Hannah Arendt is probably best known for her book The Origins of Totalitarianism, which is

mired in the death camps of Europe and paints in detail a grim picture of the willingness of
people to create systems that inflict misery on their fellows. She is rather more optimistic
about the future in On Revolution, in which she brings to bear the brilliance of her intellect on
the comparative study of revolutions. She is optimistic not least because of what she sees as
the success of the American Revolution compared to the French Revolution, even though this
latter is regularly held up as being the superior achievement politically and philosophically.
Establishing why this should be so involves her in a consideration of the interactions between
the social and economic dimensions of the revolution and the need for violence first to propel
and second to sustain the revolution. The social dimension of revolution is the desire for
freedom or liberty, while the economic imperative is the desire for freedom from want:
achieving both of these has proved extremely difficult and it is because of the fertility of the
land of the American continent that to large part made that revolution possible. Unfortunately,
it is also the case that this very fertility has contributed to the belief that the political
settlement that followed the Revolution was uniquely or even divinely inspired and,
somehow, that this means it should never or at least only rarely adjusted; it has also inspired
the rulers of that country very frequently to deny the emancipation of a revolution to the
people of so many other countries, preferring them to live in want and oppression.

In a very useful introduction, Jonathan Schell describes the way in which Arendt's thought
will "crystallize" around a certain set of analyses rather than form part of a coherent or at least
fully mapped ideology. Instead of applying a pre-existing conceptual framework or try to
discern one from the history humanity, Arendt instead applies intellectual curiosity through
what would seem to be the dialectical method and investigates the implications of what she
finds: as Theodor Adorno observed in Minima Moralia, the dialectical method produces a
variety of observations and insights which are grouped or clustered around the central starting
point, with no point necessarily closer to the centre than any other. This tends to mean that
there are no simple answers and it takes some quite detailed analysis to reach a point at which
the crystallization can take place--that is, when Arendt reaches a point in her analysis when
the relationship between the various issues becomes clear and the structure emerges. In other
words, this is a book which requires some degree of concentration and thought by the reader
and, of course, experience suggests that this will not be to the taste of everyone.

This is a book for people whose idea of history is more than just the lives and times of princes
and generals but is composed of much deeper and often more subtle forces. If it has a flaw
(other than in theoretical terms), it is that Arendt's learning, broad and impressive as it is, does
not extend much beyond Europe and North America. Even so, this is a work of great value
and, as mentioned above, inherently optimistic in nature. Arendt is convinced that some form
of council of individuals (perhaps not quite like the Soviets but similar to them) can be the
force that maintains the good governance of the country and regulates its constitution
appropriately.

Brilliant and unexpected -- focuses on French and American revolutions to explore not what
revolutions have been historically so much as what they were intended as, or ought to be. Her
argument is that revolutions are essentially political events, that are sidelined by the need to
address the immediate concerns of the poor through redistribution. The unique success of the
American revolution was due, first, to the "natural abundance" of America, which allowed the
revolution here to complete its political course.

The success of the American revolution was also due to the practical experience of selfgovernment that Americans had accumulated through their unique system of self-governing
towns, and of colonial governments created more or less de novo. And this brings us to the
other main theme of the book:

The ultimate test of a revolution is the construction of "public freedom" or "public happiness",
that is the ability of ordinary people to be active participants in self-government. (She has a
moving quote from Jefferson at one point where he imagines heaven as an endless series of
debates with his old comrades.) Here the American revolution has failed as well. The question
is whether the sort of active, self-determined political life that is possible during a revolution
can be maintained without constant new revolutions as Jefferson (and Mao, tho Arendt doesn't
go there) believed. Her conclusion is that the "lost treasure" of the revolutionary tradition is
the conciliar form of government. Local councils have self-organized in every revolutionary
setting from France in 1789 o Hungary in 1956, emphatically including Russia 1917 -- taht's
after all what the Soviet in Soviet Union referred to. Local councils allow everyone to
experience self-government directly, and by delegating power upward can constitute regional
and national governments. Councils, she argues, have the same lineage as representative
government and are a more genuinely democratic system.

It's Arendt, so it's long on persuasion through classical quotes and elegant rhetoric, and short
on evidence or step by step argument. But if nothing else, it's refreshingly orthogonal to the
vast majority of what's written on revolutionary politics.

