of energy and matter; helped to establish quantum mechanics; made a decisive contribution to solid-state of his life.
The Chinese are now publishing a two-volume collection of his work Like the Russians, they have no doubt conveniently forgotten that Einstein's theories were not so long ago being proclaimed a product of bourgeois decadence.
The West German authorities are issuing their own stamps, and tidying up the streets and houses in Ulm in preparation for the pilgrims who will be visiting the new shrine. mention that the Nazis called the theory of relativity a Jewish science designed to corrupt the Aryan mind?
Hardly. All is forgotten in the current atmosphere of festivity.
But there is a powerful additional reason why Einstein is being given this very special hero treatment today. His magnum opus, the General Theory of Relativity, which for the first half century of its existence occupied a kind of intellectual limbo, is now staging a magnificent comeback.
Its difficult mathematics, coupled with even greater difficulties in testing its premises, formerly made it the province of only a handful scientists, so that until even a few years ago the General commanded only a dozen or scientific papers a year. This number has now risen to some six or seven hundred!
Helped by powerful and sophisticated technology such as radio antennae, orbiting satellites, atomic clocks, inter-solar navigation and, last but not least, computers -experimental confirmation further corroboration 1S through thick and fast, such as the discovery of quasars and interstellar radiation, holes. It is really only today that the world is becoming aware of the full THE DOTE Einstein's heritage.
When Einstein was a Newtonian physics was fragments. Out of these a new, awesome and above all contradictory picture of the physical world emerging.
century.
Will they light proclaimed phenomenon. known as quantum mechanics). of this raised Theory so giant origin obeyed from its source.
and experiments OT coming by Fitzgerald and black black motion, scientific slowed down.
student that lying in system, undat discoveries was foundation physics — and much else besides.
Matter was decidedly atomic and obeyed Newton's laws; yet electro- of magnetic radiation - which includes followed quite different mechanical laws, those of Maxwell, All a wave Atoms themselves turned out to Physik. have been mis-named: rather than being the smallest particles of matter, they were found to have a complex internal structure, which obeyed yet another set of mechanical laws (later Atomic fission was discovered, and again the idea of transmutation of matter. In addition the work of Max Planck indicated that light was emitted in discrete packets (quanta) and not continuously as demanded bv Maxwel's wave theory; this implied that light at its quite different rules from the same light some distance The decisive blow came from the Michelson and Morley, and the theoretical follow-up gravity.
and Lorenz; these showed that light travelled at a constant speed in space, that moving bodies contracted in the direction of and that moving clocks Since the laws which govern motion the relationship of between matter, space and time - are at the very centre of any physical effect);
destroyed Newtonian light, mechanics, and thereby of Newtonian Albert Einstein, who was born 100 years ago last week in Ulm, in what is now West Germany, revolutionised our notion of space and time within just a decade and a half at the beginning of this He founded a novel and astonishing theory of the universe and its formation; proclaimed the identity physics as well. Such then, at the turn the century, was Einstein's conjuncture.
In 1905 — the year of the Soviets in Petrograd — the 26-year-old Einstein published three papers in the German scientific journal Der Annalen der These announced the beginning of a new synthesis of physics, a synthesis on which Einstein continued to work until his death in 1955 Thus the grand design of a new physics came from an obscure young scientist working at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern. Like Copernicus 350 years before, Einstein began the re-arrangement of the universe from the very fringes of established science.
And just as in 1666, in rural Lancashire, the equally Newton laid the foundation of classical science with his theories of Halt and era later is i mad a so two and a construct the new science precisely by re-thinking the nature of light and In his first paper, Einstein tackled Brownian motion - the apparently random motion of liquid molecules -in a way that reconciled two key areas of classical physics: thermodynamics and the molecular theory of heat. His second paper dealt with the emission electrons illuminated metallic surfaces (the photo-electric reviving the thoroughly discredited corpuscular theory Einstein explained phenomenon in terms of light particles knocking electrons from the surtace of the metal.
This theory won Einstein his Nobel prize nine years later, since it was in fact a vital step towards the theory of particle/wave duality of matter which cornerstone mechanics.
As it happened, Einstein never received a Nobel prize for his greatest single contribution, relativity, which was inaugurated in the third paper he published that year.
The Special Theory of Relativity -as it was subsequently called by dismissing postulated but undetected carrier electromagnetic radiation) from the universe. It went on to proclaim the young constancy of the speed of light in free space, irrespective of the speed of its The speed of light became the ultimate barrier which no body can go beyond, since the faster a body moves the heavier it becomes. In this way, time and space were tied into an indissoluble unity, whose behaviour is conditional upon the trame of reference A new mechanics was thus born. The famous equation E= mc2 also made its first apperance in this paper: when fully articulated two years later it proclaimed the matter and energy. With the clue to the energy of the universe discovered. of the atomic age had truly begun. the In 1916 Einstein incorporated the Special Theory into the General CCHO events universe.
