A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES
Louis Proyect has done us all an unwitting favour by drawing attention to a priceless assessment of Howard Zinn’s “People’s History of the United States” in the New Yorker by Jill Lepore:
Every fall, the freshmen troop into town tugging laundry bags stuffed with extra-long fitted sheets and trunks packed with aspirations, Scrabble, and socks. The next week, when they gather around the seminar table with their laptops cocked, the brashest are the kids who read Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” in high school. It got them thinking and gave them something to argue about, aside from how to cram for the AP and whether the DBQ ought to count for more than the multiple choice. Zinn doesn’t come up in scholarly journals, but he introduced a whole lot of people who hadn’t thought about it before to the idea that history has a point of view. Kids can figure this out all on their own, but it’s nice to read it in a book. I suspect that reading “A People’s History” at fourteen is a bit like reading “The Catcher in the Rye” at the same age (history’s so goddam phony): it’s swell and terrible and it feels like something has ended, because it has.
Zinn wanted to write a people’s history because he believed that a national history serves only to justify the existence of the nation, which means, mainly, that it lies, and if it ever tells the truth, it tells it too fast, racing past atrocity to dwell on glory. Zinn’s history did the reverse. Instead of lionizing Andrew Jackson, he mourned the Cherokee. The problem is that, analytically, upending isn’t an advance; it’s more of the same, only upside-down. By sophomore year, the young whippersnappers have figured that out, too, which can be heartbreaking to watch, but it doesn’t make them any less grateful for what Zinn taught them, or any less fond of him for having braved it. Come September, the freshmen will be back, Zinn on their Kindles, zeal in their striped messenger bags, and I’ll be awfully glad to see them
I think that is a fair assessment of Zinn. A brilliant populist of left wing politics, and someone who helped expose the darker side of American history to a huge audience. But “A People’s History of the United States” is, in truth, a bit of a rant.
It certainly doesn’t live up to the charm and insight of A L Morton’s “A People’s History of England”. which Christopher Hill described as ‘The best history of England for the ordinary reader’. The strength of Morton’s book is that it contextualises the specific development of Engish, and later British, society and political economy as a complex process of development, and explains the elements of contention, and how the working people and the poor were both affected by, and helped to determine the outcome in its specific national detail.
I have to admit that after reading Zinn’s book, in contrast, it gave me the impression that one damned thing happened after another, It has two further weaknesses in my view; one the rather caracatured view of the American ruling classes, as almost a conspiracy, where their democratic and republican ideology is almost presented as a trick to dupe the masses; the other failing is, despite its title, that Zinn’s book addresses very little towards discussing the national specificity of the United States.
The interesting story of the USA is a creole people in rebellion against the metropolitan power, which resulted in the formation of one of the first modern states to self-consciously create a national identity, and national-popular political ideology. The USA therefore did not fit comfortably within the dominant nineteeth century paradigm of European colonialism. They also crafted a national consciousness based upon civic identity and democratic liberalism, which set them massively apart in the early period of capitalist devlopment. The complictions of slavery and the theft of the land of the indigenous peoples were a worm in the apple; and of course the history of nations is also a contested process between the classes
Yet Zinn simply doesn’t interest himself in those aspects of American history that are exemplary, extraordinary or novel; because he is too intent on proving that America is just the same as everywhere else in the capitalist world. He also exhibits a crude underplaying of ideology, such that American approaches to the major wars are described as simple functions of economic self interest, and the idea that there may have been sincerely held pro-democratic or anti-fascist convictions is simply dismissed.
Anyway, it is an influential book, and you should read it for yourself, it is on-line here.
See also comment by Matthew Yglesias, Amy Goodman, The spook who sat by the door and Alice Walker
Not a surprising analysis from a Winston Churchill fan.
Comment by Louis Proyect — 6 February, 2010 @ 5:25 pm
I think what you miss is the air of pompous self congratulation (it would be interesting to discover exactly what kind of position Lepore has on American history). The kind of dismissive attitude on display here is mirrored in her patronising attitude to her students.
Comment by johng — 6 February, 2010 @ 10:43 pm
…but thanks muchly for the link. I was just meditating over this passage and thinking that if anyone feels themselves above the issues under discussion, they’re in fairly serious political and ethical trouble:
Was all this bloodshed and deceit-from Columbus to Cortes, Pizarro, the Puritans-a necessity for the human race to progress from savagery to civilization? Was Morison right in burying the story of genocide inside a more important story of human progress? Perhaps a persuasive argument can be made-as it was made by Stalin when he killed peasants for industrial progress in the Soviet Union, as it was made by Churchill explaining the bombings of Dresden and Hamburg, and Truman explaining Hiroshima. But how can the judgment be made if the benefits and losses cannot be balanced because the losses are either unmentioned or mentioned quickly?
