What happens when one of the clearest minds of the modern age turns on capitalism? In this brief, bracing essay, Albert Einstein argues that competition distorts democracy, corrodes education, and leaves human life precarious and small. Against it, he proposes something unfashionable: a society organized for cooperation rather than profit.

Albert Einstein was a theoretical physicist whose work reshaped modern science, most famously through the theory of relativity. Beyond physics, he was an outspoken public intellectual, writing on politics, education, and social responsibility. He remains one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century.