The historian Howard Zinn believed in the ideals of the Declaration of Independence: that the government is an artificial creation of the people, developed for the purpose of defending the equal right of all people to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If a government does not abide by these principles, then it is being destructive or tyrannical. As a consequence, the people have the right to alter or abolish it.
Born to Jewish immigrant parents, Howard Zinn grew up in the working-class tenements of New York City.
As a World War II bombardier, he became increasingly skeptical of state power after participating in the napalm bombing of Royan, France. His views were further cemented when he visited the victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
When studying history, he said that one can see not only violence but a refusal to engage in violence, not only injustice but a rebellion against such injustice. Influenced by his time as a shipyard laborer and union organizer and activist, Zinn argued that despite enormous odds, ordinary people have come together in the struggle for liberty and peace. It is not only the grand actions that seem to matter, but the many small ones that happen every day (Zinn 4).
Zinn earned his M.A. and Ph. D. in history from Columbia University, which was largely due to the GI Bill. To fund his doctorate degree, while raising two young children, he worked night-shifts as a warehouse loader and relied on fellowships.
He taught at Spelman College, a historically Black women’s institution where he supported student Civil Rights activists. Throughout his career there and elsewhere, he maintained that education should not remain neutral in times of crisis. Rather than prepare the new generations to fit into the old order, it is even more important to teach them to think critically about the issues of their lives, to question what they have been told, to form their own independent views (Zinn 7). Education becomes “most rich and alive when it confronts the reality of moral conflict in the world” (Zinn 120).
Following his military experience, he felt compelled to examine the motives of those pushing populations into war. Governments may claim to be fighting for democracy, freedom, and self-defense, they may label one side as good and the other bad, but war often multiplies violence rather than eliminates it.
As a prominent activist in the anti-war movement, Zinn observed that political leaders have to spend a tremendous effort, whether through enticement, propaganda, or coercion, to convince a normally hesitant population to support a war. But as the Pentagon Papers showed, the public statements of government officials may appear noble, such as invading Vietnam to protect liberty and democracy, while covertly serving other interests, such as tin, rubber, and oil (Zinn 155).
It is up to each person not merely to accept what they read in newspapers or watch on TV, but to examine the patterns of the past and sift truth from lies, facts from falsehoods:
History can come in handy. If you were born yesterday, with no knowledge of the past, you might easily accept whatever the government tells you. But knowing a bit of history–while it would not absolutely prove the government was lying in a given instance–might make you skeptical, lead you to ask questions, make it more likely that you would find out the truth. (Zinn 105)
The greatest danger to the country is not civil disobedience, which some believe will threaten the social order and lead to anarchy. It is civil obedience, “the submission of conscience to governmental authority” (Zinn 143). Obedience can lead to the horrors of totalitarianism. In a liberal state, it can end up as support for an unjust war or an erosion of civil liberties. The struggle of the Southern Blacks for equal rights, of the protesters during the Vietnam War for peace, may have been disobedient, may have even been illegal, but it often came from a place of deep morality. These were people who faced arrest for their ideals and risked their lives for total strangers. They were beaten and shot and crowded into cold cells. They were fired from prestigious positions and expelled from schools and shunned by their communities. But at their noblest, they acted out of compassion for humanity.
While the poor are routinely imprisoned for their crimes, the crimes of the rich and powerful often go unpunished. Imprisonment, for Zinn, would never truly solve the deeper systemic issues in society. From his own experience of teaching in prisons and being jailed for his activist work, he said:
I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions–poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed — which are at the root of most punished crime. (Zinn 150)
Despite the harsh realities of hatred and violence, despite the “large underclass of poor, desperate people” who are neglected, despite those who benefit from injustice, who fear change, who want the system to remain as it is, there is still the possibility of change. To believe that nothing positive will ever happen can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, crippling one’s will, ensuring that there will be no action.
Those who hold the power know how fragile their position is and are afraid of losing it, so they put a lot of effort into maintaining their illusions. This can work, but eventually, the people will get tired of what oppresses them.
At the most fundamental level, human beings are capable of kindness and cooperation, even if they have been conditioned to believe and act otherwise. They long for peace and love and justice. Ultimately, they want to care and be cared for:
There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment we will continue to see. We forget how often in this century we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people’s thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible.
The bad things that happen are repetitions of bad things that have always happened — war, racism, maltreatment of women, religious and nationalist fanaticism, starvation. The good things that happen are unexpected…
…We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory. (Zinn 208)
Zinn, Howard. You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times. Revised ed., Beacon Press, 2018.
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