That quick disposal might be acceptable (”Unfortunate, yes, but it had to be done”) to the middle and upper classes of the conquering and “advanced” countries. But is it acceptable to the poor of Asia, Africa, Latin America, or to the prisoners in Soviet labor camps, or the blacks in urban ghettos, or the Indians on reservations-to the victims of that progress which benefits a privileged minority in the world? Was it acceptable (or just inescapable?) to the miners and railroaders of America, the factory hands, the men and women who died by the hundreds of thousands from accidents or sickness, where they worked or where they lived-casualties of progress? And even the privileged minority-must it not reconsider, with that practicality which even privilege cannot abolish, the value of its privileges, when they become threatened by the anger of the sacrificed, whether in organized rebellion, unorganized riot, or simply those brutal individual acts of desperation labeled crimes by law and the state?
If there are necessary sacrifices to be made for human progress, is it not essential to hold to the principle that those to be sacrificed must make the decision themselves? We can all decide to give up something of ours, but do we have the right to throw into the pyre the children of others, or even our own children, for a progress which is not nearly as clear or present as sickness or health, life or death?
Comment by johng — 6 February, 2010 @ 10:49 pm
“Instead of lionizing Andrew Jackson, he mourned the Cherokee. The problem is that, analytically, upending isn’t an advance; it’s more of the same, only upside-down.”
This is gobbledegook.
Comment by The Spanish Prisoner — 7 February, 2010 @ 12:19 am
Another of Howard Zinn’s weaknesses is illustrated by the quote cited by Johng. Lumping in “Stalin… killed peasants for industrial progress in the Soviet Union” and “the prisoners in Soviet labor camps” with “progress which benefits a privileged minority in the world” is utter hokum. Despite the repression etc in the USSR, progress in the Soviet Union benefited the vast majority, not only directly in the Soviet Union itself but indirectly in many other countries.
And, as Zinn later acknowledged, the introduction of ‘the market system’ in the (former) USSR was an appalling distaster for most former Soviet citizens.
On a more positive note, Howard Zinn distinguished himself by signing this excellent letter in solidarity with Venezuela in 2004:
Dear President Chavez,
We are writing to express our solidarity during this important moment in Venezuela’s history. It is our hope and expectation that, on August 15, you will once again win an electoral mandate from the Venezuelan people to be their president.
The world knows that you are achieving something remarkable in Venezuela: you are investing your country’s vast oil wealth in ways that benefit everyone, not just small minority of well-connected elites. Over the last year your government’s literacy campaign taught one million Venezuelans to read. And today, millions of others are benefiting from the governments investment in job training, small businesses and health care.
We are disturbed by our own government’s interference in your internal affairs. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a group funded by the U.S. Congress, has financed radical opposition leaders in their efforts to cut short your term. Some of the individuals funded by the NED participated in the April 2002 coup attempt against you.
Polling done by both the Venezuelan government and its opposition shows that you will defeat the recall referendum on August 15. We have every expectation that on August 16 Venezuelan relations with the U.S. government will begin to improve.
We are committed to doing what we can, as U.S. citizens, to heal those relationships and encourage Congress and the White House to see Venezuela not only as a model democracy but also as a model of how a country’s oil wealth can be used to benefit all of its people.
Sincerely,
Reverend Jesse Jackson
Congressman Dennis Kucinich
Dr. Howard Zinn
Edward Asner
Dr. Saul Landau
Naomi Klein
Doug Henwood
Dr. Blase Bonpane
Liza Featherstone
Comment by Noah — 7 February, 2010 @ 12:24 am
I don’t think that’s a fair assessment of ” A People’s History” at all. When I did an American History degree (1981-5), Zinn’s book wasn’t on the reading lists. Instead we were first set general survey histories (which is what “A People’s history” is) and they were all about the down to earth democratic genius working its way thru national history. They certainly did not reflect the history from below , which Zinn synthesised - so when I found his book in the bookshop it was a real lifesaver - an excellent, radical survey history
Comment by Solomon Hughes — 7 February, 2010 @ 12:33 am
Solomon Hughes:
“Despite the repression etc in the USSR, progress in the Soviet Union benefited the vast majority, not only directly in the Soviet Union itself but indirectly in many other countries.”
Nonsense. Quality of life plummeted across the USSR and never recovered. The peasant classes pushed into a form of collectivised Soviet serfdom. Millions upon millions died, families, communities, age old social institutions where uprooted and eradicated. The family unit was effectively squashed.
Soviet agricultural production declined and never recovered. The USSR relied on US and Australian wheat imports to avoid its population starving until the end of the USSR.
