| Subject: | Philosophy \ Sociology |
| Title: | Socialism and the Human Condition: Reclaiming Our Social Nature from Capitalist Individualism |
| Author(s): | Dr. Madhusudhan Reddy Andem |
| Published on: | 30th September 2026 |
| Published by: | Lyceum India |
| Name of the Journal: | Lyceum India Journal of Social Sciences |
| ISSN/e-ISSN: | 3048-6513 |
| Volume & Issue: | Volume: 3, Issue: 11 |
| Pages: | 55-61 |
| Original DOI (if any): | 10.5281/zenodo.22922259 |
| Repository DOI: | |
| Abstract: | This article restates Albert Einstein’s 1949 essay “Why Socialism?” and develops it through Rousseau and Sandel. Einstein treats socialism as a social-ethical end. Science can supply means, but it cannot choose those ends. Human beings are both solitary and social. Capitalism breaks that balance. Private capital gathers in few hands, hides dependence behind the free labour contract, and uses unemployment to set wages. Formal democracy cannot, by itself, restrain an oligarchy of private capital. For Einstein, the worst evil is not only poverty. It is the crippling of individuals: people learn to see society as a threat and to worship success. Rousseau helps name this harm. Particular or actual wills seek private gain; the will of all is only their sum; the general will aims at a shared good. A true society is an association, not a heap of separate units. Sandel’s critique of meritocracy describes the same cult of deserved success: even a fair race would teach winners that they made it alone. Einstein therefore rejects socialism as a mere change of tools. Social ownership and production for need must be joined to an education in responsibility. He also warns that planning is not yet socialism if bureaucracy enslaves the individual. Any system should be judged by whether it isolates people or makes devotion to society reasonable. |
| Keywords: | Albert Einstein; Socialism, General Will, Meritocracy, Capitalist Individualism, Social Nature |
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