💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › howard-zinn-rebels-against-tyranny.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 10:51:18. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Title: Rebels Against Tyranny
Author: Howard Zinn
Date: 2008
Language: en
Topics: interview, history, anarchist movement
Source: Retrieved on August 14, 2022 from https://www.howardzinn.org/collection/rebels-against-tyranny/
Notes: Ziga Vodovnik is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, where his teaching and research is focused on anarchist theory/praxis and social movements in the Americas.

Howard Zinn

Rebels Against Tyranny

Howard Zinn, 85, is a Professor Emeritus of political science at Boston

University. He was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1922 to a poor immigrant

family. He realized early in his youth that the promise of the “American

Dream“, that will come true to all hard-working and diligent people, is

just that – a promise and a dream. During World War II he joined US Air

Force and served as a bombardier in the “European Theatre”. This proved

to be a formative experience that only strengthened his convictions that

there is no such thing as a just war. It also revealed, once again, the

real face of the socio-economic order, where the suffering and sacrifice

of the ordinary people is always used only to higher the profits of the

privileged few.

Although Zinn spent his youthful years helping his parents support the

family by working in the shipyards, he started with studies at Columbia

University after WWII, where he successfully defended his doctoral

dissertation in 1958. Later he was appointed as a chairman of the

department of history and social sciences at Spelman College, an

all-black women’s 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 movement, and in the following years only stepped up his

involvement in movements aspiring towards another, better world. Zinn is

the author of more than 20 books, including A People’s History of the

United Statesthat is “a brilliant and moving history of the American

people from the point of view of those who have been exploited

politically and economically and whose plight has been largely omitted

from most histories…” (Library Journal)

Zinn’s most recent book is entitled A Power Governments Cannot Suppress,

and is a fascinating collection of essays that Zinn wrote in the last

couple of years. Beloved radical historian is still lecturing across the

US and around the world, and is, with active participation and support

of various progressive social movements continuing his struggle for free

and just society.

Ziga Vodovnik: From the 1980s onwards we 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-national

alternative to the present form of globalization and that is equally

global. What’s your opinion about this?

I am an anarchist, and according to anarchist principles nation states

become obstacles to a true humanistic globalization. In a certain sense

the movement towards globalization where capitalists are trying to leap

over nation state barriers, creates a kind of opportunity for movement

to ignore national barriers, and to bring people together globally,

across national lines in opposition to globalization of capital, to

create globalization of people, opposed to traditional 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

economic decisions that are made about people all over the world.

ZV: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon once wrote that: “Freedom is the mother, not

the daughter of order.” Where do you see life after or beyond (nation)

states?

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 organized 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, depending on the function of the collective, having

contacts with one another. You cannot have self-sufficient little

collectives, because these collectives have different resources

available to them. This is something anarchist theory has not worked out

and maybe cannot possibly work out in advance, because it would have to

work itself out in practice.

ZV: Do you think that a change can be achieved through institutionalized

party politics, or only through alternative means – with disobedience,

building parallel frameworks, establishing alternative media, etc.

If you work through the existing structures you are going to be

corrupted. By working through political system that poisons the

atmosphere, even the progressive organizations, you can see it even now

in the US, where people on the “Left” are all caught in the electoral

campaign and get into fierce 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 get 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 representative government,

not in terms of voting, not in terms of electoral politics, but thinking

in terms of organizing social movements, organizing in the work place,

organizing in the neighborhood, organizing collectives that can become

strong enough to eventually take over – first to become strong enough to

resist what has been done to them by authority, and second, later, to

become strong enough to actually take over the institutions.

ZV: One personal question. Do you go to the polls? Do you vote?

HZ: I do. Sometimes, not always. It depends. But I believe that it is

preferable sometimes to have one candidate rather another candidate,

while you understand that that is not the solution. Sometimes the lesser

evil is not so lesser, so you want to ignore that, and you either do not

vote or vote for third party as a protest against the party system.

Sometimes the difference between two candidates is an important one in

the immediate sense, and then I believe trying to get somebody into

office, who is a little better, who is less dangerous, is

understandable. But never forgetting that no matter who gets into

office, the crucial question is not who is in office, but what kind of

social movement do you have. Because we have seen historically that if

you have a powerful social movement, it doesn’t matter who is in office.

Whoever is in office, they could be Republican or Democrat, if you have

a powerful social movement, the person in office will have to yield,

will have to in some ways respect the power of social 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 finally 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 voting is not crucial, and organizing is

the important thing.

When some people ask me about voting, they would say will you support

this candidate 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 voting booth, and after

I leave the voting booth, I am going to concentrate on organizing people

and not organizing electoral campaign.’

ZV: Anarchism is in this respect rightly opposing representative

democracy since it is still form of tyranny – tyranny 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?

Absolutely. Rousseau once said, 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 overrule

rights of minorities. If majorities ruled, we could still have slavery.

80% of the population once enslaved 20% of the population. While run by

majority rule that is ok. That is very flawed notion of what democracy

is. Democracy has to take into account several 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 public opinion, can

be totally wrong and evil. So yes, people have to act according to

conscience and not by majority vote.

ZV: Where do you see the historical origins of anarchism in the United

States?

