On Revolution by Hannah Arendt
NY: The Viking Press, 1963
(5) Under modern circumstances, however, this appearance or reappearance of total war has a very important political significance insofar as it contradicts the basic assumptions upon which the relationship between the military and the civilian branches of government rests: it is the function of the army to protect and to defend the civilian population. In contrast, the history of warfare in our century could almost be told as the story of the growing incapacity of the army to fulfill this basic function, until today the strategy of deterrence has openly changed the role of the military from that of a protector into that of a belated and essentially futile avenger.
(9) The point here is that violence itself is incapable of speech, and not merely that speech is helpless when confronted with violence.
(10-11) The tale [Cain & Abel, Romulus & Remus] spoke clearly: whatever brotherhood human beings may be capable of has grown out of fratricide, whatever political organization men may have achieved has its origins in crime.
(13) …revolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning.
(15) appanage - a gift of land, an official position, or money given to the younger children of kings and princes to provide for their maintenance; a necessary accompaniment.
(23) The polis was supposed to be an isonomy, not a democracy.
NB: Isonomy - the principle that all citizens or subjects of a state are equal before the law, or that they have equal civil or political rights
…The equality of the Greek polis, its isonomy, was an attribute of the polis and not of men, who received their equality by virtue of citizenship, not by virtue of birth.
(28) But violence is no more adequate to describe the phenomenon of revolution than change; only where change occurs in the sense of a new beginning, where violence is used to constitute an altogether different form of government, to bring about the formation of a new body politic, where the liberation from oppression aims at least at the constitution of freedom can we speak of revolution.
(46) Politically, the fallacy of this new and typically modern philosophy [post-Kantian Hegel?] is relatively simple. It consists in describing and understanding the whole realm of human action, not in terms of the actor and the agent, but from the standpoint of the spectator who watches a spectacle. But the fallacy is relatively difficult to detect because of the truth inherent in it, which is that all stories began and enacted by men unfold their true meaning only when they have come to their end, so that it may indeed appear as though only the spectator, and not the agent, can hope to understand what actually happened in any given chain of deeds and events.
NB: DeBord; multiple points of view - actor, spectator
(49) The sad truth of the matter is that the French Revolution, which ended in disaster, has made world history, while the American Revolution, so triumphantly successful, has remained an event of little more than local importance.
(58) [Marxism] Not freedom but abundance became now the aim of revolution.
(65) Since then [French Revolution], the passion of compassion has haunted and driven the best men of all revolutions, and the only revolution in which compassion played no role in the motivation of the actors was the American Revolution.
(80) For compassion, to be striken with the suffering of someone else as though it were contagious, and pity, to be sorry without being touched in the flesh, are not only not the same, they may not even be related.
(85) Since the days of the French Revolution, it has been the boundlessness of their sentiments that made revolutionaries so curiously insensitive to reality in general and to the reality of persons in particular, whom they felt no compunctions in sacrificing to their “principles,” or to the course of history, or to the cause of revolution as such.
(5) Under modern circumstances, however, this appearance or reappearance of total war has a very important political significance insofar as it contradicts the basic assumptions upon which the relationship between the military and the civilian branches of government rests: it is the function of the army to protect and to defend the civilian population. In contrast, the history of warfare in our century could almost be told as the story of the growing incapacity of the army to fulfill this basic function, until today the strategy of deterrence has openly changed the role of the military from that of a protector into that of a belated and essentially futile avenger.
(9) The point here is that violence itself is incapable of speech, and not merely that speech is helpless when confronted with violence.
(10-11) The tale [Cain & Abel, Romulus & Remus] spoke clearly: whatever brotherhood human beings may be capable of has grown out of fratricide, whatever political organization men may have achieved has its origins in crime.
(13) …revolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning.
(15) appanage - a gift of land, an official position, or money given to the younger children of kings and princes to provide for their maintenance; a necessary accompaniment.
(23) The polis was supposed to be an isonomy, not a democracy.
NB: Isonomy - the principle that all citizens or subjects of a state are equal before the law, or that they have equal civil or political rights
…The equality of the Greek polis, its isonomy, was an attribute of the polis and not of men, who received their equality by virtue of citizenship, not by virtue of birth.
