Albert Einstein:Political Profile of a Radical Scientist
-- Ish Mishra --
The year 2005 marks the centennial of the publication of 5 of Einstein’s major scientific papers that took the world of the classical physics by shock and surprise. The new research by the young scientist questioned the absolute concept of the motion and acceleration with the special theory of relativity. It authentically challenged the reigning Newtonian paradigm and its notions of the absoluteness and finality of the mechanical laws and the truth; inaugurated a new epoch in the history of scientific knowledge; laid the foundations of the future paradigm of analyses in the study of Physics. With the publication of these papers, Einstein added new dimensions to the Quantum theory. The contributions of the other two pillars of the Quantum physics -- Max Planc and Neils Bohr – are related with the quantum nature of the matter but they treated the light as electromagnetic wave within the paradigm of classical physics. Einstein, in his first paper itself, propounded the quantum theory of light that traveled as energy packets, with enormous velocity. In 1917 he demonstrated that just like the particles of the matter, light particles too have energy and momentum. For Einstein, the scientific knowledge was not just a matter of theoretical concern but the “attempt to make the chaotic diversity of our sense experience correspond to a logically uniform system of thought”. The Scientific knowledge is the means of scientific vision and temperament to scientifically comprehend the world and make it better and beautiful. Science is not an end in itself but the “scientific method furnishes the means to realize the goals” of the progress in the cause of humanity2. “Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem--in my opinion—to characterize our age. If we desire sincerely and passionately the safety, the welfare, and the free development of the talents of all men, we shall not be in want of means to reach such a state. Even if a small part of mankind strives for such goals, their superiority will prove itself in the long run.”3
2005 also marks the 50th year of Einstein’s death and the 60th year of Hiroshima-Nagasaki, the tragic catastrophe caused by the little boy and the fat man of Truman’s US government to mark its emergence as world power after the Second world war was almost already over. An anti-war activist since student days, Einstein, the epoch making scientist, was deeply perturbed with the catastrophe caused by the destructive application of the scientific knowledge. In the aftermath of the war, in a message to the intellectuals, he regretted the fate of the scientists in the existing state of affairs. “We scientists, whose destination has been to help in making the methods of annihilation more gruesome and more effective, must consider it our solemn and transcendent duty to do all in our power in preventing these weapons from being used for the brutal purpose foe which they were invented”. He appealed to the intellectuals of the world, “to build spiritual and scientific bridges linking the nations” and “to overcome the horrible obstacles of national frontiers”. In the same message he observed that “rational thinking does not suffice to solve the problems of our social life. Penetrating research and keen scientific work have often had tragic implications for mankind, producing on the one hand, inventions which liberated man from exhausting physical labour making his life easier and richer; but on the other hand, introducing a grave restlessness into his life, making him a slave of his technological environment and - most catastrophic of all - creating the means of his own mass destruction.”4
The Scientific knowledge of energy generation by the chain reaction caused by atomic fission, and its application in making atomic weapons has become the fact of the life. Hence, in order to avoid another catastrophic war of unprecedented destructive intensity, Einstein proposed the creation of a democratic, supranational government, as over-all in-charge of world’s all the security and military affairs, arms and ammunition and more importantly of the world’s atomic energy. “There is only one path of peace and security: the path of a supranational organization. One-sided armament on national basis only heightens the general uncertainty and confusion without being an effective protection.”4a The idea of a democratic world government despite its practical and theoretical lacunae owing to the intricacies of the capitalist political economy and the dangers of its becoming an imperialist tool like many economic and political world organizations, shows Einstein’s well-intended intense desire fir world peace and cooperation. Pointing to the supranational character of scientific knowledge, he envisaged a significant role of scientists and intellectuals in it. Dedicated to the supranational security, this world organization would free the national governments from military responsibilities, military secrets and the fear of war. The supranational army would consist of the armed forces personnel from the member countries and would strive for the world peace. ”The tensions of the increasingly likelihood of war in a world based on sovereignty would be replaced by the relaxation of growing confidence in peace”. And “the representatives to a supranational organization – assembly and council – must be elected by the people in each member country through a secret ballot. These representatives must represent the people rather than any government – which would enhance the pacific nature of the organization.”5
It is well known that Einstein was an epoch making physicist, what is less known and underplayed by the mainstream media is, his radical socio-political ideas and activism. In fact, he escaped persecution for his anti-war, anti-racist and egalitarian political ideas and activities -- in Germany during and after the First World War and in USA during the Second World War and the subsequent mid-century ‘red scare’ of the cold war-- due to his international celebrity status. Few other scientists, his fellow travelers in the campaign against jingoism and war, were not as fortunate. Rosenbergs case is well known. On the well-orchestrated and trumped up charges of being ‘Soviet agents’ and passing on the ‘scientific secrets’, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg had to die on the sing-sing electric chairs” on June 1953, despite frantic efforts of Einstein and other democratic minded scientists, artists and radical political activists6.
