1. Albert Einstein The guy who came up with the theory of relativity was a passionate socialist. “Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones.”

  2. Bertrand Russell In 1918, the philosopher & mathematician said: “I do not think any reasonable person can doubt that the evils of power in the present system (capitalism) are vastly greater than is necessary, nor that they might be diminished by a suitable form of Socialism.”

  3. Hellen Keller “The creators of wealth are entitled to all they create, thus they find themselves pivoted against the profit-making system. They declare no compromise so long as the majority of the working class lives in want, while the master class lives in luxury.”

  4. Oscar Wilde The famous playwright wrote an article called “Soul of Man Under Socialism,” “Socialism, by converting private property into public wealth will restore society to its proper condition & insure the material well-being of each member of the community.”

  5. Martin Luther King “Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children.”

  6. Jack London Author of Call of the Wild “As for me, you wonder why I am a socialist. I’ll tell you. It is because socialism is inevitable; because the present rotten and irrational system cannot endure.”

  7. George Orwell Even though he is considered anti-socialist because of 1984 & Animal Farm, he was actually a staunch socialist: “Every line of serious work I have written since 1936 has been written directly and indirectly against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism.”

  8. Malala. The Nobel Peace Prize winner is quoted: “I am convinced Socialism is the only answer and I urge all comrades to take this struggle to a victorious conclusion. Only this will free us from the chains of bigotry and exploitation.”

So, yeah Jordan Petterson clearly knows his stuff…

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EDIT: Going to keep George Orwell in for continuity and integrity of the OP, but after reading comments and doing research, Georgie was not a real socialist. A class traitor who took money from the CIA and would flip-flop on a comrade in a second.

People are also saying not to take JP seriously. I agree, and probably overracted, but I think it’s important for people to know that there are a lot of smart and successful people in history who just so happen to be socialists (which is why I purposefully left off Marx and other great socialist thinkers). So while this is in response to JP (was originally a twitter thread), I think it can be a useful list for people.