(28) But violence is no more adequate to describe the phenomenon of revolution than change; only where change occurs in the sense of a new beginning, where violence is used to constitute an altogether different form of government, to bring about the formation of a new body politic, where the liberation from oppression aims at least at the constitution of freedom can we speak of revolution.
(46) Politically, the fallacy of this new and typically modern philosophy [post-Kantian Hegel?] is relatively simple. It consists in describing and understanding the whole realm of human action, not in terms of the actor and the agent, but from the standpoint of the spectator who watches a spectacle. But the fallacy is relatively difficult to detect because of the truth inherent in it, which is that all stories began and enacted by men unfold their true meaning only when they have come to their end, so that it may indeed appear as though only the spectator, and not the agent, can hope to understand what actually happened in any given chain of deeds and events.
NB: DeBord; multiple points of view - actor, spectator
(49) The sad truth of the matter is that the French Revolution, which ended in disaster, has made world history, while the American Revolution, so triumphantly successful, has remained an event of little more than local importance.
(58) [Marxism] Not freedom but abundance became now the aim of revolution.
(65) Since then [French Revolution], the passion of compassion has haunted and driven the best men of all revolutions, and the only revolution in which compassion played no role in the motivation of the actors was the American Revolution.
(80) For compassion, to be striken with the suffering of someone else as though it were contagious, and pity, to be sorry without being touched in the flesh, are not only not the same, they may not even be related.
(85) Since the days of the French Revolution, it has been the boundlessness of their sentiments that made revolutionaries so curiously insensitive to reality in general and to the reality of persons in particular, whom they felt no compunctions in sacrificing to their “principles,” or to the course of history, or to the cause of revolution as such.
NB: Not just Left revolutionists either
(95) It was the war upon hypocrisy that transformed Robespierre's dictatorship into the Reign of Terror, and the outstanding characteristic of this period was the self-purging of the rulers.
(135-136) For abundance and endless consumption are the ideals of the poor; they are the mirage in the desert of misery. In this sense, affluence and wretchedness are only two sides of the same coin; the bonds of necessity need not be of iron, they can be made of silk. Freedom and luxury have always been thought to be incompatible, and the modern estimate that tends to blame the insistence of the Founding Fathers on frugality and “simplicity of manners” (Jefferson) upon a Puritan contempt for the delights of the world much rather testifies to an inability to understand freedom than to a freedom from prejudice.
(136) The hidden wish of poor men is not “To each according to his needs,” but “To each according to his desires.” And while it is true that freedom can come only to those whose needs have been fulfilled, it is equally true that it will escape those who are bent upon living for their desires.
(140) If, however, one keeps in mind that the end of rebellion is liberation, while the end of revolution is the foundation of freedom, the political scientist at least will know how to avoid the pitfall of the historian who tends to place his emphasis upon the first and violent stage of rebellion and liberation, on the uprising against tyranny, to the detriment of the quieter second stage of revolution and constitution, because all the dramatic aspects of his story seem to be contained in the first stage and, perhaps, also because the turmoil of liberation has so frequently defeated the revolution.
(152) In this respect, the great and, in the long run, perhaps the greatest American innovation in politics as such was the consistent abolition of sovereignty within the body politic of the republic, the insight that in the realm of human affairs sovereignty and tyranny are the same.
(154) Nothing, indeed, seems more natural than that a revolution should be predetermined by the type of government it overthrows; nothing, therefore, appears more plausible than to explain the new absolute, the absolute revolution, by the absolute monarchy which preceded it, and to conclude that the more absolute the ruler, the more absolute the revolution will be which replaces him.
(155) The singular good fortune of the American Revolution is undeniable. It occurred in a country which knew nothing of the predicament of mass poverty and among a people who had a widespread experience with self-government; to be sure, not the least of these blessings was that the Revolution grew out of a conflict with a “limited monarchy.” In the government of king and Parliament from which the colonies broke away, there was no potestas legibus soluta, no absolute power absolved from laws.
(170) in nuce - in a nutshell
(180) To the eighteenth century, as to the seventeenth before it and the nineteenth after it, the function of laws was not primarily to guarantee liberties but to protect property; it was property, and not the law as such, that guaranteed freedom.
(182) They themselves still knew very well what made them succeed where all other nations were to fail; it was, in the words of John Adams, the power of “confidence in one another, and in the common people, which enabled the United States to go through a revolution.”
