Rob Kall: OK.
You said that you're a bottom up historian. What do you mean by that?
Staughton Lynd: Well, I 'mean by that' that there were a few
of us: Jesse Lemisch, who wrote about sailors; the late Alfred Young, who died
last fall, who wrote about the people who made up the so-called mob in
Pre-revolutionary Boston. Most of us
happened to be historians of the American Revolution, and to quote one of
Jesse's essays, "We ask the question, who built the pyramids? What were their lives like? What has it been for ordinary people through
history?" And that became known as
"History from Below," or "History from Bottom Up."
Rob Kall: Now that's kind of what Howard Zinn got into,
also.
Staughton Lynd: Yes it is, and the greatest single example of
that is the first chapter of his Peoples History, where he describes
Columbus arriving at the home of the Arawak Indians, and what Columbus did to
them.
Rob Kall: I know I've got to let you go, but I would
love to be able to reconnect with you and talk about this with you
further. I'm writing a book called Bottom
Up, and I'm looking at it going back to before humans did farming and
started large states, because I think back at the time of bands and tribes,
humans were all bottom up, and that's the way we lived - without hierarchy,
without centralization.
Staughton Lynd: I've tried to put into words the historical
theory of the New Movement, and I think it's exactly the one you describe. When people settled down to Agriculture and
produced an economic surplus, then you could have a central government, then
you could have taxes, then you could have armies, and that's when the whole
thing started to go to hell. (laughs)
Rob Kall: Yes.
Staughton Lynd: I'll look forward to your book.
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