
Howard Zinn, historian who challenged status quo, dies at 87 - J3L2404
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/01/howard_zinn_his.html
======
barnaby
I vehemently disagreed with Zinn when I tried reading "A People's History" a
few years ago, but I was much more naive then. I have realized that corruption
is the norm, and that when people fight back, through organized labor or
through revolution, there's usually a good reason for it.

I'm even more skeptical that communism would magically fix the wrongs Zinn
railed against, for the same reasons democracy hasn't fixed it. But I do have
to say, that I am glad someone like Zinn wrote prolifically to stand up for
the little guy, for us. RIP.

~~~
rgrieselhuber
I never got the impression from his writings that communism was the
alternative he was advocating.

~~~
CWuestefeld
I could only stomach the first 10 pages, and quit. But that little peak
certainly made me think of socialism.

And I don't see how socialism is looking out for the little guy, either. To
look out for individuals you need a liberal (in the classical sense)
philosophy of individual liberty. Socialism is built on a philosophy of
collectivism, doing what's best for the community as a whole ("the needs of
the many exceed the needs of the few, or the one"). The rhetoric about helping
the little guy is just what monsters like Lenin and Mao find it easiest to use
to hoodwink the masses.

~~~
b-man
_I could only stomach the first 10 pages, and quit. But that little peak
certainly made me think of socialism._

10 pages is enough to link the guy to socialism? really?

 _The rhetoric about helping the little guy is just what monsters like Lenin
and Mao find it easiest to use to hoodwink the masses._

Monsters use any rhetoric they think will fit at their historic moment. This
is just a red shirted example of Godwin's law.

~~~
CWuestefeld
_10 pages is enough to link the guy to socialism? really?_

Maybe not to start a conversation. But when chiming in to support someone
else's claim, and with the clear caveat, then yes, I think it's perfectly OK.

 _Monsters use any rhetoric they think will fit at their historic moment._

Show me a monster since the advent of socialism that did not use it as its
justification. The only one I can think of is Pinochet in Chile (see
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_coup_of_1973#Casualties> ), and even
that needs a very loose definition of monster. Certainly the chart-toppers
like Lenin, Mao, Stalin, Kim, Pol Pot, Hitler preached socialism. (I'll grant
that they generally didn't understand the concept very well, but the point is
that it's what they advocated to their partisans and people as the ultimate
solution)

~~~
b-man
Specifically one from my own country,

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artur_da_Costa_e_Silva>

Argentina's story is a bit more brutal

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Argentina_(1966%E2%8...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Argentina_\(1966%E2%80%931973\))

All over South America during the 60~80 there were numerous 'capitalist'
brutal dictatorships.

And then there's more, such as

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suharto>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Reza_Pahlavi>

Never forget, what makes you a monster is not that you killed millions, but
that you were willing to do it in order to maintain your power.

~~~
CWuestefeld
I'm not finding counts of deaths, nor listings of atrocities, for these. I
think you're stretching the "monster" thing here; they're not in the same
league as Lenin and Mao.

 _what makes you a monster is not that you killed millions, but that you were
willing to do it in order to maintain your power_

But if you _believed_ that doing so was somehow right (again, the "greatest
good" nonsense or something), then it's OK? That's nuts.

~~~
b-man
_I'm not finding counts of deaths, nor listings of atrocities, for these._

Argument from ignorance. They were in the same league from the point of view
of their victims.

 _But if you believed that doing so was somehow right (again, the "greatest
good" nonsense or something), then it's OK?_

I never said that. From available evidence, not one of the people you
mentioned did their atrocities for the ``greatest good'', and it would not
matter if that was the case, because the willingness to commit atrocities is
the monstrous thing.

------
jswinghammer
I've always like Howard Zinn and I'm pretty far away from him politically
speaking. I'm about as libertarian as they come but I always admired his
consistent anti-war tone.

I always get annoyed when people don't like the opposition party's wars but
love their party's wars. Zinn was always one of my favorite people on the left
because he didn't like any war in American history or see it as a "good war".

I wish him well and think we're all a bit worse off for his absence.

~~~
rms
Is there really that much difference between libertarianism and libertarian
socialism? Both are anti-authoritarian political ideologies. The main
disagreement seems to be about the role of labor unions in our society. There
is much more common ground between libertarian socialism and libertarianism
than there is between libertarianism and American centrism.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Libertarianism opposes the initiation of force.

