Beyond Capitalism – Albert Einstein, 1949
The following are excerpts from Albert Einstein’s essay “Why Socialism?” published in theMay 1949 issue of the Monthly Review. In this article Einstein describes the systemic problems with capitalism. How as wealth and power is concentrated in the hands of a few the elites form an oligarchy, gaining control of the media and able to sway politicians to make laws in their favor. In this way democracy is subverted…
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“Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of the smaller ones.
The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organised political society.
This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population.
Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to Beyond Capitalism – Albert Einstein, 1949 | Creative by Nature:
