The Smartest Man Ever Was a Socialist: An Interview with John Bellamy Foster

By John Bellamy Foster (Posted Sep 15, 2025)

Originally published: A Public Affair (more by A Public Affair)

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WORT 89.9FM Madison · The Smartest Man Ever was a Socialist

This interview and the following article were originally posted by A Public Affair on WORT 89.9 FM in Madison, Wisconsin.

In the United States, Albert Einstein isn’t well known for his views on socialism. But in 1949, he wrote a salient essay for the inaugural issue of Monthly Review called “Why Socialism.” Today’s guest, John Bellamy Foster, tells host Allen Ruff about Einstein’s essay and his legacy as a socialist.

Einstein’s essay was written in defiance of the McCarthy era. And Foster says that’s timely to return to this article on its 75th anniversary in the context of the MAGA movement and neofascism in the US that is causing many people to feel a similar sense of despair as at the time Monthly Review’s beginning.

Foster describes Einstein’s commitment to socialism as something that went hand in hand with his commitment to science. He adds that Einstein was committed to many progressive causes including opposition nuclear weapons and critiquing Zionism. Foster says that Einstein believed we need socialism because we can only develop as “social individuals.”

About John Bellamy Foster

John Bellamy Foster, professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, is editor of Monthly Review, an independent socialist magazine published monthly in New York City. His research is devoted to critical inquiries into theory and history, focusing primarily on the economic, political and ecological contradictions of capitalism, but also encompassing the wider realm of social theory as a whole. He has published numerous articles and books focusing on the political economy of capitalism and the economic crisis, ecology and the ecological crisis, and Marxist theory: (with Brett Clark) The Robbery of Nature: Capitalism and the Ecological Rift; The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology; (with Paul Burkett) Marx and the Earth: An Anti-Critique (2016); The Theory of Monopoly Capitalism: An Elaboration of Marxian Political Economy (New Edition, 2014); (with Robert W. McChesney) The Endless Crisis: How Monopoly-Finance Capital Produces Stagnation and Upheaval from the USA to China (2012); (with Fred Magdoff) What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism: A Citizen's Guide to Capitalism and the Environment (2011); (with Brett Clark and Richard York) The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth (2009); (with Fred Magdoff) The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences (2009); The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet (2009); (with Brett Clark and Richard York) Critique of Intelligent Design: Materialism versus Creationism from Antiquity to the Present (2008); Ecology Against Capitalism (2002); Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature (2000); (with Frederick H. Buttel and Fred Magdoff) Hungry for Profit: The Agribusiness Threat to Farmers, Food, and the Environment (2000); The Vulnerable Planet: A Short Economic History of the Environment (1999); (with Ellen Meiksins Wood and Robert W. McChesney) Capitalism and the Information Age: The Political Economy of the Global Communication Revolution (1998); (with Ellen Meiksins Wood) In Defense of History: Marxism and the Postmodern Agenda (1997); The Theory of Monopoly Capitalism: An Elaboration of Marxian Political Economy (1986); (with Henryk Szlajfer) The Faltering Economy: The Problem of Accumulation Under Monopoly Capitalism (1984). His work is published in at least twenty-five languages. Visit johnbellamyfoster.org for a collection of most of Foster's works currently available online.