On Revolution

Whereas 18th-century European philosophers paid close attention to developments in the American colonies, their 19th-century successors displayed little interest in the American Revolution or the institutions of the American republic. In the post-World War II era, American foreign policy thinkers were motivated by fear of revolution to “support obsolete and corrupt political regimes” (209), as if even they had forgotten the revolutionary origins of the US. Arendt also argues that post-revolution American thought showed little interest in revolutionary political theory, and that this explains the Revolution’s lack of influence on political philosophy elsewhere in the world. The French Revolution, despite its disastrous outcome, became more influential mainly because of how much European philosophers thought and wrote about it.

Arendt argues that Americans have lost touch with the “revolutionary spirit” since the founding of their republic. The Founding Fathers preferred republican to democratic government because democracies had historically been unstable and ruled by the whims of public opinion, which philosophers since ancient times had denigrated. For this reason, they designed the US Senate explicitly to “guard against rule by public opinion or democracy” (218). Whereas the function of the lower chamber of Congress was to represent diverse interests, the upper chamber’s was to represent diverse opinions. Interest and opinion, Arendt explains, are two separate things: Groups have interests, but only individuals have opinions. The function of the Senate was to mediate and “purify” the multitude of opinions, allowing men who are not individually wise to produce wisdom through collective deliberation.

The American revolutionists wanted to establish lasting institutions to make their republic permanent, but this aim put them in a contradictory position. If the goal of revolution was to establish lasting institutions, then the “revolutionary spirit” was about starting something not just new, but also permanent and enduring. However, if these institutions were indeed permanent, then future generations would no longer be free to make new beginnings, which was the pinnacle of public freedom. Jefferson recognized this flaw, and his proposed solution was to include in the Constitution a requirement to revise it roughly once per generation, so that each generation could participate in the act of founding by holding its own constitutional convention.

The new state and federal governments quickly overshadowed the townships in political importance, until the latter essentially withered away. Arendt cites the historian Lewis Mumford’s claim that “the political importance of the township was never grasped by the founders, and that the failure to incorporate it into either the federal or the state constitutions was ‘one of the tragic oversights of post-revolutionary political development’” (227). Arendt argues that this oversight sprang from the Founders’ preoccupation with questions of representation, which they considered the defining feature of republics in contrast to direct democracies.

The Founders believed, at least in principle, that representation should be a “mere substitute” for direct political action by the people, and that elected representatives should act according to instructions from their electors rather than their own opinions. Nevertheless, they also realized this was unlikely to be the case in practice, since most representatives would have little to no knowledge of their electors’ opinions. This means, Arendt argues, that “the age-old distinction between ruler and ruled which the Revolution had set out to abolish [. . .] has asserted itself again” (228), and participation in government has once again “become the privilege of the few” (229). Jefferson feared that elective despotism would emerge if the people stopped paying attention to public affairs. Paradoxically, the revolutionary spirit would be destroyed by the very Constitution that was the Revolution’s greatest achievement.

In France, the experience of self-governance did not precede the revolution, as it had in America’s colonial town meetings, but emerged later in the form of the 48 sections of the Paris Commune, as well as a large number of “popular societies” (231) devoted to discussion and education on public matters. Robespierre and other leaders initially championed such societies as sites of true freedom, but after coming to power themselves, they reversed their positions and denounced the societies for opposing the unanimous “general will.” The Jacobin government became a highly centralized and ruthless regime, which soon degenerated into the Terror.

In his later years, Arendt argues, Jefferson’s wished to divide the country into various “wards” to institutionalize self-government at the local level, inspired by the colonial townships of old. He understood that these local councils were a non-violent means of preserving the revolutionary spirit, because only at the most local level could the people themselves, rather than their representatives, engage directly in public decision-making and thereby experience public happiness and public freedom.

Arendt points out that grassroots “councils” similar to Jefferson’s proposed wards and the French sociétés révolutionnaires emerged during every “genuine revolution” (241) in the 19th and 20th centuries, such as the soviets during Russia’s 1905 revolution and the Räte during the German Revolution of 1918-1919, which ended the German Empire and established the Weimar Republic. The spontaneous emergence of councils—with no help from revolutionists—surprised and impressed Marx during the Paris Commune of 1871 and Lenin during the 1905 Russian Revolution. Nevertheless, they both thought of these councils as temporary instruments of revolution rather than “as possible germs for a new form of government” (248). They understood power strictly as the monopoly of the means of violence, whereas the councils were “a new power structure which owed its existence to nothing but the organizational impulses of the people themselves” (249).

