Einstein's One Problem with Socialism
Albert Einstein wrote an article called 'Why Socialism?' in 1949. It initially seems odd. In the 1930s Einstein had escaped the National Socialist German Workers' Party. The Cold War had started in the 1940s, primarily between the US and the Soviet Union. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union grew from the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. So it seems odd that one of the smartest men in the world would think positively of socialism. Why would he agree with the philosophical foundations of the Nazis and Soviets? But, he makes some good points.
For instance, he notes that science can't decide on ends, only on means, and that the goal of socialism is to change human nature for a futuristic society. "For these reasons, we should be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems; and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society."
Einstein recognizes that there are two parts in people that combine. "Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate abilities. As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life."
He recognizes that humans have an in-built nature, but he also notes that it's malleable and influenced heavily by the environment. This is where he finds hope. "Modern anthropology has taught us, through comparative investigation of so-called primitive cultures, that the 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 condemned, because of their biological constitution, to annihilate each other or to be at the mercy of a cruel, self-inflicted fate."
He also notes that there are limits. Some things can't be changed. "If we ask ourselves how the structure of society and the cultural attitude of man should be changed in order to make human life as satisfying as possible, we should constantly be conscious of the fact that there are certain conditions which we are unable to modify. As mentioned before, the biological nature of man is, for all practical purposes, not subject to change. Furthermore, technological and demographic developments of the last few centuries have created conditions which are here to stay. In relatively densely settled populations with the goods which are indispensable to their continued existence, an extreme division of labor and a highly-centralized productive apparatus are absolutely necessary."
Einstein proposes that humans can only find meaning by devoting themselves to society, and that our society is becoming more egotistical, making people feel worse psychologically. He says that, "The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor—not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules. In this respect, it is important to realize that the means of production—that is to say, the entire productive capacity that is needed for producing consumer goods as well as additional capital goods—may legally be, and for the most part are, the private property of individuals."
He says that capital tends to accumulate to a few people, who are then able to control the media and politics. He points out that the two keys of the capitalist system are private property and the ability to freely contract labor. He states that this leads to unemployment, depressions, and waste. Some of these things are wrong, but we'll ignore that, because he also states serious problems that are true. He states that the whole society becomes competitive and this cripples individuals.
Here's where he gets to the solution. "I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely 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. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The 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."
Einstein notes just one major problem with this solution. "Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual." For me that's a major problem. I don't particularly like slavery. And, to get to Einstein's idea of true socialism someone has to change human nature, which isn't going to happen, and if it did happen it would be to make humans more compliant with the socialist slave system through force.
The planned economy won't eliminate depressions, unless possibly the economy continually being bad isn't considered a depression. The Soviet Union and China went on in the 1900s to demonstrate these things. It will increase waste because of perverse incentives, the lack of distributed local knowledge access, and the lack of price signals. Forced labor can eliminate unemployment, but that seems like a bad thing to me. Again, that's being against slavery. So the tradeoffs don't seem that beneficial.
Einstein asks some questions near the end. "The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?" We already have many of these answers. Have individual rights protected in a constitution overseen by multiple levels of government with checks and balances and separation of powers, or at the least have some limited legal protections of private property and free exchange.
I would like to think that if Einstein had been able to see the eventual economic collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 along with the revelation of decades of atrocities, and the economic reforms in China in 1978 with the subsequent economic growth, and the very clear experiment between capitalist South Korea and the planned economy of North Korea, that he would have been able to realize the importance of his own observation that there are things that can't be changed, that human nature may be one of those things, and that instead of trying to adapt human nature to a utopian economic theory we should adapt our economic and political thinking and policies to human nature to achieve the best society that is realistically possible.
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