In 1963, the German-American political scientist Hannah Arendt published her book “On Revolution.” While many focused on its comparison between the two 18th-century revolutions, those of the US and France, the book is more than that.
Arendt stresses that the goal of revolution was and remains freedom, by which she means, more precisely, political freedom. This is contrasted with what she calls a philosophical and internal conception of freedom or free will, which does not suffice to liberate its proponents. For her, freedom is a public affair that existed before Paul and Saint Augustine turned it into a philosophical question.
This freedom was on display in the Greek city-states, which Arendt consistently takes as a reference. It could also be seen with the American Revolution, as well as many beginnings that did not manage to survive and develop, such as the beginnings of the French Revolution, the Paris Commune, the Russian Soviets, the German Spartacus League, the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and the US civil rights movement. Public freedom and its elected councils are the “lost treasure” and the “revolutionary spirit” that must be recuperated.
The book discusses three revolutions, the American, the French, and the council revolutions that met a tragic end. However, Arendt considers the latter model supreme, as it allows everyone, through grassroots politics, to take part in determining the country’s destiny and find his own space for action, which is distinguished from other forms of work.
Through these councils, citizens exert influence on overarching political bodies, and through federalism, the exercise of power is constricted through a system of checks and balances, as another power monitors and moderates it. Indeed, council democracy comes closest to allowing for the rule of the people by the people. Through it, citizens organize themselves spontaneously, insulated from partisan leadership or planning. This view contrasts with the twentieth century model of revolution, whereby a well-thought-out, “scientific” plan is coldly developed and implemented.
Her preference for the American Revolution stems from the fact that it was a political phenomenon that created a public space, as prioritizing the social destroys politics. Because social issues were only rarely raised in the US, political revolution could materialize, and this was facilitated by the fact that poverty and inequality were not as significant in the US as they were in Europe.
The vastness of the US territory and people’s ability to own and invest in land (owing to the absence of feudalism) meant that poverty did not equate to misery. Indeed, being poor did not imply that people were not free or unable to attend public assemblies and see themselves as citizens, that is, as part of the “public world.”
Arendt was not opposed to resolving the social question, but she was keen on averting its replacement of the political, so as to allow for addressing it through administrative reforms. Moreover, the US was home to millions of slaves who were denied property and citizenship, and their percentage of the population was higher than that of those living in deprivation in France. While she considered ignoring the slaves and rendering them “invisible” to be the “original sin” of the American Revolution, she also argued that freedom remaining the mother of all issues mitigated this sin’s harm.
The Americans thus launched a revolution and adopted a constitution whose goal was to create a world whose citizens could act, speak, and be free, with their freedom guaranteed by a system that encourages a plurality of power centers and places the Supreme Court above all else, thereby separating the sources of law from the sources of power.
While she expresses admiration for John Adams, Arendt also acknowledges the importance of Jefferson for his awareness of the significance of council rule, though she does not deny that he only mentioned councils (and in passing) in letters he wrote late in life.
Nonetheless, Arendt is pessimistic about the future of the US: it did not establish such councils later on, and as soon as the constitution became a written document, the institutions that could allow for the flourishing of public freedom were disregarded. Instead, efforts poured into establishing and consolidating conservative institutions, thereby taking away the power of the population and local bodies. According to her, a continuous non-violent revolution is needed to oil the machine of freedom, keep institutions faithful to the early days of revolution, and broaden mass participation.
On the other hand, the focus of the French Revolution was different: emancipation from tyranny was replaced by emancipation from need. With the revolution falling into this “trap,” what had begun as a search for freedom ended up becoming a mere social issue.
Thus, the French Revolution lost sight of its objectives, turning human rights into the rights of the impoverished sans-culottes. This is the same reason that the Russian Revolution descended into violence and failed.
Compared to the Americans, the French were poor. Nevertheless, early on during its revolution, republican organizations were founded, officers and leaders were elected, and structures to facilitate mass participation were built. However, it seems that it did not take long for these developments to clash with the revolutionary government on several matters, including “the eradication of poverty,” which was an impossible task.
While Arendt recognized that Robespierre could be right and realistic at times, she found fault with his drive to punish and persecute elected groups and mass participation organs, as well as his insistence on centralization being adopted instead of these bodies’ federalist system and pluralistic representation. However, as was the case elsewhere, the government defeated the councils in what was another tragic development.
Arendt’s hostility to prioritizing the question of poverty is sharp and forceful. This is not all that people need; rather, it is not all that they want. The goal of the poor is not “to each according to his need” but “to each according to his desire.” Along the same lines, communism is not bad because of its failure to achieve prosperity but because of its tyranny and suppression of liberty.
Arendt broke the monopoly that the left had had on interpreting revolution and developed a liberal theory, though not all liberals subscribed to it. The merits of the theory are debatable. It is rendered less incandescent by the fact that all the council experiences, in all their forms, have failed, while it is reinforced and rendered more compelling by the urgency of our present need to reinvent the aging system of democratic representation.
