The Ideas of Howard Zinn

7/30/2019 The Ideas of Howard Zinn

1/12BAAM Newsletter - 1

Extra Issue March 12th 2010

Boston Anti-AuthoritarianMovement Newsletter

The Art of Revolution, Anarchism Shouldnt be

a Dirty Word, Page 6

The Ideas of Howard Zinn

Presented in collaboration with

The Sacco and Vanzetti Commemoration Society

Special Edition

Zinn: A World Without

Borders, Page 9Page 3



-The Art of Revolution,

by Howard ZinnPage 3-Anarchism Shouldnt be a Dirty

Word, an Interview.Page 7

A World Without Borders,Page 9

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Since the death of Howard Zinn, many

have paid tribute to this great think-er. Howard Zinn as a historian was a

teacher of the world that was, and as a radical,

a teacher of the world that could be. Newspa-

pers have printed stories full of his deeds: the

campaigns he fought on, the working peoples

history he brought to light, the plays he wrote,

the books he published, and the students he

taught. Little, however, has been said about

Howards ideas themselves.

Howard Zinn has been celebrated through-

out the mainstream media he so scathingly

criticized. But thus far, the mainstream me-

dia, and even much of the independent, leftistand progressive media, have barely touched

on his anarchist ideas. In part this is under-

standable. One of Zinns best traits was his

ability to relate to almost everyone, and that

hes been embraced by so many may be one

reason why his specic political beliefs have

been downplayed. He always gave his energy

and natural gifts to the most just causes, and

his words resonated with so many people

searching for a real change to the old order

of things. Another reason his revolutionary

beliefs have been downplayed may be that

anarchism is largely misunderstood and taboo

in the Western world. As Dimitri Prieto-Sam-

sonov wrote for the Havana Times, (Zinns)

biography in Wikipedia includes the uncom-

fortable symbol of the A inside the O: a refer-

ence to the axiom Anarchy is Order and the

emblem of the anarchist movement of which

he was an adherent. Uncomfortable? yes.

Only a few thinkers today dare to proclaim

themselves anarchists. Howard Zinn was one

of them. Indeed, anarchism is probably the

most misunderstood political ideology in the

United States. Howard wrote in the opening

words of Chapter 7 (entitled Anarchism)

Remembering HowardZinn, the anarchist.

of his book, The Zinn Reader, That I could

get a Ph.D from a major American universitywithout knowing anything about anarchism,

surely one of the most important political phi-

losophies of modern times, is a commentary

on the narrowness of American education.

Asked in an interview if he was unconfort-

able with the term anarchism, he said Im

not uncomfortable...I feel they need clari-

cation. After all, the term anarchist to so

many people means somebody who throws

bombs...Anarchism to me means a society in

which you have a democratic organization of

society--decision making, the economy--and

in which the authority of the capitalist is nolonger there... I see anarchism as meaning

both political and economic democracy, in

the best sense of the term.

Lastly, for some, Zinns ideas about a bet-

ter world have been watered down to make

his work t into their world view, to use his

name to further their cause or party. For us,

hoever, the extent of Zinns radicalism is a

testament to his brilliance, and that through

the course of his long and very active life, he

never gave up daring to believe that the world

could be drastically better.

An integral part of the life and legacy of

Howard Zinn are the contributions he made

to revolutionary thought. Instead of telling

you what we think Howard Zinn believed,

weve brought together a few works in which

he described his beliefs with his own words.

So many have already, in these few weeks

since his passing, strung together words re-

membering Howard Zinn the professor, the

activist, the WWII air force pilot, the play-

wright, the speaker, the historian, and the

husband, and some even the dock worker

from Brooklyn. This issue is dedicated to

remembering Howard Zinn, the anarchist.

In This Issue



The Art of Revolution

The following is part of Howard Zinns introduction to the 1971 American

edition of Herbert Reads collection of writings,Anarchy and Order. Thecollection was frst published in London in 1954.

The word anarchy unsettles most people

in the Western world; it suggests dis-

order, violence, uncertainty. We have

good reason for fearing those conditions,

because we have been living with them for

a long time, not in anarchist societies (there

have never been any) but in exactly those so-

cieties most fearful of anarchythe powerful

nation-states of modern times.

At no time in human history has there been

such social chaos. Fifty million dead in theSecond World War. More than a million dead

in Korea, a million in Vietnam, half a million

in Indonesia, hundreds of thousands dead

in Nigeria, and in Mozambique. A hundred

violent political struggles all over the world

in twenty years following the second war to

end all wars. Millions starving, or in prisons,

or in mental institutions. Inner turmoil sym-

bolized by huge armies, stores of nerve gas,

and stockpiles of hydrogen bombs. Wherever

men, women and children are even a bit con-

scious of the world outside their local bor-

ders, they have been living with the ultimate

uncertainty: whether or not the human raceitself will survive into the next generation.

It is these conditions that the anarchists

have wanted to end: to bring a kind of order

to the world for the rst time. We have never

listened to them carefully, except through

the hearing aids supplied by the guardians of

disorderthe national government leaders,

whether capitalist or socialist. The order de-

sired by anarchists is different from the order

(Ordnung, the Germans called it: law and

order, say the American politicians) of na-

tional governments. They want a voluntary

By Howard Zinn

forming of human relations, arising out of the

needs of people. Such an order comes from

within, and so is natural. People ow into

easy arrangements, rather than being pushed

and forced. It is like the form given by the

artist, a form congenial, often pleasing, some-

times beautiful. It has the grace of a volun-

tary, condent act....

The order of politics, as we have known it

in the world, is an order imposed on society,

neither desired by most people, nor directed to

their needs. It is therefore chaotic and destruc-

tive. Politics grates on our sensibilities. It vio-

lates the elementary requirements of aesthet-

icsit is devoid of beauty. It is coercive, as

if sound were forced into our ears at a decibel

level such as to make us scream, and those re-

sponsible call this music. The order of mod-

ern life is a cacophony which has made us al-

most deaf to the gentler sounds of the universe.

