
We Still Need Howard Zinn - rbanffy
https://lithub.com/we-really-still-need-howard-zinn/
======
tptacek
This critique of Zinn has been cited multiple times on AskHistorians:

[https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/howard-zinns-
history...](https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/howard-zinns-history-
lessons)

~~~
jahaja
Assuming the criticism is true, would an edited version put US history in a
much brighter light?

~~~
tptacek
Probably not, just a different one. The AskHistorians threads about this are
typically accompanied by more credible left/populist histories; Jill Lepore,
as an example.

~~~
jahaja
Exactly, so to focus on dismissing the book/author seem very opportunistic
since the core of the argument is still based on facts, and people should
acknowledge the bad parts of their history.

~~~
tptacek
I'm sorry, I don't understand this response.

~~~
jahaja
That people should discuss the issue even if one account of the issue is only
90% correct. People seem to be deflecting.

~~~
tptacek
The story is _about Zinn_. If anything, the deflection goes the other way.

------
0xB31B1B
I don't really understand the hate for Zinn by some folks. He tells the truth,
a truth not often told. Curious how so many self styled "contrarians" and
"free thinkers" dislike his work without reading it. Anyway, it's a good read.

~~~
rayiner
Because it’s not the truth, and is in fact propaganda. There was a purpose to
it back when it was published, because it was a response to books that were
also propaganda. But there is no place for it today, where better scholarship
exists and the Internet provides ready access to a plethora of view points.

~~~
tmh79
>>> "But there is no place for it today, where better scholarship exists and
the Internet provides ready access to a plethora of view points"

Thats now how history works at all man. Pretty much all writing on history
goes into the metaphorical dust bin maybe 20-40 years after it is created but
the "dust bin" isn't a dead place that no one should ever explore, its the
world of historiography, and understanding how people understood their point
in time at different points in time. No one should read a history book like
its the bible handed down from on high, they should read it knowing the
authors biases, the contemporary views on the authors work from other experts
in the field, and an understanding of their own knowledge level and context.
The reality is that a huge amount of K-12 American history education is
propaganda and for someone with a K-12 American history background this book
is a very compelling read that provides a useful counter narrative to what
they have been taught, the main function of which is not to blindly trust the
words in the book, but to understand the practice of history not as a
recitation of facts but an analysis of past events with a specific point of
view, and how different points of view from authors with different motivations
can give different views of the past. IMO, this really brought the field of
history to life for me.

~~~
elefanten
It seems like the spirit of your comment is in accord with GP. GGP put forth
that Zinn is "the truth."

GP may have phrased it a bit dismissively but I read that comment as making
the same argument you do: no given history book contains the final truth.

As for GP's comment that Zinn has no place today -- you offer a more nuanced
take. But we're in a moment replete with valorizing paeans to Zinn (like TFA)
and calls for using People's History more widely as a _textbook_. Maybe, given
that we are 40 years on from it's writing, that's not the best move.

------
rayiner
[https://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/december/wineburg-
histor...](https://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/december/wineburg-
historiography-zinn-122012.html)

> Wineburg, one of the world's top researchers in the field of history
> education, raises larger issues about how history should be taught. He says
> that Zinn's desire to cast a light on what he saw as historic injustice was
> a crusade built on secondary sources of questionable provenance, omission of
> exculpatory evidence, leading questions and shaky connections between
> evidence and conclusions.

A similar warning needs to be leveled at the 1619 Project, which likewise
focuses more on rhetoric than careful scholarship:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1619_Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1619_Project)

In particular, the lead essay originally stated that protecting slavery was
“one primary reason the colonists fought the American Revolution.”

After extensive criticism from scholars, the Times edited that sentence to
read that protecting slavery was “one primary reason some of the colonists
fought the American Revolution.”

Of course the “one primary ... some of...” construction dilutes they assertion
beyond recognition. The Times defended this as just the addition of “two
words” but it undermines the central thesis of the lead essay. Think of the
evidence required to support the first assertion, compared to the second
assertion. To support the first assertion, you needed evidence that protecting
slavery was a primary reason for the colonists as a whole. To support the
revised assertion, you need only find _some_ colonists, among millions, with
that motivation.

The 1619 articles on the economic importance of slavery, moreover, are not
written by an economist and do not represent the consensus views of
economists. Here, the Zinnesque aspect really comes out. It is an often
overlooked and very important fact that slavery made some politically powerful
people very rich, and those people had a major hand in fashioning America. But
most people can’t trace any wealth back to that time. Politically, it would be
better to convince people that they continue to benefit from slavery having
existed. So the essays are forced to make the far more tenuous claim that
America traces its exceptional wealth to slavery. But of course it defies
basic economics to suggest you can make a society—as opposed to specific
oligarchs—richer through non-free, non-market labor. That’s where it helps to
have an author write the essays who isn’t an economist!
[https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-1619-project-tells-a-
false-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-1619-project-tells-a-false-story-
about-capitalism-too-11588956387)

