Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
As the Occupy Wall Street movement writes a new chapter in the history of American leftism, you’ve published a history of radical movements in the United States titled American Dreamers. Tell me about it.
It chronicles almost 200 years of the American left’s history, interpreting what the left did right and what it did wrong. What it did wrong is better known. The subtitle of the book is “How the Left Changed a Nation”. I emphasise the positive difference it made, focusing on a couple of themes.
One is that the left expanded the meaning of individual freedom. It made sure that people of all races, religions and sexual preferences are, at least in theory, able to enjoy the same opportunities and freedoms as everybody else. The book begins with the abolitionists and goes up until the gay and lesbian movement of the 1970s. The other theme is that the left succeeded in presenting a vision of a more egalitarian and socially responsible society. The left may have had less success in this respect but its success has been considerable nonetheless.
I highlight figures like Henry George and Edward Bellamy, both journalists. Henry George wrote a bestselling economics tract called Progress and Poverty in 1879. He was very popular among the labour unionists. Edward Bellamy was a Christian Socialist who wrote Looking Backward. Published in 1888, it ranks with Uncle Tom’s Cabin as one of the most influential political novels of the 19th century. Bellamy’s followers were important figures in the populist movement of the 1890s and the Socialist Party in the early 20th century. These figures articulated an anti-corporate platform which continues to be influential even in the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.
Do you see the DNA of the abolitionists, suffragettes and other leftist forebears in today’s protest?
Yes, in many ways I do. There are different strands. Of course you have civil disobedience, which abolitionists were known for. You have nonviolence and a “beloved community”, which civil rights protesters were known for. And you have a very strong emphasis on the 99% being injured by the 1%, and a critique of American democracy as being corrupted by big money, that began in the late 19th century with people like George and Bellamy.
The Communist Manifesto might be familiar to readers but please refresh our memory.
It was a 50-page-long pamphlet, originally written in German for a small group of working class activists trying to create a socialist society who were called The Communist League. They asked Marx and Engels, who were friends and collaborators, to write a document that they could use for political education.
The manifesto is the most widely read tract Marx ever wrote. It explains capitalism, where it came from and how they see it as being in its late stage. They argue that capitalism laid the groundwork for socialism by making the world into one capitalist market and doing away with nationalist loyalties. There is one famous sentence: “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.” They believed that capitalism was equipping the proletariat to take control of the engine of capitalist production and turn it over to social uses. There’s a lot of critique of other socialists as well, but those sections are outmoded. The bulk of it is a very powerful statement of the nature of capitalism. It was influential all over the world and has been translated into who knows how many languages – over 200 I’m sure.
"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” Is that the prism through which the American left sees American history?
The occupiers are making an analysis of hierarchy in the economy and in society. Almost all of those kinds of analyses go back to Marx. You can see the paradox that Marx and Engels describe in these occupations. On the one hand people have computers and iPhones. They’re using the latest technological gadgets – which of course were created by capitalist societies and entrepreneurs – to organise against capitalism and try to bring about a radical transformation of society which would at least lead to a more egalitarian capitalism, if not a different kind of society altogether.
Howard Zinn’s classic A People’s History of the United States sees other sorts of struggle roiling America and shaping the course of the country’s history. It seems to have become as sacred to the American left as the Bible is to evangelicals.
Zinn’s book has sold over two million copies. It’s probably the most popular work of nonfiction that any radical has written in American history. It’s a history of what he calls the “1%” and the “99%”. It’s an interpretation of all of American history, from the Native Americans before European settlement all the way up to 9/11 in the last edition. In his telling, workers, blacks, women, Native Americans, Chicanos and other groups struggled for higher wages, truer democracy and sometimes a different kind of society entirely, but they keep getting defeated.
Zinn’s book has been very popular with Occupy Wall Street people and among American radicals generally. I’m critical of it myself: I think it’s a simplistic propagandistic understanding of American history. Somehow the 99% always lose, even though they’re the great majority. But nevertheless it’s been an influential book among American leftists since its publication 30 years ago.
Michael Kazin is a professor of history at Georgetown University and co-editor of the leftist quarterly magazine Dissent. A graduate of Harvard with a PhD from Stanford, he was a member of the radical group Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s. Kazin has written five books and co-edited three, including the Encyclopedia of American Political History. His most recent book, American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation came out in August
![greed [aka cost/benefit] by the|G|™](http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4134/4813413572_c9db428131_s.jpg "greed [aka cost/benefit] by the|G|™")
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