Howard Zinn and the myth of the "People's War"

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In the days following Howard Zinn’s passing, there was some 
discussion on the Marxism list trying to put him into an 
ideological context. One subscriber wrote:

	I don’t want to start a … flame war over the dubious merits of “A 
People’s History.” Howard Zinn had an enormously influential 
career and is beloved by the American left. His “Voices of a 
People’s History” is of great merit as a collection of source 
material which will enrich the study of American history. He was, 
in many ways, the Charles Beard of this era which is fitting 
considering how of his work replicates Beard’s approach.

This led another subscriber, a professional historian, to respond:

	Classing Zinn as a “Beardsian” seems not to understand these 
central differences related to race. This isn’t some triviality 
like misunderstanding Whig foreign policy. There is the racial 
conquest of the continent foundational to the civilization, and 
the entire racial enslavement of Africans. Related, too, are the 
issues of Jeffersonian, sectionalism and the agrarian 
particularism for which Beard had great affinities and Zinn 
regarded with due skepticism.  In this regard, the “Marxist” 
writers of the 1930s and 1940s were far more “Beardsian” than 
Zinn. Indeed, these are some of the central issues that 
distinguished the body of New Left scholarship from the old line 
dogmas of those writers connected with the CP.

This discussion led me to thinking about Zinn’s approach to WWII 
in chapter sixteen of “People’s History of the United States”, 
titled appropriately enough “A People’s War?” (The entire book can 
be read online here. Written in 1980, the book adopts a 
“revisionist” perspective that was associated with a number of 
younger New Left historians such as Gar Alperovitz whose 1965 book 
“Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam” revealed U.S. war aims 
as setting the stage for the Cold War.

Along with many other “revisionists”, Alperovitz studied history 
at the University of Wisconsin under William Appleman Williams who 
was a seminal figure of the New Left. Williams was born in 1920 
and could be seen as a contemporary of Zinn. His 1959 “The Tragedy 
of American Diplomacy” was a highly influential work, arguing that 
the U.S. had imperial ambitions from the days of Thomas Jefferson.

read full article: 
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/howard-zinn-and-the-myth-of-the-peoples-war/

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