It is tting that in modern times, around

the time of the French and American Revolu-

tions, exactly when man [sic] became most

proud of his [sic] achievements, the ideas of

anarchism arose to challenge that pride. West-ern civilization has never been modest in de-

scribing its qualities as an enormous advance

in human history: the larger unity of national

states replacing tribe and manor; parliamen-

tary government replacing the divine right of

kings; steam and electricity substituting for

manual labor; education and science dispel-

ling ignorance and superstition; due process

of law canceling arbitrary justice. Anarchism

arose in the most splendid days of Western

civilization because the promises of that

civilization were almost immediately broken.

Nationalism, promising freedom from

outside tyranny, and security from interna

disorder, vastly magnied both the stimulus

and the possibility for worldwide empires

over subjected people, and bloody conicts

among such empires: imperialism and war

were intensied to the edge of global suicide

exactly in the period of the national state. Par-

liamentary government, promising popula

participation in important decisions, became

a faade (differently constructed in oneparty and two-party states) for rule by elites

of wealth and power in the midst of almost-

frenzied scurrying to polls and plebiscites

Mass production did not end poverty and

exploitation; indeed it made the persistence

of want more unpardonable. The produc-

tion and distribution of goods became more

rational technically, more irrational morally

Education and literacy did not end the decep-

tion of the many by the few; they enabled

deception to be replaced by self-deception

mystication to be internalized, and socia

control to be even more effective than everbefore, because now it had a large measure

of self-control. Due process did not bring

justice: it replaced the arbitrary, identiable

dispenser of injustice with the unidentiable

and impersonal. The rule of law, replacing

the rule of men, was just a change in rulers

In the midst of the American Revolution

Tom Paine, while calling for the establish-

ment of an independent American govern

ment, had no illusions about even a new

revolutionary government when he wrote, in

Common Sense, Society in every state is a

blessing, but government even in its best state

is but a necessary evil.

Anarchists almost immediately recognized

that the fall of kings and the rise of commit

tees, assemblies, parliaments, did not bring

Some excerpts of

Graphic taken from the article, A

Peoples History of Howard Zinnby Andrew Flood,www.anarchism.pageabode.com/andrewnood/peo-

ples-history-howard-zinn


4/12

democracy; that revolution had the potential

for liberation, but also for another form of

despotism. Thus, Jacques Roux, a country

priest in the French Revolution concerned

with the lives of the peasants in his district,

and then with the workingmen in the Gravil-

liers quarter of Paris, spoke in 1972 against

the senatorial despotism, saying it was as

terrible as the scepter of kings because it

chains the people without their knowing it

and brutalizes and subjugates them by laws

they themselves are supposed to have made.

In Peter Weisss play, Marat-Sade, Roux,

straitjacketed, breaks through the censorship

of the play within the play and cries out:Who controls the market

who locks up the granaries

who got the loot from the palaces

who sits tight on the estates

that were going to be divided

between the poor

before he is quieted.

A friend of Roux, Jean Varlet, in an earlyanarchist manifesto of the French Revolution

calledExplosion wrote

What a social monstrosity, what a master-

piece of Machiavellianism, this revolutionary

government is in fact. For any reasoning be-

ing, Government and Revolution are incom-

patible, at least unless the people wishes to

constitute organs of power in permanent in-

surrection against themselves, which is too

absurd to believe.

But it is exactly that which is too absurd to

believe which the anarchists believe, because

only an absurd perspective is revolutionary

enough to see through the limits of revolution

itself. Herbert Read, in a book with an appro-

priately absurd title, To Hell with Culture (he

was seventy: this was 1963, ve years before

his death), wrote:

What has been worth while in human his-

torythe great achievements of physics and

astronomy, of geographical discovery and of

human healing, of philosophy and of art

has been the work of extremistsof thse who

believed in the absurd and dared the impos-

sible...

The Russian Revolution promised even

moreto eliminate that injustice carried into

modern times by the American and French

Revolutions. Anarchist criticism of that Rev-

olution was summed up by Emma Goldman

(My Further Disillusionment in Russia) as

follows:

It is at once the great failure and the great

tragedy of the Russian Revolution that it at-

tempted...to change only institutions and con-ditions while ignoring entirely the human and

social values involved in the Revolution... No

revolution can ever succeed as a factor of lib-

eration unless the means used to further it be

identical in spirit and tendency with the pur-

poses to be achieved. Revolution is the nega-

tion of the existing, a violent protest against

mans inhumanity to man [sic] with all of the

thousand and one slaveries it involves. It is

the destroyer of dominant values upon which

a complex system of injustice, oppression,

and wrong has been built up by ignorance and

brutality. It is the herald of new values, usher

ing in a transformation of the basic relations

of man to man, and of man [sic] to society.

The institution of capitalism, anarchists be-

lieve, is destructive, irrational, inhumane. I

feeds ravenously on the immense resources

of the earth, and then churns out (this is its

achievementit is an immense stupid churn)

huge quantities of products. Those products

have only an accidental relationship to wha

is most needed by people, because the orga

nizers and distributers of goods care not abou

human need; they are great business enter

prises, motivated by prot. Therefore, bombs

guns, ofce buildings, and deodorants take

priority over food, homes, and recreation ar

eas. Is there anything closer to anarchy (in

the common use of the word, meaning con

fusion) than the incredibly wild and wastefu

economic system in America?

Anarchists believe the riches of the world

belong equally to all, and should be dis

tributed according to need, not through theintricate inhuman system of money and

contracts which have so far channeled mos

of the riches into a small group of wealthy

people, and into a few countries. (The United

States [in the 1970s] with six percent of the

population, owns, produces, and consumes

fty percent of the world production.) They

would agree with the Story Teller in Berthol

Brechts The Caucasian Chalk Circle, in the

nal words of the play:

BAAM Newsletter - 4



Take note what men of old concluded:

That what there is shall go to those

who are good for it

Thus: the children to the motherly,

that they prosper

The carts to good drivers,

that they are well driven

And the valley to the waterers,

that it bring forth fruit.