(95) It was the war upon hypocrisy that transformed Robespierre's dictatorship into the Reign of Terror, and the outstanding characteristic of this period was the self-purging of the rulers.
(135-136) For abundance and endless consumption are the ideals of the poor; they are the mirage in the desert of misery. In this sense, affluence and wretchedness are only two sides of the same coin; the bonds of necessity need not be of iron, they can be made of silk. Freedom and luxury have always been thought to be incompatible, and the modern estimate that tends to blame the insistence of the Founding Fathers on frugality and “simplicity of manners” (Jefferson) upon a Puritan contempt for the delights of the world much rather testifies to an inability to understand freedom than to a freedom from prejudice.
(136) The hidden wish of poor men is not “To each according to his needs,” but “To each according to his desires.” And while it is true that freedom can come only to those whose needs have been fulfilled, it is equally true that it will escape those who are bent upon living for their desires.
(140) If, however, one keeps in mind that the end of rebellion is liberation, while the end of revolution is the foundation of freedom, the political scientist at least will know how to avoid the pitfall of the historian who tends to place his emphasis upon the first and violent stage of rebellion and liberation, on the uprising against tyranny, to the detriment of the quieter second stage of revolution and constitution, because all the dramatic aspects of his story seem to be contained in the first stage and, perhaps, also because the turmoil of liberation has so frequently defeated the revolution.
(152) In this respect, the great and, in the long run, perhaps the greatest American innovation in politics as such was the consistent abolition of sovereignty within the body politic of the republic, the insight that in the realm of human affairs sovereignty and tyranny are the same.
(154) Nothing, indeed, seems more natural than that a revolution should be predetermined by the type of government it overthrows; nothing, therefore, appears more plausible than to explain the new absolute, the absolute revolution, by the absolute monarchy which preceded it, and to conclude that the more absolute the ruler, the more absolute the revolution will be which replaces him.
(155) The singular good fortune of the American Revolution is undeniable. It occurred in a country which knew nothing of the predicament of mass poverty and among a people who had a widespread experience with self-government; to be sure, not the least of these blessings was that the Revolution grew out of a conflict with a “limited monarchy.” In the government of king and Parliament from which the colonies broke away, there was no potestas legibus soluta, no absolute power absolved from laws.
(170) in nuce - in a nutshell
(180) To the eighteenth century, as to the seventeenth before it and the nineteenth after it, the function of laws was not primarily to guarantee liberties but to protect property; it was property, and not the law as such, that guaranteed freedom.
(182) They themselves still knew very well what made them succeed where all other nations were to fail; it was, in the words of John Adams, the power of “confidence in one another, and in the common people, which enabled the United States to go through a revolution.”
NB: Another side of the "confidence" concept from Melville's The Confidence Man to The Confidence Game (https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-confidence-game-guide-to-2016.html)
(186) It is all the more noteworthy that John Adams - who even before the outbreak of the Revolution had insisted on “rights antedecedent to all earthly government… derived from the great Legislator of the universe” and who then became instrumental in “retaining and insisting on [the law of nature] as a recourse to which we might be driven by Parliament much sooner than we were aware” - should have believed that “it was general opinion of ancient nations that the Divinity alone was adequate to the important office of giving laws to men.” For the point of the matter is that Adams was in error, and that neither the Greek νόμος nor the Roman lex was of divine origin, that neither the Greek nor the Roman concept of legislation needed divine inspiration.
(235) The perplexity was very simple and, stated in logical terms it seemed unsolvable: if foundation was the aim and the end of revolution, then the revolutionary spirit was not merely the spirit of beginning something new but of starting something permanent and enduring; a lasting institution, embodying this spirit and encouraging it to new achievements, would be self-defeating. From which it unfortunately seems to follow that nothing threatens the very achievements of revolution more dangerously and more acutely than the spirit which has brought them about.
(239) Hence, they could hear with approval, though perhaps not entirely without misgivings, when Benjamin Rush proposed the new and dangerous doctrine that although “all power is derived from the people, they possess it only on the days of their elections. After this it is the property of their rulers.”
(250-251) However, this sad familiarity should not prevent us from recognizing that we are confronted even in the midst of the French Revolution with the conflict between the modern party system and the new revolutionary organs of self-government. These two systems, so utterly unlike and even contradictory to each other, were born at the same moment. The spectacular failure of the council system were both due to the rise of the nation-state, which elevated the one and crushed the other, whereby the leftist and revolutionary parties have shown themselves to be no less hostile to the council system than the conservative or reactionary right.