Science has of quantum his theory ether (a of observer's are centres their small mechanics.
progress, •Ine can perhaps still be heard in the weak but universally present background radiation that arrives from outer space.
With the help of atomic physics, the theory can lay out the likely sequence which led construction of the universe of today. However, it must then also explain the historic and actual relationship of the basic forces unar noid tne together, since these must have been created from a common original force in the process of evolution of the made considerable ground in this direction, reducing all natural forces to four fundamenta ones: the weak force, which govern the interplay of elementary particles; the strong or nuclear force, which bindsthenucleiofatomstogetherandis responsible for the release of energy from the sun; the electromagnetic force, which creates the atoms and molecules of which the familiar world is made; and the gravitational force which holds the universe together.
It was Einstein's lifelong ambition to integrate the laws governing the behaviour of these four forces into a single 'unified field' theory. This he failed to accomplish.
Nevertheless. there is a striking similarity between Maxwell's equations for the electromagnetic force and Einstein's gravitational field equations (though the latter are far more complicated). It also now appears that the weak and electromagnetic forces can be united in an experimentally demonstrable fashion.
There is still a long way to go before the quantum physics of the subatomic level can be fused with the continuous equations of Einsteinian space-time Here the study of black holes may provide the necessary break, since these greedy monsters of outer space of extremely strong gravitational force which, because of size, must also be commanded by the laws of quantum At the present rate of scientific Einstein's dreamed-of unification is not all that Socialist Challenge 22 March 1979 page 13
SOCIALIST CHALLENGE EVENTS Camden -a special case?
CHRIS Adamson (8 March) talks of *fairly left-wing full-time recruited universities colleges' without saying whether he is of that category, presumably because it is a useless description of his wOrKerS As a Communist full-time official of NUPE who was not recruited from a university or college, I reject his statement that a tair people who belong to urgamisanon and work tor a union may be good industrial militants, but are not particularly useful political cadres". I believe that generalising too much from his own experiences and method of operating.
However, I would like to deal with question of the settlement and join with the other criticisms of your reporting. socialist newspapers may feel the need to propagandise rather than educate, it becomes very dangerous if facts are hidden in order to justify a certain political position.
I believe the Camden settlement is a very important and useful propaganda weapon in the public services wage negotiations. It is, however, harmful and incorrect to draw the conclusion that all we needed to do in other local authorities or nationally was to adopt the same strategy as NUPE members in Camden to secure victory.
Tower Hamlets local authority manual workers have been, and are on all-out strike action from the beginning of the dispute, before Camden, and have not yet secured a local settlement. The same is true of Hackney council manual workers, who have been on strike since 22 January.
What pearls of wisdom do we have from you about their inability so far so secure a local settlement? Does it not suggest that the Camden settlewas not basco On trength, but political and historical circumstances?
The London Borough of Camden has been an unusual employer for women manual workers satrary to a national agreement hách provided for a five year phasing. In 1974 it implemented a 374-hour week for manual workers contradiction agreement of a 40-hour week, and greed in principle at that time to a 35-hour week Its political example has been very helpful in getting some local authority manual workers to take industrial action of a stronger nature or longer HE DEADLINE for this column is publication. une saturday SE officials and meaningless previous fellownumber or a left-wing Chris strike JIM CORNELIUS (in Camden capacity) (London SE4)
Whilst "Gang of Four view China today, Tariq Lose or us conclusion Vietnamese. chea?', Vietnamese 'intervention'.
Tariq tells us, Vietnamese help.?
Very
self-determination fears.
to the national Front for Hese una the Kampuchea for themselves?
Tariq castigated NORTH EAST NEWCASTLE local supporters are active: if you want ARE • YOU TOTA COPY duration. But it doesn't prove that action would have achieved a satisfactory settlement in one or all other local authorities.
Fi personal Laos WHILE being an old-time 'Gang of Four' Maoist with no sympathy for the current political leadership in I feel compelled to defend the Chinese against some of political/military struggles concerning China, Vietnam, and Kampuchea.
argues that the Chinese invasion of Vietnam is a crime against socialism. On the other hand, who jump to the about the Invasion KampuTariq covers his tracks by saying that there is no comparison between the Chinese invasion and *It would have been much better, if the Kampuchean people themselves had been able to remove Pol Pot and his cohorts. In the event they could not do so without significant help indeed approximately 100,000 troops. Nevertheless this "intervention' was progressive according to Tariq, so my qualms about Kampuchea's right to are groundless Tariq calls on the Vietnamese to withdraw now that their job of work is done. Well, why don't they? Could it be that the Kampuchean United National Salvation wouldn't last five minutes without Vietnamese guns to back it up? Could Vietnamese want happen? the Chinese (11January) for not extending their Challence Saturday 11am-2pm COrner "ABERDEEN Socialist THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT THE LONG AWAITED REPORT HOW THE R.U.C IKEN DODUDYECT solidarity to the Khmer Rouge beyond 'brave words'. Now they have done so, Tariq gets all hot under the collar.
