the questioning of the previously unquestionable norms of American society first by blacks, then by the young, and finally even by a growing number of people at the very center of the American Establishment, Professor Zinn sees the possible beginnings of a sweeping revolution in values and behavior with the potential to mobilize the American public in a successful quest for those great elusive goals of the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This revolution, then, and the painful failures of American society—more especially those of its predominant liberal credo—are the central and complementary themes Professor Zinn employs to lead his readers through this shattering yet vital and creative period in the History of American Society.
Jack P. Greene
Johns Hopkins University
To Abby Dunlop, Judith Mandelbaum, Betsy Neal, and Joan Tighe, for indispensable help. To Susan Hartman, for finding material on the treatment of women during World War II. To the Rabinowitz Foundation, for aid at a certain crucial time in the production of this book. To William Hoth, a perceptive and indefatigable editor. To Bill Hackett, for wanting me to do this. To Roz, as always, for wise counsel and encouragement.
H.Z.
Boston University
Introduction: The American Creed
Any book of history is, consciously or not, an interpretation in which selected data from the past is tossed into the present according to the interest of the historian. That interest, no matter how much the historian’s mind dwells on the past, is always a present one. My own interest in writing this short history of the United States in the twenty-five years following World War II is to explore two questions, in the hope that the reader will be stimulated to take a more active part in the making of an American history different from what we have had so far.
First, why did the United States, exactly as it became the most heavily armed and wealthiest society in the world, run into so much trouble with its own people? From the late fifties to the early seventies, the nation experienced unprecedented black rebellion, student demonstrations, antiwar agitation, civil disobedience, prison uprisings, and a widespread feeling that American civilization was faltering, or even in decay.
And second, what are the possibilities, the visions, the beginnings, of fresh directions for this country?
I begin the discussion of the first question in my opening chapter, with Hiroshima, in 1945, when an entire city was annihilated by American technology in a burst of righteous brutality, with no protest from the American public. I raise the second question in my final chapter with the scene at Bunker Hill, 1971, when veterans of the Vietnam War assembled to protest similar brutality in Indochina.
Running through these questions, and this book, is the theme of an American creed at odds with itself. The common distinctions made between promise and performance, theory and practice, words and deeds, do not represent the situation accurately. The promise itself is ambiguous, the words contradictory. And so with the performance—in which greed and violence are mixed with just enough nobility and heroism to confuse any simple characterization of “America.” For America is not only warrior-presidents, insatiable industrialists, servile intellectuals, and compliant victims, it is also men and women of courage, organizers and agitators of dissent and resistance.
In the pages to follow, I distinguish between the warring elements of the American creed. There is the rhetorical creed, represented best by the words of the Declaration of Independence: “all Men are created equal … unalienable Rights … Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness … whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it. …” There is the working creed, those beliefs that, whether or not written into the Constitution and the laws, are embedded in the minds of the American people by constant practice, reinforced by church, family, school, official pronouncements, and the agents of mass communication: that all men are created equal, except foreigners with whom we are at war, blacks who have not been singled out for special attention, Indians who will not submit, inmates of prisons, members of the armed forces, and anyone without money; that what are most alienable are the lives of men sent off to war and the liberties of people helpless against authority; that whenever members of any group of people become destructive of this working creed, it is the right of the government to alter or abolish them by persecution or imprisonment.
In this sense, American history is a long attempt, so far unsuccessful, to overcome the ambiguity in the American creed, to fulfill the principles of the Declaration of Independence.
Ambiguity has always been useful to those who run societies. It joins a working set of rules and beliefs necessary to keep the system going with a set of ideals that promise something better in the future and soften the harshness of the present. In the great liberal revolutions of modern times—England in the seventeenth century, the United States and France in the eighteenth century—this ambiguity became more necessary than ever before. Large numbers of people had to be mobilized to overthrow the old regimes and to participate actively in the complex economic and parliamentary-party systems born of those revolutions. The ideals spurred the people; the rules controlled them. Religion, education, the mass media took turns in communicating both the ideals and the rules.
The industrial states that emerged from these revolutions have all claimed to represent great progress over pre-modern societies. The claim is enormously exaggerated. Elections and parliamentary systems have not done away with the concentration of decisionmaking power in the hands of the few; they have permitted only token participation in government by a largely uninformed and powerless electorate. The capitalist system has not done away with the crass division of society into rich and poor that obtained in feudal times; indeed, it has deepened that division on a global scale, and within the rich nations it has disguised the maldistribution of wealth by an intricate set of contractual relationships enforced by law. Modern constitutional due process and bills of rights have not changed the basic truths of pre-modern societies: that justice in the courts and freedom of expression are rarely available to those without money or position. Mass literacy, science, and education have not eliminated deception of the many by the few; rather, they have made it possible for duplicity to be more widespread.
The rise of national states in modern times has been viewed as a progressive development, as an advance over the splintered world of monarchs and popes, tribal chiefs and feudal lords. But the new order, disappointing for most people within the new nations, was lethal for those outside; nation-states were able to organize empires, dispense violence, and conduct war on a level far beyond the reach of the old regimes. The “rule of law” that developed inside the modern nations was accompanied by the rule of lawlessness on the world scene. Nation-states armed with nuclear warheads diverted national wealth to war and preparation for war, while controlling their people at home by police rule and token benefits.
This is not to deny the reality of progress in medical science and technology, in literacy, and political participation. But these prerequisites for a good society have thus far been perverted by war, nationalistic ambitions, and private profit. What is called progress has meant mostly the sharpening of tools not yet used for human purposes, the sowing of expectations not yet realized.
The United States, as the most modern of modern countries, epitomizes all these characteristics of the twentieth-century nation-state. It has been the most effective in utilizing its rhetorical creed, in conjunction with its working creed, to sustain control
