De Leonist Society of Canada response to Albert Einstein, Why Socialism?

Einstein, the Socialist Labor Party, and Socialism
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reprinted from
The De Leonist Review
published by the De Leonist Society of Canada
July-Aug. 1996

EINSTEIN, THE SOCIALIST LABOR PARTY, AND SOCIALISM

The world awards Albert Einstein highest honors in his field, however who is aware that the great physicist was also a foe of Capitalism and friend of Socialism? The fact comes to light in an essay of Einstein titled WHY SOCIALISM? that was published in 1949 by the Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine. What is more, the fact has received renewed attention today through the efforts of The Discussion Bulletin. This not only through DB number 75 (Jan-Feb 1996) which its editor Frank Girard prefaces "This seems to be our Einstein issue," but also through DB's publication of the Einstein essay in pamphlet form. In addition to a reprint of Einstein's WHY SOCIALISM? DB75 has among other things included a reproduction of a Socialist Labor Party leaflet titled Scientist EINSTEIN Goes Unscientific on SOCIALISM -- a response to WHY SOCIALISM? first published as an Open Letter in the Weekly People of December 31, 1949.

But is the SLP thereby in all respects itself scientific? The De Leonist Society of Canada holds that not only then, but continuing to this day, the SLP program is tragically flawed in point of democracy and that this flaw results from a pernicious habit of thought that invariably identifies political democracy with the Marxian political State of class rule. "We believe the point is of inestimable importance to the socialist cause and should therefore at every opportunity be "shouted from the rooftops." This issue of The De Leonist Review, which we too shall call "our Einstein issue," affords such opportunity.

Beginning with Girard's introduction in DB75 (I), we next reproduce Einstein's WHY SOCIALISM? essay from that issue(II) and follow this with the SLP's response-the leaflet Scientist EINSTEIN Goes Unscientific on SOCIALISM (III). Finally, with the background thus in place, we reproduce here (IV) an Open Letter to The Discussion Bulletin dated February 3 of this year wherein we challenge the SLP position that political government is inseparable from class rule.* (See footnote.)

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FOOTNOTE

* Note: By copies of our "Einstein issue" registered mail to the Socialist Labor Parties of the U.S. and Canada, we are informing them of the Canadian De Leonist Society's position anent political government in a Socialist Commonwealth.