During his academic tours of the European countries and the America, apart from lecturing on quantum physics and the theory of relativity in simple language, he also pleaded for the mass education in science to emancipate people from superstitions, mysticism, and religious-racial bigotry. He shared with the audience his concerns and anxieties regarding the weapons of the mass destruction, particularly the nuclear weapons and appealed for peace, freedom and equality so that the enormous human creative potentialities could be realized. Through out his life, Einstein used all the scientific and public forums, the worldwide network of his acquaintances and his celebrity status to campaign for peace, disarmament and socialism. He stressed upon the need of social ethics in the field of science. In An Open letter to the Society for Social Responsibility in Science published in 1950, he wrote that the institutions unless supported by “the sense of responsibility” are “ in a moral sense impotent”. And “In our times scientists and engineers carry particular moral responsibility, because the development of the military means of mass destruction is within their sphere of activity. I feel therefore, that the formation of the Society for Social Responsibility in Science satisfies a true need….”6a. All that attracted public attention towards these issues and also the attention of the Gestapo and the FBI7.
This article seeks to present a brief political profile of the radical scientist in terms his views and activism on various political and socio-economic issues facing the world.
Born in a well-to-do secular German Jewish family in 1879, from the childhood itself, Albert Einstein had a scientific bent of mind and the will and desires to scientifically explore and comprehend the world. During the last decade of the 19th century, the Europe witnessed two contrasting political trends – of sectarian jingoism and the imperialist expansion on the one hand, that culminated in the First World War, and the revolutionary socialist internationalism on the other. The young Albert sympathized with the later, and abhorred the military mentality; sectarian, chauvinist and racist ideologies and mobilizations. At the age of 16 he renounced his German citizenship and moved to Switzerland in 1895, in order to escape the compulsory military services and to pursue his education at Zurich’s Polytechnic in an atmosphere relatively free from anti-Semitism, pervading the German and Austrian campuses at the time. Zurich, in those days, was a ‘hide out’ for the Russian and German ‘under-ground’ revolutionaries. Einstein spent much time at the Odeon CafĂ©, “a hangout for Russian radicals” including Leon Trotsky and Lenin. There he was introduced with the scientific ideas of socialism as he spent much time at the Cafe and participated in the “coffee shop’s intoxicating political debates” even at the cost of missing the classes8.
