Mgxr44
25150
686
17
That’s the choice
Apr 18, 2026 5:53 PM
Mgxr44
25150
686
17
That’s the choice
hushpuppyextraordinaire
And that man was Albert Einstein
ShimmerinStrider
My man caught a lot of flak for his beliefs.
LaughingMan2Gig
Gippo53
Einstein9073
"eat the rich" - Albert Einstein
astronomypictures
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler" - Albert Einstein
cuprohastes
Wait up. That's Einstein teaching an all black group because the university wouldn't let them attend his lectures, and that pissed Einstein off enough that he personally made an exception for them.
zmillah
Did not see the little "Or" between Socialism and Barbarism at first XD
TheShoggothOfMosquitoCreek
Beatings! Beatings for everyone! It's egalitarian!
htapoicoS
People here where I'm from lived in socialism and they know it sucks. Socialists now say that it wasn't real socialism (and other coping mechanisms)
CeoHuntingSeason
yeah, getting bankrupt from trying to get cancer treatments is the real way to liberty! that doesn't suck at all! lmao, stfu and gtfo
Subsound
I think people would name the country instead of speaking in vague generalized ways.
nevercompromisenoteven
I make some stupid freestyle raps from time to time, and the amount of ppl who talks about money when I tell them thats a hobby annoys me. Can't you do something just cause it is fun?
johnblood616
That Einstein's name? Albert
bad1080
not listening to smart people seems to be a feature of capitalism too
ThisIsYourLifeNow
In fact, its a "feature" of capitalism. If it makes huge profits, they listen.
LicensedAdHominem
Anti-intellectualism is a necessary feature of capitalism. It monetizes emotion over reason, paywalls education, prevents systemic challenge, makes corporate propaganda more effective. It isolates people with hyperindividualism that convinces them they're independent thinkers whose opinion is valued the same as a scientist's life's work... then sells them that opinion.
Hendlton
Why would they? It seems to be working out just fine the way it is for them.
DubhIainn
Smart people often think of the good of everyone.
A capitalist cannot, by definition think beyond his own limited mind.
InTangier
One only has to look at LinkedIn influencers.
Bigemedic
Smart people tell capitalists all the things they don't want to hear. Like, that will crash the economy, or she's only 15.
Antrobus55
It's nothing but smart people with a conscience against smart people with none. Together, that's about 20% of the population. Given the economic system, the rest of the population is getting fucked no matter what, just to different degrees.
ThatGuyFromJustSouthOfTheMiddleOfNowhere
NightOwlRally
He was indeed brilliant, just don't take any of his dating advice
MrAcurite
Trivia contest! What do all of the following have in common, and which is the odd one out?
* Albert Einstein
* Charles Darwin
* Rudy Giuliani
* Aragorn II Elessar, son of Arathorn II, King of the Reunited Kingdom of Gondor and Arnor, Chieftain of the Dunedain Rangers
astronomypictures
Or read his diary entries about China... eek.
0053
?
NightOwlRally
He wrote a list of duties and requirements that his wife had to follow as if she were his personal servant instead of a spouse.
maincarrot
He's like "I know exactly what I want"
ShimmerinStrider
Hell of a physicist. FUCKING TERRIBLE husband and father.
0053
Yikes...
badbuddhist
Do any of us agree on the definition of socialism?
Mgxr44
Socialism just means the workers control the means of production. There’s a lot of ways you can implement that, but that’s all that means. A dictatorship of the proletariat instead of a dictatorship of the bourgeois that we have currently
badbuddhist
By that definition, it seems like the Nordic Model is also a dictatorship of the bourgeois, and on a fundamental level just as bad as our shitshow?
Mgxr44
Well, I have a lot of appreciation for the Nordic model. The drawback is that those societies still live off the mass suffering of the global south under capitalism, even if they aren’t the ones enforcing it. The system is not designed to eliminate the evils of capitalism, but just to shield their citizens from it. So less so, but still yes.
badbuddhist
I’m sorry- I’m not trying to be a troll, I’m genuinely trying to understand the mind of a socialist. If my coworkers and I own the company for whom we work, how would that have any impact on global dynamics? Or we assuming it’s a reasonable goal that every paper company on earth merge into one, and we end economic competition altogether?
