was a socialist or was so in later life, then he is surprisingly misinformed.
In 1949 Einstein published an article that leaves no doubt about his political stance at the time. Its title was “Why Socialism?” and it appeared in the inaugural issue of the American journal Monthly Review; it is available online at http://www.monthlyreview.org/598einstein.php.
Schulmann replies: Differentiation is as critical in the social sciences as in their exact cousins. A blanket statement that Einstein was a socialist will not do. His article “Why Socialism?” is replete with ambivalence toward the ideology. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Einstein carefully weighed the benefits of a planned economy against the danger that an all-powerful and overweening bureaucracy might encroach on the rights of the individual and overwhelm the classical liberal ideal of intellectual freedom. Though he demonstrated philosophical sympathy for socialism with a human face, including many of its economic principles, he did not identify with the intellectual tradition of the European labor movement or the Marxist legacy. The central issue for him always remained the free play afforded every individual to develop creative potential. In that he was the true intellectual heir of Gustav Maier and Jost Winteler, the liberal political mentors of his early Swiss years.