It was on this principle that Gerrard Win-

stanley, leader of the Diggers in seventeenth

century England, ignored the law of private

ownership and led his followers to plant grain

on unused land. Winstantly wrote about his

hope for the future:

When this universal law of equity rises up

in every man and woman, then none shall lay

claim to any creature and say, This is mine,

and that is yours. This is my work, that is

yours. But everyone shall put to their hands to

till the earth and bring up cattle, and the bless-

ing of earth shall be common to all: when aman [sic] hath need for any corn or cattle,

take from the next storehouse he [sic] meets

with. There shall be no buying or selling, no

fairs or markets, but the whole earth shall be

a common treasury for every man, [sic] for

earth is the lords...

Our problem is to make use of the mag-

nicent technology of out time, for human

needs, without being victimized by a bu-

reaucratic mechanism. The Soviet Union did

show that national economic planning for

common goals, replacing the prot-driven

chaos of capitalist production, could produce

remarkable results. It failed, however, to do

what Herbert Read and other recent anar-

chists have suggested: to do away with the

bureaucracy of large-scale industry, charac-

teristic of both capitalism and socialism, and

the consequent unhappiness of the workers

who do not feel at ease with their work, with

the products, with their fellow workers, with

nature, with themselves. The problem could

be solved, Read has suggested, by workers

control of their own jobs, without sacricing

the benets of planning and coordination for

the larger social good....

Both the capitalist and the socialist bu-

reaucracies of our time fail, anarchists say,

on their greatest promise: to bring democra-cy. The essence of democracy is that people

should control their own lives, by ones or

twos or hundreds, depending on whether the

decision being made affects one or two or a

hundred. Instead, our lives are directed by a

political-military-industrial complex in the

United States, and a party hierarchy in the So-

viet Union. In both situations, there is the pre-

tense of popular participation, by an elaborate

scheme of voting for the representatives who

do not have real power (the difference be-

tween a one-party state and a two-party state

being no more than one partyand that asmudged carbon copy of the other.) The vote

in modern societies is the currecy of politics

as money is the currency of economics: both

mystify what is really taking placecontrol

of the many by the few....

What a waste of the evolutionary process! It

took billions of years to create human beings

who could, if they chose, form the materials

of the earth and themselves into arrangements

congenial to man, woman, and the universe.

Can we still choose to do so?

It seems that revolutionary changes are

neededin the sense of profound transfor-

mations of our work processes, our decision-

making arrangements, our sex and family

relations, our thought and culturetoward

a humane society. But this kind of revolu-

tionchanging our minds as well as our

institutionscannot be accomplished by the

customary methods; neither military action

to overthrow governments, as some tradition

bound radicals suggest; nor by that slow pro-

cess of electoral reform, which traditional lib

erals urge on us. The state of the world today

reects the limitations of both these methods

Anarchists have always been accused of a

special addition to violence as a mode of rev-

olutionary change...What makes anarchists

unique among revolutionaries, however, isthat most of them see revolution as a cultural

ideological, creative process, in which vio

lence would be as incidental as the outcries of

a mother and baby in childbirth. It might be

unavoidablegiven the natural resistance to

changebut something to be kept to a mini

mum while more important things happen....

Anarchism seeks that blend of order and

spontaneity in our lives which gives us har-

mony with ourselves, with others, with na-

ture. It understands the need to change ou

political and economic arrangements to free

ourselves, for the enjoyment of life. And iknows that the change must begin now, in

those everyday human relations over which

we have the most control. Anarchism knows

the need for sober thinking, but also for tha

action which classies otherwise academic

and abstract thought.

Herbert Read, in Chains of Freedom, writes

that we need a Black Market in culture, a de

termination to avoid the bankrupt academic

institutions, the xed valued and standardized

products of current art and literature; not to

trade our spiritual goods through the recog-

nized channels of Church, or State, or Press

rather to pass them under the counter. If

so, one of the rst items to be passed under

the counter must surely be the literature tha

speaks, counter to all the falsications, abou

the ideas and imaginings of anarchism.



Howard Zinn, 85, is a Professor Emer-

itus of political science at Boston

University. He was born in Brooklyn,

NY, in 1922 to a poor immigrant family....Al-

though Zinn spent his youthful years helping

his parents support the family by working in

the shipyards, he started with studies at Co-

lumbia University after WWII, where he suc-cessfully defended his doctoral dissertation in

1958. Later he was appointed as a chairman

of the department of history and social sci-

ences at Spelman College, an all-black wom-

ens college in Atlanta, GA, where he actively

participated in the Civil Rights Movement.

From the onset of the Vietnam War he was

active within the emerging anti-war move-

ment, and in the following years only stepped

up his involvement in movements aspiring

towards another, better world. Zinn is the au-

thor of more than 20 books, including A Peo-

ples History of the United States that is a

brilliant and moving history of the American

people from the point of view of those who

have been exploited politically and economi-

cally and whose plight has been largely omit-

ted from most histories (Library Journal).

Zinns most recent book is entitled A Power

Governments Cannot Suppress, and is a fas-

cinating collection of essays that Zinn wrote

in the last couple of years. The beloved radi-

cal historian is still lecturing across the US

and around the world, and is, with active par-

ticipation and support of various progressive

social movements continuing his struggle for

free and just society.

Ziga Vodovnik: From the 1980s onwardswe are witnessing the process of economic

globalization getting stronger day after day.

Many on the Left are now caught between a

dilemma -- either to work to reinforce the

sovereignty of nation-states as a defensive

barrier against the control of foreign and

global capital; or to strive towards a non-na-

tional alternative to the present form of glo-

balization and that is equally global. Whats

your opinion about this?

Howard Zinn: I am an anarchist, and ac-cording to anarchist principles nation states

become obstacles to a true humanistic glo-

balization. In a certain sense the movement

towards globalization where capitalists are

trying to leap over nation state barriers, cre-

ates a kind of opportunity for movement to

ignore national barriers, and to bring peopletogether globally, across national lines in op-

position to globalization of capital, to create

globalization of people, opposed to tradition-

al notion of globalization. In other words to

use globalization -- it is nothing wrong with

idea of globalization -- in a way that bypasses

national boundaries and of course that there

is not involved corporate control of the eco-

nomic decisions that are made about people

all over the world.