After his Ph.D., unable to find an academic job, Einstein joined as a clerk in the Swiss Patent Office in Berne in 1902. The tedious nature of the job could not deter the young scientist from venturing into the new researches and inventions. While working there he published his first five, epoch making, research papers in 1905,on the photo-electric effect, which demonstrated the quantum nature of the light and propounded the special theory of relativity that quashed the established, Newtonian paradigm of the classical physics. The famous equation of the modern physics, E=mc2 was the theme of his fourth paper, which established the law of equivalence between mass and energy. In this equation E is the kinetic energy generated by the mass m and the c is the velocity of light in the space (approximately 300,000 KM/second). This invention not only revolutionized the study oh the theoretical physics but also opened the new avenues of generating enormous energy. Accordingly if one gram of matter is completely converted into energy, the energy thus obtained shall be equivalent to 2.4x107 units of electrical energy, sufficient to take care of the energy needs of an average households for 4000 years. Einstein did not get carried away by the universal and the ubiquitous acceptance of the quantum theory and insistence by Boer and other physicist regarding its being the ultimate, and carried on his search of newer possibilities. In June 1933, in his Herbert Spencer lecture at Oxford, he said, “I attach only a transitory importance to this interpretation (quantum theory). I still believe in the possibility of a model of reality – that is to say, of a theory, which represents the things, themselves and not merely the probability of their occurrence”8a. He went ahead working on the Unified Field Theory, hoping to answer the questions, unanswered by quantum theory. Debates aroused by Einstein’s theories gave him an early celebrity status and in 1914, he was offered and accepted a full professorship in Berlin. Fred Jerome opines that the offer was probably a result of competition between German, British, French and American Universities to attract scientific and technological talent to enhance their imperial interests9.
The First wold war broke out immediately after his joining the post. Prior to the war, ideologically, he aligned himself with the Second (Socialist) International which and considered the war as imperialist. Einstein was a sympathizer of the German Social Democrats, who were part of the Socialist International, but as soon as the war broke out, like their counterparts in other countries, they too, joined their national government’s war efforts with the cries of jingoistic nationalism. They tore apart the socialist internationalism and anti-war instance of the yesteryears. Einstein opposed to the war and the military mentality and disillusioned with the Social Democrats, aligned himself with the party’s minority (the communists) who saw the war as a reflection of the internal contradictions of the ruling classes of the belligerents. Max Planc and over 100 other Scientists signed a jingoistic Manifesto to the Civilized world, “endorsing Germany’s war aims in a language that prefigured the Nazi rants a generation later”. Einstein and only three other scientists in a reply to it condemned the behavior of these scientists as shameful. The letter was suppressed at that time. “At least one of the signatories was jailed”. Einstein’s “power of newly acquired celebrity” not only protected him but also allowed him “to speak out when others couldn’t”. In 1917 Einstein propounded the laws of radiation on the basis of the quantum nature of the light. In 1921 he received the Nobel Prize for Physics on his work on photoelectric effect. Einstein’s vocal presence became more visible to the people in general, and the advocates of anti-Semitism and national chauvinism in particualr.10
He continued to speak out in the devastated aftermath of the war that was followed by the fall of seven other European monarchies along with the fall of Kaiser Wilhelm, the Prussian monarch. They were replaced, for the moment, by liberal and socialist regimes. He was with his liberal and radical colleagues and students in the war time opposition and joined them in their post war resistance to “the burgeoning revanchist militarism that would quickly morph into Nazism”. The day Kaiser abdicated, Einstein posted a sign on his classroom’s door that read: “CLASS CANCELLED – REVOLUTION”11.
Einstein’s public visibility and his outspoken political views made him popular with the peace loving, democratic and radical intellectuals, students and activists, but it also made him the focus of the growing virulent anti-Semitism, particularly after receiving the Nobel prize. The right wing politicians as well as many fellow German scientists denounced his theory of relativity as a “Jewish perversion”, but undeterred by these criticisms and condemnations, Einstein’s presence became more visible in the scientific as well as in the cultural and political life of the Weimer Republic. In 1920s, in the wake of the rising tides of racist and jingoist violence and ultra-nationalism in Germany, Einstein became more vocal in politically opposing these obscurantist and reactionary ideologies and their socio-political manifestations. He supported the cause of European unity and aligned with the organizations involved in helping the Jews against growing anti-Semitic violence. He regarded “class distinction as unjustified and, in the last resort, based on force” and never looked upon “the ease and happiness as ends in themselves”. For him, “the ideals” which lighted his way and “time after time” gave him “new courage to face life cheerfully”, had been “Kindness, Beauty and the Truth”. He noted that “without the sense of kinship with the men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally attainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, the life would have seemed to me empty”. Einstein was quite averse to the very idea of the war, which he considered as “the worst outcrop of herd life” and proposed that “this plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed”. He “passionately” hated the “heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism”. He believed that “this bogey would have disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of people not been systematically corrupted by political and commercial interests acting through the schools and the press”12. In his opinion, “In two weeks the sheep-like masses of any country can be worked up by the newspapers into such a state of excited fury that men are prepared to put on uniforms and kill and be killed for the sake of sordid ends of a few interested parties”13. His egalitarian vision led him to oppose the fee hikes confronting the poorer students and “routinely offered after-hours physics classes”14.
