Interview with Howard Zinn: “Identifying oneself with progressive values is a default choice”

16Ambre Ivol. – What is a “progressive”?

17Howard Zinn. – The Progressive movement… This is a complicated concept, a complicated word. With a capital “P,” it refers to Theodore Roosevelt and is in a sense an offshoot of the Populist movement, which was dead by then. It attracted many of the people who were once drawn to the Populist movement and had some of the same features, as it was anti-big business.

18This is what the Progressive movement meant at that time.

19But there are three moments really of Progressivism, which were quite different from one historical moment to the next: Theodore Roosevelt, a supporter of war in the 1900s, then Robert LaFollette in 1924 and finally Henry Wallace in 1948.

20From one era to the next, the Progressive leaders moved more and more to the left, and received fewer and fewer votes in presidential elections. LaFollette was against World War I, so he was to the left of Teddy Roosevelt then, and later Henry Wallace was against the Cold War. The furthest to the left, the fewer votes they got. So these are the capital “P” Progressives, understood as a historical movement.

21Small “p” progressives refer to something more elusive. The progressive era refers to the first years of the twentieth century and applies to the legislation passed under Teddy Roosevelt, with the Meat Inspection Act, the Hepburn Act, and under President Wilson with the Federal Reserve System and Federal Trade Commission to regulate big corporations. [13] It was called “the progressive era” because of that body of legislation. The Supreme Court was then very reactionary and it passed something recognizing corporations as “people” protected by the 14^th amendment, at a time when black people were not even protected by law. [14]

22Today people are unsure as to what the term “progressive” really means. In the past, it generally meant something akin to the Liberal Democrats, who are progressive on domestic issues, and quite traditional in terms of foreign policy. Identifying oneself with progressive values is thus a default choice, meaning being to the left of liberals. During the Cold War, “liberal” meant being in favor of the anti-communist feeling developing in the country, with Arthur Schlesinger Jr. as the quintessential example of it, with his book entitled The Vital Center and the American Democratic Association (ADA). I personally have never wanted to identify myself as a progressive or a liberal; I prefer to call myself a radical.

23A. I. – You usually identify with the left, but you also use the term progressive in a comprehensive way, thus referring to a vast conglomerate of people including—and going beyond—the Democratic Party.

24H. Z. – Some people on the far left wouldn’t use the term, thinking it is too mild. Most people would accept it, as meaning something beyond “liberal.” Some Socialists and Communists would accept it, in the spirit of unity, though the term doesn’t suggest socialism. This should be distinguished from the use of “Progressive” as a political party, because then it is even more vague. The “Progressive Movement” of the early twentieth century fits only a vague definition of “progressive” because (as Richard Hofstadter pointed out in his book on Progressivism) [15] that movement included some reactionary ideas. What I refer to today as “the progressive movement” is to the left of that, and somewhere between liberal and socialist. So you can see, it’s a term almost impossible to define precisely.

25A. I. – Yet Hillary Clinton has recently defined herself as a progressive while distancing herself from liberals. She seems to shun her identity as a liberal and to move to progressivism as being a more consensual term.

26H. Z. – Well, during Bill Clinton’s years, and already during the Reagan administration, liberals have been under attack and many have shunned their identity as a result. A certain cowardice has set in, because liberals were attacked, like Dukakis. [16] Liberals were defeated as liberals. Liberalism was then understood as pro-“big government” and pro-regulations, and the Clintons have been very timid and have refused to defend the idea of liberalism.

27A. I. – What is your relation to The Progressive Magazine? How do you understand its identity as “progressive”?

28H. Z. – They are very much in the tradition of Robert LaFollette, the closest to LaFollette today indeed, because they combine an antiwar and an anti-corporation stand. This is the line of the magazine today. Indeed in the 1920s, the Progressive Party absorbed whatever radical thought there was around at the time.

29A. I. – Is the “muckraker” tradition still alive today?

30H. Z. – We don’t use the term today. It is used to describe investigative journalism, or individuals like Ralph Nader. [17] Journalists like Amy Goodman, or Seymour Hersch would be some of the muckrakers of today, and maybe William Bloom. [18]

31A. I. – So “muckrakers” could be understood as public intellectuals?

32H. Z. – The muckrakers of that time, like Upton Sinclair, Jack London, Clarence Darrow, Haywood Broun, Randolph Bourne, and John Reed, were then intellectuals in the service of politics. [19]

33A. I. – How did the relationship between progressivism and radicalism play out in the 1940s with Henry Wallace? You were politically active during that time as you mentioned in previous interviews. [20]

34H. Z. – Radicals supported Wallace when he ran for president on a Progressive Party platform in 1948. Renowned figures like Paul Robeson [21] and playwright Lillian Hellman. The Communist Party supported Wallace because of his opposition to the Cold War.