Ziga Vodovnik: Pierre-Joseph Proudhononce wrote that: Freedom is the mother, not

the daughter of order. Where do you see life

after or beyond (nation) states?

Howard Zinn: Beyond the nation states?(laughter) I think what lies beyond the nation

states is a world without national boundaries,

but also with people organized. But not or-

ganized as nations, but people organized as

groups, as collectives, without national and

any kind of boundaries. Without any kind

of borders, passports, visas. None of that!

Of collectives of different sizes, depend-

ing on the function of the collective, having

contacts with one another. You cannot have

self-sufcient little collectives, because these

collectives have different resources availableto them. This is something anarchist theory

has not worked out and maybe cannot pos-

sibly work out in advance, because it would

have to work itself out in practice.

Ziga Vodovnik: Do you think that a changecan be achieved through institutionalized par-

ty politics, or only through alternative means

-- with disobedience, building parallel frame-

works, establishing alternative media, etc.

Howard Zinn: If you work through theexisting structures you are going to be cor-

rupted. By working through political system

that poisons the atmosphere, even the pro-

gressive organizations, you can see it even

now in the US, where people on the Leftare all caught in the electoral campaign and

get into erce arguments about should we

support this third party candidate or that third

party candidate. This is a sort of little piece

of evidence that suggests that when you ge

into working through electoral politics you

begin to corrupt your ideals. So I think a way

to behave is to think not in terms of repre-

sentative government, not in terms of voting

not in terms of electoral politics, but think-

ing in terms of organizing social movements

organizing in the work place, organizing in

the neighborhood, organizing collectives tha

can become strong enough to eventually takeover -- rst to become strong enough to resis

what has been done to them by authority, and

second, later, to become strong enough to ac-

tually take over the institutions.

Ziga Vodovnik: One personal questionDo you go to the polls? Do you vote?

Howard Zinn: I do. Sometimes, not al-ways. It depends. But I believe that it is

preferable sometimes to have one candidate

rather another candidate, while you under-

stand that that is not the solution. Sometimes

the lesser evil is not so lesser, so you want to

An Interview with Howard Zinn

By Ziga Vodovnik, CounterPunch, May 17, 2008,

http://www.alternet.org/story/85427/

Howard Zinn: Anarchism

Shouldnt Be a Dirty Word



ignore that, and you either do not vote or vote

for third party as a protest against the party

system. Sometimes the difference betweentwo candidates is an important one in the im-

mediate sense, and then I believe trying to get

somebody into ofce, who is a little better,

who is less dangerous, is understandable. But

never forgetting that no matter who gets into

ofce, the crucial question is not who is in

ofce, but what kind of social movement do

you have. Because we have seen historically

that if you have a powerful social movement,

it doesnt matter who is in ofce. Whoever is

in ofce, they could be Republican or Demo-

crat, if you have a powerful social movement,

the person in ofce will have to yield, will

have to in some ways respect the power ofsocial movements.

We saw this in the 1960s. Richard Nixon

was not the lesser evil, he was the greater evil,

but in his administration the war was nally

brought to an end, because he had to deal with

the power of the anti-war movement as well

as the power of the Vietnamese movement. I

will vote, but always with a caution that vot-

ing is not crucial, and organizing is the im-

portant thing.

When some people ask me about voting,

they would say will you support this candi-

date or that candidate? I say: I will support

this candidate for one minute that I am in the

voting booth. At that moment I will support

A versus B, but before I am going to the vot-

ing booth, and after I leave the voting booth, I

am going to concentrate on organizing people

and not organizing electoral campaign.

Ziga Vodovnik: Anarchism is in this re-spect rightly opposing representative democ-

racy since it is still a form of tyranny -- tyr-

anny of majority. They object to the notion

of majority vote, noting that the views of

the majority do not always coincide with the

morally right one. Thoreau once wrote that

we have an obligation to act according to the

dictates of our conscience, even if the latter

goes against the majority opinion or the laws

of the society. Do you agree with this?

Howard Zinn: Absolutely. Rousseau oncesaid, if I am part of a group of 100 people,

do 99 people have the right to sentence me

to death, just because they are majority? No,

majorities can be wrong, majorities can over-

rule rights of minorities. If majorities ruled,we could still have slavery. 80% of the popu-

lation once enslaved 20% of the population.

While run by majority rule that is OK. That

is a very awed notion of what democracy

is. Democracy has to take into account sev-

eral things -- proportionate requirements of

people, not just needs of the majority, but

also needs of the minority. And also has to

take into account that majority, especially in

societies where the media manipulates pub-

lic opinion, can be totally wrong and evil.

So yes, people have to act according to con-

science and not by majority vote.Ziga Vodovnik:Where do you see the histor-ical origins of anarchism in the United States?

Howard Zinn: One of the problems withdealing with anarchism is that there are many

people whose ideas are anarchist, but who do

not necessarily call themselves anarchists.

The word was rst used by Proudhon in the

middle of the 19th century, but actually there

were anarchist ideas that proceeded Proud-

hon, those in Europe and also in the United

States. For instance, there are some ideas of

Thomas Paine, who was not an anarchist,

who would not call himself an anarchist, but

he was suspicious of government. Also HenryDavid Thoreau. He does not know the word

anarchism, and does not use the word anar-

chism, but Thoreaus ideas are very close to

anarchism. He is very hostile to all forms of

government. If we trace origins of anarchism

in the United States, then probably Thoreau is

the closest you can come to an early Ameri-

can anarchist. You do not really encounter

anarchism until after the Civil War, when you

have European anarchists, especially German

anarchists, coming to the United States. They

actually begin to organize. The rst time that

anarchism has an organized force and be-

comes publicly known in the United States is

in Chicago at the time of Haymarket Affair..

Ziga Vodovnik: Most of the creative energy for radical politics is nowadays coming

from anarchism, but only few of the people

involved in the movement actually call them-

selves anarchists. Where do you see the

main reason for this? Are activists ashamed

to identify themselves with this intellectua

tradition, or rather they are true to the com-

mitment that real emancipation needs eman

cipation from any label?