As the economic and political crises gripped the Europe, Einstein used the platforms of scientific conferences to air his political views and concerns. As Jerome notes, “He had no problems, discussing relativity at a university lecture in the morning, and, on that same evening, urging the young people to refuse military service”15. By the end of 1920s, jingoism and anti-Semitism were at the peak, thanks to Social Democrats’ non-dialectical approach towards socialism and nationalism, aversion to communists and their inability to comprehend the fraudulent facade of Hitler’s National Socialism. The constitutional bourgeois rule was making way for the extra-constitutional bourgeois rule of Hitler’s National Socialist Party on the pattern of Mussolini’s Fascist rule in Italy. Hitler’s Nazi campaign was gaining ground riding on the pervasive anti-Semitic feelings and the ideological constructs of Racial superiority of Aryans, i.e. Germans whose “racial purity” had to be regained by “purging the country of the Semitic Races i.e. Jews”16.
Though still vocal against obscurantism, Military mentality and the war phobia at home, but the atmosphere in Germany was so vitiated and virulent that free scientific research and political articulation had become a difficult proposition. Einstein found himself more and more looking abroad for congenial platforms for his scientific and political expressions. He lectured in Britain, the Netherlands and other parts of the Europe and, from 1930 on, annually as a visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology. Nazis seized the power on January 30,1933 and Nazi zealots confiscated Einstein’s house and property in Berlin belongings, along with the capture and the seizure of the properties of other prominent and not-so prominent Jews. In the public book burning organized by Hitler’s propaganda minister, Goebbels, Einstein’s works featured prominently. Einstein was on a speaking tour of Netherlands at the time. Large cash bounty was offered for his murder in Nazi newspapers, following which he had to complete his lecture-tour in the Netherlands under the protection of security guards. He resigned from the Prussian the Prussian Academy of Sciences and declared, thought, “As long as I have any choice, I will only stay in a country where political liberty, tolerance, and equality of all citizens before the law prevail. Political liberty implies the freedom to express one’s political opinions orally and in writing; tolerance implies respect for any and every individual opinion.” And at that time, these conditions did not obtained in Germany distempered by Nazis. He hoped that “the healthy conditions will soon supervene in Germany”16a. He was accused of anti-patriotism by the Academy for deploring “Germany’s lapse into the barbarism of long passed ages” and of being used by “the enemies of not merely the present government but of the whole German people”. Einstein in his reply wrote that such a testimony “would have been equivalent to a repudiation of all those notions of justice and liberty for which I have stood all my life. Such testimony, would not be as you put it, a good word for the German people; on the contrary, it would only have helped the cause of those who are seeking to undermine the ideas and principles which have won for German people a place of honor in the civilized world.”16b.
That year, when at the California Institute of Technology for his annual lectures, he along with his family decided not to return to Berlin, and accepted a lifetime job offer from the Institute for Advanced studies, Princeton, New Jersey. He was granted American citizenship in 1940. There, his major scientific concern was the United Field Theory, an attempt to demonstrate that electromagnetic waves and the gravity were manifestation of a single phenomenon, which remained his life-long scientific concern and “remains one that continues to animate contemporary physics and cosmology”17.
