Einstein's Defense of Socialism

http://luxemburgist.wordpress.com/2010/09/05/einsteins-defense-of-socialism/

by lists • 16 years ago

21 23 16 years ago

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plesn• 16 years ago

Interesting, even though i'm not suprised knowing Einstein's affinity for Spinoza : he must have carefully read Marx and other materialist philosophers.

OstiaAntica• 16 years ago

Ironic that Einstein, writing in America after fleeing the horrors of national socialism in Germany, still entertained notions of subjugating the individual to the state.

kingkilr• 16 years ago

Uhh, you know that the National Socialist Worker's Party didn't really have anything to do with socialism?

TomOfTTB• 16 years ago

I'm sorry but that just isn't correct. I'm absolutely not saying all socialists are Nazis but the Nazi party was an extreme example of the socialist philosophy. That philosophy being that the Government should use its power to socially engineer a better world (the opposite of which being the libertarian philosophy that the Government should exist to protect people against social engineering by allowing them to do what they want even if those actions are detrimental).

Obviously it's all a sliding scale but to say OstiaAntica is flat out wrong is not accurate.

foljs2• 16 years ago

Emm, actually Hitler adopted the "Socialism" part of "National Socialism" in order to win leftist votes, in a giant bait-and-switch scheme.

The Nazi party had nothing to do with socialism, as the term was and is known and defined in the relevant political literature.

Or, more correctly, the horrors of Nazi germany had nothing to do with economic regulation and the social health care et al, and all to do with racist ideology, dictatorship and imperialism.

Actually, Sweden is socialist, in the sense most americans define the word, as well as New Zealand, and it's all the better for them --and they have tens times more refined than either US Republican or Democrat policies.

cma• 16 years ago

The taboo is extremely strong here on Hacker News.

davidj• 16 years ago

it is ironic that this site is dedicated to entrepreneurship, but is full of people who are anti-capitalist and promote socialism.

NicuCalcea• 16 years ago

I feel like you are all somehow far from the truth.

I live in Moldova, a state that appeared as a consequence of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact (also known as the Stalin-Hitler pact). We had the Communist Party ruling our country until 2 years ago.

I've been talking to both Romanian (Fascist) and Russian (Soviet) soldiers, and they all agree, both Nazism and Communism are socialistic regimes. I strongly recommend "The Soviet Story", watching it might clear your views.

maxharris7• 16 years ago

http://ia700107.us.archive.org/17/items/TheSovietStory/THE_S...

"The classes and the races too weak to master the new conditions of life must give way." ... "They must perish in the revolutionary holocaust." - Karl Marx

Everyone should watch this movie - especially people that think that socialism is a benign idea.

applicative4• 16 years ago

`maxharris` is either a moron or a liar, or more probably both. The first fragment of this sentence is genuine Marx, writing for the New York Daily Tribune, as a one-second search would have shown him. The second I cannot find; it is certainly not in the same article, as the ellipsis fraudulently suggests. If it exists the chances that it refers to a transition to socialism, communism, or whatever Marx is supposed to have favored, are certainly zero.

In the Daily Tribune article, Marx is discussing emigration (mostly to America) from England, Ireland and Scotland, in the years around 1850, and the gruesome commentary of English writers of the period.

The Economist, for example, he quotes as writing:

"The departure of the redundant part of the population of Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland is an indispensable preliminary to every kind of improvement. The revenue of Ireland has not suffered in any degree from the famine of 1846-47, or from the emigration that has since taken place. On the contrary, her net revenue amounted in 1851 to £4,281,999, being about £184,000 greater than in 1843"

I.e. they "regard ‘Net-Revenue’ as the Moloch to whom entire populations must be sacrificed..." as Marx puts the view of the Ricardians.

The context can be found here on a website for true believers: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/03/04.htm

I don't see any easy way of search for ancient Economist articles, but I notice that in the same year the American writer Carey quoted the same passage as from "Economist, (London,) Feb. 12, 1853." in his book on the slave trade http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8000/pg8000.txt

Einstein's Defense of Socialism

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