It is a sad day. As you have probably heard, left historian Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States, died yesterday of a heart attack. He will be sorely missed.
We just celebrated our 35th anniversary year. Back in 2004, in our 30th anniversary issue, we asked prominent leftists to "describe their vision of a more economically just world 30 years hence, and to outline what they consider the most important steps to take today to move toward that vision." Here's what Howard Zinn contributed to the resulting Visions of Economic Justice:
Where the United States has declared an end to military intervention, has eliminated its intelligence agencies, has dismantled its overseas military bases, has reduced its armed forces to a small peace-keeping contingent ready to heed the call of the U.N. General Assembly for emergencies, and where the resultant saving of half a trillion dollars is then added to another half trillion dollars that comes from a wealth tax and a truly progressive income tax, the trillion dollars then to be used in the following ways:
- To establish a program of Health Security, with free medical care and prescription drugs for every person, citizen or not, with the government footing the bill.
- To guarantee public employment (on environmental projects, arts projects, etc.) to people unable to get work in the private sector at a fair wage.
- To guarantee free education up through the university level.
- To guarantee decent housing—through rent subsidies or low-interest home loans—for any family not able to afford market prices for good housing.
How to achieve this? Organize a new national movement around this agenda, which will then engage in a variety of nonviolent tactics: strikes, boycotts, demonstrations, marches, occupations, to insist that this program be enacted. —Howard Zinn
Here are two other items—a video of Zinn talking about his experience as a bombardier in WWII, and an obituary by left sports writer Dave Zirin, from the Nation website.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ehc3V1g5pm0&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
Howard Zinn: The Historian Who Made History
"Let's talk about socialism. ... I think it's very important to bring back the idea of socialism into the national discussion to where it was at the turn of the [last] century before the Soviet Union gave it a bad name. Socialism had a good name in this country. Socialism had Eugene Debs. It had Clarence Darrow. It had Mother Jones. It had Emma Goldman. It had several million people reading socialist newspapers around the country… Socialism basically said, hey, let's have a kinder, gentler society. Let's share things. Let's have an economic system that produces things not because they're profitable for some corporation, but produces things that people need. People should not be retreating from the word socialism because you have to go beyond capitalism."