[In the following review of The Politics of History, Stone finds that Zinn provides valuable advice to historians on making their work more relevant to the contemporary political situation.]

Howard Zinn is a radical historian. The order is important, for Zinn's perception of the present consciously shapes his outlook on the past. He argues in this book that more historians should do the same. In other words, there should be more politics in history. If so, more people might read what historians are writing. Integrating their history and their politics would also help historians reduce some of that disjointedness they feel between their career and the rest of their lives. Zinn would hope that in the process much of the new history would be radical. But he would settle for conservative scholarship as long as it sought to be relevant. At least such history can be debated; it is living, something that can't be said of most of what is written today.

Zinn begins with the assumption that the only real justification for studying history is to advance man toward the solution of current and future problems. He does not exclude truly artistic works which rely on imagination and flashes of insight to illuminate the past. But few historians are capable of such writing, and few even attempt it. What historians in fact do is write about the past for its own sake. Their defense is that they are laying the foundation blocks which some later scholar, more interpretive and with a longer vision, will erect into a great structure.

Zinn rejects the notion that such building-block history is comparable to what the “pure” scientist does. The latter is seeking ever-expanding alternatives to assist living human beings (or future beings) to cope with their world. The historian too often is writing dead history, dehumanizing not only to those who read it but even more so to those who write it. Who cares about “The Shield Signal at Marathon” or “Bampson of Bampson's Raiders” except a few fellow specialists or antiquarians (one and the same person, Zinn says)?

The point, though, as Zinn concedes, is not the subject itself; the most narrowly conceived subject might compel our attention if significant questions were asked of it. That is not happening and Zinn explains why in his chapter, “History as Private Enterprise.”

Writing history is profitable, Zinn points out. The professor can expect promotions, tenure, prestige, salary increments, not to mention royalties, all for “producing” a commodity that has almost no usefulness except to others in the “business.” While the ambitious historian may not consciously avoid social and political issues, “some quiet gyroscopic mechanism of survival operates to steer [him] toward research within the academic consensus.” He claims that his work does not reflect his middle-class affluence. But Zinn maintains that the scholar's seeming objectivity about the past is only a defense—even if unconscious—of the status quo.

What is the solution? First of all, Zinn advises historians to make a commitment to value-laden history. He distinguishes between ultimate and instrumental values. The former include such things as economic security, freedom of expression, abolition of war and racism; these values can be adhered to with no danger that they will distort the historian's enquiry. Instrumental values, however, are dangerous; for example, the influence of a religion, nationality, ideology, or particular class can badly prejudice an otherwise acceptable work.

Next, Zinn suggests several specific ways historians might proceed in applying ultimate values: “We can intensify, expand, sharpen our perception of how bad things are, for the victims of the world.” “We can expose the pretensions of governments to either neutrality or beneficence.” “We can expose the ideology that pervades our culture—rationale for the going order.” “We can recapture those few moments in the past which show the possibility of a better way of life than that which has dominated the earth thus far.” And “We can show how good social movements can go wrong, how leaders can betray their followers, how rebels can become bureaucrats, how ideals can become frozen and reified.”

All good advice, I think, and Zinn demonstrates what he means in a series of essays that form the middle part of the book. Chapters on the abolitionists, racism, the New Deal, Fiorello La Guardia, and imperialism, among others, are of varying quality. Zinn is at his best when discussing the recent black experience. Not surprisingly, this is the subject which he probably knows most intimately from personal involvement, thus supporting his argument for more politics in history.

My major questions concern methodology. The historian clearly can not escape being affected to a great degree by instrumental values. This is especially so when ultimate values conflict. Thus, when economic security, for example, is blocked, does one forsake non-violence? Zinn accepts the necessity of violence to promote social change, though only as a last resort and with many wise qualifications. Nevertheless, one's means will inevitably shape his end. The same statement applies to one's history. Granted we must make our writing more relevant, useful, and humanistic. Can we not also make it more precise in the best scientific sense? Zinn has little to say about quantifying and statistical methods.

Historians—and academicians generally—may not like Zinn's book. But they just might profit from it.