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This seems like a kneejerk response to a strawman version of Zinn. He's a pretty middle-of-the-road academic politically speaking and doesn't get anywhere near
by the_benno 6y ago
This seems like a kneejerk response to a strawman version of Zinn. He's a pretty middle-of-the-road academic politically speaking and doesn't get anywhere near what I would call far-left.
As for "pessimistic", well, I'd just say that the facts don't care about your feelings. Powerful institutions are (generally speaking) violent and uncaring towards those without power; ignoring that fact does us all a disservice.
- trentnix 6y agoZinn's own words (which are quoted in the article) confirm the parent's point: From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong in this country . . . something rotten at the root. The situation required not just a new president or new laws, but an uprooting of the old order, the introduction of a new kind of society—cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian.
- jolux 6y agoSaying that America has deeply rooted problems is not pessimism, it's realism. Not believing in people's ability to make it better is pessimism.
- trentnix 6y agoAnd in that quote, Zinn explicitly mentions he doesn’t believe in “people’s ability to make it better”: I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy
- jolux 6y agoYou're misreading him. He's talking about the ability of an ideology and a system to correct itself, not that of the people it rules to choose a different society for themselves.
- trentnix 6y agoHe is saying a revolution is required because the people can’t change things. I’m not sure, short of outright nihilism, how one could be more pessimistic that that.
- ImprobableTruth 6y agoHe's literally saying that he believes that American democracy is fundamentally flawed and that it can't be fixed, therefore necessitating a revolution.
- jolux 6y agoHe said it's not self-correcting, meaning people have to take charge to build the country that they need and want. That's not the same as saying it can't be fixed.
- rayiner 6y agoNo, he says he doesn’t believe in the “self-correcting character of American Democracy.” That doesn’t just mean that people need to fix it, it means he thinks they need to operate outside the Democratic process to fix it.
- jolux 6y agoYou're overfocusing on the "American Democracy" part and missing what he means about self-correction. Being an active and engaged citizen does mean being engaged beyond the ballot box. What specifically do you believe he was advocating that you find immoral or distasteful?
- ImprobableTruth 6y ago>He said it's not self-correcting, meaning people have to take charge to build the country that they need and want. Yeah, and he believes that this has to happen through a revolution, because the democratic system can't fix itself _even if the people vote and try to change laws to do so_. >That's not the same as saying it can't be fixed. Maybe you call tearing down a system and replacing it wither another 'fixing', but I (and likely most others) certainly don't. At the very least, it's a hell of a lot more pessimistic than reformism.
- jolux 6y agoReform and revolution are a false dichotomy. Social movements and popular unrest effect the electoral process significantly.
- rbanffy 6y ago> doesn't get anywhere near what I would call far-left. To the far-right, everything looks like far-left.
- ImprobableTruth 6y agoFar left is a pretty fuzzy term, but I don't think you need to be far-right to consider someone advocating for revolutionary anti-capitalism to be part of it.
- rbanffy 6y agoI don't question Zinn's position is very much to the left, but, I've often heard people say universal healthcare is "socialism" and that makes the person sound like they are so far into the right, well past nazism, to confuse human rights with socialism.