He continued his political activities even in his new country with his political concerns focussed on the dangers of Nazism and fascism. Exodus of Jews from Germany and east-European countries was a matter of serious concern. Using his celebrity status and supported by many other European intellectuals, he appealed to the Franklin D.Roosevelt government to allow the refugees to migrate to US, but this time the power of his celebrity status failed to get the desired result. Einstein did not oppose only Nazism and Fascism but was opposed to any system that attempts to make inroads on human liberty in the name of the Reason of State18. During the Spanish civil war, he supported the anti – Franco forces and criticized the stand of phony “neutrality” embargo by US, French and British governments, effectively denying the needed ammunitions to Republican troops while Nazi forces bombed the Spanish villages. Einstein participated in the rallies and demonstrations organized to demand the lifting of the blockade and to protest against the imposition of the fascist regime. “Nearly 3000 American volunteers of Abraham Lincoln Brigade defied their government to fight with the republic with Einstein an early and zealous supporter”19.
On the request of the physicist Szilard, a refugee co-victim of Nazi atrocities, Einstein wrote to President Roosevelt in 1939, about the German advances in the field of nuclear research. But due to governmental fear of his radicalism and his own reluctance, he had no role in the Manhattan project launched with the stated goal of creating atomic deterrent. After the war, Einstein’s strong protests and criticisms of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are well known. In a newspaper interview he “blamed the atomic bombing of Japan on President Truman’s anti Soviet foreign policy”. And the interview was added in the FBI file. It is also well known that Manhattan project scientists had well debated the repercussions of the use of the atomic bomb and many of them including Openheimer had strongly opposed the use of the bomb. Fearing a nuclear arms race between the USA and the USSR, many of them founded the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists (ECAS) under the chairmanship of Einstein. In that role Einstein unsuccessfully tried to impress upon the US administration to remove the atomic development from the military and to place it under international control and described Truman’s foreign policy as reflection of the US imperialist ambitions – Pan Americana – the anti-Soviet expansionism. Despite the rebuff from the US administration, the ECA’s anti-nuclear message made international headlines and evoked significant public response all over the world20.
The post-war period in the US witnessed the racist attacks on the Afro-Americans, their segregation, lynching and other manifestations of inhuman and brutal; manifestations of imperialist white supremacy. The pre-war promises of equality for the mobilization of the people were forgotten. The army remained segregated, the schools remained segregated. Lynching of non-white minorities by the right wing white hoodlums had become a commonplace thing. The racial discrimination in all the walks of the life was obvious. Access to housing, jobs and the University itself were routinely denied to African-Americans. The anti-racist activists and peace agitators were firmly dealt with. Einstein, having witnessed the racial frenzy and mob-violence in Germany, put everything on his disposal to oppose racial discrimination and was actively involved in anti-racist protests. As a long time anti racist activist, he reacted against every outrage, through public meetings, radio talks and newspapers. Addressing the students and the faculty at Lincoln University, a historically black institution, Einstein observed, “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”21. In the aftermath of the war, in the face of nationwide wave of lynching he joined the American Crusade to End Lynching as co-chair with legendary Paul Robeson. In his letter to President Truman, delivered by Paul Robeson, he demanded the prosecution of lynchers and passage of anti-lynching law. He agreed with Robeson, who told Truman that if the government would not protect the blacks they would have to do so themselves. Truman, of course, didn’t like and tolerate the idea. The meeting broke down leading to the accentuated racist violence and more determined resistance that would transform into civil rights movement in a few years time.