Mgxr44
Marx describes worker coops as a potential step towards socialism. Some people argue that you could just make everything a workers coop and that would be socialism in a way. You don’t necessarily only need one giant paper company to do socialism. You can do elements of socialism within a capitalist system though. Like universal healthcare, having the socialist version of healthcare doesn’t mean the overall system is socialist.
astronomypictures
Makes you wonder why he didn't move to the Soviet Union: socialist, planned economy.
Yetiphobia
No, it makes *you* wonder. The rest of us have brains enough to have figured that out in middle school.
astronomypictures
Red scare, commies bad right?
PennysWorthOfTea
I suspect it was largely because he was literally touring the US in 1933 when the Nazis came to power. As a German Jew, he was barred from holding a university post while also making it very unsafe for him to even return to Germany. He was declared a refugee while a visiting professor at California Institute of Technology. Finally, Russia was just coming out from a particularly violent civil war &, as such, wouldn't really be on anybody's list of "places to emigrate to".
JustUsLeagueUnlimited
And if you like Capitalism I wonder why you don't move to Somalia?
astronomypictures
Is this a joke I'm not racist enough to understand?
ImJustHereAtThisPoint
He probably would have been killed by the CIA. Random guess
astronomypictures
I mean why did he not go here initially in 1940? Seems strange he would pass up the only industrialised socialist country with a planned economy for the very heart of capitalist evil, but hey...
ImJustHereAtThisPoint
He would probably have been killed. Do you think they would allow an asset like him to just "switch sides"?
LespritDeLescalier22
Granted, it wasn't the systematic murder machine that the Nazis had, but Jews still experienced repression, discrimination, deportation, and political repression during ww2. Not to mention the swath of Russia that was occupied by the Nazis saw some of the worst war crimes by the einsatgruppen. So, even if he had defected to the ussr, there still would've been a good chance he'd have been murdered during the Holocaust
LespritDeLescalier22
Germany wasn’t the only country ripe with violent antisemitism in WW2
trigonman3
*rife
neithermenoryou
The Soviet union was authoritarian, state ownership of the means of production under an authoritarian leader is not socialist in any form, as it doesn't serve the people but only the ruling elite (like capitalism does), a planned economy is something completely separate from either of those issues and can be good if it isn't specifically run by some asshole trying to loot the country so he can shit in a golden toilet.
astronomypictures
"a planned economy is something completely separate from either of those issues" How can a planned economy be separate from state ownership of the means of production? If the government wants to plan the whole economy, they need to completely control it.
TyphoonMuscles
This was a really interesting question, so I did some light reading on it. Technically it is possible to have parts of the economy of a state be planned, while leaving room for market forces, but I don't know if any country is doing/has done that. It would be a kind of mixed economy. Anyway, you're basically right. Those things are not "completely separate".
astronomypictures
It's not that they are not "completely separate", one cannot be without the other. You cannot have a planned economy without government ownership of the means of production. A 'partially planned' economy is otherwise known as a mixed economy, it has free market forces in combination with government intervention and public ownership to varying degrees. Basically every country on earth has a mixed economy with the exception of North Korea.
neithermenoryou
A planned economy can be partial and doesn't have to literally cover every single item produced or service offered. For example if the government pays farmers to produce X amount of wheat every year to distribute elsewhere that would be a partially planned economy. This can also happen in capitalist countries, like how in WW2 the US government forced most of the industry to help the war effort whether they wanted to or not.
And if the state is controlled by a dictator then state owned doesn't
neithermenoryou
really translate to publicly owned (like it would with socialism) because, again, just a single person controls it instead of the people (via democratic elections or whatever else). Socialism is generally better described as power from the bottom up (workers hold the power) instead of top down (capitalism and authoritarian systems).
astronomypictures
A partially planned economy is called a mixed economy, and that's basically every single country. If you are going to talk about something its important to use the correct words. You didn't say partially planned economy, you said planned economy, and that has a definition.