35A. I. – So you would you call him a progressive?

36H. Z. – Of course, he ran on the platform of the Progressive Party in 1948, but he was really a rebel of the Democratic Party, he came from inside the Democratic Party and broke with the party when Truman became president. But before that he was loyal member of FDR’s party, he was his vice-president.

37A. I. – Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote an article in which Wallace is described as a naïve politician, [22] who came to be manipulated by—

38H. Z. – The Communists?

39A. I. – Yes, what do you think of such a claim?

40H. Z. – The Communists welcomed Wallace, because they wanted an alternative to the major parties so they supported him. But he wasn’t himself a Communist and he wasn’t close to the Communists, only their policies overlapped for a time, as he believed in a peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union as did the Communists.

41A. I. – Was he close to the Communist Party USA on labor issues?

42H. Z. – It is hard to say. He was secretary of agriculture under F.D. Roosevelt, so he did not have much to do with labor unions. I guess you’d call him a progressive on labor issues almost in the way that Roosevelt was progressive on labor unions. Under Roosevelt the National Labor Board was set up, as well as minimum wages, and so I would say he was sympathetic to labor unions.

43A. I. – How did you personally come to support him?

44H. Z. – Because I was critical of Truman. I was critical of his foreign policy.

45A. I. – Was that the major issue that led you to distance yourself from the Democratic Party?

46H. Z. – Yes, that was the basic thing, foreign policy, the Cold War and relations with the Soviet Union, as well as overall militarism. So those were the things that appealed to me.

47A. I. – You came across the personal files of Fiorello LaGuardia and decided by the early 1950s to focus on his years in Congress for your doctoral dissertation. His political itinerary is quite complex, and raises questions about the different ways of interpreting political affiliations in the country, as he did not belong to any specific political party. Could LaGuardia be called a progressive in that he did not identify with either of the two main parties of the early twentieth century?

48H. Z. – I started to study LaGuardia’s record as a Congressman in the mid-50s, and indeed the man was interesting. He ran on two different tickets, both Republican and Socialist because in New York the Democratic Party was particularly corrupt. LaGuardia found it useful and politically convenient to run as a Republican and a Socialist. He thought of Republicans as belonging to the tradition of a Progressive like Teddy Roosevelt, although LaGuardia was also opposed to military interventions like the one in Nicaragua in 1927. [23] So party affiliation to him was a matter of convenience, he had his own views and could be pragmatic about his political affiliations. So he was an example of somebody who was a dissident in Congress, a radical Republican you might say, but a dissident inside his own party.

49A. I. – During the Cold War, how did the concept of progressivism play out. How did it translate in terms of party affiliations?

50H. Z. – In the 60s, the Democratic Party was liberal in the double sense of the word, liberal on domestic issues, and aggressive in foreign policy. Today, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are opposed to this particular war in Iraq at this particular time, but not to war in general. They are part of the Democratic tradition; they belong to the liberal Democratic tradition.

51A. I. – What about mavericks in the party such as George McGovern running on an antiwar platform for the Democrats in the 1972 presidential elections?

52H. Z. – McGovern is an oddity. He was a progressive in the real sense of the word, he did his doctoral dissertation on the Colorado Coal strike (as I had done earlier for my Master’s degree, although he did not hear of it, these theses are not distributed). [24] He was to the left of most Democratic leaders then in 1972 when he ran for office, and since he was a World War Two veteran, he was considered something of an antiwar hero and he matched the national feeling against the war. [25] But there has been a distortion about the 1972 campaign, used by the Democrats as an example of how an antiwar candidate cannot win the election. This was a crushing defeat of McGovern, in electoral votes especially though, which is different from popular vote where the turn-out was much closer. But when the election took place, the war was almost over, the peace treaty was being negotiated in Paris, the war was not the key issue when people went to the polls in 1972. Nixon had also pledged to pull out of Vietnam, he had withdrawn a good number of troops by then. McGovern lost probably for other reasons, I guess because he lacked charisma, and did not run the best of campaigns, his vice-presidential candidate Thomas F. Eagleton was disowned by him because of his psychiatric record. So he did not make for a good candidate.

53A. I. – Were you surprised that he supported Hillary Clinton in this campaign, given his antiwar credentials?

