A-Infos (en) US, Boston, Anti Authoritarian Movement - BAAM Extra edition: - Anarchism Shouldn't Be a Dirty Word - An Interview with Howard Zinn By Ziga Vodovnik

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....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 States that is "a
brilliant and moving history of the American
people from the point of view of those who
have been exploited politically and economi-
cally and whose plight has been largely omit-
ted from most histories" (Library Journal).
   Zinn's most recent book is entitled A Power
Governments Cannot Suppress, and is a fas-
cinating collection of essays that Zinn wrote
in the last couple of years. The beloved radi-
cal historian is still lecturing across the US
and around the world, and is, with active par-
ticipation 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-na-
tional alternative to the present form of glo-
balization and that is equally global. What's
your opinion about this?

   Howard Zinn: I am an anarchist, and ac-
cording to anarchist principles nation states
become obstacles to a true humanistic glo-
balization. In a certain sense the movement
towards globalization where capitalists are
trying to leap over nation state barriers, cre-
ates a kind of opportunity for movement to
ignore national barriers, and to bring people
together globally, across national lines in op-
position to globalization of capital, to create
globalization of people, opposed to tradition-
al 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 eco-
nomic decisions that are made about people
all over the world.
   Ziga Vodovnik: 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?
   Howard Zinn: 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 or-
ganized 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, depend-
ing 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 pos-
sibly work out in advance, because it would
have to work itself out in practice.
   Ziga Vodovnik: Do you think that a change
can be achieved through institutionalized par-
ty politics, or only through alternative means
-- with disobedience, building parallel frame-
works, establishing alternative media, etc.
   Howard Zinn: If you work through the
existing structures you are going to be cor-
rupted. By working through political system
that poisons the atmosphere, even the pro-
gressive 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 repre-
sentative government, not in terms of voting,
not in terms of electoral politics, but think-
ing 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 ac-
tually take over the institutions.
   Ziga Vodovnik: One personal question.
Do you go to the polls? Do you vote?
   Howard Zinn: I do. Sometimes, not al-
ways. It depends. But I believe that it is
preferable sometimes to have one candidate
rather another candidate, while you under-
stand 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 im-
mediate 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 Demo-
crat, 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 vot-
ing is not crucial, and organizing is the im-
portant thing.
   When some people ask me about voting,
they would say will you support this candi-
date 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 vot-
ing booth, and after I leave the voting booth, I
am going to concentrate on organizing people
and not organizing electoral campaign."
   Ziga Vodovnik: Anarchism is in this re-
spect rightly opposing representative democ-
racy since it is still a form of tyranny -- tyr-
anny 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?
   Howard Zinn: 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 over-
rule rights of minorities. If majorities ruled,
we could still have slavery. 80% of the popu-
lation once enslaved 20% of the population.
While run by majority rule that is OK. That
is a very flawed notion of what democracy
is. Democracy has to take into account sev-
eral 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 pub-
lic opinion, can be totally wrong and evil.
So yes, people have to act according to con-
science and not by majority vote.
   Ziga Vodovnik: Where do you see the histor-
ical origins of anarchism in the United States?
   Howard Zinn: 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 Proud-
hon, 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 anar-
chism, 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 Ameri-
can 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 be-
comes publicly known in the United States is
in Chicago at the time of Haymarket Affair...
   Ziga Vodovnik: Most of the creative en-
ergy for radical politics is nowadays coming
from anarchism, but only few of the people
involved in the movement actually call them-
selves "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 com-
mitment that real emancipation needs eman-
cipation from any label?
   Howard Zinn: The term anarchism has
become associated with two phenomena
with which real anarchists don't want to as-
sociate 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 disci-
pline, everybody does what they want, confu-
sion, 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 Com-
mittee -- SNCC. SNCC without knowing
about anarchism as philosophy embodied the
characteristics of anarchism. They were de-
centralized. 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 organi-
zation. 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 author-
ity. 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 sus-
picion 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 be-
haved. John F. Kennedy was not supporting
the Southern movement for equal rights for
Black people. He was appointing the segrega-
tionists 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 so-
ciety 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.
   Ziga Vodovnik: Do you thing that pejora-
tive (mis)usage of the word anarchism is di-
rect consequence of the fact that the ideas that
people can be free, was and is very frighten-
ing to those in power?
   Howard Zinn: No doubt! No doubt that an-
archist ideas are frightening to those in pow-
er. 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 anar-
chism to create this impression of anarchism as
violent and chaotic. It is useful for them, yes.
   Ziga Vodovnik: In theoretical political sci-
ence we can analytically identify two main con-
ceptions 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?
   Howard Zinn: To me this is an artificial
separation. As so often happens analysts can
make things easier for themselves, like to cre-
ate categories and fit movements into catego-
ries, 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 anar-
cho-syndicalism become stronger in Europe
than in the US. While in the US you have the
IWW, which is an anarcho-syndicalist organi-
zation and certainly not in keeping with indi-
vidualist anarchism.
   Ziga Vodovnik: What is your opinion
about the "dilemma" of means -- revolution
versus social and cultural evolution?
   Howard Zinn: I think there are several
different questions. One of them is the is-
sue of violence, and I think here anarchists
have disagreed. Here in the US you find a
disagreement, and you can find this disagree-
ment 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 impor-
tant 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 Gan-
dhi, who believed in nonviolence.
   There is one central characteristic of anar-
chism 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 buses 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 ac-
tion 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 distin-
guishing characteristics of anarchism.
   Ziga Vodovnik: 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 prop-
er means and ends, to even start "experiment-
ing" in practice?
   Howard Zinn: I think it is worth present-
ing ideas, like Michael Albert did with Pare-
con 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 soci-
ety might be like, because then it guides you
somewhat what you are doing today, but only
so long as this discussions about future so-
ciety don't become obstacles to working to-
wards this future society. Otherwise you can
spend discussing this utopian possibility ver-
sus that utopian possibility, and in the mean
time you are not acting in a way that would
bring you closer to that.
   Ziga Vodovnik: In your People's History
of the United States you show us that our free-
dom, 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?
   Howard Zinn: I think our first step is to
organize ourselves and protest against exist-
ing 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 cre-
ate kind of human relationship that should
exist in future society. That would mean to
organize ourselves without centralize author-
ity, 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.
   Ziga Vodovnik: 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?
   Howard Zinn: Actually I believe in this
idea, but I think that you cannot have biologi-
cal evidence for this. You would have to find
a gene for freedom? No. I think the other pos-
sible way is to go by history of human behav-
ior. History of human behavior shows this de-
sire for freedom, shows that whenever people
have been living under tyranny, people would
rebel against that.
   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. His new book Anarchy of Every-
day Life -- Notes on Anarchism and its For-
gotten Confluences will be released in late
2008.

   View this story online at: http://www.alter-net.org/story/85427/ ·

See also:
http://Baamboston.org
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