As difficult as The Human Condition, but takes longer to pick up steam. Luckily though,
Arendt keeps the momentum building until the end, starting around Chapter 3. Overall,
Arendt spends too long discussing abstract philosophical ideas and linguistic origins, and not
enough time discussing the practical distinctions among revolutions, and what makes them
work or fail. When she does this, the book becomes much more interesting, although any
enjoyment is still hampered by the almost unbearably long sentences, each filled with as many
as five different ideas punctuated by hyphens, colons, commas and parentheses. Some
sentences take several re-readings just to wrap your mind around everything she is trying to
say. It is obvious the woman is brilliant (I've already used adjectives like "astounding" and
"staggering" to describe her intellect in other reviews), but it's equally obvious that she either
doesn't give much of a darn about bringing her ideas to a wider (read: "stupider") audience, or
she's just not capable of adopting a more accessible writing style. I'm tempted to cite the
former, just because Eichmann in Jerusalem did not suffer from the same shortcoming.

As far as content, I can only give a partial rundown, since the entire book is so dense. Her
discussion of the differences between the American and French Revolutions was illuminating
and persuasive. She posits that the success of a revolution depends on 1) it being free of the
misery surrounding an impoverished populace 2) its success in finding a sufficient authority
to replace the deposed one. America got lucky, starting from scratch, and the success of their
and any revolution was dependent upon a foundation -- in the American case, the foundation
of a constitution and new form of government, which is something the French and most
subsequent revolutions failed to do. At the same time, The American revolution dwindled and
the "revolutionary spirit" eventually died away because the founders did not do enough to
protect it when enshrining the Constitution. She says they could have done this by protecting
the political rights and freedom of the townships and town meetings. These small groups or
"councils," she claims, are vital aspects that spring organically from any revolutionary
movement and are the only outlet for true political expression by the common citizen. They
therefore must be nurtured in a symbiotic relationship with the state if freedom is to be
preserved.

The conclusion is particularly impressive, when she actually suggests a return to a

Greekish/Romanesque political system in which not everyone votes, only those who are
sufficiently interested in the political process. This government would be inherently both selfchosen and self-including. In this way, people not concerned with their public freedom are not
forced to participate and can instead focus on their private lives, while people to whom
politics does indeed matter will never be excluded from political decisions (as they inevitably
are in our current representative system). I honestly don't know enough about political or
revolutionary theory to agree or disagree with her authoritatively, but I can say at least that
her arguments are persuasive, and even intuitive despite their complexity.

The ideas here are essential, but the packaging is unfortunately rather repellant. I would not
recommend starting your exposure to Arendt with this book. Probably better to start with the
far easier Eichmann, and then move onto the more important Human Condition. But this one
is important nonetheless, especially for anyone interested in political theory or the concept of
freedom.

Hannah Arendt was a much more perceptive critic of the French Revolution than Burke,
although she had the virtue of hindsight. In On Revolution (1963), Arendt made the
provocative claim that the American Revolution was actually more ambitious than the French
Revolution, although it failed to set the world ablaze. On Revolution is a work of
dichotomies. Arendt claimed that the French Revolution was a struggle over scarcity and
inequality, while the American Revolution was quest to secure political freedom. The
Americans were more civic minded, while the French were obsessed with liberation, which is
simply freedom from a tyrant. The French were driven by desperation, for while the French
Revolutionaries were sincere men, they had set themselves the impossible task of alleviating
the misery of the masses through political means. The Americans, living in a land of plenty
and having a tradition of freedom, were trying to create a uniquely new state, making their
revolution far more civic. It was these more purely public goals that Arendt preferred to the
more material goals of the French Revolution.

On the surface, Arendt offered a modern recasting of Burke, for she found the violence of the
French Revolution to be inevitable and she conformed Burkes fears that the revolution would
have a baleful influence upon later generations. Yet, at the heart of it the two were very much
in disagreement. Burkes continuing appeal lies in his reputation as the founding intellectual
of conservatism. Arguably the ultimate connecting thread in all conservatism is an abiding
faith in the natural inequality of the universe. For this reason, Burke was antidemocratic,
because such system rejects the hierarchy of life, as ordained by god and nature. To Burke
aristocrats, because of the training and experience they receive, are the proper rulers of men.
This is why conservatives, from George Fitzhugh to Russell Kirk, have found Burke
beguiling, even as they lived in democratic societies. Conservatism, by simply having a
respect for inequality, can survive and even thrive in a democracy, where once conservatives
could not stomach the thought. Arendt, by contrast, argued for more peaceful means to
achieve revolution and had a far greater affection for democracy. Arendt, while not a radical,
was clearly not in favor of Burkes unequal society where change occurred slowly. If
anything, Arendt rightfully feared that Burkean societies actually bred the conditions that led
to the French Revolution. Arendt may not share the optimism of Thomas Paines Rights of
Man (1792), but they both share a belief that government is a construct of man, not an organic
system ordained by god and shackled to tradition.

Arendts work is more in line with that of Tocqueville. Like Tocqueville, Arendt found
material goals in revolutions to be odious. In this way she supports Tocquevilles assertion
that if people want freedom not for its own sake, but for material reasons, then freedom will
fall to tyranny. If material, self-interested behavior is the sole inspiration for action then
people may vote for a government that gives them economic stability at the price of political
freedom. Arendts contribution was that she saw this material motive as the true basis for the
French Revolution, and therefore the reason why it turned towards terror and tyranny. Also,
Arendt believed that ward republics in the tradition of Jefferson were a means to maintain

civic virtues and a healthy dose of local government. She had perhaps noted Tocquevilles
distaste for centralization, who believed that it made the French Revolutions turn toward
tyranny all the more inevitable. Tocqueville had seen and generally admired the local
governments of America, something Arendt wanted to see restarted in her day, when more
central authority held sway in America. By contrast Burke ignored the American experience
in his work, for while he famously supported the American Revolution, he ignored its course
after 1776. As R. R. Palmer pointed out, Burke never bothered to examine the new state
constitutions in America, something the nascent French Revolutionaries poured over.

The bulk of this book was quite boring with the exception of the last few chapters. Either
ways, it was my opportunity to be introduced into the world of Hannah Arendt, the famous
German political scientist. The later chapters of the book were so rich in content that it was
well worth reading through the two hundred-or-so pages of rubbish.

Arendt carried out an in-debt study of the concept of revolution throughout the American,
French, and Russian Revolutions among others. The most interesting aspects of these
rebellions are the rise of community-based grassroots organizations constructed by the
common citizens in order to provide some sort of emergency government during periods of
no-government. These organizations were known simply as town hall meetings in the
American Revolution, soviets in the Russian Revolution, and so on. Such a rise of an
organic democracy seemed to be a natural companion to the lack of a clear state power during
and immediately after revolution.

Unfortunately, processional revolutionaries and other men of power often sweep in to steal
victory from the hands of the town hall communities. In Americas case, the founding fathers
failed to incorporate them into the American political system, replacing them with four-year
elections, and so on. In Russias case, Soviets were cleaned of those who were not
Bolsheviks, and in general terms, replaced by a centralized party dictatorship.

Fascinating book, especially if one has often sympathized for the social revolutions of both
two centuries ago and those of recent decades.

Hannah Arendt is one of the world's most profound political scientists: her scholarship is
sterling, her philosophical- psychological insights staggering; two of her books Origins of
Totalitariansim and Human Condition are among the few significant works in her field and
our era. Whenever she publishes, it is an event. And although she is not at her best in this
close study of the American and French revolutions and their meaning for the 20th century,
still on every page we are in the presence of a mind of high individuality, great interest and
intellectual integrity. It is her thesis that the Founding Fathers were faithful above all else to
the ideal of freedom as the end and justification of revolution and thereby they assured its
success. On the other hand, the Rousseau-Robespierre misalliance, the idea of the general will
binding the many into the one, the transformation of the Rights of Man into the rights of SansCulotte, not only ultimately led to the Reign of Terror but also the whole catalogue of post1792 ideological corruptions. The malhcurcux became the enrages, then the Industrial
Revolution's miserables. And the Marxist Leninist acceptance of the new absolutism, which
was done in the name of historical necessity and the name of the proletariat as a "natural"
force, subsequently absolved both tyranny and blood baths as stages along the way... A
powerful indictment and illumination, both immediate and enduring.


