Who the Hell is… Albert Einstein?

Today we’re reviving a regular feature you used to see the in the classic (pre-blog, paper only) version of Leftfield.

“Who the Hell is…” brings you the low down on key folk who’ve tried to make a difference to the world in the past. Previous people we’ve profiled have included Delegate Zero/Subcommandante Marcos, and Che Guevara.

Today, we’re asking: Who the Hell is… Albert Einstein?

That might seem a bit of a redundant question, since he’s one of the most famous scientists to have ever lived. Everyone has heard of him, and his name is like another word for “really really clever.” What’s less well known (but shouldn’t surprise you considering how smart he was) is that he was a lifelong socialist.

In science, Einstein completely revolutionised the study of physics, with his theories of relativity, beginning of quantum mechanics and explanation of the wave-particle duality of light, to name just a few of his massive contributions. His work was so important he was to become a world wide celebrity decades before celebrities became as commonplace as today. He used his international fame tirelessly to fight for social justice and for the rights of people who had been wronged by racism, the capitalist system and right wing politics.

Einstein as a young man: Nice jacket

Einstein was born in 1879 in Germany to a liberal and secular Jewish family, but at the age of 16 he renounced his German citizenship in order to avoid military service in the German army. He moved to Switzerland to study at Zurich Polytechnic, free from the anti-Semitism that was commonplace at German universities. As a young man he was fascinated with finding out the secrets of the material world, and read a lot, including the works of Darwin. In Zurich he spent plenty of time skiving off class to hang out at the Odeon Cafe, which was a favourite of exiled Russian radicals like Alexandra Kollontai and Leon Trotsky (and later, Lenin.) Einstein took part vigorously in the political debates going on in the cafe, and met many of the people who would go on to make the Russian Revolution.

After finishing uni Einstein couldn’t get an academic job, so worked in the Swiss patent office in Berne for a few years. It was during this time (and often while he should have been working at his boring job) that he wrote most of his most revolutionary scientific papers that were to make his name. As a result of these works on relativity and quantum mechanics he was offered a Professorship at Berlin uni.

Unfortunately, this was just before the outbreak of World War One. The German Social Democratic party, which Einstein had previously supported, had voted against all its own principles to support the war. Einstein, and a minority of the party members, said the war was nothing but a fight between the ruling classes of Europe for dominance, and that ordinary people should refuse to kill and be killed for something that was nothing to do with them. At the time, Max Planck and many other prominent scientists published a racist manifesto which ranted about why Germany should be supported against the “Russian hordes” “Mongols” and “Negroes” who were “threatening the white race.”

Einstein’s response was to help write and sign the ‘Manifesto to the Europeans’, which called on the people of Europe to stand together for internationalism and civilisation against racism, war and destruction.

Having spoken out against the barbarism of World War One all the way through, Einstein celebrated the revolutions that followed its end. On the day the German Kaiser abdicated (which was during a fortnight that saw the fall of seven different European monarchies, which were replaced, at least for the time, by liberal and social democratic democracies), he famously put a notice on the door of his classroom for students that said “CLASS CANCELLED – REVOLUTION”.

Einstein took an active part in the social and political life of the German republic that came after the war. This made him a major target for the rising far right, who denounced him as a “Swiss Jew.” He campaigned against military service, and helped form organisations to defend and support victims of fascist anti-Semitic violence. He also defended poor students who couldn’t afford the rising cost of uni fees, frequently giving free evening classes in physics after his working day had finished.

The Nazis burning books, including Einstein's

As the Nazis became more and more powerful in Germany, Einstein was forced to do more of his lecturing and political speaking abroad. In 1933, Hitler came to power. The Nazis seized his Berlin home, organised a mass book burning among which his work was prominently displayed, and published an offer of a cash reward for his murder in Nazi newspapers. Touring the Netherlands at the time, Einstein was forced to hire bodyguards. He eventually decided it would be safer not to return to Germany, and took up a lifelong job offer at Princeton University in New Jersey, USA. Here, he worked on the problem that was to occupy the rest of his life (and still physics to this day): understanding gravity and electromagnetism as aspects of the same phenomenon as part of a unified theory.

Einstein was already famous in the US, and crowds gathered to see him arrive. He used this position to speak out against the rise of fascism, warning of the dangers posed by the Nazis. He condemned the fake neutrality of Britain and the US towards the fascist attack on the Spanish Republic: they refused aid and arms to Spain, while Italy and Germany vigorously aided the Franco’s Spanish fascists. He also demanded the US government allow Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler be granted asylum.

In 1939, in his most remembered public act, Einstein and other physicists wrote to President Roosevelt warning about German advances in nuclear technology, and the risk that they might develop a nuclear bomb. This led to the Manhattan Project, which developed the first real nukes which were later used against Japan. Einstein refused to participate in the project, and he and many other physicists were haunted for years afterwards by what they had helped to create.