One of the problems with dealing with anarchism is that there are many

people whose ideas are anarchist, but who do not necessarily call

themselves anarchists. The word was first used by Proudhon in the middle

of the 19th century, but actually there were anarchist ideas that

proceeded Proudhon, 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 Henry David Thoreau. He does not know the

word anarchism, and does not use the word anarchism, but Thoreau’s 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 American

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 first

time that anarchism has an organized force and becomes publicly known in

the United States is in Chicago at the time of Haymarket Affair.

ZV: Where do you see the main inspiration of contemporary anarchism in

the United States? What is your opinion about the Transcendentalism –

i.e., Henry D. Thoreau, Ralph W. Emerson, Walt Whitman, Margaret Fuller,

et al. – as an inspiration in this perspective?

Well, the Transcendentalism is, we might say, an early form of

anarchism. The Transcendentalists also did not call themselves

anarchists, but there are anarchist ideas in their thinking and in their

literature. In many ways Herman Melville shows some of those anarchist

ideas. They were all suspicious of authority. We might say that the

Transcendentalism played a role in creating an atmosphere of skepticism

towards authority, towards government.

Unfortunately, today there is no real organized anarchist movement in

the United States. There are many important groups or collectives that

call themselves anarchist, but they are small. I remember that in 1960s

there was an anarchist collective here in Boston that consisted of

fifteen (sic!) people, but then they split. But in 1960s the idea of

anarchism became more important in connection with the movements of

1960s.

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 themselves “anarchists”. Where do you see the main reason for this?

Are activists ashamed to identify themselves with this intellectual

tradition, or rather they are true to the commitment that real

emancipation needs emancipation from any label?

The term anarchism has become associated with two phenomena with which

real anarchist don’t want to associate 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 discipline, everybody does what they want,

confusion, etc. That is why there is a reluctance to use the term

anarchism. But actually the ideas of 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 Committee –

SNCC. SNCC without knowing about anarchism as philosophy embodied the

characteristics of anarchism. They were decentralized. Other civil

rights organizations, for example Southern Christian Leadership

Conference, were centralized organizations with a leader – Martin Luther

King. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

were based in New York, and also had some kind of centralized

organization. SNCC, on the other hand, was totally decentralized. It had

what they called field secretaries, who worked in little towns all over

the South, with great deal of autonomy. They had an office in Atlanta,

Georgia, but the office was not a strong centralized authority. The

people who were working out in the field – in Alabama, Georgia,

Louisiana, and Mississippi – they were very much on their own. They were

working together with local 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 behaved. John F. Kennedy was not

supporting the Southern movement for equal rights for Black people. He

was appointing the segregationists judges in the South, he was allowing

southern segregationists to do whatever they 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 society 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.

ZV: Do you thing that pejorative (mis)usage of the word anarchism is

direct consequence of the fact that the ideas that people can be free,

was and is very frightening to those in power?

No doubt! No doubt that anarchist ideas are frightening to those in

power. 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 anarchism to create this impression of

anarchism as violent and chaotic. It is useful for them, yes.

ZV: In theoretical political science we can analytically identify two

main conceptions 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?

To me this is an artificial separation. As so often happens analysts can

make things easier for themselves, like to create categories and fit

movements into categories, but I don’t 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 find both

manifestations, except that maybe in Europe the idea of

anarcho-syndicalism become stronger in Europe than in the US. While in

the US you have the IWW, which is an anarcho-sindicalist organization

and certainly not in keeping with individualist anarchism.

ZV: What is your opinion about the “dilemma” of means – revolution

versus social and cultural evolution?

I think here are several different questions. One of them is the issue

of violence, and I think here anarchists have disagreed. Here in the US

you find a disagreement, and you can find this disagreement 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 important figure. 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 Gandhi, who believed in

nonviolence.

There is one central characteristic of anarchism 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 of anarcho-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 file lawsuits, wait for Congress to pass

the legislation. They took direct action; they went into restaurants,

were sitting down there and wouldn’t move. They got on those busses 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 action 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 distinguishing characteristics of anarchism.

ZV: On one occasion Noam Chomsky has been asked about his specific

vision of anarchist society and about his very detailed plan to get

there. He answered that “we can not figure 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 proper means and ends, to even start

“experimenting” in practice?

I think it is worth presenting ideas, like Michael Albert did with

Parecon for instance, even though if you maintain flexibility. 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

society might be like, because then it guides you somewhat what you are

doing today, but only so long as this discussions about future society

don’t become obstacles to working towards this future society. Otherwise

you can spend discussing this utopian possibility versus that utopian

possibility, and in the mean time you are not acting in a way that would

bring you closer to that.

ZV: In your A People’s History of the United States you show us that our

freedom, rights, environmental standards, etc., have never been given to

us from the wealthy and influential few, but have always been fought out

by ordinary people – with civil disobedience. What should be in this

respect our first steps toward another, better world?

I think our first step is to organize ourselves and protest against

existing 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

create kind of human relationship that should exist in future society.

That would mean to organize ourselves without centralize authority,

without charismatic leader, in a way that represents in miniature the

ideal of the future egalitarian society. So that even if you don’t 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.

ZV: What is your opinion about different attempts to scientifically

prove Bakunin’s ontological assumption that human beings have “instinct

for freedom”, not just will but also biological need?

Actually I believe in this idea, but I think that you cannot have

biological evidence for this. You would have to find a gene for freedom?

No. I think the other possible way is to go by history of human

behavior. History of human behavior shows this desire for freedom, shows

that whenever people have been living under tyranny, people would rebel

against that.