~~~
alecb
Damn, a millionaire professor at Stanford has issues with Howard Zinn. Funny
coincidence!

~~~
squidlogic
Argument ad hominem.

~~~
anigbrowl
Actually a genetic fallacy. An ad hominem would be 'an ugly millionaire
professor.'

------
philipkglass
Eric Hobsbawm's account of the "long 19th century," as told in his _The Age of
Revolution_ , _The Age of Capital_ , and _The Age of Extremes_ , is something
that readers who are interested in Zinn may also be interested in. Hobsbawm
appears to have a significantly better reputation among professional
historians than Zinn does.

Hobsbawm still frequently appears on university reading lists for history
majors. I remember the trilogy as engaging and easy to read for an outsider to
the field. He is less polemical than Zinn, even if his political sympathies
are similar.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hobsbawm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hobsbawm)

Favorable mentions of Hobsbawm from AskHistorians:

[https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5bcvbe/i_am_...](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5bcvbe/i_am_reading_eric_hobsbawms_the_age_of_revolution/)

[https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/efznsq/is_er...](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/efznsq/is_eric_hobsbawns_long_19th_century_trilogy_still/)

~~~
sayhar
Can cosign. Hobsbawn was widely regarded as the greatest British historian (as
opposed to historian of Britain) by his death.

No shade to Howard Zinn, but he, like pretty much every other historian,
didn't nearly have that level of respect.

------
anm89
I doubt that many people as truly well intentioned as Zinn have done as much
damage to the world as he has.

I think you could tie a lot of the "the ends justify the means" attitude of
current leftists to Zinn.

~~~
bvrstvr
Can you cite examples of Zinn causing the world damage?

~~~
pessimizer
That would be too easy. Better to make vague accusations.

------
littlemerman
Nice to see an article about a history professor at the top of HN. :)

As a former history major, I can confirm that Zinn's work, while well
intentioned, isn't much respected in academia. He brought a useful new
perspective but didn't back up his arguments with strong evidence.

Poor evidence, however, doesn't discredit Zinn's central thesis about American
history.

For more rigorous approach American history I would recommend Eric Foner:

[http://www.ericfoner.com/books/index.html](http://www.ericfoner.com/books/index.html)

Although his focus is more global, Eric Hobsbawm is one of the most
influential historians of the twentieth century. His "The Age of..." are worth
a read"

[https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/eric-
hobsbawm-t...](https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/eric-hobsbawm-the-
communist-who-explained-history)

The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848 The Age of Capital: 1848-1875 The Age of
Empire: 1875-1914 The Age of Extremes: 1914-1991

------
lazugod
Who are his contemporaries?

