Talk on Democracy and Citizenship in Greece

Talk on Democracy and Citizenship in Greece

Howard Zinn delivered this address at the French Institute in Athens on May 25, 2009, the day before attending a performance of his play Marx in Soho, and he frames his talk as an examination of the tension between democracy and real citizenship, using the United States as his illustration. He notes that "democracy" is a Greek word and recalls Lincoln's definition of it as government of the people, by the people, for the people, then sets out to question whether the United States, despite calling itself the world's leading democracy, actually embodies or spreads democracy through its actions. He cites Truman's 1947 doctrine of sending military aid to Greece and Turkey in democracy's name, then traces the same justification through the Korean War, in which two to three million Koreans died while dictatorships persisted in both North and South Korea, and through the Vietnam War, fought ostensibly to support a democracy that was in fact a dictatorship in Saigon. Turning to Athens itself, Zinn observes that American education presents Athens as the cradle of democracy while omitting that its democracy excluded slaves and that citizens were a minority; he cites the scholar J. D. Kitto's description of slavery in the mines as a "little blot" on Athens's democracy, comparing it to how American education treats slavery as a minor blemish on U.S. democracy. He discusses Socrates's trial and execution by due process, and his refusal, as recounted in Plato's Crito, to escape prison because of his obligation to the state, calling this obedience-to-the-state principle "totalitarian" rather than democratic, and notes it goes uncriticized in American education. Zinn extends this critique of due process through the case of Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italian immigrant anarchists executed after a biased trial in Massachusetts, whose sentence was upheld by a special commission including the presidents of Harvard and MIT; he quotes journalist Heywood Broun's remark that the men could take unction to their souls at being put to death by men in academic gowns. He returns to Lincoln, noting that Lincoln, despite personally opposing slavery, felt bound by the Constitution's due process and did not act against it, since the Constitution protected "life, liberty, and property" rather than the Declaration of Independence's "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." He describes the fifty-five wealthy white men who gathered in Philadelphia to frame the Constitution, arguing the resulting strong central government was designed to suppress uprisings like the 1786 farmers' rebellions in Massachusetts, referencing a letter to George Washington expressing alarm that veterans believed they deserved an equal share of the nation's wealth. He quotes a leader of the populist movement's remark that America has "government by Wall Street, for Wall Street, of Wall Street," and describes how constitutional amendments meant to protect free speech and the rights of freed Black people were undermined in practice, with the Supreme Court later applying the Fourteenth Amendment mainly to protect corporations. Zinn identifies two exceptions to this pattern: the 1930s, when strikes, the Bonus Army march, and tenant organizing pushed Roosevelt and Congress to pass unemployment insurance, social security, and minimum-wage laws; and the 1960s, when the civil rights movement (which he witnessed while teaching at a Black women's college in Atlanta) forced enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, and antiwar activism, including draft-board raids and soldiers' refusals to fight, helped end the Vietnam War, spawning subsequent movements for women's, gay and lesbian, and disabled people's rights. He notes that this energy has since faded, with both parties, including Obama's early administration and its missile strikes over Pakistan, continuing the pattern of serving wealth and militarism, citing forty-five million uninsured Americans and one in five children born into poverty as evidence that economic inequality is omitted from formal definitions of democracy. He argues that historical progress—abolition, the eight-hour day—came not from voting or due process but from citizen action: abolitionist civil disobedience against the Fugitive Slave Act, and labor strikes despite police violence. He rejects violent revolution as a solution, citing Hannah Arendt's view that violence corrupts those who use it and produces uncertain ends, and calls instead for sustained citizen action between the poles of legal procedure and violence. He points to contemporary signs of renewed activism: student walkouts, antiwar vigils, a longshoremen's one-day strike, doctors and nurses arrested demanding national health care, war veterans speaking out, and rising military desertions. He closes by explaining that power, whether under dictatorship or democracy, depends on the obedience of ordinary people—illustrated by the success of labor strikes against General Motors and Ford and the consumer boycott of grapes led by California farmworkers, and by the collapse of governments in Eastern Europe, Latin America, Indonesia, and the Philippines—and asserts that social change arises from millions of small acts converging, concluding that engaging in the struggle for democracy, win or lose, makes one's life more fulfilling.

By Howard Zinn · Genre: Political Philosophy, Essay, History · 8,216 words

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French Institute, Athens, Greece, May 25, 2009.

Zinn's play Marx in Soho has been translated into many languages and performed in a number of countries, including Cuba, France, and Greece. He gave this address a day before attending a performance of the play in Athens.

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democracy · citizenship · ancient Greece · political philosophy · governance · public participation · civic engagement · political systems · classical history · Greek civilization · political thought · society and politics

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