Howard Zinn gave one of his last public interviews with Bill Moyers on December 11, 2009. He died today, January 27, 2010, of a heart attack at the age of 87 while traveling in Santa Monica, California.
The single question that plagued him most of his adult life, the same that plagued me most of mine, seemed to be
Why Do People Put Up With So Much Abuse
From Their Government?
While the most famous of his more than 20 books, The People’s History Of The United States, appears to be a concise introduction to his thoughts, his other works get into the nitty-gritty of government abuse of the people until they rise up and stop it.
- Artists in Times of War (2003) ISBN 1-58322-602-8.
- The Cold War & the University: Toward an Intellectual History of the Postwar Years (Noam Chomsky (Editor) Authors: Ira Katznelson, R. C. Lewontin, David Montgomery, Laura Nader, Richard Ohmann[7], Ray Siever, Immanuel Wallerstein, Howard Zinn (1997) ISBN 1-56584-005-4.
- Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology (1991) ISBN 0-06-092108-0[44]
- Disobedience and Democracy: Nine Fallacies on Law and Order (1968, re-issued 2002) ISBN 0-89608-675-5.
- Emma: A Play in Two Acts About Emma Goldman, American Anarchist (2002) ISBN 0-89608-664-X.
- Failure to Quit: Reflections of an Optimistic Historian (1993) ISBN 0-89608-676-3.
- The Future of History: Interviews With David Barsamian (1999) ISBN 1-56751-157-0.
- Hiroshima: Breaking the Silence (pamphlet, 1995) ISBN 1-884519-14-8.
- Howard Zinn On Democratic Education Donaldo Macedo, Editor (2004) ISBN 1-59451-054-7.
- Howard Zinn on History (2000) ISBN 1-58322-048-8.
- Howard Zinn on War (2000) ISBN 1-58322-049-6.
- Justice in Everyday Life: The Way It Really Works (Editor) (1974) ISBN 0-89608-677-1.
- Justice? Eyewitness Accounts (1977) ISBN 0-8070-4479-2.
- La Otra Historia De Los Estados Unidos (2000) ISBN 1-58322-054-2.
- LaGuardia in Congress (1959) ISBN 0-8371-6434-6, ISBN 0-393-00488-0.
- Marx in Soho: A Play on History (1999) ISBN 0-89608-593-7.
- New Deal Thought (editor) (1965) ISBN 0-87220-685-8.
- Original Zinn: Conversations on History and Politics (2006) Howard Zinn and David Barsamian.
- Passionate Declarations: Essays on War and Justice (2003) ISBN 0-06-055767-2.
- The Pentagon Papers Senator Gravel Edition. Vol. Five. Critical Essays. Boston. Beacon Press, 1972. 341p. plus 72p. of Index to Vol. I-IV of the Papers, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, editors.
- A People’s History of the Civil War: Struggles for the Meaning of Freedom by David Williams, Howard Zinn (Series Editor) (2005) ISBN 1-59558-018-2.
- A People’s History of the United States: 1492 – Present (1980), revised (1995)(1998)(1999)(2003) ISBN 0-06-052837-0.
- A People’s History of the United States: Teaching Edition Abridged (2003 updated) ISBN 1-56584-826-8.
- A People’s History of the United States: The Civil War to the Present Kathy Emery Ellen Reeves Howard Zinn (2003 teaching edition) ISBN 1-56584-725-3.
- A People’s History of the United States: The Wall Charts by Howard Zinn and George Kirschner (1995) ISBN 1-56584-171-9.
- A People’s History of American Empire (2008) by Howard Zinn, Mike Konopacki and Paul Buhle. ISBN 978-0805087444.
- The People Speak: American Voices, Some Famous, Some Little Known (2004) ISBN 0-06-057826-2.
- Playbook by Maxine Klein, Lydia Sargent and Howard Zinn (1986) ISBN 0-89608-309-8.
- The Politics of History (1970) (2nd edition 1990) ISBN 0-252-06122-5.
- Postwar America: 1945 – 1971 (1973) ISBN 0-89608-678-X.
- A Power Governments Cannot Suppress (2006) ISBN 978-0872864757.
- The Power of Nonviolence: Writings by Advocates of Peace Editor (2002) ISBN 0-8070-1407-9.
- SNCC: The New Abolitionists (1964) ISBN 0-89608-679-8.
- The Southern Mystique (1962) ISBN 0-89608-680-1.
- Terrorism and War (2002) ISBN 1-58322-493-9 (interviews, Anthony Arnove (Ed.)).
- The Twentieth Century: A People’s History (2003) ISBN 0-06-053034-0.
