The World According to Zinn

Can there be an objective view of history? Ask Howard Zinn this question, and he’ll answer, “No.” Each history we read is interpretation. Everyone has a point of view. Zinn, a Professor Emeritus at Boston University, participated in the Civil Rights Movement and protested against the Vietnam War. He does not pretend to be impartial. “My history is not objective,” Zinn says. “It’s intended to inspire [readers] with stories of how people fought back and sometimes won. Conventional history pretends to objectivity, but [those stories] don’t inspire people or propel people into activity.” His A People’s History of the United States (first published in 1980) has recently been adapted into both a graphic novel and a two-volume book for young readers titled A Young People’s History of the United States (Seven Stories, 2007).

Why do you think interest in your work is piqued now?

I think it’s because the times are very troubling to people. There is great uncertainty about the future, about the environment. People are looking for a new way of observing American history and learning something from it that might be useful. I think people want to be grounded in the past in a way that helps them understand what’s going on—not the same old stories that are adulatory about liberty and democracy, because the fact is that liberty and democracy are not in good shape.

You write, “Patriotism, in my view, does not mean unquestioning acceptance of whatever the government does. . . If you live in a democratic state, it means you have the right to criticize your government.” Do you think our country encourages this kind of debate?

Criticism of the government is generally not encouraged—certainly not by the people in government, and not by the media. The example the media sets is they’re generally respectful of the government—when Bush declares war on terror in 2001, all the papers immediately go along. They’ve lost the spirit of dissent, which is embodied in the Declaration of Independence. It’s set up to honor the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” It states that “it is the right of the people to alter or abolish the government.” If you said that without telling people that this language is included in the Declaration of Independence, they’d say it’s revolutionary.

If you’re living in a democratic government, you must have a citizenry investigating it to see if it’s following its charge, and if it’s not following that charge—if it’s sending people to war, spoiling the environment, turning the wealth over to a small group of wealthy individuals—then that calls for disobedience and dissent.

The Founding Fathers come in for some close scrutiny in your book.

What I tried to do was [demonstrate that] the Constitution stands in opposition to the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration of Independence is a rallying cry to fight against the British Empire. These ideals are useful in mobilizing people on behalf of what the government wants. But once the government has what it wants, those principles are forgotten. Once independence was won, the slaves and the poor were tossed out. The Founding Fathers were almost always rich landowners and speculators. Charles Beard wrote a book about [their] economic interests [An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States]; one by one, he went into their holdings of bonds, land, and slaves and made clear that [the Constitution] was in the economic interests of the Founding Fathers.

The veterans of the Revolution, many of them farmers [like Daniel Shays], were taking the principles seriously, saying you shouldn’t take away our farms just because we can’t pay our taxes. [The Founding Fathers] wanted to fashion a government that would allow them to put down rebellions like [Shays’ Rebellion, which] they faced just before the [1787] Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.

Complicated as he was, Thomas Jefferson may be one of the few good guys in your history.

Like most people in political power, or members of the elite, [Jefferson was] much better out of power than in power. He was at his best as a rebel against England and writing the Declaration of Independence. When Shays’ Rebellion took place, [and] the Founding Fathers were fearful of more rebellions, Jefferson, [who] was away from the fray as ambassador to France, could be detached from that fear and say, We need a rebellion every once in a while. That’s Jefferson at his best, when he was not president.

When he was president, things were different. He was expected to represent the powerful interests around him. He was against expansion, but became one of the great expansionists with the Louisiana Purchase, and he expelled Indians from their land. Yes, he’s a complicated person.

What do you hope students will keep in mind as the 2008 election approaches?

I hope that young people would look critically at our electoral college and our political system. It permits a president who doesn’t have the majority of popular votes. There are other flaws in the system that have to do with it being a two-party system, which leave[s] a third or fourth party helpless to counter the wealth of those two parties.

I want young people to understand the limits of the electoral system, in which voting is seen as the supreme act of citizenship. It deflects their energy from where I think it should be, which is creating an atmosphere in the country which will influence whatever political party wins power. One good reason for [young people] understanding [the electoral system’s] limits is to understand why I emphasize bringing about social change. Social movements are the key to rectifying grievances people have and the injustices of society…. In the case of Lincoln, if there hadn’t been a great antislavery movement, the feeling he had for poor people [having grown up modestly himself] would have been overwhelmed by political ambition and the politics of maintaining a strong union. What was key was that he faced the antislavery movement which had grown to giant proportions and was pushing him toward antislavery.

Look at FDR. He moved from being a patrician politician to an innovator—and a very important innovator—to help poor people and give them jobs and subsidized housing. Not because of anything in his background, but because he faced strikes and agitation and turmoil—a social movement in the country. That’s the crucial thing in determining what a president will do.