The USSR was the most destructive economic, moral and social movement ever witnessed in the modern era. It destroyed the lives of generations.
Comment by Mick — 7 February, 2010 @ 12:59 am
I think Noah would do well to reflect on What Zinn actually wrote and the history he is actually writing about. His approach to the appalling crimes of the Stalin period is clearly a mirror image of those who wish to ‘pass over quickly’ crimes against ordinary people in the name of history in the West. After all Zinn correctly raises questions concerning the conduct of the allied powers during world war 2. This hardly makes him a sympathiser of Hitler, and its not a weakness of some kind. Its the key difference between socialists and liberals that we raise these questions and they don’t. And its a good measure of whether someones Marxism is authentic if they do. Those who regard raising such questions as ‘weaknesses’ deserve nothing but scorn from Marxists. Their ‘progressiveness’ is identical to the ‘progressiveness’ of those who don’t wish to count the dead in Iraq. On the question of social history etc, its clear that this is a serious and critical introduction to historiography (how history is written) as well as to history itself, and I think the failure of supposedly ‘more sophisticated’ academics to realise this should be treated with scorn and derision.
Comment by johng — 7 February, 2010 @ 1:13 am
Mick #8: “Quality of life plummeted across the USSR and never recovered.”
Hmmm. Odd, then, that average life expectancy doubled and that literacy increased from 35% to 98%.
Even during the very tough years of early industrialisation in the USSR (between 1928 and 1938) per-capita consumption increased by 22%.
Source:
http://www.fcs.edu.uy/multi/phes/Allen%202001.pdf
More from Mick: “Soviet agricultural production declined and never recovered. The USSR relied on US and Australian wheat imports to avoid its population starving until the end of the USSR.”
Utter drivel. By the latter years of the USSR, the average calorie consumption per day in the Soviet Union was 3,379, of which 2,430 was from vegetable sources and 949 was from animal sources. Much higher than in Japan, and very close to the levels in the USA.
(Source: Table in ‘The starting point of liberalistation- China and the former USSR on the eve of reform’ by Prof. Peter Nolan)
The reason that the USSR began to import grain was to feed its rising number of livestock, due to the increasing meat content of the diet of people in the Soviet Union.
Comment by Noah — 7 February, 2010 @ 1:43 am
johng #9: “I think Noah would do well to reflect on What Zinn actually wrote and the history he is actually writing about.”
Howard Zinn’s contribution is what one might call a ‘mixed bag’. I do agree with the point made at #5 by The Spanish Prisoner, and to an extent also with Solomon Hughes at #7.
And Zinn’s attack on the US bombing of Dresden, Hiroshima, etc should be appreciated, along with his later solidarity with Hugo Chavez and the people of Venezuela.
You say: “This hardly makes him [Zinn] a sympathiser of Hitler…”
That’s a rather bizarre remark, John, given that nobody here (nor anywhere else, so far as I know) is accusing the late Prof. Zinn of being a Nazi sympathiser.
However. Howard Zinn was wrong in his knee-jerk anti-Sovietism, and he was wrong in his opposition to the entry of the USA to the World War 2 alliance, alongside the USSR, Britain and other countries, against the aggressive Nazi German empire .
In which spirit, here’s a lovely song by the wonderful Woody Guthrie- the USA’s most eloquent musical champion of the oppressed- in the cause of the Second Front in Europe:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL8OhLqSE8k&feature=PlayList&p=E81799594E8C8C60&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=12
Comment by Noah — 7 February, 2010 @ 2:28 am
Of course, Woody Guthrie would have been wrong to sing that before June 22 1941, because before that date WW2 was an inter-imperialist war - it only became a people’s war after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.
Spare a though for the Almanac Singers (Pete Seeger’s first band) who released Songs for John Doe, an album of anti-war songs, in May 1941, and discovered less than a month later that the album’s pacifist sentiments were politically incorrect.
Comment by chjh — 7 February, 2010 @ 1:00 pm
This is a truly unhelpful post, and it entirely misses the importance of Zinn’s contribution. The great historian of Reconstruction Eric Foner gets much closer to the truth in his appreciation of Zinn:
“The way he inspired people, to me, is his legacy, rather than his interpretation of the Jacksonian era or the Gilded Age or the New Deal. Those can be debated and will be debated. But he deserves more than just people saying this is a biased historian. He really was an important figure in the public vision of history.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-miller1-2010feb01,0,6706674,full.story
I would only add that judging Zinn on the strength of his implicit analysis of the USSR is even dumber.
(btw, Sean Wilentz - wtf? Chants Democratic is a great book, but that guy has clearly lost the plot).
