Perhaps he would, however he would have had enough exposure to see an example of a planned economy in the USSR even before 1950 - i.e. he clearly already saw wh

Perhaps he would, however he would have had enough exposure to see an example of a planned economy in the USSR even before 1950 - i.e. he clearly already saw what a planned economy is, which leads me to make the charitable reading of him, in which he is only positing what a planned economy could be. Interestingly, there's been some work on this recently, such as by Paul Cockshott, a computer scientist interested in economic planning. Nevertheless, it is even more of a mistake to identify Einstein with a love or allegiance to Marxist-Leninist socialism, despite his praise of Lenin. Your reading of him as being in favour of pure economic planning is refuted by him later in the essay: >Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems[...] I have no doubt he was saying this in reaction to planned economies of the time.