54H. Z. – Yes, I was, very. And disappointed too, because he has been very opposed to the war in Iraq. But I guess personal loyalties to the Clintons, together with Hillary Clinton’s rhetoric about promising to end the war, has led him to seize on every word of hers to feel consistent in his views while supporting her.

55A. I. – Other congressmen in the same political tradition as McGovern, such as the African-American Representative John Lewis from Georgia have supported Clinton.

56H. Z. – Yes, but he shifted to Obama recently. He is also closer to the Clintons, and though has been one of the more progressive members of Congress, he has been very loyal to the Democratic leadership, sometimes too loyal. Other, more progressive members such as [Michigan Representative] John Conyers, have gone along with the Democratic leadership as well in a disappointing way too. Conyers had been very vocal and influential in leading hearings to impeach George W. Bush when the Democrats were in the minority in Congress, but since it shifted in the House, he dropped the hearings though he was the head of the Judiciary Committee. He has been good on healthcare though. And we have remained in touch, the two of us, since the 60s. [26] He invited me to speak to Congressional aides a few years ago, I forget about what, but you know how aides are usually more progressive than their congressmen, they do the research, the briefs, the correspondence, etc. And more recently he invited me to speak, we shared a platform and I congratulated him on his efforts to impeach Bush. So we have remained in touch occasionally indeed.

57A. I. – Can you think of other Democratic Party members in the true tradition of progressivism?

58H. Z. – Dennis Kucinich is in the Robert LaFollette tradition, and more so than John Edwards even. Kucinich has remained the most progressive of all. [27]

59A. I. – How would you define Dennis Kucinich?

60H. Z. – As a progressive. He is not a liberal, he is almost a radical, but what is missing is that he still won’t dissociate himself from the Democratic Party. So I would call him a progressive Democrat, you see. It is hard to find definitions for all these people because people don’t fall into neat categories.

61He represents the best of the Democratic Party. There are rebels in Congress, political rebels, you see, inside the party, like Bernie Sanders, who is in the Senate and calls himself a socialist actually. And there are some of the black members, like Shirley Chisholm and Barbara Lee. [28] So there are political figures who are to the left of the Democratic Party.

62A. I. – In this context, what do you think of third-party or independent candidates or voices outside the two main parties? Do they serve a progressive purpose?

63H. Z. – Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney are useful of course, but only symbolically. [29] It is good to have alternative voices, if they have the opportunity to express themselves. But they are always excluded from the national debate. In 2004, when Nader was thinking of running for office again, he called me and I gave him my views. I had supported him in 2000. But in 2004, I did not think it such a good idea to run again. In 2000, it was not yet clear how vicious the Republican Party would be, not that Kerry was any good —he was indeed a poor excuse. I advised Nader to run but to withdraw at the last moment, that is to use the election campaign as a platform to voice his views on a large scale, but to me his strength was in that political platform he could use, not in the votes. The latter would only show his weakness, not his strength. Strength is in ideas not votes. I made the point that electoral politics are not a field where we on the left can hope to win. Our job is outside the electoral arena, to build a movement. This has to do with the way the electoral system is set up and run in this country, where minority coalitions are not given a voice, where proportionality does not play out in the electoral arena.

64A. I. – But this was true in 2000 as well, yet you pledged your support for Nader then.

65H. Z. – It is true, but then I did not think the differences were so great between the Republicans and the Democrats, and I did not anticipate 9/11 and the “war on terrorism.” There is a qualitative difference now between the Republicans and Democrats, not because the Democrats are any better—indeed they are not—but because the Republicans have become so much worse, worse than ever.

66A. I. – Is the difference between the two parties greater today than during the Cold War?

67H. Z. – Well, during the Cold War, both parties had the same foreign policy. No difference to be found then.

68A. I. – Is the difference now that we don’t know what the Democrats’ foreign policy might be on the war on terrorism?
H. Z. – Yes, indeed.
A. I. – How different is the Democratic Party today compared to back in the 1960s with John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson as liberal presidents?
H. Z. – You see the Movement then did not see itself as “liberal,” but Vice-President Hubert Humphrey indeed defined himself as a liberal, as the Democratic presidential nominee against Nixon in 1968. [30] By comparison with liberalism, the word “progressive” is used very loosely today.
A. I. – Who did you vote for in the Massachusetts primaries?
H. Z. – I don’t remember, but whenever there is a third party candidate on the ballot I vote for them. If I had to choose between Hillary Clinton and Obama though, I’d choose Obama, but only for two minutes. Once the vote is cast, the real work for people on the left begins.
Boston, May 6 and October 8, 2008