In 1948 presidential elections, he along with Paul Robeson and other progressive scientists, artists and intellectuals actively campaigned for the new Progressive Party candidate, former Vice President Henry Wallace. The new party formed by the left wing of Roosevelt’s New Deal Coalition included radicals, socialists and communists and called for international control of nuclear weapons. Einstein and Paul Robeson went ahead with their joint campaign in the south despite the violent attacks and refused to appear before a segregated audience. But the specter of communism was haunting the America. And as a result of anti Soviet jingoism and Truman’s belated promises of welfare programs led to the fall of the Wallace movement and unfortunately for America and the world, Truman got reelected. This accelerated the cold war phobia and the corresponding ideological repression. Few radical supporters of the party including Leo Huberman and Paul Sweezy, blamed it on the party’s failure to go beyond the New Deal liberalism and advocated for explicit socialist stand on questions like public ownership of basic industries. They were subjected to all kinds of restrictions on their intellectual freedom and movement. Paul Robeson had to bear the brunt of challenging the racist ideology of white supremacy overtly-covertly patronized and promoted by Truman’s establishment, during the ‘red scare days’. He was denied his basic civil rights – right to income, concert-venues, and the right to travel. He was virtually reduced to a non-person in his own home. In 1952 Einstein, in an act of according him public honor, Einstein invited him and his accompanist Lloyd Brown for lunch and they spent a long afternoon discussing music politics and other issues of mutual interest. Earlier in 1937 when Marion Anderson, an Afro-American performer after giving a “critically acclaimed concert” was denied lodging at the segregated inn, Einstein instantly invited her to stay at his house. Ever since whenever she sang in New Jersey, she would be his guest.22
Anti-Semitic discrimination and violence faced by the Jews of eastern and central Europe, had been Einstein’s consistent political concern that intensified after the Nazi genocide. As early as 1921 Einstein visited US to raise funds for the establishment of a “Jewish national home” in Palestine, for the threatened European Jewish community but distinguished himself from the Zionists. He wanted that the “oppressive nationalism must be conquered” and envisaged a Jewish homeland in Palestine on the basis of peaceful cooperation between peoples who are at home in the country”, and that there should be no “majorisation of one group by the other”. Einstein was opposed to the idea of the aggressive Zionism, the way he was opposed to Nazi anti-Semitism and the racial repression in the USA. He could rose above the ethnic “limitations” and felt that jingoist Zionism “will have only undesirable results” 23. After the war, the victorious allies were not willing to absorb even a part of the displaced European Jews and the state of Israel was created in the Palestine. Einstein applauded the achievement of a homeland for the displaced community but was not happy the way it was created. In 1949 in a radio broadcast he regretted not achieving the goal of “ an undivided Palestine in 24which Jews and Arabs would live as equals, free, in peace.” In the same broadcast he appealed to the Jews of the Israel to crate a community on the ethical ideals of “peace, based on understanding and self-restraint, and not on violence”24. Given his consistent stand against militarism, racial discrimination, war and subjugation of one people by others, had he been alive, would certainly have disapproved Israel’s subjugation and oppression of Palestinians, particularly since 1967.
The issues related with the intellectual freedom and civil liberties threatened by Omni-present American state with its manipulated anticommunist frenzy and jingoistic anti Soviet phobia –“red scare”-- occupied major portion of his political activism, in the post war period. He was quite perturbed by the ‘red hunting’ along with the repression of Afro-Americans in the US in the name of patriotism and felt that “honest people” in the US “constitute a hopeless minority”. In 1953, in reply to a letter from an innovative, radical schoolteacher, William Frauenglass, who had been fired for his refusal to discuss his politics and names before a senate investigating committee, Einstein appealed to all the intellectuals “to refuge 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 slavery which is intended for them.” The letter was a national front-page news. Many tall intellectuals including Bertrand Russell supported Einstein’s views. Many young Americans took the “advice from Dr. Einstein”25.
