Howard Zinn's prescription for the US

When I was in college (and perhaps inspired by its mention in the film "Good Will Hunting"), I bought or was given Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States". I started it numerous times, but other things always got in the way. It sat on my bookshelf for years, save for a few times I loaned it to friends who actually read it (and one who dropped it in a bathtub). I brought my water-damaged and taped-up copy of the book to Colombia with me sometime this year, where it resumed its role as shelf dressing.

But recently, spurred by the death of its author, I finally picked up the book again, determined to read through it this time. It's been a fascinating read, and has caused me to reconsider my attitudes on violence and on anti-system type movements. I still can't justify violence, but I see from the book that there have been many occasions in US history when violent resistance to injustice has been the only effective way that people have been able to gain certain rights. I'm thinking of occasions when local and even national authorities have sided with large companies or landholders, and common people have resorted to violence or outside-the-system tactics after exhausting their legal options (citing of laws and ordinances, appeals to the courts, etc.). Oftentimes this has been the only way that rights, even those rights already guaranteed in our laws, have been won for regular people.

If this is true, that our authorities often side with the wealthy and corporations, and that violence or at least nonviolent questioning of the government is often the only viable way to get the authorities to right wrongs, there arise a number of questions. Essentially the questions arise because the functioning of revolt and resistance is inherently opposed to the system of government in play, and in fact to any system of government. Often the cry of those seeking redress for injustice has been the cry of anarchy, that is to say the abolition of organized, centralized government. The claim is that even our ostensible democracy stifles the will and the rights of the people, so it must be taken down in order for everyone to be truly happy. The problem is that I don't see how a modern society can function without some organized government. An informal anarchy can be an effective way of life in small groups, but an autonomous, tribal lifestyle is not a realistic possibility for most people in the modern world. We live in densely-populated, agrairo-industrial societies in which large numbers of people interact with and depend on one another economically and politically. Even successful revolutionary movements set up centralized governments of their own. Of course the new government is often different from the old, but it is still a centralized form of rule, that almost necessarily places certain limits on freedom, favors a certain status quo, for the smooth functioning of the system.

When I refer to the questioning of the government as a bad thing, I don't mean the debate and criticism of current rulers and policies. This criticism and debate are our right and our duty as citizens and human beings. No, I'm talking about the questioning of the very foundations of our government, the entertaining of the idea that it is somehow permissible or desirable to want or try to tear down the system. Because in the end, I think it's good to have a Constitution. I like the idea of having a system of laws that everyone can refer to. It provides an evolving framework for defining what is or is not permissible, for voicing grievances, and for working to address those grievances. Of course it is possible for people to manipulate the laws, and often the wealthy and powerful have more resources and knowhow to use the law to their advantage, but I prefer having a framework to refer to and to build upon, as opposed to starting with a blank slate. Any new system would have its own inherent problems, might not possess the mechanisms we have now for the constant change and improvement of our society and its laws, and would obviously have 200 years less of insight and debate behind its provisions than does the present Constitution.

I don't know if this is a conservative stance or not. I just think it's operative. When, for instance, the new Teapartier masses work themselves into an anti-government froth, I think they're being shortsighted and stupid. Of course they claim that what they really want is a return to our roots, a newfound, elemental respect for the Constitution. But despite their fixation with the Constitution, these people are really questioning the legitimacy of this or any government. Even if their explicit arguments show a reverence for our founding documents, the logical conclusion of their attitudes and assertions is a sort of anarchy.

Here in Colombia, for instance, people have been messing with the laws or ignoring them or rising up against them for decades. From all sides of the political spectrum there come regular attacks on civilians, on common decency, on ethics, on the validity of the very legal underpinnings of Colombian life. The most coherent, fair way my wife and I have found of trying to make a society that's more tolerable for everyone is by trying to inculcate a respect for the Constitution drafted in 1991. Perhaps before this latest Constitution certain groups were justified in feeling that the system was illegitimate, and thus that their only recourse was to rise in insurrection. But the Constitution of 1991 was drafted in collaboration with many of these insurrectionist groups, to include them in the system, along with oppressed minorities and any and all political parties. Zinn might describe such a process as defusing revolutionary movements through a cynical inclusion in the oppressive system, but I don't know what other alternative there is for a country, short of constant, brutal civil conflict with no overarching rules.

On this note, yesterday my wife and I saw Gustavo Petro when he visited the university we work at. Petro is the presidential candidate for the Polo Democrático Alternativo, a party formed some years ago from the fusion of the Colombian Communist party and other more mainstream, progressive parties. Petro spent many years as a guerrilla insurgent, until a peace process in the 1980s that led to the incorporation of his insurgent group as a legal political party, and that eventually led to the 1991 Constitution. We like his party, and his proposals as a candidate are the most progressive, realistic, and sensible of all the presidential hopefuls. He acknowledges that there is an armed insurgency still going on in the country (a topic most other politicians avoid) and proposes doing something about it, and he proposes massive land redistribution and repurposing of unproductive cattle ranches (often owned by criminal bigwigs). However, it is odd to think of electing someone to lead a government that was formerly dedicated to the liquidation of that government. Of course in theory it's a different government ever since the new Constitution that Petro and his ilk helped to create. And in all fairness, Petro has paid any penance or debt he owed society for his guerrilla activity. He is a citizen in good standing. Still, it's an odd situation, his running for president, and he will surely be haunted by his past in these elections.

