This is fascinating (and something of which I was, surprisingly, entirely unaware): Einstein was a socialist and articulated his views in the monthly socialist periodical, the Monthly Review, in 1949. Permit me to quote his critique of capitalism at length (although I am omitting a substantial amount that is material to his argument, so I encourage you to follow the link to read the entire thing):
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Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands .... result[ing] [in] ... an oligarchy of private capital [ ] which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.
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There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an 'army of unemployed' almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job. ... Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. ...
This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.
The solution Einstein proposes is the socialization of the means of production and a centrally planned economy ("which adjusts production to the needs of the community, [ ] distribut[ing] the work to be done among all those able to work and [ ] guarantee[ing] a livelihood to every man, woman, and child"). Einstein recognizes the dangers of concentrating so much power in the bureaucratic state ("[a] planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual"), but -- at least in the essay I quoted here -- does not even hint at a solution to the "extremely difficult socio-political problems" that a centrally planned economy presents.
Still, how very fascinating that Einstein (recognized as one of the most brilliant thinkers of the last century) was such an ardent socialist. ("I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy ...") Indeed, in my view, Einstein articulates the Marxist critique of capitalism better (and using far fewer words) than Marx himself. I wonder whether Einstein ever further addressed the pragmatic difficulty in achieving a just socialistic state; that, after all, is the real challenge (and the reason that the proponents of capitalism have been so successful in defending an economic system that rests, fundamentally, upon nothing more than greed and large-scale exploitation).
