According to Howard Zinn, most of what we are taught about
history is “told from the point of view of governments, conquerors, diplomats
and leaders” (Zinn, p. 9). He contends that selection, simplification and
emphasis, are inevitable distortions; choices that must be made in order to
tell a cogent story. But, “the historian’s distortion is more than technical,
it is ideological” and “any chosen emphasis supports (whether the historian
means to or not) some kind of interest, whether economic or political or racial
or national or sexual” (Zinn, p. 8). Given this view, Zinn’s A People’s
History of the United States is an attempt to add the viewpoints of those
most often left out of historical narratives. He tells the landing of Columbus
from the perspective of the Arawaks, the Civil War from the perspective of the
slaves, the rise of industrialism from the perspective of the workers, the
opeerations of government from the perspective of the women ignored by it, and
the wars from the perspective of those who favored peace.
The writing in this book is plain, without being
simple-minded. Because of the overwhelming task the historian has set for
himself, he relies upon the linked stories of individuals and events to present
broad movements and subcultures. “It was January, midwinter, when the pay
envelopes distributed to weavers at one of the mills…showed that their wages,
already too low to feed their families, had been reduced. They stopped their
looms and walked out of the mill…soon 10,000 workers were on strike…the IWW
organized mass meetings and parades…the governor ordered out the state police.
A parade of strikers was attacked by police…this lead to rioting all that day…a
striker, Anna LoPizzo, was shot and killed. Witnesses said a policeman did it, but
the authorities arrested Joseph Ettor and another IWW organizer…Neither was at
the scene of the shooting.” (Zinn, pp. 327-8). His images are clear and
evocative, pitting the common people against a wealthy owner class and the
government that supports their interests.
Zinn admits that “a ‘people’s history’ promises more than
any one person can fulfill” and that “it is a history disrespectful of
governments and respectful of people’s movements of resistance.” He explains this
“makes it a biased account, one that leans in a certain direction. I am not
troubled by that, because the mountain of history books under which we all
stand leans so heavily in the other direction—so tremblingly respectful of
states and statesmen and so disrespectful, by inattention, to people’s
movements—that we need some counterforce to avoid being crushed into submission”
(Zinn, p. 570).
There is an underlying political science theory that drives Zinn’s
narrative: the historian straightforwardly expresses that he sees our government
as created by wealthy elites to support their interests, and that it has been
safeguarding those interests ever since. He puts forth the idea that most
governments are interested in maintaining stability and will relinquish power
and rights just enough to prevent rebellion from below. Concurring with Karl
Marx, Professor Zinn describes our capitalist state as “pretending neutrality
to maintain order, but serving the interests of the rich” (Zinn, p. 252). At times, the historian’s self-proclaimed
“bias” and “distortion” leads to distorted conclusions. Chapter Sixteen, “A
People’s War?” is an artless and comically unconvincing attempt to challenge
the notion that World War II was not popular among the US masses and
undemocratically foisted upon them. Conversely, in the same chapter, he
presents China’s communist government as “the closest thing, in the long
history of that ancient country, to a people’s government” (Zinn, p. 418).
Perhaps compared to China’s dynasties, Mao’s regime was closer to “a people’s
government;” but it was still a dictatorship with re-education camps and
prisons for those who disagreed. It appears doctrinaire to attack the capitalist
state for being in the hands of an elite minority while extolling the virtues
of a dictatorship in the following paragraph. But such juxtapositions are rare
for Zinn, and his version of our history presents consistent evidence of State
collusion with wealthy elites to maintain stability in a system which benefits
their association.
Whether or not the reader agrees with Professor Zinn’s
political paradigm, there is a great deal to learn from his topics. A
People’s History of the United States provides significant puzzle pieces to
our picture of the past. It is uniquely compiled and sensitively reveals the
paths of the disenfranchised through our nation’s evolution. He focuses upon
groups that are under-represented in our government and under-represented in the
discussion of our past. Their stories are the stories of the rest of us: immigrants,
activists, minorities, women and workers. People who influenced the evolution
of our country and without whom neither our nation nor our history is complete.
Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. New
York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1980.
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