Please, if you haven’t already, read Albert Einstein’s brilliant defense of socialism, published in the first issue of Monthly Review back in 1949. I’m tempted to simply repost the whole thing, but I’ll restrict myself to a synopsis of the key points.
Einstein first rejects the claims to scientificity of modern economics, on the basis of both the nigh impossibility of controlled experimentation, and more crucially, the fact that the premises it takes for granted (especially the existing distribution of wealth) are continually reproduced by means that are not included in reflection, what Einstein follows Thorstein Veblen in calling an ongoing “predatory phase” of human development, or what David Harvey would call “accumulation by dispossession”. The virtues of the capitalist mode of production extolled by its “scientific” apologists ignore the fact that this system is only sustainable on the basis of an inadmissible and contradictory activity that reproduces its practical premises. (This would also be a basically Luxemburgian argument; in volume 1 of Capital, Marx only admits the necessity of accumulation by dispossession at the historical origins of capitalism, and seems to argue that a mature capitalist economy can effectively reproduce its practical premises by means of expanding reproduction alone. I’m not prepared to come down on either side, but I do find persuasive Harvey’s suggestion that the argument in Capital intends to show that even the ‘ideal’ capitalism postulated by its defenders will lead to ever increasing inequality and misery, and not to agree that theory in which this ideal is situated accurately reflects social reality.)
He then goes on to claim that science “cannot create ends and, even less, instill them in human beings; science, at most, can supply the means by which to attain certain ends.” Ends “are conceived by personalities with lofty ethical ideals”, and only become relevant when adopted by the masses. Yet Einstein makes clear that while these ends have an important relationship to our ‘natural, biological’ constitution, they cannot simply be read off of nature. A peculiar feature of humanity is the way our biology is offset by social determinations that are historically variable, and in whose perpetuation or change we continually participate.
Einstein bemoans the way we have become cut-off from our participatory role in this social determination, instead becoming fixated on a pseudo-scientific self-conception that sees society not as something in which we participate and that liberates us from purely biological determination, but as an oppressive external force to be combatted for the sake of individual gain. While it at first seems as if Einstein is offering an idealist order of explanation, condemning this ‘idea of society’ as the source of social deterioration, he subsequently reverses this appearance, launching into what can only be described as an unmarked citation of the principle arguments of Marx’s Capital, Volume 1. He explains how it is the specific relations of production prevailing under capitalism that render this oppressive conception of society valid, including the manner in which the media and educational apparatuses are manipulated by their private owners to perpetuate the system from which they benefit.
As a way out of this predicament, Einstein first proposes a Soviet-like centrally-planned economy:
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.
Yet he goes on to distinguish central planning from socialism, pointedly recognizing that the former may very well be “accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual.” This raises the biggest questions libertarian socialists must confront:
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?
These questions, on the possibility of a genuinely egalitarian system of collective decision-making, are my primary preoccupation, as I hope this blog attests. The fact that Einstein, one of the most brilliant minds in human history, posed them so explicitly so long ago is a good sign.
Just wanted to share this link, which you probably must have read.
Einstein and Soviet Ideology by Alexander Vucinich.
http://www.questia.com/library/book/einstein-and-soviet-ideology-by-alexander-vucinich.jsp