A Letter to Albert Einstein: On the Predicament of Human Society and the Quest for Transcendence.

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Dear Einstein,

Your 1949 essay, Why Socialism?, struck a chord with me—not just for its incisive critique of capitalism’s failings, but for its earnest hope that socialism could mend the fractures in our social fabric. You argue that capitalism’s “economic anarchy” breeds greed, alienation, and insecurity, turning workers into cogs of profit and communities into arenas of rivalry. You propose socialism—collective ownership and planned production—as a remedy to nurture our social drives and ethical ideals, a vision deepened by your cosmic spirituality—your belief in the impersonal God of Spinoza—which finds meaning in the universe’s rational order.

I myself am not an expert on the issue, nor do I have your rare clarity, but as a human, I am stirred by the imperative for all voices to engage with these human problems. What immediately prompts this letter is a couple of exchanges and conversations I had with scholars, more schooled than I am. For one, an X post by Dr. Marius Kothor illuminates the deepest wound of colonialism: that it captured African imaginations, binding governance to “democracy” and prosperity to “capitalism,” while nation-states, inherited from colonial masters, impose pathological formations. In response to her post, a Harvard alumnus…