- Three Strikes: Miners, Musicians, Salesgirls, and the Fighting Spirit of Labor’s Last Century (Dana Frank, Robin Kelley, and Howard Zinn) (2002) ISBN 0-8070-5013-X.
- Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal (1967) ISBN 0-89608-681-X.
- Voices of a People’s History of the United States (with Anthony Arnove, 2004) ISBN 1-58322-647-8.
- You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times (1994) ISBN 0-8070-7127-7.
- A Young People’s History of the United States, adapted from the original text by Rebecca Stefoff; illustrated and updated through 2006, with new introduction and afterword by Howard Zinn; two volumes, Seven Stories Press, New York, 2007.
- Vol. 1: Columbus to the Spanish-American War. ISBN 978-1-58322-759-6.
- Vol. 2: Class Struggle to the War on Terror. ISBN 978-1-58322-760-2.
- The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy (1997) ISBN 1-888363-54-1.
Howard Zinn hoped to reach out and influence people into demanding a more democratic, if not a truly democratic. government. He hoped, as I hope, that people will change things once they understand that it is in their power to do so.
We do not need to
put up with a government
doing things in our name
that we do not agree with.
Howard Zinn dedicated his adult working life to proving this point and educating others as to its truth. He realized that once enough people woke up to the truth then the entire political-economic environment can change over night.
We can have a peaceful world. I am sad that Howard Zinn did not live to see it.
Great to see this page – thank you!
I am mourning, along with countless others, a person who I never met, but whose presence in his writings and interviews was so powerful it is as if we knew him.
I do wonder about what you wrote “The single question that plagued him most of his adult life, the same that plagued me most of mine, seemed to be – Why Do People Put Up With So Much Abuse From Their Government?”
I actually never got the feeling that Zinn didn’t completely understand why people put up with it – he understood oppression well, he wrote and spoke to counter all the ways people have been made to feel insignificant, voiceless and afraid..and to bring to light how the powerful have tried to accomplish this – but how throughout history they have often finally been defeated by the actions of working people -
and that, as you wrote, “people will change things once they understand that it is in their power to do so.”
While we can’t help but mourn, we can still keep organizing…
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see:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/02/remembering-howard-zinn-1922-2010.html
Steve Lendman says this about Howard Zinn:
>Few could deny his commitment to his core belief – “that >people should stand for their rights and their vision of >the good society.” For decades, Zinn did that and more >with the best of the most committed.
If more acted as Howard Zinn, our country and our world would be a better place, of that I have no doubt. The fact he was so active in the struggle to activate people in their own cause indicates to me that he saw this as an essential point that needed strengthening.
It seems to me he split his attention between directly addressing problems with government and explaining why it is in everyone’s interest to do so. I draw my conclusions based upon his actions.
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jay, i’m not sure if your comment was in response to mine, but just in case it was: i’m sorry if i wasn’t clear. of course i agree with everything you quoted about zinn; my only point was that he was not at all puzzled by *why* people put up with so much abuse by their government” – he understood completely *why* they did; unlike most academics (and others who live in their own bubble), he was well aware of how hard it was to stand up to power, he understood oppression, he understood what working people have to sacrifice and jeopardize in their struggle for a just and egalitarian country – he was not puzzled about *why* people put up with abuse and exploitation, but he wanted them to realize their enormous power when they act collectively.
[Reply]
leeza, IMHO the idea of “how hard it was to stand up to power” is a pervasive myth that Howard Zinn dedicated his life to disprove.
The important thing to remember is that people actually hold the power, that government holds temporary power only at the pleasure and discretion of people who may revoke that privilege at any time for any or no reason at all.
The image in my mind is of a puny scrawny academic jumping up and down, waving his arms and doing everything he can think of to show us that we can all change things today if we stand up together because power lives in human subjects and not in their constructs. He exposed himself as living proof of his concept.
I believe he understood repression, not oppression, as the dominate structure that keeps people from acting in their own interests. The only thing “working people have to sacrifice and jeopardize in their struggle for a just and egalitarian country” are the very structures that keeps them coerced into disagreeable labor, the very same unjust and non-egalitarian system.
Repression may be countered by education and live demonstrations of freedom in action. With exposure to these two tactics people can generally figure it out for themselves. Howard Zinn seemed to have found an excellent balance between these two tactics.
Individuals must take the final step in freeing themselves from repression, otherwise the liberator merely becomes the new authority figure. Howard Zinn knew this and refused to take that position content in his flawless persistent demonstration of what level of action was possible by even a frail academic.
After all, Howard Zinn, that leaping gnome, pranced and danced about exclaiming his freedom for all to hear. How could he not but wonder *why* more people did not join him?
