I, myself, am not a Socialist I tend to vote 3rd party because I believe Nader's basic idea that there is no difference between the two dominant parties - they just serve different corporate interests. But I am in no way a committed Marxist/ Socialist anything. But I feel deeply that so few discussions get it right - in ether the pro or the con.<p>It is easy to confuse the political realities of Socialism for the underlying ethos. Marx's Socialism at its core sought to put political control in the hands of those who produce society. The ethic defining the movement was to take the advances of the French Revolution (which was essentially a Middle Class revolution) and extend those liberties for all.<p>It is in that sense that Zinn is a Socialist writer. It is not accurate to characterize him as writing to "help the little guy". I tis accurate that this is a perversion of not only Stalin and Mao (Stalin more than Lenin as Lenin was more about aligning state power with a political party) but also Hitler, Huey Long, David Duke, etc. Demagogery is neither left nor right.<p>The important work of someone like Howard Zinn is not that he simplified history or wrote for the 'little guy' but that he wrote with awareness of Machiavelli's dictum: "History is written by the victors"<p>I think - if one is interested in what Zinn was writing towards and can look at things like socialism with a dispassionate eye - it is worth reading Walter Benjamin's "Theses on the Philosophy of History". Dense and epigrammatic - like reading Nietzsche or Kierkegaard.<p>It is easy - and in terms of praxis correct - to lambaste Socialism as a failed attempt which turned into horrific perversion. But there is something vital there still. I would argue that there is much still to be learned from reading Marx and as a thinker he leads back to thinkers like Hegel, Kant, Vico, etc and engaged some of the brilliant minds of the 20th century - like Adorno, Benjamin, Bloch, etc<p>To borrow from one of Adorno's lectures on Hegel in which he attacked Benedetto Croce for the presumption of an early 20th century essay entitled "What is living and what is dead in Hegel". The issue here is not Zinn's relevance to our world but our relevance in terms of the basic Enlightenment tradition.<p>One thing that is very hard to argue if you are coming from the standpoint of " liberal (in the classical sense) philosophy of individual liberty" (which I agree is the place to start - that is where Marx and Zinn both start in their very different attempts), one thing that is hard to argue is that we are dealing with the Kantian transendental subjectivity that classical liberal philosophy was based on.<p>We are different. The 20th century changed what it means to be human.<p>To sum up - I think Howard Zinn was a wonderful figure. I have enormous respect for him. He is not one of my favorite writers or thinkers but I do enjoy listening to his readings. For me he is an example of an ethical person who saw clearly and attempted to educate others. I have similar respect for Ralph Nader, Richard Stallman, Philip and Daniel Berrigan even when I entirely disagree with a point or a position. RIP Professor Zinn.