Review: "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn
A Bible of the Left. But is it worth reading?
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By Christopher Ferguson
In the recent culture war percolations surrounding covid19 and the protests (and riots) following the murder of George Floyd, at several points I heard the name of Howard Zinn. Zinn’s tome A People's History of the United States purports to consider history of the United States from the perspective of the underdog: the lower classes, workers, women, immigrants, African slaves and their descendants and indigenous people. A Washington Post editorial credits Zinn as being a major inspiration for the modern far-left with its pessimistic reading of US history and particularly its socialist or even Neo-Marxist leanings. Zinn appears to be a hero of that far-left, but predictably, is widely criticized as a poor and misleading historian by outlets on the right. These believe he has done great damage to young people’s understanding of American history. To get a sense of who is correct, I finally buckled down and read his volume.
First, just as a matter of style, Zinn’s writing is not for the attention deprived. I read a lot of history for enjoyment, and Zinn’s book, subject matter aside, is not “fun.” The writing can be a bit dense, and often broken by multiple quotes from sources. Though I appreciated this sourcing, it tended to break up the narrative quite a bit resulting in disjointed reading. Zinn writes most passionately when he relies on this less, particularly his latter chapters on Civil Rights and the Carter/Reagan/Bush years which are among the best in the book.
Let me first convey what I found positive about the book. Early on, Zinn expresses concern about US history being taught as a kind of universally positive journey toward the shining city on a hill. In doing so, much of the education taught to kids in school and college expunged the horrible side of US history and often erased the experiences of marginalized groups, including indigenous people and African slaves. In fairness, that’s probably much less true today, but Zinn published his book initially in 1980. To the extent that I retain any fragments of memory of primary education from the 1970s, I’d say that Zinn’s critique here was largely fair. He and others have forced us to be more honest about our historical shortcomings and come to terms with the atrocities in which our nation has been involved and which still affect us today regarding serious racial and ethnic disparities.
Zinn also makes a strong argument that much of our country’s functioning is as much oligarchy as it is democracy or republic. This argument still resonates today. Numerous aspects of our system, whether lobbying, campaign financing, or just the degree of resources it takes to become involved in politics suggests that Zinn is on target in suggesting that American politics tends to benefit the elite more often than (or at the expense of) those further down the chain. Zinn doesn’t excuse either Republicans or Democrats from this observation nor, frankly, should he. True, Zinn can seem obsessed with this point (it’s a bit like his hammer for which every episode in history is a nail), but I don’t think he’s wrong. Unfortunately, his message that those in the lower and middle classes should reach beyond their differences to find commonalities in challenging the elites have often been lost on his left-wing descendants who, arguably, have too often joined the far right in emphasizing polarization, divisiveness and even racial stereotypes.
That said, there is much to be concerned about regarding A People's History of the United States. Zinn himself is actually fairly explicit in saying he never intended it to be an objective work of history. Instead, it is a paean for a quasi-Marxist socialist utopia he envisions. Having read The Communist Manifesto I’d say it’s fair to interpret Zinn’s socialism as quasi-Marxist, as opposed to, say, the modern welfare state of Denmark. Though his utopia is only briefly sketched out, it seems to be a kind of loose confederation of socialist communes with little overarching federal authority. To say this vision is…unworkable, is to be gentle. But my greater concern is Zinn’s ostensible lack of commitment to even an attempt at objectivity. Zinn appears to believe this is simply impossible. As I note in my own book How Madness Shaped History, reaching objectivity in history is difficult as people tend to want historical narratives to tell us comforting things about the present. We want to learn how our enemies are all bad and we (or those whom we identify with) are all good. Zinn does the same, just the enemies here are US capitalists. The historian struggles to overcome their own biases in presenting history. This doesn’t mean there aren’t objective facts in history, there certainly are, more that history is always filtered through a grey lens of wishful thinking. But there’s a difference between understanding that history is often subjective and, by contrast, not giving a crap about objectivity at all in order to tell a morality tale. As scientists and historians, we should always strive toward objectivity even as human being, we often flunk.