Resistance to “red-hunting” found an authentic supporter in Einstein and started being more articulate and vocal. Many young people started refusing to testify and by 1960 breaking committee hearings. These acts of civil disobedience inspired by Einstein preluded the civil rights movements of 1960s under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. Earlier in 1951, Einstein and Paul Robeson sponsored a dinner and rally to raise funds fir the defense of W.E.Du Bois, who was indicted on the trumped-up charge of “being a Soviet agent”. In 1953, the case of Rosenbergs – Julius and Ethel—Einstein’s intervention and his letters to media and to the President Truman, attracted popular, international support. He wrote to the trial judge that scientific evidence against them, even if accurate, did not reveal any vital secret. Failing to get a positive response he wrote to the President about it. But the Truman’s government was not moved. And they had to die. His 75th birthday was celebrated as an occasion for a conference on civil liberties organized by the Emergency Civil liberties Committee (ECLC). The ECLC had been formed in response to the failure of the American Civil Liberties Union to defend he communists and take on the questions raised by the Rosenberg case. The conference attended by many luminaries from various fields launched the ECLC “on a forty-six years trajectory defending freedom of expression, the rights of labor, and multi-faceted campaigns for civil liberties”. -Days before his death on April 18, 1955, Einstein jointly signed what came to be known as The Einstein–Russell Manifesto that posed practical political choice between humanism and universal death, in the wake of invention of the weapons of mass destruction. “There lies before us, if we choose continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom. Shall we instead choose death, because we can not forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.” 26
This sketchy and incomplete profile of the great scientist and political activist has not his views on religion, religion and sciences, role of mass education in science and social ethics in fighting against myths, obscurantism and mysticism often used by the reactionary forces in all ages. Also not discussed here are his understanding and vision of socialism and the views on human rights and philosophy of science. Its incompleteness shall be further aggravated without a brief discussion on his lifelong commitment to pacifism, world order and. After the Hiroshima-Nagasaki catastrophe, Einstein wrote, “The release of the atomic bomb has not created a new problem. It has made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one… So long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable…. What has been changed is the destructiveness of war.” He wanted the “secret of the bomb should be committed to a world government, and the United States should immediately announce its readiness to give it to the world government”26. Einstein feared the atomic race among the big powers of the world, which came true in his lifetime itself, as by the mid-fifties USSR, Britain, France and China had already developed and tested atomic weapons. According to his own admission his part in the development of atomic energy “quite indirect”. He did not “foresee its release” so soon. With his invention of the laws of equilibrium between mass and energy, he had said “that it was theoretically possible” and that it “it became practical through accidental discovery of chain reactions”. He was opposed to the idea of managing the atomic science on the pattern of commercial corporations and pleaded that the US, till then the sole atomic power, must outlaw the bomb. As we know The US did not heed his advice and went ahead testing many more bombs. He wrote, “To keep a stockpile of atomic bombs without promising not to initiate its use is exploiting the possession of the bomb for political ends” and that he opined was “hardly pardonable”. That is Einstein pleaded for the creation of a supranational government with no military secrets, as “if a sufficient number of the governments pool heir strengths they can take this risk, for their security will be greatly increased. And it could be done with greater assurance because of the decrease of fear, suspicion, and distrust that will result.” 27
In response to An Open Letter: Dr. Einstein’s Mistaken Notions on his suggestion of a popularly elected world organization, Einstein, in order to prevent the catastrophic national wars, underlined the need of a supranational government accountable to the international community. He shared the views of the Russian intellectuals “that a socialist economy possesses advantages…” and that “economic power in all widely industrialized countries has become concentrated in the hands of relatively few. These people in capitalist countries, do not need to account for their actions to the public as a whole; they must do so in socialist countries in which they are civil servants similar to those who exercise political power.” He added, “No doubt, the day will come when all nations will be grateful to Russia for having demonstrated, for the first time, by vigorous action the practical possibility of planned economy in spite of exceedingly great difficulties.”28 He blamed the “anarchy of capitalist society Einstein was aware of the dangers of bureaucratization involved in the socialist regime based on the planned economy. “A planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by complete enslavement of individuals. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?”29
Einstein was a radical and egalitarian from his student days and remained so all his life. Last years of his life was devoted to campaign for the disarmament, world peace and civil rights and to find jobs for the victims of racial discrimination and “red hunting” using his network of acquaintances. He remained committed to the ideals of socialism and democracy and considered the de-bureaucratized socialism as the “only one way to eliminate the “grave evils” of capitalism.30 The real homage to this radical scientist shall be by heeding his advice on disarmament and outlawing the weapons of mass destruction. “We must build spiritual and scientific bridges linking the nations of the world. We must overcome the horrible obstacles of national frontiers…The time is terribly short. We must act now if we are to act at all.”31