Howard Zinn: The term anarchism hasbecome associated with two phenomena

with which real anarchists dont want to as-

sociate themselves with. One is violence, and

the other is disorder or chaos. The popular

conception of anarchism is on the one hand

bomb-throwing and terrorism, and on the

other hand no rules, no regulations, no disci

pline, everybody does what they want, confu-

sion, etc. That is why there is a reluctance to

use the term anarchism. But actually the ideasof anarchism are incorporated in the way the

movements of the 1960s began to think.

I think that probably the best manifestation

of that was in the civil rights movement with

the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Com

mittee -- SNCC. SNCC without knowing

about anarchism as philosophy embodied the

characteristics of anarchism. They were de-

centralized. Other civil rights organizations

for example Southern Christian Leadership

Conference, were centralized organizations

with a leader -- Martin Luther King. Nationa

Association for the Advancement of ColoredPeople (NAACP) were based in New York

and also had some kind of centralized organi

zation. SNCC, on the other hand, was totally

decentralized. It had what they called eld

secretaries, who worked in little towns al

over the South, with great deal of autonomy

They had an ofce in Atlanta, Georgia, but

the ofce was not a strong centralized author

ity. The people who were working out in the

eld -- in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and

Mississippi -- they were very much on their

own. They were working together with loca

people, with grassroots people. And so there

is no one leader for SNCC, and also great suspicion of government.

They could not depend on government to

help them, to support them, even though the

government of the time, in the early 1960s

was considered to be progressive, liberal

John F. Kennedy especially. But they looked

at John F. Kennedy, they saw how he be

haved. John F. Kennedy was not supporting

the Southern movement for equal rights for

Black people. He was appointing the segrega-

tionists judges in the South, he was allowing

southern segregationists to do whatever they

I am an

anarchist, and

according toanarchist prin-

ciples nation

states become

obstacles to a

true humanistic

globalization.

-Howard Zinn

Drawing byEric Gulliver



wanted to do. So SNCC was decentralized,

anti-government, without leadership, but they

did not have a vision of a future society like

the anarchists. They were not thinking long

term, they were not asking what kind of so-

ciety shall we have in the future. They were

really concentrated on immediate problem of

racial segregation. But their attitude, the way

they worked, the way they were organized,

was along, you might say, anarchist lines.

Ziga Vodovnik: Do you thing that pejora-tive (mis)usage of the word anarchism is di-

rect consequence of the fact that the ideas that

people can be free, was and is very frighten-

ing to those in power?

Howard Zinn: No doubt! No doubt that an-archist ideas are frightening to those in pow-

er. People in power can tolerate liberal ideas.

They can tolerate ideas that call for reforms,

but they cannot tolerate the idea that there will

be no state, no central authority. So it is very

important for them to ridicule the idea of anar-

chism to create this impression of anarchism as

violent and chaotic. It is useful for them, yes.Ziga Vodovnik: In theoretical political sci-ence we can analytically identify two main con-

ceptions of anarchism -- a so-called collectivist

anarchism limited to Europe, and on another

hand individualist anarchism limited to US.

Do you agree with this analytical separation?

Howard Zinn: To me this is an articial

separation. As so often happens analysts can

make things easier for themselves, like to cre-

ate categories and t movements into catego-

ries, but I dont think you can do that. Here in

the United States, sure there have been people

who believed in individualist anarchism, but

in the United States have also been organized

anarchists of Chicago in 1880s or SNCC. I

guess in both instances, in Europe and in the

United States, you nd both manifestations,

except that maybe in Europe the idea of anar-

cho-syndicalism become stronger in Europe

than in the US. While in the US you have the

IWW, which is an anarcho-syndicalist organi-

zation and certainly not in keeping with indi-

vidualist anarchism.

Ziga Vodovnik: What is your opinionabout the dilemma of means -- revolution

versus social and cultural evolution?

Howard Zinn: I think there are severaldifferent questions. One of them is the is-

sue of violence, and I think here anarchists

have disagreed. Here in the US you nd a

disagreement, and you can nd this disagree-

ment within one person. Emma Goldman,

you might say she brought anarchism, after

she was dead, to the forefront in the US in the

1960s, when she suddenly became an impor-

tant gure. But Emma Goldman was in favor

of the assassination of Henry Clay Frick, but

then she decided that this is not the way. Her

friend and comrade, Alexander Berkman, he

did not give up totally the idea of violence.

On the other hand, you have people who were

anarchistic in way like Tolstoy and also Gan-

dhi, who believed in nonviolence.

There is one central characteristic of anar-

chism on the matter of means, and that central

principle is a principle of direct action -- of

not going through the forms that the society

offers you, of representative government,

of voting, of legislation, but directly taking

power. In case of trade unions, in case ofanarcho-syndicalism, it means workers going

on strike, and not just that, but actually also

taking hold of industries in which they work

and managing them. What is direct action? In

the South when black people were organizing

against racial segregation, they did not wait

for the government to give them a signal, or

to go through the courts, to le lawsuits, wait

for Congress to pass the legislation. They took

direct action; they went into restaurants, were

sitting down there and wouldnt move. They

got on those buses and acted out the situation

that they wanted to exist.Of course, strike is always a form of direct

action. With the strike, too, you are not asking

government to make things easier for you by

passing legislation, you are taking a direct ac-

tion against the employer. I would say, as far

as means go, the idea of direct action against

the evil that you want to overcome is a kind

of common denominator for anarchist ideas,

anarchist movements. I still think one of the

most important principles of anarchism is that

you cannot separate means and ends. And that

is, if your end is egalitarian society you have

to use egalitarian means, if your end is non-

violent society without war, you cannot use

war to achieve your end. I think anarchism

requires means and ends to be in line with one

another. I think this is in fact one of the distin-

guishing characteristics of anarchism.

