When Reason Goes on Holiday: Philosophers in Politics
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Last annotated on February 24, 2017
CHAPTER FIVE Einstein and Gödel: Great Minds Err AlikeRead more at location 1312
relativity) should be also classified as an outstanding contribution to philosophy,Read more at location 1320
on certain occasions he either tried to justify, or refused to condemn,Read more at location 1329
“In Lenin I admire a man who has thrown all his energy into making social justice real, at the sacrifice of his own person. I do not consider his method practicable. But one thing is sure: Men like him are the guardians and reformers of the conscience of mankind” (quoted in Grundmann 2005, 253).Read more at location 1332
only thing Einstein says about the Leninist method is that he does not consider it “practicable.”Read more at location 1335
(If one knows that a politician killed thousands of innocent people in order to achieve his goal, usually one would not object merely that the politician’s method was “impractical”Read more at location 1338
“guardian and reformer of the conscience of mankind”Read more at location 1340
evidence, easily accessible at the time, that massive atrocitiesRead more at location 1341
I will mention only two well-known sources from the 1920s that pointed to dark aspects of Lenin’s politics.Read more at location 1342
In 1924 a book titled The Red Terror in Russia, 1918–1923 appeared in Berlin (in German). The author, Sergei Melgunov, was sentenced to death by the Bolsheviks in 1919 and later, after his sentence was commuted to imprisonment, was forced into exile. The book contains a wealth of information about proclamations and actions of the Soviet government under Lenin.Read more at location 1343
a statement by Martin Latsis, a high official of ChekaRead more at location 1346
We are eradicating bourgeoisy as a class. Do not seek evidence during the investigation that the accused acted or spoke against [the] soviet government. The first question that you must ask would be—what class do you belong to, what is your background, upbringing, education or trade. These questions must seal the fate of the accused (Melgunov 1924, 45; emphasis added)Read more at location 1348
documents the horrors of Communist rule in detail, year by year.Read more at location 1352
I am not suggesting that Einstein had to take Melgunov’s accusations at face value. My point is, rather, that in light of such and many other similar troubling reports about the Bolsheviks, a reasonable person should have been at the very least reluctant to call Lenin a “guardianRead more at location 1353
Einstein, who knew he had a considerable influence on world opinion.Read more at location 1355
book Letters from Russian Prisons, published in New York in 1925,Read more at location 1356
letters from many of those who had spent years under horrible conditions in labor camps just because they had expressed disagreement with the politics of the Soviet government (Berkman 1925).Read more at location 1357
a section with comments from “celebrated intellectuals” from the West, including Einstein.Read more at location 1359
If you study these accounts as a reader in a peaceful, well-regulated system of government, don’t imagine that those around you are different and better than those who conduct a regime of terror in Russia. Shudder to view this tragedy of human history where one murders out of fear that one will be murdered. It is the best, the most altruistic who are tortured and killed because their political influence is feared—but not just in Russia. All serious men owe a debt of gratitude to the editor of these documents. He will help to reverse this dreadful fate. After the publication of these documents the rulers of Russia will have to change their methods if they wish to continue their effort to gain moral credibility with civilized nations. They will lose all sympathy if they cannot show through a great and courageous act of liberation that they do not need to rely on bloody terror to lend support to their political ideals (in Rowe & Schulmann 2013, 412–13; emphasis added).Read more at location 1361
downplay the natural revolt against those who were responsible for them.Read more at location 1370
“Don’t imagine that those around you are different and better than those who conduct a regime of terror in Russia!”Read more at location 1371
later, Einstein would never dream of similarly “normalizing” the behavior of the Nazi leaders,Read more at location 1373
normalizing the terror and neutralizing the outrage it generates.Read more at location 1376
Einstein says the rulers of Russia “will lose all sympathy” if they do not renounce the terror, but this was not true of his own reaction to them.Read more at location 1378