Einstein tried to deal with the part his work had played in the invention of weapons of mass destruction by actively protesting them. He condemned the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the paranoid, anti-Soviet US politics that helped launch the Cold War. As chair of the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, Einstein met with US government officials to demand an end to American military expansionism, and demanded that all nuclear technology be put under international control. He famously said of the nuclear bomb: “Everything has changed except the way we think,” meaning that war could no longer be used to solve international problems because of the risk of total destruction. He also alluded to the risk of the destruction of civilisation, saying:

“I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones.”

Mushroom cloud over Nagasaki: Einstein fought tirelessly for the abolition of nuclear weapons

In the US Einstein also began to fight tirelessly against racism, seeing parallels between the oppression of black people and the way that Jews had been treated in Germany. Where he lived in Princeton he frequently saw the discrimination black people experienced in housing, jobs and education, and the police violence meted out to those who challenged it. He became great friends with black radicals like W.E.B. Du Bois and the famous singer and Communist Paul Robeson. He became co-chair of the campaign the American Crusade to End Lynching, and wrote to the President to demand Federal action against racist violence. He also publicly defended Robeson when he said that if the government could not defend blacks they would do it themselves. He said of racism:

“The social outlook of Americans…their sense of equality and human dignity is limited to men of white skins. The more I feel an American, the more this situation pains me. I can escape complicity in it only by speaking out.”

When the famous black singer Marian Anderson gave a concert in Princeton, afterwards she couldn’t get a room in the racist hotels, and Einstein immediately invited her to stay with him. She continued to stay with him every time she came to Princeton, even after the hotels had been desegregated.

He also spoke out in defence of left wingers targeted by the right wing “red scare” after the war, when Senator Joseph McCarthy began forcing anyone he didn’t like to appear before his committee on accusations of being Soviet agents. He wrote of the situation: “The German calamity of years ago repeats itself.” He made national front page news when he wrote in a letter to William Frauenglass (an innovative English teacher in New York who had been targeted because he gave intercultural lessons to try and overcome racism and prejudice):

“Every intellectual who is called before the committees ought to refuse to testify…If enough people are ready to take this grave step, they will be successful. If not, then the intellectuals deserve nothing better than the slavery which is intended for them.”

This helped bring McCarthyism towards collapse, as more and more people refused to participate, encouraged by Einstein. The hearings collapsed a few years later. Einstein was however unfortunately unable to save the lives of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were American Communists executed for espionage, after being accused of passing atomic secrets to the USSR. Einstein, who believed their guilt had not been proven, wrote to the President to point out that even if they had, the scientific information they were accused of passing on was not secret and not important.

Paul Robeson

Einstein’s friend, and world famous singer, Paul Robeson, had been massively attacked for being a Communist, militant anti-racist and supporter of African independence. He was denied a passport to travel and was unable to get venues to perform in. As a response, Einstein made a very public gesture of support by inviting Robeson and his accompanist Lloyd Brown to lunch, at which they spent three hours discussing music, science and politics. At one point, when Robeson left the room, Brown remarked about what an honor it was to be in the presence of such a great man. To which Einstein replied, “but it is you who have brought the great man.”

After the war, Einstein had taken part in the Presidential campaign of Henry Wallace, and the Progressive Party. The Progressive Party mounted a serious challenge to the re-election of Harry Truman, standing on a platform of an end to the Cold War, friendly relations with the Soviet Union, the outlawing of nuclear weapons, an end to segregation and racism and universal health care.

The party was an alliance of the people who had been part of Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition, including socialists and communists. After the party lost the election, some went on to take a more clear stance for socialism, including demanding public ownership of basic industries. Einstein supported the founders of the important American socialist magazine Monthly Review (which is still going today), and contributed his famous essay ‘Why Socialism?‘ for its first issue in 1949. In it he wrote:

“This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.

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.”

There isn’t space in this (already massive!) blog post to go into all the amazing stuff Einstein did during his life. One thing that may be controversial for socialists today is his support for the establishment of the state of Israel, which today steals Palestinian land and imposes on them misery and oppression. But it should be remembered that, after the war, hundreds of thousands of Jews were still displaced in Europe, and the victorious allies refused to grant them a home. Having fought against anti-Semitism in Europe for years, Einstein now supported the settlement of Jews in Palestine. However, he was never a supporter of right wing Jewish nationalism, and remained a secular anti-racist. He called for a bi-national Palestinian state, and argued that:

“Oppressive nationalism must be conquered…I can see a future for Palestine only on the basis of peaceful cooperation between the two peoples who are at home in the country…come together they must in spite of all.”

It doesn’t seem unreasonable to suggest that if he were alive today Einstein would fight actively against the oppression of the Israeli occupation of Palestine and for the rights of Palestinians.

He also retained a lifelong commitment to scientific education for all, as a way of fighting back against mysticism, pseudo-science and right wing religion that continues to be used as a way of upholding the power of right wing elites.

This is only the beginning of an understanding of Einstein’s lifelong fight for a better world. To learn more I recommend this article and this one. While Einstein today is remembered as one of the greatest scientists of all time, his role as a fighter for socialism and justice has been airbrushed from history. But its time that socialists everywhere remembered that one of the smartest people who ever lived was on our side.