Libertarian socialists, like regular socialists, favor the use of force. They
differ from socialists only on exactly who should be empowered to use it (the
state vs smaller agencies).

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marciovm123
I remember reading "A People's History" during high school and having my mind
completely blown. As I got older, I realized my life experiences led me to
disagree more and more with Zinn, but I was always thankful that his book had
pushed me to see the world through such a different (and easily neglected)
point of view. RIP.

------
patrickgzill
Obligatory challenging of the status quo about Howard Zinn:

<http://hnn.us/articles/1493.html>

~~~
kingkawn
To insist on appending an angry, trashy review on the day the man died is
especially graceless.

~~~
lionhearted
> To insist on appending an angry, trashy review on the day the man died is
> especially graceless.

I'm glad the commentor did, because this will likely be the first and last
discussion of Howard Zinn on Hacker News, and the review had some important
points.

~~~
rms
I thought it was inappropriate, not for questioning Zinn, but for doing so in
a way much more biased than Zinn himself. Zinn was a great historian; Daniel
J. Flynn is the proud author of _Why the Left Hates America: Exposing the Lies
That Have Obscured Our Nation’s Greatness._

Flynn loses any remaining credit for calling Zinn a Marxist, continuously.
That's a label chosen for its emotional resonance; not its meaning. Zinn was a
socialist, a libertarian socialist, an anarchist sympathizer, a leftist... but
he didn't go around labeling himself as a Marxist on the back of the books,
that's something only done by his critics. I might as well be calling Flynn a
fascist.

~~~
lionhearted
> I thought it was inappropriate, not for questioning Zinn, but for doing so
> in a way much more biased than Zinn himself.

Eh, the review was nothing special, but the fact that Zinn left out that the
side he labeled as oppressed started the Pequot War with a murder seemed like
an important detail. Or the fact that war was primarily Indian tribes vs.
other Indian tribes, and the Anglo component was less than 20% of the winning
side. But, you can't let the facts get in the way of a good story.

I imagine Zinn himself would agree he was more of an activist than a
historian, and he fits history to his activism. The uberpatriot people aren't
any better and might well be worse, but the message is more important than the
messenger. Pointing out that a man claiming to be a historian is leaving out
entirely crucial historical details is important.

~~~
rms
By the point of that war the white people had been oppressing the Indians for
more than a hundred years. One murder does not justify returning with a
massacre, and leaving out various facts from history does not mean much when
you are trying to retell a whole lot of history. If people want a different
telling of history, there is always Wikipedia.

Also, if you read Wikipedia, you will see that Daniel Flynn's understanding of
the Pequot War is completely wrong. I will quote him, and then let you read
the Wikipedia article yourself.

>Thus the Pequot violence against whites that led to the war is almost
entirely absent from the text. The most Zinn can bring himself to admit is
that “Massacres took place on both sides.” In fact, the author details only
the atrocities committed by one side: the Puritans.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pequot_War>

------
ryanwaggoner
I'm reading A People's History right now. Like others here have said, I don't
agree with much of the underlying ideology, but I appreciate a different view
of history that acknowledges that the study of history isn't as simple as
"this is what happened". RIP.

------
netcan
I recommend listening to 'A People's History' as an audiobook.

Howard Zinn sets out with the stated objective of narrating a dissident's
history. With this, he absolves himself from narrating a completely objective
history, which I suspect he sees as an impossible task. You may not agree with
many of his assumptions (I don't), but you will gain from the experience.

------
ubernostrum
Headline seems a bit off, but perhaps only because I know quite a few
practicing historians whose reaction to his work was "oh, so some guy just
made a fortune packaging up all the stuff we've been writing about for years?"

~~~
rgrieselhuber
Making it accessible is key.

~~~
ubernostrum
True, but it doesn't mean that he "challenged the status quo", unless by that
you mean he wrote the same stuff as everybody else but in an easier-to-read
format. The credit Zinn gets for being some sort of maverick attacking a
standard view of history is... well, he wasn't. History's complex and often
not very nice, as most historians will be happy to tell you, and American
history is no exception.

~~~
rgrieselhuber
From a purely historical context, you're right of course. I think the
"challenged the status quo" part comes from the way he combined the
popularization of a history that had previously under-represented in the
mainstream consciousness with his activism in a variety of forums.