~~~
jolux
Noam Chomsky and the other elements of the Cantabrigian intelligentsia of his
generation mostly.

~~~
lazugod
Oh, I see, “contemporaries” is the opposite of what I meant to ask.

Who are current writers like him?

------
lehi
This is presumably posted today because Trump announced an executive order to
establish an anti-anti-racist "1776 Commission" for "patriotic education" to
instruct children "to love America with all of their heart and all of their
souls": [https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-calls-
pat...](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-calls-patriotic-
eduction-says-anti-racism-teachings-are-child-n1240372)
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/trump-history-
educa...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/trump-history-
education/2020/09/17/f40535ec-ee2c-11ea-ab4e-581edb849379_story.html)

------
hirundo
> Zinn’s approach to history essentially inverted the traditional approach
> that placed the rich and powerful ... To tell history from the perspective
> of the oppressed and marginalized

The mirror image of Ayn Rand. I wonder if there is anyone at the intersection
of their fandoms.

~~~
oivey
Rand wrote fiction, not even anything purporting to be history.

~~~
hirundo
She is best known for fiction but was also a prolific essayist. The essays
expound on her theories of history, economics, and philosophy. See
[https://aynrand.org/novels/](https://aynrand.org/novels/), bottom of the page
for the non-fiction.

------
google234123
Well, if you want a far-left and deeply pessimistic interpretation of history,
he's you guy.

~~~
the_benno
This seems like a kneejerk response to a strawman version of Zinn. He's a
pretty middle-of-the-road academic politically speaking and doesn't get
anywhere near what I would call far-left.

As for "pessimistic", well, I'd just say that the facts don't care about your
feelings. Powerful institutions are (generally speaking) violent and uncaring
towards those without power; ignoring that fact does us all a disservice.

~~~
trentnix
Zinn's own words (which are quoted in the article) confirm the parent's point:

 _From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-
correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that
something fundamental was wrong in this country . . . something rotten at the
root. The situation required not just a new president or new laws, but an
uprooting of the old order, the introduction of a new kind of
society—cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian._

~~~
jolux
Saying that America has deeply rooted problems is not pessimism, it's realism.
Not believing in people's ability to make it better is pessimism.

~~~
trentnix
And in that quote, Zinn explicitly mentions he doesn’t believe in “people’s
ability to make it better”:

 _I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of
American democracy_

~~~
jolux
You're misreading him. He's talking about the ability of an ideology and a
system to correct itself, not that of the people it rules to choose a
different society for themselves.

~~~
trentnix
He is saying a revolution is required because the people can’t change things.
I’m not sure, short of outright nihilism, how one could be more pessimistic
that that.

~~~
jolux
He's casting doubt that the problems can be solved through voting alone.

~~~
trentnix
Yes. That's pessimistic.

~~~
jolux
About voting, sure. Not about the country at large.

------
pnw_hazor
I think we have had quite enough of Zinn.

“Objectivity is impossible,” Zinn once remarked, “and it is also undesirable.
That is, if it were possible it would be undesirable, because if you have any
kind of a social aim, if you think history should serve society in some way;
should serve the progress of the human race; should serve justice in some way,
then it requires that you make your selection on the basis of what you think
will advance causes of humanity.

[https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1493](https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1493)

~~~
sbilstein
This is true of all history, regardless of political viewpoint. There is no
such thing as objective explanation of history.

~~~
pnw_hazor
Is it undesirable to aim for objectivity? Zinn seemed to believe it was his
job to shape American society not record its history.

Reshaping American society may be a fine goal. And, Zinn certainly has been
successful at that, but it does not sound like history to me.

~~~
pessimizer
> Is it undesirable to aim for objectivity?

It's definitely undesirable to admit the concept is meaningless, then to
strive for it. That's just producing propaganda. You know the standards you're
going to strive for are arbitrary and just made up of a combination of things
you haven't questioned the importance of and things you've decided the
importance of, but not only do you cleave to them anyway, but you criticize
those who deviate from them as dangerous propagandists.

He thought his job was to create a more rational, more just society, and the
narrative he used to connect the events described in his sources was a servant
to that. That's the same thing that people who claim objectivity claim to be
doing, while they write history as the conflicts between the wealthy and
royal.

Claiming "objectivity" is just claiming that someone would be insane or
seditious for daring to question the claimant's premises. Claims that
objectivity is real inevitably ends in journalists and writers having to be
licensed and approved by the government.

