einstein

In it he argued that unrestrained capitalism produced great disparities of wealth, cycles of boom and depression, and festering levels of
unemployment. The system encouraged selfishness instead of cooperation, and acquiring wealth rather than serving others. People were educated
for careers rather than for a love of work and creativity. And political parties became corrupted by political contributions from owners of great
capital.
These problems could be avoided, Einstein argued in his article, through a socialist economy, if it guarded against tyranny and centralization of
power. “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,” he wrote. “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.”
He added, however, that planned economies faced the danger of becoming oppressive, bureaucratic, and tyrannical, as had happened in
communist countries such as Russia. “A planned economy may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual,” he warned. It was
therefore important for social democrats who believed in individual liberty to face two critical questions: “How is it possible, in view of the farreaching
centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights
of the individual be protected?” 44
That imperative—to protect the rights of the individual—was Einstein’s most fundamental political tenet. Individualism and freedom were
necessary for creative art and science to flourish. Personally, politically, and professionally, he was repulsed by any restraints.
That is why he remained outspoken about racial discrimination in America. In Princeton during the 1940s, movie theaters were still segregated,
blacks were not allowed to try on shoes or clothes at department stores, and the student newspaper declared that equal access for blacks to the
university was “a noble sentiment but the time had not yet come.” 45
As a Jew who had grown up in Germany, Einstein was acutely sensitive to such discrimination. “The more I feel an American, the more this
situation pains me,” he wrote in an essay called “The Negro Question” for Pageant magazine. “I can escape the feeling of complicity in it only by
speaking out.” 46
Although he rarely accepted in person the many honorary degrees offered to him, Einstein made an exception when he was invited to Lincoln
University, a black institution in Pennsylvania. Wearing his tattered gray herringbone jacket, he stood at a blackboard and went over his relativity
equations for students, and then he gave a graduation address in which he denounced segregation as “an American tradition which is uncritically
handed down from one generation to the next.” 47 As if to break the pattern, he met with the 6-year-old son of Horace Bond, the university’s
president. That son, Julian, went on to become a Georgia state senator, one of the leaders of the civil rights movement, and chairman of the
NAACP.
There was, however, one group for which Einstein could feel little tolerance after the war. “The Germans, as a whole nation, are responsible for
these mass killings and should be punished as a people,” he declared. 48 When a German friend, James Franck, asked him at the end of 1945 to
join an appeal calling for a lenient treatment of the German economy, Einstein angrily refused. “It is absolutely necessary to prevent the restoration
of German industrial policy for many years,” he said. “Should your appeal be circulated, I shall do whatever I can to oppose it.” When Franck
persisted, Einstein became even more adamant. “The Germans butchered millions of civilians according to a well-prepared plan,” he wrote. “They
would do it again if only they were able to. Not a trace of guilt or remorse is to be found among them.” 49
Einstein would not even permit his books to be sold in Germany again, nor would he allow his name to be placed back on the rolls of any German
scientific society. “The crimes of the Germans are really the most abominable ever to be recorded in the history of the so-called civilized nations,”
he wrote the physicist Otto Hahn. “The conduct of the German intellectuals—viewed as a class—was no better than that of the mob.” 50
Like many Jewish refugees, his feelings had a personal basis. Among those who suffered under the Nazis was his first cousin Roberto, son of
Uncle Jakob. When German troops were retreating from Italy near the end of the war, they wantonly killed his wife and two daughters, then burned
his home while he hid in the woods. Roberto wrote to Einstein, giving the horrible details, and committed suicide a year later. 51
The result was that Einstein’s national and tribal kinship became even more clear in his own mind. “I am not a German but a Jew by nationality,”
he declared as the war ended. 52
Yet in ways that were subtle yet real, he had become an American as well. After settling in Princeton in 1933, he never once in the remaining
twenty-two years of his life left the United States, except for the brief cruise to Bermuda that was necessary to launch his immigration process.
Admittedly, he was a somewhat contrarian citizen. But in that regard he was in the tradition of some venerable strands in the fabric of American
character: fiercely protective of individual liberties, often cranky about government interference, distrustful of great concentrations of wealth, and a
believer in the idealistic internationalism that gained favor among American intellectuals after both of the great wars of the twentieth century.
His penchant for dissent and nonconformity did not make him a worse American, he felt, but a better one. On the day in 1940 when he was
naturalized as a citizen, Einstein had touched on these values in a radio talk. After the war ended, Truman proclaimed a day in honor of all new
citizens, and the judge who had naturalized Einstein sent out thousands of form letters inviting anyone he had sworn in to come to a park in Trenton
to celebrate. To the judge’s amazement, ten thousand people showed up. Even more amazing, Einstein and his household decided to come down
for the festivities. During the ceremony, he sat smiling and waving, with a young girl sitting on his lap, happy to be a small part of “I Am an American”
Day. 53