------
teeja
When Howard got done, 'his-story' was no longer his. So much for the painted-
up, lying cheap tart once called history.

~~~
pjonesdotca
Absolutely, the best thing that Howard Zinn ever did was tear to shreds the
lie that "History is written by the winners". As I recall, he never meant "A
People's History of the United States" to be a canonical text but, merely one
to read alongside the "standard message" in dialectical* conflict.

*"Dialectical" in Marxist critical theory, not necessarily in political motivation.

~~~
mbubb
Good point - and to further your definition of dialectical - it is not simple
opposition of two forces that leads to a 3rd path (I think that is often
referred to as Aristotelian dialectic).

The critical theory dialectic you refer to is the ability to observe something
in terms of its totality. The moment (for Hegel) that the totality is clear
and apparent it begins to 'sublate' which in this context means simultaneously
to negate and transcend.

In the preface to Hegels "Phenomenology Of Spirit" one example is the acorn.

It goes through a series of discrete steps of growth. It is hard to say the
moment that it ceases to become an acorn and becomes something else. It goes
through a process of negation (no longer an acorn) and transcends this to
become an oak shoot and then a tree.

There is a moment i am sure - when the shell cracks and a series of small
quantitative changes result in a qualitative change.

There was a time in which the highly educated 'saw' the totality. Samuel
Johnson was reputed to have read all the available knowledge of his time. (I
dont know how one could know this - but for the sake of argument I will take
Ben Jonson's word). But it has been 200 years since anyone would even make
that claim.

But Zinn was able to hold up a recognizable fragment in which we could get a
glimpse of a total image for a brief moment.

------
cunard3
How sad. Because when the older ones die it seems for the first while like the
rest of us have no one. No one to look up to, no one to stick up for us.

------
mbubb
I, myself, am not a Socialist I tend to vote 3rd party because I believe
Nader's basic idea that there is no difference between the two dominant
parties - they just serve different corporate interests. But I am in no way a
committed Marxist/ Socialist anything. But I feel deeply that so few
discussions get it right - in ether the pro or the con.

It is easy to confuse the political realities of Socialism for the underlying
ethos. Marx's Socialism at its core sought to put political control in the
hands of those who produce society. The ethic defining the movement was to
take the advances of the French Revolution (which was essentially a Middle
Class revolution) and extend those liberties for all.

It is in that sense that Zinn is a Socialist writer. It is not accurate to
characterize him as writing to "help the little guy". I tis accurate that this
is a perversion of not only Stalin and Mao (Stalin more than Lenin as Lenin
was more about aligning state power with a political party) but also Hitler,
Huey Long, David Duke, etc. Demagogery is neither left nor right.

The important work of someone like Howard Zinn is not that he simplified
history or wrote for the 'little guy' but that he wrote with awareness of
Machiavelli's dictum: "History is written by the victors"

I think - if one is interested in what Zinn was writing towards and can look
at things like socialism with a dispassionate eye - it is worth reading Walter
Benjamin's "Theses on the Philosophy of History". Dense and epigrammatic -
like reading Nietzsche or Kierkegaard.

It is easy - and in terms of praxis correct - to lambaste Socialism as a
failed attempt which turned into horrific perversion. But there is something
vital there still. I would argue that there is much still to be learned from
reading Marx and as a thinker he leads back to thinkers like Hegel, Kant,
Vico, etc and engaged some of the brilliant minds of the 20th century - like
Adorno, Benjamin, Bloch, etc

To borrow from one of Adorno's lectures on Hegel in which he attacked
Benedetto Croce for the presumption of an early 20th century essay entitled
"What is living and what is dead in Hegel". The issue here is not Zinn's
relevance to our world but our relevance in terms of the basic Enlightenment
tradition.

One thing that is very hard to argue if you are coming from the standpoint of
" liberal (in the classical sense) philosophy of individual liberty" (which I
agree is the place to start - that is where Marx and Zinn both start in their
very different attempts), one thing that is hard to argue is that we are
dealing with the Kantian transendental subjectivity that classical liberal
philosophy was based on.

We are different. The 20th century changed what it means to be human.

To sum up - I think Howard Zinn was a wonderful figure. I have enormous
respect for him. He is not one of my favorite writers or thinkers but I do
enjoy listening to his readings. For me he is an example of an ethical person
who saw clearly and attempted to educate others. I have similar respect for
Ralph Nader, Richard Stallman, Philip and Daniel Berrigan even when I entirely
disagree with a point or a position. RIP Professor Zinn.