However, the hardest thing for me to understand is how. when the Vietnamese have 40,000 troops in coupled 100,000 Kampuchea, Tariq can completely ignore the growth of Vietnamese expansionism in Indochina. It seems that Tariq is blind to Vietnamese intentions and only sees red when the Chinese decide to give the Vietnamese a kick up the arse for their un-socialist expansionism RON SKINNER (London NW6)
Art crisis ITHOUGHT Peter Fuller's article on fine art (1 March) was misleading in its implication that there is a recent crisis in 'modernism'. it seems to ignore important points about art and its practice which have been debated within Marxist aesthetics for years.
Of course any 'crisis" must be related to the appropriation of art as commodity within capitalism, but I don't think it helps to discuss 19th century realism, or 'philistinism'; and to dismiss statements and currents within the fine arts as "madness' displays nothing the outrage of the bourgeois critic.
Manzoni sold shit LO "art", Yves managed to extract money from financiers for his 'concepts' statements are threatening to the bourgeois definition of art, but can easily be accommodated and defused within the capitalist art world.
For revolutionary socialists (and Carl André of the Tate bricks is a confessed Marxist!) the important question in terms of praxis seems to be not whether 'modernism has become indefensible' (when/how was it defensible? - when did this avant garde modernist gestures have always been OVer of Scores i ide sales outside NOTTINGHAM ocialist LEAMINGTON Contact 311772 COVENTRY or and g OTHER WHITE WASH JOB? how does one contradict a ruling ideology within the terms it imposes? Is there an autonomous working class culture? Does it reflect the demands of the working class within capitalism? What is important is the in redundancy of statements of rebellion against a culture and ideology from within its own limits; the realisation that the isolated gesturing of the avant garde — statements from a 'socially inactive sector' — impact as long as it is not articulated within the demands of the exploited class for socialism KEVIN HALLIWELL (Herne Bay)
Kick out the right!
I AM writing to express concern about the timidity Challenge's central political thrust throughout this extraordinary winter of wage struggles. summed up as calls for the recall of the and conferences.
Recalled their place, but only as part of a more urgent and audacious counter-offensive. As it is, circumstances, such moral would only reiterate past policy and the government would ignore them as the blithely as it has in the past. Klein Socialist Challenge has supportec all workers who -these higher wages • incomes These workers political affiliations, though in their majority they (a) belong to trade unions, (b) would vote, for Labour most activity they have been fighting this Labour government and those in the trade unions who support its policies. Objectively, a divide has opened up within the labour movement. Our job and is to do everything to deepen this divide, to isolate the government and condemned by the popular press), but its supporters. For the working class | PAUL WILSON (Bristol RCG)
in the Wedge cafe/ bookshop, High St. market) Susalom Cooks, Heath otest. Todders - can have no real Police ban of Socialist This can be Labour Party conferences may have in the best of conferences have struck fo workers than those offered have grudgingly, But in their recent Amount letter.
markersity of Past Angl Thursdays a Hoad BRIGHTON SC forums fortnightly o IT MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE PEOPLE WHO FIND THEMSELVES IN THE HANDS OF OUR BELOVED POLICE?
I DOUBT the fight has to be to throw the right wing out of the Labour Party and to demote all officials in the unions who have gone along with the government in the present wages round.
Such a fight now, starting from the real needs of the working class, basing itself on its recent and present willingness to struggle for some of those needs, would most uncomfortably limit the room for manoeuvre of the lefts'. For, as they uneasily look over their shoulders, they will see the Kakis of movement he they compromise with the right.
JOHN WEAL (London N6)
Hands Off Ireland!, the quarterly anti-imperialist bulletin which is sold to British workers, has been banned by the police in four towns in South-west England and South Wales. Over the past few weeks the police in Bristol Bath, Newport and Cardiff have tolc sellers of Hands Off Ireland! that they must stop or be arrested. Only Hands Off Ireland! has been singled out for thistreatment — other left-wing paper sellers have been left untouched Hands Off Ireland! has always taken the side of the Irish people against the British state. It has always exposed the torture of the British state It has always tried to tell British the truth about British imperialism's rule in Ireland The banning of Hands Off Ireland! is yet another blatant case of the forces of the British state trying to cover up their oppression of the Six Counties. No socialist can allow the British state to get away with this. We intend to campaign against this harassment. We are sure your readers will support us in this campaign to restore our right to sell Hands Off Ireland! in these four towas and any others, and we ask you to print this NW2, 7.30pm. Everyone
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Tariq Ali's more outrageous remarks (11 January and 22 February) on the