Perhaps it’s impossible for people who didn’t grow up in the intellectually and politically stultifying atmosphere of the US in the 1980s and 90s to fully comprehend what Zinn meant to those of us who did. It’s not just that the standard version of history taught to American students is built around a hyper-patriotic narrative of freedom and progress - I remember well how my high school US history text book regurgitated the most idiotic Cold War propaganda myths/distortions.
It’s also that in the absence of left social movements - and the progressive organizations that drive them - young people have almost no other resources to learn about the radical movements and battles of the past.
Zinn filled a vacuum, because his book was so uniquely effective in transmitting the stories of American radicals to people who would otherwise literally never hear about them.
As a result, he’s done more to radicalize American young people than anyone else over the past three+ decades.
Further, as suggested by others above, it’s insane to suggest that Zinn’s “history from below” isn’t an analytical step forward from mainstream accounts of US history.
Comment by Jonah — 7 February, 2010 @ 3:53 pm
chjh #12: “Of course, Woody Guthrie would have been wrong to sing that before June 22 1941, because before that date WW2 was an inter-imperialist war - it only became a people’s war after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.”
Well, self-evidently WW2 continued to be an inter-imperialist war after 1941, given that Britain, the USA, Germany and Japan were/are imperialist countries. However, WW2 had other very important aspects- it was also a war against fascism and, eg in the USSR and China, a war for national liberation.
From June 1941 onward, it became absolutely clear that these latter aspects were the most crucial ones.
You add: “Spare a though for the Almanac Singers (Pete Seeger’s first band) who released Songs for John Doe, an album of anti-war songs, in May 1941, and discovered less than a month later that the album’s pacifist sentiments were politically incorrect.”
Pete Seeger was totally correct to abandon the ‘pacifism’ of that album and to put his efforts, alongside Woody Guthrie and Paul Robeson, into the war effort and the call for the Second Front in Europe. The next album by the Almanacs, entitled ‘Dear Mr President’, included the eponymous song by Seeger which included the following lines:
This is the reason that I want to fight,
Not because everything’s perfect or everything’s right.
No. it’s just the opposite… I’m fighting because I want
A better America with better laws,
And better homes and jobs and schools,
And no more Jim Crow and no more rules,
Like you can’t ride on this train ’cause you’re a Negro,
You can’t live here ’cause you’re a Jew
You can’t work here ’cause you’re a union man.
There’s a line keeps running through my head,
I think it was something Joe Louis once said,
Said, “There’s lots of things wrong,
But Hitler won’t help ‘em.”
So Mr. President, we’ve got this one big job to do,
That’s lick Mr. Hitler and when we’re through,
Let no one else ever take his place,
To trample down the human race.
So what I want is you to give me a gun,
So we can hurry up and get the job done.
Comment by Noah — 7 February, 2010 @ 8:09 pm
“one the rather caracatured [sic] view of the American ruling classes, as almost a conspiracy, where their democratic and republican ideology is almost presented as a trick to dupe the masses”
So you think there are real, valuable ideological differences between the Republican and Democratic parties? If that’s what you think, this blog is clearly something of a joke.
Comment by Tom — 7 February, 2010 @ 10:42 pm
#15
*sigh*
well actualy there *are* differences between the Democratis Party and RepublicanParty, but clearly the most obvious reading of what I wrote is what I intended, that the dominant ideoliogy in the USA is republican (opposed to monarchy) and democratic (belief in elections, free press, and individual liberty)
Comment by Andy Newman — 7 February, 2010 @ 10:48 pm
“However. Howard Zinn was wrong in his knee-jerk anti-Sovietism, and he was wrong in his opposition to the entry of the USA to the World War 2 alliance”
Before AND after the Nazi-Soviet pact? I just find it bizarre that people are still trying to construct a coherent historical narrative around what were actually entirely inconsistant policies which did a disservice to those who fought and died for them with idealism. The attempt to suggest that these rapid shifts in line were in some sense coherent suggests to me that I’ll stick with a proper historian like Zinn as opposed to being lectured by someone who, ironically enough, seems to fit almost EXACTLY the model of turning things upside down that Zinn was patronisingly being accused of.
Comment by johng — 7 February, 2010 @ 11:40 pm
@ Johng #17.
World War 2 was not a purely simple, straightforward phenomenon. Like I pointed out at #14, it was an inter-imperialist war as well as being an anti-fascist and national liberation war. The relative importance of these aspects varied with time, ie during the course of that massive & terrible struggle, and also with place, ie in the different parts of the world.
So your complaints re: “rapid shifts in line” etc by the people who had to face that situation are wide of the mark.
And your remark that “entirely inconsistant policies […] did a disservice to those who fought and died for them with idealism” is rhetorical claptrap.
Comment by Noah — 8 February, 2010 @ 12:59 am