(257) Jefferson’s ward system: Hence, the ward system was not meant to strengthen the power of the many but the power of “every one” within the limits of his competence; and only by breaking up “the many” into assembles where every one could count and be counted upon “shall we be as republican as a large society can be.” In terms of the safety of the citizens of the republic, the question was how to make everybody feel “that he is a participator in the government of affairs, not merely at an election one day in the year, but every day; when there shall not be a man in the State who will not be a member of some one of its councils, great or small, he will let the heart be torn out of his body sooner than his power wrested from him by a Caesar or a Bonaparte.”
NB: Oscar Wilde's trouble with Socialism was all the meetings but there are a variety of meetings and ways to do so
(265) There are certain paragraphs in the writing of the Utopian Socialist, especially in Proudhon and Bakunin, into which it has been relatively easy to read an awareness of the council system. Yet the truth is that these essentially anarchist political thinkers were singularly unequipped to deal with a phenomenon which demonstrated so clearly how a revoliution did not end with the abolition of state and government but, on the contrary, aimed at the foundation of a new state and the establishment of a new form of government. More recently, historians have pointed to the the rather obvious similarities between the councils and the medieval townships, the Swiss cantons, the English seventeenth-century “agitators” - or rather “adjustators,” as they were originally called - and the General Council of Cromwell’s army, but the point of the matter is that none of them, with the possible exception of the medieval town, had ever the slightest influence on the minds of the people who in the course of a revolution spontaneously organized themselves in councils.
NB: Wards, councils, communes, coops, soviets, mutual aid, no Kropotkin?!
(265) There are certain paragraphs in the writing of the Utopian Socialist, especially in Proudhon and Bakunin, into which it has been relatively easy to read an awareness of the council system. Yet the truth is that these essentially anarchist political thinkers were singularly unequipped to deal with a phenomenon which demonstrated so clearly how a revoliution did not end with the abolition of state and government but, on the contrary, aimed at the foundation of a new state and the establishment of a new form of government. More recently, historians have pointed to the the rather obvious similarities between the councils and the medieval townships, the Swiss cantons, the English seventeenth-century “agitators” - or rather “adjustators,” as they were originally called - and the General Council of Cromwell’s army, but the point of the matter is that none of them, with the possible exception of the medieval town, had ever the slightest influence on the minds of the people who in the course of a revolution spontaneously organized themselves in councils.
NB: Wards, councils, communes, coops, soviets, mutual aid, no Kropotkin?!
(270-271) In order to prove what Odysse Barrot felt to be true [the federation was both liberal and republican], we must turn to the February Revolution of 1917 in Russia and to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, both of which lasted just long enough to show in bare outlines what a government would look like and how a republic was likely to function if they were founded upon the principles of the council system. In both instances councils or soviets had sprung up everywhere, completely independent of one another, workers', soldiers', and peasants' councils in the case of Russia, the most disparate kinds of councils in the case of Hungary: neighborhood councils that emerged in all residential districts, so-called revolutionary councils that grew out of fighting together in the streets, councils of writers and artists, born in the coffee houses of Budapest, students’ and youths’ councils at the universities, workers’ councils in the factories, councils in the army, among the civil servants, and so on. The formation of a council in each of these disparate groups turned a more or less accidental proximity into a political institution. The most striking aspect of these spontaneous developments is that in both instances it took these independent and highly disparate organs no more than a few weeks, in the case of Russia, or a few days, in the case of Hungary, to begin a process of coordination and integration through the formation of higher councils of a regional or provincial character, from which finally the delegates to an assembly representing the whole country could be chosen.
(277) The conflict between the two systems, the parties and the councils, came to the fore in all twentieth-century revolution. The issue at stake was representation versus action and participation. The councils were organs of action, the revolutionary parties were organs of representation, and although the revolutionary parties halfheartedly recognized the councils as instruments of “revolutionary struggle,” they tried even in the midst of revolution to rule them from within; they knew well enough that no party, no matter how revolutionary it was, would be able to survive the transformation of the government into a Soviet Republic. For the parties, the need for action itself was transitory, and they had no doubt that after the victory of the revolution further action would simply prove unnecessary or subversive.