This means that Zinn fails to learn his own lesson. He rightly criticizes past historians for skipping past inconvenient details, but then essentially does the same thing in his own narrative. As a consequence, absolutely every decision made by the US (including, say, entry into both World Wars) is interpreted in the worst possible way. But Zinn barely mentions atrocities committed by non-US cultures. Zinn rightly criticize other historians for breezing past Columbus’ harsh treatment of indigenous people, but then himself only barely mentions details such as the Aztecs’ mass human sacrifices, or the owning of Black slaves by some indigenous tribes. Zinn, in celebrating socialism, seems to only reluctantly admit that Stalin was a monster, yet suggests that the Soviet system became much better after Stalin. He claims that after Stalin “A remarkably open discussion had been initiated” by the Soviet Union beginning in the 1950s. By degrees, one supposes this is true, but this elides that Soviet Russia remained a brutal, censorious, aggressive, authoritarian regime until its fall. The horrors of Maoist China are brushed off entirely, as well as the universal failings of Communism wherever it has been tried. Mao’s brutal and murderous revolutionary faction which, once ensconced in power, led to the death of tens of millions of Chinese is described by Zinn as “…a Communist movement with enormous mass support.” If older historians celebrating Columbus’ adventures without noting the horrible results of his journeys on indigenous people is, as Zinn suggests, irresponsible history telling, certainly this is too.
Zinn also fails to give his reader anything like important broader historical context. Before the mid-20th century, (and still too often afterward) the history of humankind across most cultures was one of aggression, barbarism, elitism and ethnic strife. This context is critical to understanding the aggressiveness of a young 18th century republic even as it fails to live up to the values of the 21st century or its own Bill of Rights. Brutal and vicious slavery was exceedingly common across human cultures (and too often still exists across the world today), violent wars of territorial expansion were common, as were ethnocentric empires. In that sense, the fact that the United States (and England) made any attempt to move toward the values of equality and liberalism, even if too slowly and imperfectly to be sure, is historically uncommon. This does not mean we should excuse the serious moral lapses of slavery, aggressive wars against indigenous people, etc., but understanding these in the context of generally poor human historical behavior can also give people a wider picture. Zinn is correct that the narrative of American exceptionalism can often gloss over inconvenient truths. But Zinn is, arguably, equally guilty of promoting what might be called reversed American exceptionalism giving unwitting readers the false impression US history is uniquely bad and evil. Ironically, the culture war over reversed American exceptionalism arguably sucks away considerable attention from the millions of today’s contemporary slaves across the globe.
Zinn also presents historical moments as exceedingly simple moral choices for which the US consistently fails to make the right choice at every turn. At some point reading his book one must ask, surely even a stopped clock tells the time correctly every now and again? But Zinn is largely relentless in depriving US history of any credit at all. I’m skeptical of the insinuation that a counterfactual better world existed had the US made Zinn’s morally pure choice at every turn. Zinn’s history exists in a moral ideal devoid of practical ramifications. For instance, Zinn seems almost desperate to paint Lincoln as unconcerned about slavery, yet even the examples Zinn provides suggests a president wrestling with the practical realities of the Civil War, not indifferent to the plight of slaves in either the North or South. Had Lincoln emancipated the slaves by decree upon assuming the presidency (if that were even possible), more states may have moved to the Confederacy, losing the war for the North and extending the life of slavery, not shortening it.
On balance, is A People's History of the United States worth reading? Absolutely. Should it be taught to students as if it were true? Absolutely not. Zinn’s main contribution was in noting that US history must take account of the horrors of our past, however shameful. But he was wrong in painting a picture in which the US has been incapable of any good, even unprecedented good. In that sense, his tome is not so much different than the propaganda books of history he condemns. US history is still waiting for a narrative that at least strives toward objectivity, both acknowledging our serious failings and the harm we have inflicted on many others, while still celebrating our glorious achievements and our brave ongoing struggle to overcome the limitations of our past. That would be the book our students should read. I look forward to it being written.
(This post originally appeared in the pages of the now defunct Aero Magazine. It was also previously posted on Chris Ferguson’s Substack Secrets of Grimoire Manor).
Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read History is complicated. Let's teach the complexity
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Zinn is a left propagandist, not a historian.
Despite the flaws, the advanced democracies are the freest, wealthiest, best countries in human history.
Excellent commentary. Balanced and informative.