“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”
-Stephen Jay Gould.
This quote is great because so was Einstein himself! He never saw himself as a genius, as a mind like no other. He saw himself as a guy who studied alot and he was very dedicated to give that opportunity to others. He also spoke very openly against racism and was one of the few professors that thought black people at the time. Here are some great pictures of him in 1946
Adding onto this: I really recommend Einstein’s short, entry-level essay “Why Socialism?”, found here. It’s ~10 min read and it does a great job of explaining the crux of socialism.
Here are some of his major points:
The individual and society form a symbiotic relationship. A healthy individual needs a healthy society and a healthy society needs healthy individuals.
Capitalism undermines democracy by concentrating wealth into the hands of an economic elite, which in turn funds a political elite to represent its interests in government. The ultra-rich also control the media and educational systems to manipulate public opinion and prevent free thought. (Here Einstein is pre-empting Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman’s propaganda model).
Capitalism’s profit motive entails human needs going unmet to satisfy human greed.
The “worst evil” of capitalism is the crippling of individuals, which begins in school where an exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student.
A transition to socialism is necessary to overcome these problems, and is in fact imperative to avert constant warfare and ecological catastrophe. We need a fully democratic society where society’s productive capacity is not concentrated into the hands of a few, but owned by workers and society itself.
Here’s an audio version on youtube.
