A Life on the Left

Movements against power have risen across time and space. It comes to this day and will remain so. History is a powerful tool to use masses for and against. And practically, sports the vulnerability for manipulation. Howard Zinn was one of those champions. He rose to counter the false narrative of US History and produced a volume to retrace the history, not a ‘version’ of history but actual events that had been deliberately omitted. With Zinn’s ‘War is no longer the recourse’ thought fading in our times, it is imperative to go back in history and retrieve a man who stood for human integrity, absolute equality, and above all, freedom.

Howard’s family emigrated to the USA in 1903 from Eastern Europe and started life in abject poverty in the alleys of Brooklyn. Zinn, born on 24th August 1922, son of working-class Jewish parents, went a long way from a shipyard worker at 18 to become one of the respected Historians of America. The class consciousness for which Zinn would dedicate all his life was the result of “the sweat of industrial life that made me aware of the differences between the lives we lived with those we saw in movies and magazines,” as Zinn recalled himself.

In the 1940’s he joined the air force and took part in the ‘good war,’ as a B-17 bombardier. He participated in multiple aerial missions during World War II with enthusiasm for doing good to get the world rid of fascist forces. It was not long he would turn skeptical on every premise on which the war was fought. ‘Fighting fascism had made allies their equal’, as one of his colleagues would tell him during a conversation, implored a sort of introspection with Zinn and his understanding of the War.

Post-war, Zinn took on further education and years later would start his academic career in 1953 at Spelman College, an all-black college for women affiliated to Atlanta University. During the tenure, Zinn, who already had the radical reservations about the class society, involved himself in activism. A reason for which he years later would be fired from the college. His belief in history as an objective recollection of facts had already buckled as a researcher at University during his academic examination of Colorado coal genocide of 1914, for which he found no trace in the books of history. Coupled with other instances, his zeal to unearth the ‘hidden’ facts, those beyond the ‘glorified versions’ of history and its heroes upscaled, The People’s History of the United States of America came as a result of that determination.

Howard Zinn, as many perceive, precedes Noam Chomsky (b.1928) as America’s leading major civil rights activist. “Our problem is that we are obedient all over the world, in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war and cruelty”, a position Zinn thought encouraged State to trample human rights. His magnum opus, The Peoples History of the United States of America duly transformed the outlook of America’s past which Chomsky onec wrote ‘literally changed the consciousness of a generation’.

His demonstrations on the public platform through calls against the Vietnam War and positing civil obedience meted anti-government imagery which didn’t go well with the administration. A phenomenon that hasn’t changed much since. The US strife with Vietnam remained a point focus of the anti-government movement at the time and many activists joined the chorus. Zinn remained firmly and rather unflinching towards Vietnam’s sovereignty. As the movement got stronger, the public joined the rhetoric and by the end significant USA population was sceptical about US interference in Vietnam, and demanded an unconditional withdrawal.

Zinn remained active to unveil the truth behind ‘great’ historical moments, at least as they were called by mainstream politicians right from the time, Christopher Columbus set foot on the west coast. Zinn’s debunking of those myths immediately put him on the national pedestal. The movement ought to interpret the history as it was, not with a gloss of pride of a nation or white supremacism. Chomsky at the time, along with names as Edward Said joined the reprise and set the country at the edge of rethinking US State as well as its foreign policy. Martin Dubermann’s titular phrase of the biography on Zinn, ‘A life on the left,’ which I have used as title, exemplifies the man well. The question of welfare society intrigued him all life. Zinn identified himself as a democratic socialist and had reservations about the idea that communism and socialism were inherently flawed. Fall of Soviet Russia is symbolically associated with the impractical nature of Communism though it remains behind clouds whether the causa prima for the debilitation was the communist ethos per se or the authoritarianism resulting from the consolidation of power.

“A society where the motive for the economic system is not corporate profit but focuses on welfare, education, and healthcare of the people” was the core principle of model state in Zinn’s understanding. The perfect concoction of ideal government as per Zinn took “freedom of the individual and rational use of resources from Communism; civil liberties and use of government for civil welfare from socialism; and suspicion of authority from anarchism”.

The accountability of the state is obscured in current times. The curb on civil rights, disregard of minorities, and the rise of majoritarianism are engulfing the world at an alarming rate, something unprecedented in recent history. It underscores the importance of Howard Zinn and all others who regard humanity and freedom as supreme values. It duly asks of us to read and spread their message. Zinn wrote extensively, and one can start with ‘Disobedience and Democracy’, ‘You can’t be neutral on a moving train’ and of course ‘The People History’. There is definitely a dearth of intention in readers today, not of substance. Howard Zinn died in 2010.

Sheikh Muzamil Hussain, Architect and Urban Planner. Alumnus of CEPT University, Ahmedabad.