Lenin embraced the slogan “All power to the soviets” at the beginning of the October Revolution, yet he was unable to truly change his thinking, and when the soviets rebelled against the dictatorial Bolshevik Party leadership during the 1921 Kronstadt Rebellion, he decided to crush them because they threatened the party’s power monopoly. Naming their country the “Soviet Union” was therefore “a lie” on the part of the Bolsheviks, Arendt explains, which acknowledged the genuine popularity of the crushed soviet system. The Russian people, in other words, preferred local self-governance to single-party dictatorship, and the Bolsheviks knew it.

The French Revolution gave rise to what Arendt dubs the “professional revolutionist,” who was a successor to the 17th- and 18th-century “man of letters.” Professional revolutionists were primarily thinkers: They did not actually prepare revolutions but “watched and analyzed the progressing disintegration in state and society” (251) without being able to do much to direct it. Thus, they were usually surprised by the spontaneous outbreak of revolution, and typically rose to power only after revolution had broken out.

Revolutionists had nothing to do with the reemergence of the council system following the French Revolution, in France in 1870, Russia in 1905 and 1917, Germany in 1918, and Hungary in 1956. Arendt finds it remarkable that these spontaneous formations were all so similar to one another, without being influenced by any common historical tradition or outside actors, and that they were entirely non-partisan. Russia’s February Revolution of 1917 (See: Index of Terms) and Hungary’s 1956 Revolution (See: Index of Terms) lasted just long enough to indicate what a government based on the council system could look like.

Arendt observes that, unlike the chaotic multiparty systems of European countries, the two-party systems in the US and Britain have ensured stability and authority primarily because they recognize the opposition party “as an institution of government” (259). The European system, by contrast, insists on the unanimity of the nation and is therefore very much in the tradition of Rousseau’s general will. However, while the two-party system has proved viable and capable of guaranteeing constitutional rights, it only adequately represents the interests of the citizens but not their opinions, because opinions are formed only through public deliberation. Without an opportunity for debate and discussion, citizens cannot develop opinions but only “moods.”

Voters can influence their representatives through interest-group lobbying, but the power they exercise in this way is more similar to the coercion of a blackmailer than to the power that springs from joint action and deliberation. Political parties do not empower ordinary citizens but rather curtail their power. Only party elites enjoy the opportunity of participating directly in public decision-making. Liberal defenders of such governments insist that most citizens consider such decision-making burdensome and are happy to delegate it to their representatives, while non-liberal defenders claim that the people are not competent to govern themselves.

One weakness of the council system has been that members often failed to “distinguish clearly between participation in public affairs and administration or management of things in the public interest” (265-66). Thus, for example, workers’ councils would try to take over management of their factories. Such attempts always failed dismally because leaders selected on the basis of political criteria—trustworthiness, integrity, judgment, courage—are not necessarily well-suited for running a factory; in fact, individuals rarely possesses both sets of qualities.

In the present era, Arendt laments, “politics has become a profession and a career” (269), which means the political elite is selected based not on political talent, but on “the petty manoeuvres of party politics with its demands for plain salesmanship” (270). When parties dominate political life, there are no public spaces in which the people at large can interact and self-select their own elite, as they do in the council system.

In a federal government built on the foundation of “elementary republics,” only those individuals who prioritize engagement in public freedom would actively participate in government: They would choose to join a council or ward, and from there be selected by their peers to represent them at the next level, and so on. Those who care about “the state of the world” as much as or more than their private happiness would enjoy public freedom, while the rest would enjoy “freedom from politics” (271), which Arendt calls “one of the most important negative liberties we have enjoyed since the end of the ancient world”(271). Arendt acknowledges that, “such an ‘aristocratic’ form of government would spell the end of general suffrage as we understand it today,” but argues that this is not necessarily a bad thing since, rather than being selected or excluded by an “outside body” (272) such as a party, citizens would be selecting or excluding themselves based on personal preference.