Why Socialism? by Albert Einstein, 1949, Monthly Review

An excerpt from the 1949 Monthly Review Magazine article by Albert Einstein entitled, Why Socialism, (this was the lead article in the first issue published by the magazine):

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.

Why Socialism? Albert Einstein—Monthly Review

 

Comments

But wait......

....according to the Republicans and the Free Marketeers and the conservatives and the Tea Party and the fundamentalist Christian right and the everyone else who doesn't consider themselves "LIBERAL", socialism is bad, bad, mucho bad.  So what gives?

  Don't we need the corporate ownership doing out just enough jobs to keep the masses from rioting?  Isn't a capitalistic society based on the notion that people are capital the same way money is capital - to be used?  Isn't the idea of capitalism that only some of the people get rich or even have the ability to make a living wage?

   What's all this fuss I hear all the time about how SOCIALISM is the next worst thing to unsliced bread?  All those I mentioned before can't be wrong, can they?

 

 

 

Nope, that's not THE idea...

Isn't the idea of capitalism that only some of the people get rich or even have the ability to make a living wage?

That is consistant with corporatism and an exploitation-based industrial economy, but not necessarily capitalism.  As Chesterton said, "The problem with capitalism is that there are not enough capitalists."