whakahekeheke

Einstein vs. Einstein

on socialism, capitalism, the individual and the State

(…he changed his mind sometimes)

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.

~ Albert Einstein, Why Socialism? (1949)

vs.

It is no accident that Capitalism has brought with it progress, not merely in production but also in knowledge. Egoism and competition are, alas, stronger forces than ‘public spirit’ and ‘sense of duty.’ In Russia they say it is impossible to get a decent piece of bread. Perhaps I am over-pessimistic concerning State and other forms of communal enterprise, but I expect little good from them. Bureaucracy is the death of achievement.

~ Albert Einstein, The World As I See It: Culture and Prosperity (1954), p.88-89

An autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion, soon degenerates. Force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels. … The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the State but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; the individual alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.

~ Albert Einstein, The World As I See It: Culture and Prosperity (1954) p.13

Every individual should have the opportunity to develop the gifts which may be latent in him. Alone in that way can the individual obtain the satisfaction to which he is justly entitled; and alone in that way can the community achieve its richest flowering. For everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labour in freedom. Restriction is justified only in so far as it may be needed for the security of existence.

~ Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years (1950), p.19