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At times threatening to deviate into academic irrelevance but always recovering to continue a
highly accessable treatment of the topic of revolution in the post-nuclear age, Hannah
Arendt's "On Revolution" makes the argument that the American Revolution was a successful
revolution while the French Revolution was not. More importantly, the relevance of this
conclusion lies in the manner in which her arguments lead her to advocate for the continuation
of revolution, in a qualified sense, and the continuation of the republican form of government
in the United States. Arendt fled Germany to Paris and then the United States. "On
Revolution" was published in 1963.
Crucial to understanding the distinctions she made between the French revolution and the
American is her attitude towards "the masses", a unique blend of bourgeois paternalism and
solidly reasoned historical analysis. Few could argue with her cogent and brilliant summation
of the events of the French Revolution and the ensuing "Terror". Arendt makes the case that
the French Revolution was doomed from the start essentially because the revolutionary
leaders, whom she depicts as sincere men of action, including Robespierre, set themselves the
impossible task of alleviating the misery of the masses through political means. In contrast,
the violence of the American Revolution followed the Declaration of Independance by a
colonial peoples for the purpose of forming a uniquely new state. The opportunities afforded
by the wealth of the new nation meant that following the Revolutionary War the United States
could continue to prosper as a republic despite the perpetuation of class differences.
Arendt argues however that the innovations of the American Revolution, most importantly
the sepration of powers and the enfranchisement of the masses through the vote, have become
inadequate in themselves for the purposes of guaranteeing ongoing stability and social wellbeing. Her defense of the continued viability of the republican form of government in the
modern age is conditional upon the institution of a "bottom up" organization of grassroots
social and community organizations. These citizens groups, modeled after those which played
a role in the French and Russian Revolutions as well as the revolt in Hungary in 1956, would
inform the discrete levels of government, from local communities which could be organized
in "cantons" to the federal government. Arendt refrains from offering a revolutionary agenda,
but implicit in her argument is that such an augmentation of the democratic nature of public
life will be made by inevitable by the interests of a population facing the pressures of the
modern state. These grassroots citizen organizations with a "bottom-up" heirarchical
organization, can form a democratic consensus independant of party politics. One of the key
components of Arendt's arguments is the distinction between public and private happiness. In
the end her argument explicitly rests upon the premise that freedom consists of "public
happiness", that is public service in the form participation in the affairs of government. Public
life in the form of social and community involvement are the very basis of the possibility of
private happiness, thus we must all take on the responsibility that the framers (she uses the
term founders) of the Constitutin took upon themselves as the champions of liberty.
Arendt is at her best and most quotable during the first 125 pages or so. This work is a
theoretical work and not a history, so we do not expect her to have traced the implications of
her arguments through the entire history of the United States. Thus, she makes no mention of
the U.S. Civil War, or Roosevelt's "New Deal" and proposed constitutional amendments.

The role of violence in revolution is a central theme throughout the work, and this is the
matter which she argues that Thomas Jefferson was most concerned about when he developed
his idea of a "canton" system. It is an important note that Jefferson devised this notion of a
republic of republics, so to speak, later in life, and for the purpose of avoiding recurring
bloodshed (the "watering" of the "Tree of Liberty"). In developing her argument she points
out that citizens' groups are not structured towards the function of administration, as they
reflect a wide variety of concerns such as trade unionism and scientific societies, lawyer's
guilds, etc. Thus Arendt does not propose that they take the place of government in the
traditional institutional sense of the word. The function of these civic institutions will be to
inform elected representatives with a democratic consensus, to guide political institutions with
the mandate of a natural elite each of which have the respect of and are derived from the
people.
The importance of strengthening the role of local government, intrinsic to the notion of the
"canton" system, lies in the resiliance of the political system which has thereby liberated itself
from the tyranny of political parties. Political parties, such as the communist party are,
according to Arendt, subject to corruption. The masses themselves fall prey to the vicissitudes
of history should they rely entirely on party politics or a statist system. Arendt speculates
openly on whether the political system of the United States is adequate to providing a means
for non-violent revolution. Unfortunately, she provides no specifics as to how a grassroots
network can discipline a political party which holds the reins of institutional power.
Arendt's arguments are convincing to the length which she takes them. She makes clear that
the implementation of her ideas would be revolutionary itself in that they rectify a
fundamental flaw in the american system, namely the dearth of opportunity for the average
citizen to involve him or herself in political affairs other than through the institution of voting.
She gives short shrift however to the post-WWII era European governments (the
"parliamentary" system), dismissing them as impotent. Therefore she does not discuss the
potential for a multi-party representative system operating at the federal level, something
which now seems obvious to many to be a signal shortcoming of political life in the United
States.
Moreover, she does not develop in any great length the idea that civil societies can take on
the role of revolutionary and ultimately political institutions; and therefore does not
distinguish in her arguments the advocacy for revolution itself and that of stability through the
republican form of government. She only suggests a possible resolution to this theoretical
dilemna when she suggests a deliberate as oppossed to spontaneous emergence of citizen's
groups. She argues that the historical occurances of these citizen's councils have been potent
only in the short term during or directly preceding revolutions. "Professional revolutionaries"
then opportunistically embrace the traditional centralized state with its top-down power
structure, ostensively out some sort of deference to its putative stability. Her distinction
between the French Revolution and the American Revolution in regard to this point is that
Robbespiere's betrayal of the "popular societies" in favor of the Jacobin Party is deliberately
mirrored by Lenin's betrayal of the "soviets" (see: Kronstadt Rebellion) This deliberateness is