Ziga Vodovnik: On one occasion NoamChomsky has been asked about his specic

vision of anarchist society and about his very

detailed plan to get there. He answered that

we can not gure out what problems are

going to arise unless you experiment with

them. Do you also have a feeling that many

left intellectuals are loosing too much energy

with their theoretical disputes about the prop-er means and ends, to even start experiment-

ing in practice?

Howard Zinn: I think it is worth present-ing ideas, like Michael Albert did with Pare-

con for instance, even though if you maintain

exibility. We cannot create blueprint for

future society now, but I think it is good to

think about that. I think it is good to have in

mind a goal. It is constructive, it is helpful,

it is healthy, to think about what future soci-

ety might be like, because then it guides you

somewhat what you are doing today, but only

so long as this discussions about future so

ciety dont become obstacles to working to

wards this future society. Otherwise you can

spend discussing this utopian possibility ver

sus that utopian possibility, and in the mean

time you are not acting in a way that would

bring you closer to that.

Ziga Vodovnik: In your Peoples Historyof the United States you show us that our free

dom, rights, environmental standards, etc.

have never been given to us from the wealthyand inuential few, but have always been

fought out by ordinary people -- with civi

disobedience. What should be in this respec

our rst steps toward another, better world?

Howard Zinn: I think our rst step is toorganize ourselves and protest against exist

ing order -- against war, against economic

and sexual exploitation, against racism, etc

But to organize ourselves in such a way

that means correspond to the ends, and to

organize ourselves in such a way as to cre-

ate kind of human relationship that should

exist in future society. That would mean toorganize ourselves without centralize author-

ity, without charismatic leader, in a way tha

represents in miniature the ideal of the future

egalitarian society. So that even if you don

win some victory tomorrow or next year in

the meantime you have created a model. You

have acted out how future society should be

and you created immediate satisfaction, even

if you have not achieved your ultimate goal.

Ziga Vodovnik: What is your opinionabout different attempts to scientically

prove Bakunins ontological assumption tha

human beings have instinct for freedom,

not just will but also biological need?

Howard Zinn: Actually I believe in thisidea, but I think that you cannot have biologi

cal evidence for this. You would have to nd

a gene for freedom? No. I think the other pos-

sible way is to go by history of human behav-

ior. History of human behavior shows this de-

sire for freedom, shows that whenever people

have been living under tyranny, people would

rebel against that.

Ziga Vodovnik is an Assistant Professo

of Political Science at the Faculty of Socia

Sciences, University of Ljubljana, where his

teaching and research is focused on anarchistheory/praxis and social movements in the

Americas. His new book Anarchy of Every

day Life -- Notes on Anarchism and its For

gotten Conuences will be released in late

2008.

View this story online at: http://www.alter

net.org/story/85427/



Howard Zinn, professor emeritus at

Boston University, is perhaps thiscountrys premier radical historian.

He was an active gure in the civil rights and

anti-Vietnam War movements of the 1960s.

Today, he speaks all over the country to large

and enthusiastic audiences. His book, A Peo-

ples History of the U.S. continues to sell in

huge numbers. His latest work is Original Zinn.

...Barsamian: Donald Macedo, in the in-troduction to On Democratic Education, men-

tions the Tom Paxton song, What Did You

Learn in School Today? He quotes a couple

of the lyrics.I learned that Washington never

told a lie/I learned that soldiers seldom die/Ilearned that everybodys free. What does a

democratic education mean to you?

Zinn: To me, a democratic educationmeans many things: it means what you learn

in the classroom and what you learn outside

the classroom. It means not only the content

of what you learn, but also the atmosphere in

which you learn it and the relationship between

teacher and student. All of these elements of

education can be democratic or undemocratic.

Students as citizens in a democracy have

the right to determine their lives and to play a

role in society. A democratic education should

give students the kind of information that will

enable them to have power of their own in so-

ciety. What that means is to give students the

kind of education that suggests to the students

that historically there have been many ways

in which ordinary people can play a part in

making history, in the development of their

society. An education that gives the student

examples in history of where people have

shown their power in reshaping not only their

own lives, but also in how society works.

In the relationship between the student and

the teacher there is democracy. The student

Howard Zinn:

A World Without BordersBy David BarsamianZNet MagazineMay 2006 Issue

An interview with Howard Zinn.

has a right to challenge the teacher, to ex-

press ideas of his or her own. That educationis an interchange between the experiences of

the teacher, which may be far greater than

the student in certain ways, and the experi-

ences of the student, since every student has a

unique life experience. So the free inquiry in

the classroom, a spirit of equality in the class-

room, is part of a democratic education.

It was very important to make it clear to

my students that I didnt know everything,

that I was not born with the knowledge that

Im imparting to them, that knowledge is ac-

quired and in ways in which the student can

acquire also.Barsamian: How do you as a teacher foster

that sense of questioning and skepticism and

how do you avoid its going over to cynicism?

Zinn: Skepticism is one of the most im-portant qualities that you can encourage. It

arises from having students realize that what

has been seen as holy is not holy, what has

been revered is not necessarily to be revered.

That the acts of the nation which have been

romanticized and idealized, those deserve to

be scrutinized and looked at critically.

I remember that a friend of mine was teach-

ing his kids in middle school to be skeptical of

what they had learned about Columbus as the

great hero and liberator, expander of civiliza-

tion. One of his students said to him, Well,

if I have been so misled about Columbus, I

wonder now what else have I been misled

about? So that is education in skepticism.

Barsamian: When you taught at SpelmanCollege, and later at Boston University, you

were teaching kids just coming out of high

school. They come with a lot of baggage, a

lot of embedded ideas. How difcult was it

for you to reach them?

Zinn: In the case of teaching at Spelman

College, my students were African Ameri-

can and I was one of a few white teachersFor most of my students I was the rst white

teacher they had ever encountered.

I tried to have them realize that my values

and ideas were different from those of the

white-supremacist society they had grown up

in, that I believed in the equality of human be

ings, and that I took the claims of democracy

seriously, not only to try to break down the

barrier between us by what I said in the class-

room, but by how I behaved toward them, by

not indicating that their education had been

poor, which it very often was, by not mak-

ing them feel that they were coming into thisclassroom handicapped.