Anyway, he visited our university yesterday. Right now we're in the middle of Congressional elections, so Petro was legally forbidden from explicit campaign activities. He couldn't make a speech or anything, but he walked around the Quad, shaking hands, greeting students. I was stricken that this man, who has is the target of numerous active threats on his life, was walking around calmly, with only a few unarmed bodyguards strolling 10 feet behind him. In the States, I feel like even the most insignificant little candidate for anything goes around with a full security detail.

Okay, back to Zinn. I have to say that in the end, despite my admiration for Zinn's well-supported, integral treatment of the lives and movements of ordinary working people throughout US history, I have to ask myself what model of society is proposed by many of the movements he depicts. Because if the proposal is to tear down the current society and build a new one, there's a big possibility that the new society would be little better or more just than the old. Perhaps this is idle rumination, because most of the worker movements in US history didn't possess an explicit model for society, or didn't expect to gain power to implement their specific model. No, most worker movements seem to have been spontaneous, punctual, focused on making life a bit more dignified for people. Those with a strong anti-government rhetoric didn't seriously expect to overthrow the government and build anew. Even if they did, it's never been a realistic possibility.

And maybe there is my answer. It probably doesn't matter what model of society is proposed by most radical movements, because it will never be realized. In that case, the utility of radical movements in our society wouldn't be the overarching but impossible changes they propose, but simply the existence of alternatives to the current system. Can I subscribe to a program of ripping down US government to create a new system? Probably not. But are movements that do call for such a revolutionary ripping necessary? I think so. It seems that the status quo and revolutionary fervor can (should?) exist in a sort of yinyang counterplay, one thing necessary for the other. Indeed, without the status quo, revolutionary movements would have no reason to exist. And without revolutionary movements (be they violent, organized, anarchistic, or simply a laundress refusing to stand up on a Montgomery bus), the status quo would never change, never improve, never right its wrongs.

Okay, I feel that I've touched enough on that whole argument, for now at least. But there's another thing that bugs me, and it may be pretty related. I keep asking myself why the US government has adopted such cynical policies so many times. I mean, things like the Vietnam war, or the McCarthy-led witch hunt, or privatizing public services. Obviously I understand that big businesses have an inordinate amount of influence on those who govern, and I understand that sometimes elected officials adopt policies that may hurt the public, if they feel it will aid their political career. But why is this so prevalent? I mean, I feel like a lot of the country's problems might be solved if just a few honest legislators decided they weren't going to worry about what their corporate suitors wanted. Corporations don't vote anyway. If there were a critical mass of such legislators (maybe such a president, too, though in theory he's not the one responsible for making laws), they might do things like halving our military budget, dedicating massive amounts of money to international agrarian development, restoring high tax rates on the super rich (Zinn reports that during the Second World War, those earning over $400000 a year were taxed at 90%!). I think the general public would like such changes, and they'd support such legislators, even if big companies and the rich and the military bigwigs were pissed off. And the type of honest, straightforward legislator I'm imagining wouldn't worry too much even if he were to lose his seat due to corporate lobbying against him. He or she would know that there is life after Congress, and would just be happy to have done some useful things.

I know I'm rambling here, so I'll finish up soon. Basically reading Zinn has informed me about a lot of stupid, despicable things our government has done in the past, even beyond the stuff I already knew about. And it is often in the interests of so few as to seem silly and parochial, and certainly not that hard to change. To give an example, why support all the dirty wars and oppression in Central America just to protect the interests of a few US fruit companies? Those companies can't have been worth so much as to warrant the expenditure of human life and public economic resources, even if they were occasionally threatened by local governmental changes in one country or another. Again, corporations don't vote, so why all the kowtowing to their interests?

I'm not talking about changing US policies through some huge revolutionary, anti-system movement, but rather just saying simple things like, "Hey, you know how in the Constitution it says the president can't declare war without Congressional approval? Why don't we start respecting that again, as we did before Vietnam?" or "You know, there seem to be some violations of human rights going on in our US prisons. Why don't we fix that?" or "Speaking of prisons, why don't we have our government run those, instead of contracting them out to private, for-profit companies?" Nothing wild, nothing polemical, just common-sense stuff.

But maybe that's where my first discovery comes in. Maybe making common-sense suggestions with little bombast, little discourse, isn't what changes things. Maybe that's the role of extremist, revolutionary movements--not to achieve their wild-eyed, radical goals, but to push and pull enough to get the status quo to make the little changes that it is unwilling to pursue on its own.