By the way, there are increasing signs that the Russian trials are not faked, but that there is a plot among those who look upon Stalin as a stupid reactionary who has betrayed the ideas of the revolution. Though we find it difficult to imagine this kind of internal thing, those who know Russia best are all more or less of the same opinion. I was firmly convinced to begin with that it was a case of a dictator’s despotic acts, based on lies and deception, but this was a delusion (quoted in Born 1971, 126).Read more at location 1384
managed to swallow the Stalinist story after he had already been “firmly convinced” it was “based on lies and deceptions.”Read more at location 1388
What kind of evidence could have convinced him to change his mindRead more at location 1389
“the steady stream of absurd admissions of guilt . . . convinced only the most nakedly servile of Communist intellectuals” (Judt 1992, 102).Read more at location 1393
used his huge fame in support of a terrible miscarriage of justice,Read more at location 1396
Initially he joined a group of European intellectuals in a campaign against the prosecutionRead more at location 1396
I gave my signature at the time after some hesitation because I trusted in the competency and honesty of the persons who had approached me about this signature, and also because I considered it psychologically impossible that people bearing the full responsibility for implementing technical tasks of utmost importance could purposefully harm the cause they are supposed to be serving. Today I regret most profoundly that I gave this signature, because I have since lost confidence in the correctness of my views at that time. I was not sufficiently aware then that under the special conditions of the Soviet Union things were possible that are totally unthinkable to me under conditions familiar to me (Grundmann 2005, 254).Read more at location 1401
suspicion that it was caused by something other than a rational assessment of evidence.Read more at location 1410
in this particular case no evidence had been presented that could have changed his mindRead more at location 1414
In the past September of 1930, there was an ominous rumbling across the land: forty-eight people—“wreckers in the food supply chain”—were sentenced to be shot. “Responses from workers” appeared in the newspapers: “Wreckers must be wiped from the face of the earth!” The front page of Izvestia proclaimed: “Crush the serpent beneath your heel!” and the proletariat demanded that the OGPU [the early name for the security and political police of the Soviet Union] be awarded the Order of Lenin (Solzhenitsyn 2011, 68).Read more at location 1416
Einstein, with his public change of heart, had actually made it easierRead more at location 1428
how long was the period during which Einstein occasionally expressed the belief,Read more at location 1430
Einstein explained he could not join the protest because, in his opinion, its only probable effect would be in countries that were not friendly to Russia. Then he added: “Under the circumstances I regret your action and suggest you abandon it altogether.”Read more at location 1436
“Consider further that the Russians have proved that their only aim is really the improvement of the lot of the Russian people, and that they can in this regard already show important achievements” (quoted in Levine 1973, 172).Read more at location 1440
“I was grieved to read your statement that the only aim of the Soviet rulers is the improvement of the people’s condition. How can one reconcile that belief with the fact that in 1933 from three to five million peasants were deliberately starved to death by the Stalin regime?” (ibid., 173).Read more at location 1443
to my grief terminated a relationship which had lasted over ten years.”Read more at location 1446
Einstein again made a similar point about the “great merits” of the SovietRead more at location 1448
I am not blind to the serious weaknesses of the Russian system of government and I would not like to live under such government. But it has, on the other side, great merits and it is difficult to decide whether it would have been possible for the Russians to survive by following softer methods (quoted in Hook 1987, 471).Read more at location 1449
Precisely what methods have you in mind? I am puzzled on what evidence anyone can assert that cultural purges and terror in astronomy, biology, art, music, literature, the social sciences, helped the Russians to survive, or how the millions of victims in concentration camps of the Soviet Union, not to speak of the wholesale executions, contributed in any way to the Russian victory over Hitler (ibid., 473).Read more at location 1453
why did he and some other prominent intellectuals often take part in Communist-infiltrated initiativesRead more at location 1459