Also by showing them that outside the

classroom I was involved in the social strug

gle that related to their lives. When they de

cided to participate in this struggle and go

to Atlanta and try to desegregate the public

library or when they decided to follow the

example of the four students in Greensboro

North Carolina and sit in, I was with them, I

was supporting them, I was helping them, I

was walking on picket lines with them, I was

engaging in demonstrations with them, I was

sitting in with them. More than anything,

tried to create an atmosphere of democracy in

our relationship.

Barsamian: Youve been a lifelong readerfrom the time when as a kid you found Tarzan

and the Jewels of Opar in the street with the

rst few pages torn out. Later, your parents go

you the complete collection of Charles Dick-

enss novels. Whats the value of reading?

Zinn: I dont know if my experience agreeswith the experience of other people-I have

talked to people, young people especially

who would say to me, This book changed

my life. I remember sitting in a cafeteria in


10/12

Hawaii across from a student at the Universi-

ty of Hawaii and she had a copy ofThe Color

Purple by Alice Walker. Since Alice Walker

had been my student at Spelman, I didnt im-

mediately say, Thats my student. I sort of

cautiously said, Oh, youre reading The Col-

or Purple. What do you think of it? The stu-

dent said, This book changed my life. And

that startled me, a book that changed your life.

And also, I must say, in all modesty, that I

have run into a number of students who havereadA Peoples History of the United States,

and whove said, in ways that I rst did not

believe but Im almost beginning to believe

now, You know, your book changed my life.

There are books that have changed my

life. I think reading Dickens changed my life.

Reading Steinbecks The Grapes of Wrath

changed my life. Reading Upton Sinclair,

yes, changed my life.

...Barsamian:The economist John KennethGalbraith once said that the paradox of the

U.S. was private wealth and public squalor.

There is a story on page 16 in the New YorkTimes describing how in John Steinbecks

hometown of Salinas, California where theyre

facing record decits. The town is closing the

three public libraries, including those named

for Steinbeck and one for Cesar Chavez.

Zinn: Its interesting that that item ap-peared on page 16. It should have appeared

on page 1 because it might have alerted more

people to what is a horrifying development

today. What is happening in Salinas, Califor-

nia, should be a wake-up call.

Barsamian: But this attack on libraries, onschools, is it part of a pattern of undermining

the commons?

Zinn: Let me interject my own personalnote because I grew up in a cockroach-in-

fested tenement in New York and we had no

books in our house. I would go to a library

in East New York on the corner of Stone and

Sutter. I still remember that library. That was

my refuge. It was a wonderful eye-opener and

mind-opener for me.

But your question is a larger one. And that

is, what is happening to the public commons?

That is what Galbraith pointed to when he

wrote The Afuent Society. What has been re-

ally one of the terrible consequences of themilitarization of the country is the starving of

the public sector, education, libraries, health,

housing. This is why people become social-

ists. People become socialists in the way that

I became a socialist when I read Upton Sin-

clair and when I read Karl Marx.

Barsamian: There are lots of distortionsand misrepresentations attached to Marx.

Should people be reading Marx today?

Zinn: Yes, but I wouldnt advise them toimmediately plunge into Volume II or III

ofDas Kapital, maybe not even Volume I,

which is formidable. But I think The Commu-

nist Manifesto, although the title may scare

people, is still very much worth reading be-

cause what it does is suggest that the capital-

ist society we have today is not eternal. The

Communist Manifesto presents an historical

view of the world in which we live. It shows

you that societies have evolved from one

form to another, one social system to another,

from primitive communal societies to feudal

societies to capitalist societies. That capitalistsociety has only come into being in the last

few hundreds years and it came into being as

a result of the failure of feudal society to deal

with the change in technology which was in-

exorably happening-the commercialization,

industrialization, new tools and implements.

Capitalist society was able to deal with this

new technology and to

enhance it enormously.

But what Marx

pointed out-and I think

this is a very important

insight-is that capitalistsociety, while its de-

veloped the economy

in an impressive way,

nevertheless did not

distribute the results of

this enormous produc-

tion equitably. So Marx

pointed to a fundamen-

tal aw in capitalism,

a aw that should be

evident to people today,

especially in the U.S.

Here is this enormously

productive and advanced technological coun-

try and yet more than forty-ve million peo-

ple are without health insurance, one out of

ve children grow up in poverty, and millions

of people are homeless and hungry.

I think another thing that would be important

is Marxs view that when you look beneath the

surface of political conicts or cultural con-

icts, you nd class conict. That the impor-

tant question to ask in any situation is, Who

benets from this, what class benets from

this? If Americans understood this Marxian

concept of class then, when they went to the

polls and they had to choose between the Re-publican and Democratic Party, they would

ask, Which class does this party represent?

Barsamian: There was a parade in Taos,New Mexico on February 15, 2003. The lead

banner read, No Flag Is Large Enough to

Cover the Shame of Killing Innocent People.

Thats a quote from you. How is patriotism

being used today?

Zinn: Patriotism is being used today theway patriotism has always been used and that

is to try to encircle everybody in the nation

into a common cause, the cause being the

support of war

and the ad-

vance of na-

tional power.

Patriotism is

used to create

the illusion of

a common in-

terest that ev-

erybody in the

country has.I just men-

tioned about

the necessity

to see society

in class terms,

to realize that

we do not

have a common interest in our society, tha

people have different interests. What patrio

tism does is to pretend to a common interest

And the ag is the symbol of that common in

terest. So patriotism plays the same role tha

certain phrases in our national language play

Barsamian: The U.S. is the only countryin history to use weapons of mass destruction

The year 2005 marked the 60th anniversary

of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

That anniversary, incidentally, came amid

reports that the U.S. was redesigning atomic

weapons that would be sturdier and more re

liable and last longer. Where were you whenthe bombs were dropped and what were your

thoughts at the time?

Zinn: I remember it very clearly becauseI had just returned from ying bombing mis

sions in Europe. The war in Europe was over

but the war in Asia with Japan was still on

We ew back to this country in late July 1945

We were given a 30-day furlough before re

porting back for duty with the intention tha

we would then go to the Pacic and continue

in the air war against Japan.