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Jay, I appreciate your responding, but I don’t understand why you give Zinn so little credit. Clearly, he had nothing but enormous admiration for all those who risked and gave their lives during the civil rights movement, as just one example – he would never think that was anything but “hard,” to say the least. I can’t imagine his diminishing workers who had their heads bashed in, people who lost their jobs, and then from there, everything else, including their health, during the McCarthy era (as my family and friends did), etc., by not recognizing that everything they went through was hard. Nowhere is there any indication that Zinn didn’t fully understand just how much people had to sacrifice and struggle; he uses the words “struggle” (which, by definition, would mean it isn’t easy) and “oppression” often in this understanding. In fact, much of what Zinn accomplished was to bring to light all the courage, strength, work and sacrifice that “ordinary” people did to win their rights, and taught us to see not what *he* had, but what we all have within us when we act collectively; his admiration for these people is palpable; if their fight (again, by definition, means it was hard) was as easy as you imply, it wouldn’t evoke this admiration and the necessity of writing about all the “ordinary” working people whose history must not be forgotten. The sacrifices, difficulties and dangers people faced, and perservered, which Zinn taught his students, and which inspired him, are translated by you into a “pervasive myth that Howard Zinn dedicated his life to disprove.”
Why would Zinn wonder about other people not joining him? He was not arrogant, he was fully aware that without tenure, for instance, he wouldn’t have had a job where he could speak freely (which he had to fight to hold even with tenure), and he knew the enormous risks and difficult lives (he knew not everyone can be a college professor) working people must face in their fight for their rights. (Even now thousands of people are fired every year for trying to organize a union – could you possibly think that losing a job, in this country, is anything but hard?) He was fully aware that he had privileges that others didn’t. Yes, he did want “to show us that we can all change things today if we stand up together because power lives in human subjects and not in their constructs.” But, he did not have the conceit that “He exposed himself as living proof of his concept.” He would never insult workers by negating just how much people have to fight to get that power. He was not blind to the difficulties working people face every single day of their lives – and that in the midst of living such hard lives, fighting for an egalitarian society is that much harder.
No one who has been involved in this struggle has any illusions about how hard it is, including, if not especially, Zinn. Recognizing that this is a long, hard struggle does not discourage people; on the contrary, this recognition is part of the fuel that unites and inspires us.
(As for being a “frail academic,” Zinn, more than once, rejected the description of himself as an “academic,” and “frail?” – you are referring to a very brief period of his long life, and Zinn no doubt would have attributed his vitality to random good luck.)
[Reply]
Leeza, I give Zinn a great deal of credit, perhaps more than you give him. With whom do we fight for an egalitarian society? Only ourselves. Because we, as a people, are ignorant. Zinn sought always to remedy this.
Who builds the weapons, loads them onto transport and uses them in the field? Working people.
Who constructs courtrooms and jails, administers and staffs them, arrests people and guards them behind bars? Working people.
What are the biggest unions in the United States? The ones the members of our governments belong to. And they continue to vote themselves greater benefits while legislating more power for their unions. My experience with unions is that they are generally a convenience for management who then gets to average out everyone’s pay to the lowest common denominator. Speak to me not of the attractiveness of unions.
I believe Howard Zinn wished, as I do, for the day when we no longer feel the need to petition our wrongdoers for redress, but demand it in no uncertain terms. Unions were once the vehicles for these demands but that is history, as Zinn well knew.
Waiting for the government to side against the government, the courts to side against the courts, Wall Street to side against Wall Street, Big Business to side against Big Business, Union management to side against Union management, regardless of how eloquent or logical you make your appeal, appears through out history as a waste of time. I believe Zinn knew this.
If the great majority of people wish things to change, then they need to stop thinking about how hard it will be and get it in gear. The fear you invoke, which ignorance makes so convincing, is the enemy, a much greater enemy than any group of white men in $5,000 suits. I believe Zinn knew this.
I’ve never met anyone united or inspired by the prospect of a long hard struggle, especially those in the midst of living a hard life. What seems to unite and inspire people is the prospect that we can change things now. I believe Zinn knew this.
And regardless of how he thought of himself, society rightly perceived him as an academic. I believe Zinn felt everyone could be an academic with his knowledge and so made less of his own accomplishments.
OK, I recant “frail” and substitute “not physically imposing.”
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I wish Howard Zinn ‘s message could be played every night to the American public, maybe then they would get off thier lazy behinds and make the changes needed to make this country what it should be ; BY THE PEOPLE,AND FOR THE PEOPLE, GOD BLESS AMERICA. I long for justice!
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