Waldorf Peace Conference carried the clear signature of heavy Communist involvement,Read more at location 1461
propaganda for the USSR, presenting it as the main force for peace in the contemporary world.Read more at location 1462
Carnap (as well as others like Thomas Mann, Arthur Miller, Charlie Chaplin, Linus Pauling, and Leonard Bernstein)Read more at location 1464
the State Department warned that the conference would be manipulatedRead more at location 1466
“none of the cultural leaders of Eastern Europe would be free to express any view other than that dictated by the political authorities in Moscow.”Read more at location 1467
especially troubling was the speech of the famous Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich.Read more at location 1470
was read by an interpreter, while Shostakovich sat next to him and “appeared nervous and uneasy” (Fay 2000, 172).Read more at location 1471
contained the composer’s response to the recent criticism of his music by the Central CommitteeRead more at location 1472
“The criticism brings me much good. It helps me bring my music forward.” About Stravinsky, whose work had been condemned in the Soviet Union, Shostakovich concurred with the Party’s opinion, saying “Stravinsky betrayed his native land and severed himself from his people by joining the camp of reactionary modern musicians.”Read more at location 1472
one day he was informed that he would receive “an important phone call.”Read more at location 1477
Stalin on the line, politely requesting that Shostakovich join the delegationRead more at location 1477
The literary critic Morris Dickstein, in a review of a biography of Arthur Miller,Read more at location 1481
It was one thing . . . to be a radical in the 1930s. [But] to remain a fellow traveller throughout the 1940s, culminating in the notorious Stalinist-inspired Waldorf peace conference in New York in 1949, long after the crimes, purges, and repressions of Stalin had been exposed to the world, demanded a special kind of obtuseness (Dickstein 2009).Read more at location 1483
In answer to your cable I must frankly confess that, in view of my experience with the first congress of this kind in Wroclaw last August, and from what I have observed concerning the recent congress in New York, I have the strong impression that this kind of procedure does not really serve the cause of international understanding. The reason is simply that it is more or less a Soviet enterprise and everything is managed accordingly (in Rowe & Schulmann 2013, 481–82; emphasis added).Read more at location 1488
Life magazine published a long article headlined “Red Visitors Cause Rumpus” that ridiculed the naïveté of those who supported the conference,Read more at location 1495
One year after Waldorf, Carnap supported the 1950 Stockholm peace appeal,Read more at location 1501
an obvious suggestion would be that they, and possibly many others, had been wooed by acquaintances with moderate-sounding views who insisted that their politics were primarily progressive, resolutely anti-fascist and peace-oriented, and who carefully avoided any directly Soviet-style, crude rhetoric that could upset the people they were trying to recruit.Read more at location 1514
The relationships with [Thomas] Mann and Einstein were established by what the Communists called “remote control,” while I was still part of the Red leadership. The chain of communication with Mann ran through associates of his daughter Erika; while with Einstein, means of reaching him were set up at Princeton. In both instances, these men were persuaded to their pro-Communist stands by playing upon their hatred of Nazism. This I know from what I heard said in Politburo meetings. No more striking illustration could be found of the way well-known men and women of unquestionable integrity are deceived and exploited by the Communists (Budenz 1950, 211).Read more at location 1520
the most charitable explanation of how Einstein was politically manipulatedRead more at location 1526
Some of Einstein’s Soviet connections, however, raise more troubling questions.Read more at location 1527
Frederick S. Litten describes the case of Hilaire Noulens, an official of the Communist International (Comintern), who was arrested in ChinaRead more at location 1528
Einstein repeatedly intervened on Noulens’s behalf, and even sent telegrams to three U.S. senatorsRead more at location 1530
why did he intervene, given that the man was a Soviet agent working on behalf of Stalin?Read more at location 1532
An additional fact that might have justifiably raised suspicions about Einstein’s involvement is that the address he used in correspondence about the case was c/o Internationale Arbeiter Hilfe (Workers International Relief), an organization founded under the auspices of the Comintern by the notorious Communist propagandist Willi Münzenberg.Read more at location 1535
