einstein

His fears were realized. The conference became mired in such issues as how to calculate the offensive power of aircraft carriers in assessing an
arms-control balance. Einstein showed up in Geneva in May, just as that topic was being tackled. When he appeared in the visitors’ gallery, the
delegates stopped their discussions and rose to applaud him. But Einstein was not pleased. That afternoon, he called a press conference at his
hotel to denounce their timidity.
“One does not make war less likely to occur by formulating rules of warfare,” he declared to dozens of excited journalists who abandoned the
conference to cover his criticism. “We should be standing on rooftops, all of us, and denouncing this conference as a travesty!” He argued that it
would be better for the conference to fail outright than to end with an agreement to “humanize war,” which he considered a tragic delusion. 66
“Einstein tended to become impractical once outside the scientific field,” his novelist friend and fellow pacifist Romain Rolland commented. It is
true that, given what was about to happen in Germany, disarmament was a chimera, and pacifist hopes were, to use a word sometimes flung at
Einstein, naïve. Yet it should be noted that there was some merit to his criticisms. The arms-control acolytes in Geneva were no less naïve. They
spent five years in futile, arcane debates as Germany rearmed itself.
Political Ideals
“Go One Step Further, Einstein!” the headline exhorted. It was on an essay, published in August 1931 as an open letter to Einstein, by the
German socialist leader Kurt Hiller, one of many activists on the left who urged Einstein to expand his pacifism into a more radical politics. Pacifism
was only a partial step, Hiller argued. The real goal was to advocate socialist revolution.
Einstein labeled the piece “rather stupid.” Pacifism did not require socialism, and socialist revolutions sometimes led to the suppression of
freedom. “I am not convinced that those who would gain power through revolutionary actions would act in accord with my ideals,” he wrote to Hiller.
“I also believe that the fight for peace must be pushed energetically, far ahead of any efforts to bring about social reforms.” 67
Einstein’s pacifism, world federalism, and aversion to nationalism were part of a political outlook that also included a passion for social justice, a
sympathy for underdogs, an antipathy toward racism, and a predilection toward socialism. But during the 1930s, as in the past, his wariness of
authority, his fealty to individualism, and his fondness for personal freedom made him resist the dogmas of Bolshevism and communism. “Einstein
was neither Red nor dupe,” writes Fred Jerome, who has analyzed both Einstein’s politics and the large dossier of material gathered on him by the
FBI. 68
This wariness of authority reflected the most fundamental of all of Einstein’s moral principles: Freedom and individualism are necessary for
creativity and imagination to flourish. He had demonstrated this as an impertinent young thinker, and he proclaimed the principle clearly in 1931. “I
believe that the most important mission of the state is to protect the individual and to make it possible for him to develop into a creative
personality,” he said. 69
Thomas Bucky, the son of a doctor who cared for Elsa’s daughters, was 13 when he met Einstein in 1932, and they began what would become a
longstanding discussion of politics. “Einstein was a humanist, socialist, and a democrat,” he recalled. “He was completely anti-totalitarian, no
matter whether it was Russian, German or South American. He approved of a combination of capitalism and socialism. And he hated all
dictatorships of the right or left.” 70
Einstein’s skepticism about communism was evident when he was invited to the 1932 World Antiwar Congress. Though putatively a pacifist
group, it had become a front for Soviet communists. The official call for the conference, for example, denounced the “imperialist powers” for
encouraging Japan’s aggressive attitude toward the Soviet Union. Einstein refused to attend or support its manifesto. “Because of the glorification
of Soviet Russia it includes, I cannot bring myself to sign it,” he said.
He had come to some somber conclusions about Russia, he added. “At the top there appears to be a personal struggle in which the foulest
means are used by power-hungry individuals acting from purely selfish motives. At the bottom there seems to be complete suppression of the
individual and freedom of speech. One wonders whether life is worth living under such conditions.” Perversely, when the FBI later compiled a secret
dossier on Einstein during the Red Scare of the 1950s, one piece of evidence cited against him was that he had supported, rather than rejected,
the invitation to be active in this world congress. 71
One of Einstein’s friends at the time was Isaac Don Levine, a Russian-born American journalist who had been sympathetic to the communists but
had turned strongly against Stalin and his brutal regime as a columnist for the Hearst newspapers. Along with other defenders of civil liberties,
including ACLU founder Roger Baldwin and Bertrand Russell, Einstein supported the publication of Levine’s exposé of Stalinist horrors, Letters
from Russian Prisons. He even provided an essay, written in longhand, in which he denounced “the regime of frightfulness in Russia.” 72
Einstein also read Levine’s subsequent biography of Stalin, a fiercely critical exposé of the dictator’s brutalities, and called it “profound.” He saw
in it a clear lesson about tyrannical regimes on both the left and the right. “Violence breeds violence,” he wrote Levine in a letter of praise. “Liberty is
the necessary foundation for the development of all true values.” 73
Eventually, however, Einstein began to break with Levine. Like many former communist sympathizers who swung over to the anti-communist
cause, Levine had the zeal of a convert and an intensity that made it hard for him to appreciate any of the middle shades of the spectrum. Einstein,
on the other hand, was too willing to accept, Levine felt, some aspects of Soviet repression as being an unfortunate byproduct of revolutionary
change.
There were, indeed, many aspects of Russia that Einstein admired, including what he saw as its attempt to eliminate class distinctions and
economic hierarchies. “I regard class differences as contrary to justice,” he wrote in a personal statement of his credo. “I also consider that plain
living is good for everybody, physically and mentally.” 74
These sentiments led Einstein to be critical of what he saw as the excessive consumption and disparities of wealth in America. As a result, he
enlisted in a variety of racial and social justice movements. He took up, for example, the cause of the Scottsboro Boys, a group of young black men
who were convicted of a gang rape in Alabama after a controversial trial, and of Tom Mooney, a labor activist imprisoned for murder in California. 75
At Caltech, Millikan was upset with Einstein’s activism, and wrote him to say so. Einstein responded diplomatically. “It cannot be my affair,” he
agreed, “to insist in a matter that concerns only the citizens of your country.” 76 Millikan thought Einstein naïve in his politics, as did many people. To
some extent he was, but it should be remembered that his qualms about the convictions of the Scottsboro Boys and Mooney proved justified, and
his advocacy of racial and social justice turned out to be on the right side of history.
Despite his association with the Zionist cause, Einstein’s sympathies extended to the Arabs who were being displaced by the influx of Jews into
what would eventually be Israel. His message was a prophetic one. “Should we be unable to find a way to honest cooperation and honest pacts with
the Arabs,” he wrote Weizmann in 1929, “then we have learned absolutely nothing during our 2,000 years of suffering.” 77
He proposed, both to Weizmann and in an open letter to an Arab, that a “privy council” of four Jews and four Arabs, all independent-minded, be