We were there waiting at the bus stop and

BAAM Newsletter - 10



there was this newsstand and the big head-

line, Atomic Bomb Dropped on Hiroshima.Because the headline was so big, although

I didnt know what an atomic bomb was, I

assumed it must be a huge bomb. And my

immediate reaction was, well, maybe then I

wont have to go to Japan. Maybe this means

the end of the war on Japan. So I was happy.

I began to question the bombing of Hiro-

shima when I read John Herseys book,Hiro-

shima, which is based on a series of articles

he wrote for the New Yorker. He had gone

to Hiroshima after the bombing and spo-

ken to survivors. You can imagine what the

survivors looked like-people without arms,legs, blinded, their skin something that you

couldnt bear to look at. Hersey spoke to

these survivors and wrote down their stories.

When I read that, for the rst time the effects

of bombing on human beings came to me.

I had dropped bombs in Europe, but I had

not seen anybody on the ground because

when youre bombing from 30,000 feet, you

dont see anybody, you dont hear screams,

you dont see blood, you dont know whats

happening to human beings. When I read John

Hersey, it came to me, what bombing did to

human beings. That book changed my idea

not just about bombing, but it changed myview of war because it made me realize that

war now, in our time, in the time of high-level

bombing and long-range shelling and death at

a distance inevitably means the indiscriminate

killing of huge numbers of people and cannot

be accepted as a way of solving problems.

Barsamian: Youre sometimes describedas an anarchist and/or a democratic socialist.

Are you comfortable with those terms? And

what do they mean to you?

Zinn: How comfortable I am with thoseterms depends on whos using them. Im

not uncomfort-

able when you

use them. But if

somebody is us-

ing them who

I suspect does

not really know

what those terms

mean, then I feel

uncomfor table

because I feelthey need clari-

cation. After all,

the term anar-

chist to so many

people means

somebody who

throws bombs,

who commits

terrorist acts,

who believes in

violence. Oddly

enough, the term

anarchist has always applied to individualswho have used violence, but not to govern-

ments that use violence. Since I do not believe

in throwing bombs or terrorism or violence, I

dont want that denition of anarchism to ap-

ply to me.

Anarchism is also misrepresented as being

a society in which there is no organization,

no responsibility, just a kind of chaos, again,

not realizing the irony of a world that is very

chaotic, but to which the word anarchism is

not applied.

Anarchism to me means a society in which

you have a democratic organization of so-

ciety-decision making, the economy-and in

which the authority of the capitalist is no lon-

ger there, the authority of the police and the

courts and all of the instruments of control

that we have in modern society, in which they

do not operate to control the actions of peo-

ple, and in which people have a say in their

own destinies, in which theyre not forced to

choose between two political parties, neither

of which represents their interests. So I see

anarchism as meaning both political and eco-

nomic democracy, in the best sense of the term.

I see socialism, which is another term that

I would accept comfortably, as meaning notthe police state of the Soviet Union. After all,

the word socialism has been commandeered

by too many people who, in my opinion, are

not socialists but totalitarians. To me, social-

ism means a society that is egalitarian and in

which the economy is geared to human needs

instead of business prots.

Barsamian: The theme of the World So-cial Forum, which is held annually, is An-

other World Is Possible. If you were to close

your eyes for a moment, what kind of world

might you envision?

Zinn: The world that I envision is one inwhich national boundaries no longer exist

in which you can move from one country to

another with the same ease in which we can

move from Massachusetts to Connecticut, a

world without passports or visas or immigra

tion quotas. True globalization in the human

sense, in which we recognize that the world is

one and that human beings everywhere have

the same rights.

In a world like that you could not make wabecause it is your family, just as we are no

thinking of making war on an adjoining state

or even a far-off state. It would be a world

in which the riches of the planet would be

distributed in an equitable fashion, where ev-

erybody has access to clean water. Yes, tha

would take some organization to make sure

that the riches of the earth are distributed ac-

cording to human need.

A world in which people are free to speak

a world in which there was a true bill of

rights. A world in which people had their

fundamental economic needs taken care owould be a world in which people were freer

to express themselves because political rights

and free speech rights are really dependent on

economic status and having fundamental eco

nomic needs taken care of.

I think it would be a world in which the

boundaries of race and religion and nation

would not become causes for antagonism

Even though there would still be cultural dif

ferences and still be language differences

there would not be causes for violent action

of one against the other.

I think it would be a world in which people

would not have to work more than a few hours

a day, which is possible with the technology

available today. If this technology were no

used in the way it is now used, for war and for

wasteful activities, people could work three

or four hours a day and produce enough to

take care of any needs. So it would be a world

in which people had more time for music and

sports and literature and just living in a hu-

man way with others.

Barsamian: Youve said that you becamea teacher for a very modest reason: I wanted

to change the world. How close have you

come to achieving your goal?Zinn: All I can say is, I hope that by my

writing and speaking and my activity that I

have moved at least a few people towards a

greater understanding and moved at least a

few people towards becoming more active

citizens. So I feel that my contribution, along

with the contribution of millions of other peo

ple, if they continue, and if they are passed on

to more and more people, and if our numbers

grow, yes, one day we may very well see the

kind of world that I envision.


12/12BAAM N l tt 12

www.HowardZinn.org

Photos byFred Clow

In celebration of your time on this earth,

Howard Zinn, Presente!

(1922-2010),

Sacco and Vanzetti SocialSaturday, March 27th

Gather for a cultural celebration, with food, drinks

information about Tarek Mehannas case, and o

course, socializing. At the Community Church545 Boylston St, Copley Square, Boston

www.SaccoandVanzetti.org

This extra issue of the BAAM Newsletter was created with the

Sacco and Vanzetti Commemoration Society. Together, we

present it as a contribution to the Howard Zinn memorial

held on March 12, 2010, at the Community

Church of Boston, entitled A Celebration:

The Radical Ideas of Howard Zinn.

We envite you to our next event:

Documents

The Ideas of Howard Zinn