a key point in her tragic portrayal of the failure to learn the lessons of the French Revolution,
lessons which she elucidates with great precision in the opening chapters of "On Revolution".
From our perspective, with all that has transpired in the last fifty-odd years, including the
forfeiture of the traditional responsibility to "public life" on the part of the priveleged (she
mentions the aspect of oligarchy in american life) which used to be a hallmark of conservative
thought, and the fall of the Soviet Union, and the re-emergence of war as a tool of empire in
an age of global disorder, Arendt's work may lack topicality. She makes no mention for
instance of the problems of ecology, population growth, or international political order. She
could not have foreseen the exact manifestation of uniquely american cultural phenomenon
such as the "culture wars", the fight over abortion, etc.. Nor could she have predicted the
advent of the internet or the resurgence of terrorism on a global scale as a political tactic. She
makes no use of the civil rights movement or the liberation of formerly colonized peoples in
the third world through the then-incipient global movement towards independence through
statehood, nor does she discuss the World Bank and the IMF. Nevertheless, in her treatment
of the scope of this work her erudition shines through her delicate yet powerful oratory and
makes "On Revolution" an excellent introduction to political theory and historical philosophy,
and a touchstone in the popular movement for progressive revolution. Also, in fairness after
having related the shortcomings of "On Revolution", I should state that this is the only work
of Arendt's that I have read. Her wikipedia page states that in other works she discusses the
Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. for example, though I do not know what her opinions are
about it or how her discussion of it relates to the themes of "On Revolution."

pg 11: "Under the concerted assault of the modern debunking 'sciences', psychology and
sociology, nothing indeed has seemed to be more safely buried than the concept of freedom.
Even the revolutionists, whom one might have assumed to be safely and even inexorably
anchored in a tradition which hardly could be told, let alone made sense of, without the notion
of freedom, would much rather degrade freedom to the concept of a lower-middle class
prejudice than admit that the aim of revolution was, and always has been, freedom."

pg 19: "For political thought can only follow the articulations of the political phenomena
themselves, it remains bound to what appears in the domain of political affairs; and these
appearances, in contradistinction to physical matters, need speech and articulation, that is,
something which transcends mere physical visibility as well as sheer audibility, in order to be
manifest at all."

pg. 45: "Former centuries might have recognized that men were created equal with respect
to God or the Gods, for this recognition is not Christian but Roman in origin; Roman slaves
could be full-fledged members of religious corporations and, within the limits of sacred law,

their legal status was the same as that of the free man." her source: Fritz Schultz, Prinzipien
des romischen Rechts, Berlin,1954, pg. 147

pg. 278: With respect to the elementary councils that sprang up wherever people lived or
worked together, one is tempted to say that they had selected themselves; those who
organized themselves were those who cared and those who took the initiative; they were the
political elite of the people brought into the open by the revolution. From these 'elementary
republics', the councilmen then chose their deputies for the next higher council, and these
deputies, again, were selected by their peers, they were not subject to any pressure from above
or from below. Their title rested on nothing but the confidence of their equals, and this
equality was not natural but political, it was nothing they had been born with; it was the
equality of those who had commited themselves to, and now were engaged in, a joint
enterprise. Once elected and sent in the next higher council, the deputy found himself again
among his peers, for the deputies on any given level in this system were those who had
received a special trust. No doubt this form of government, if fully developed, would have
assumed again the shape of a pyramid, which, of course, is the shape of an essentially
authoritarian government. But while, in all authoritarian government we know of, authority is
filtered down from above, in this case authority would have been generated neither at the top
nor at the bottom, but on each of the pyramid's layers; and this obviously could constitute the
solution to one of the most serious problems of all modern politics, which is not how to
reconcile freedom and equality but how to reconcile equality and authority." {emphasis mine}