Litten concludes: “I believe that, temporibus illis, Einstein had laid himself open to the possibility of being used as a relay by the Comintern and Soviet intelligence, although I don’t know to what extent he had been aware of it” (ibid.).Read more at location 1538
their tendency to picture the political situation in the United States in excessively negative terms, sometimes ridiculously so.Read more at location 1543
“We have come a long way toward the establishment of a Fascist regime. The similarity of general conditions here [in the United States] to those in the Germany of 1932 is quite obvious” (letter to W. Stern, January 14, 1954, quoted in Isaacson 2007, 533). “The separation [between Jews and Gentiles] is even more pronounced [in America] than it ever was anywhere in Western Europe, including Germany” (letter to Hans Mühsam, March 24, 1948, Einstein Archives 38-371; emphasis added).Read more at location 1544
The political situation developed wonderfully here during the holidays, and you only hear of defense of the homeland, compulsory military service, increase of taxes, increase of prices, etc. I think, even in the blackest (or brownest) Hitler Germany, things were not that bad (letter to his mother, January 8, 1951, quoted in Dawson 1997, 191; emphasis added).Read more at location 1554
“For the last two months I have been so much occupied with politics, that I had almost no time for anything else” (quoted in Wang 1990, 118).Read more at location 1559
“Gödel reads Lenin and Trotsky, is for planned society and socialism, and interested in the mechanism of influences in society, e.g., that of finance capital on politics” (ibid., 91).Read more at location 1561
“The wall that was erected in Berlin, this is really a culmination. But the Russians are probably right that spies and saboteurs were coming there from the West” (Gödel 2002, 203).Read more at location 1565
“Why do you ask me whether I like de Gaulle? His foreign policy has a lot of similarity with Hitler”Read more at location 1567
With regard to the new president [Kennedy], one sees quite clearly already where his politics is leading: war in Vietnam, war in Cuba, the belligerent Nazis or fascists (in the form of “anticommunist” organizations) beginning to bloom, more rearmament, less press freedom, no negotiations with Khrushchev, etc. (April 30, 1961, quoted in Wang 1996, 53; emphasis added).Read more at location 1570
glibly anti-Communists are equated with “belligerent Nazis or fascists.”Read more at location 1573
in 1935 Gödel himself officially joined a fascist movement, the Fatherland Front,Read more at location 1576
Gödel’s livelihood at the time did not depend on his keeping that job in Vienna.Read more at location 1579
The fame of his proof of the incompleteness theorem meant he could count on receiving invitations and job offers in many countries,Read more at location 1580
Gödel’s wife apparently applied for membership in the Nazi Party in 1938, after the AnschlussRead more at location 1588
Of Gödel’s letter to [American mathematician Oswald] Veblen only a burnt fragment has survived; it is dated 26 March [1938], just thirteen days after Hitler’s Anschluß [309]. It would be interesting to know what, if anything, Gödel had to say about that event, or what immediate effect it had on his life or work, but, incredibly, there is no mention of the Nazi takeover in any of Gödel’s correspondence (ibid., 127).Read more at location 1590
Gödel was asked by the Austrian physicist Hans Thirring to warn Einstein that Nazi Germany might develop a nuclear weapon—Read more at location 1594
Gödel traveled from the safety of Princeton to post-Anschluss Austria in 1939 with the aim of convincing the Nazi authorities there to renew his university lectureship.Read more at location 1598
the percentage of Nazis among mathematicians he was in contact with (apart from some of his pupils) was not far from 100 percentRead more at location 1603
in danger of being drafted into the German army after he was unexpectedly declared to be fit for militaryRead more at location 1611
Now it is easy to understand that reasonable people could find some aspects of American politics in the late forties and early fifties worrying or deserving condemnation. Many would especially single out the methods of Senator Joseph McCarthy in his clumsy and counterproductive attempts to deal with the dangers of Communist infiltration.14 But to suggest that things in America were at that time worse than in the “blackest (or brownest) Hitler Germany” or that the separation of Jews and non-Jews was “even more pronounced” in America than in the Third Reich—this borders on insanity. No, this actually crosses the border. And yet these opinions come from two of the greatest minds of the twentieth century.Read more at location 1618