(277-278) The fatal mistake of the councils has always been that they themselves did not distinguish clearly between participation in public affairs and administration or management of things in the public interest. In the form of workers' councils, they have again and again tried to take over the management of the factories, and all these attempts have ended in dismal failure.
NB: Not sure that’s true with the variety of worker-ownership possibilities available. Mondragon Cooperatives for instance. Worker owner and investor models are now numerous and successful in many different forms.
(279) Freedom in a positive sense is possible only among equals, and equality itself is by no means a universally valid principle but, again, applicable only with limitations and even within spatial limits.
(280) My quarrel with the “élite” is that the term implies an oligarchic form of government, the domination of the many by the rule of a few. From this, one can only conclude - as indeed our whole tradition of political thought has concluded - that the essence of politics is rulership and that the dominant political passion is the passion to rule or to govern. This, I propose, is profoundly untrue. The fact that political “élites” have always determined the political destinies of the many and have, in most instances, exerted a domination over them, indicates, on the one hand, the bitter need of the few to protect themselves against the many, or rather to protect the island of freedom they have come to inhabit against the surrounding sea of necessity; and it indicates, on the other hand, the responsibility that falls automatically upon those who care for the fate of those who do not.
NB: "those who care for the fate of those who do not” - Milt Raymond’s for the benefit of all who are for the benefit of all
(282-283) But while, in all authoritarian government we know of, authority is filtered down from above, in this case [council or ward system] 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.
(277-278) The fatal mistake of the councils has always been that they themselves did not distinguish clearly between participation in public affairs and administration or management of things in the public interest. In the form of workers' councils, they have again and again tried to take over the management of the factories, and all these attempts have ended in dismal failure.
NB: Not sure that’s true with the variety of worker-ownership possibilities available. Mondragon Cooperatives for instance. Worker owner and investor models are now numerous and successful in many different forms.
(279) Freedom in a positive sense is possible only among equals, and equality itself is by no means a universally valid principle but, again, applicable only with limitations and even within spatial limits.
(280) My quarrel with the “élite” is that the term implies an oligarchic form of government, the domination of the many by the rule of a few. From this, one can only conclude - as indeed our whole tradition of political thought has concluded - that the essence of politics is rulership and that the dominant political passion is the passion to rule or to govern. This, I propose, is profoundly untrue. The fact that political “élites” have always determined the political destinies of the many and have, in most instances, exerted a domination over them, indicates, on the one hand, the bitter need of the few to protect themselves against the many, or rather to protect the island of freedom they have come to inhabit against the surrounding sea of necessity; and it indicates, on the other hand, the responsibility that falls automatically upon those who care for the fate of those who do not.
NB: "those who care for the fate of those who do not” - Milt Raymond’s for the benefit of all who are for the benefit of all
(282-283) But while, in all authoritarian government we know of, authority is filtered down from above, in this case [council or ward system] 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.
(283-284) It would be tempting to spin out further the potentialities of the councils, but it certainly is wiser to say with Jefferson, "Begin them only for a single purpose; they will soon show for what others they are the best instruments” - but the best instruments, for example, for breaking up the modern mass society, with its dangerous tendency toward the formation of pseudo-political mass movements, or rather, the best, the most natural way for interspersing it at the grass roots with an “élite” that is chosen by no one but constitutes itself. The joys of public happiness and the responsibilities for public business would then become the share of those few from all walks of life who have a taste for public freedom and cannot be “happy” without it. Politically, they are the best, and it is the task of good government and the sign of a well-ordered republic to assure them of their rightful place in the public realm. To be sure, such an “aristocratic” form of government would spell the end of general suffrage as we understand it today; for only those who as voluntary members of an “elementary republic” have demonstrated that they care for more than their private happiness and are concerned about the state of the world would have the right to be heard in the conduct of the business of the republic. However, this exclusion from politics should not be derogatory, since a political élite is by no means identical with a social or cultural or professional élite. The exclusion, moreover, would not depend upon an outside body; if those who belong are self-chosen, those who do not belong are self-excluded. And such self-exclusion, far from being arbitrary discrimination, would in fact give substance and reality to one of the most important negative liberties we have enjoyed since the end of the ancient world, namely, freedom from politics, which was unknown to Rome or Athens and which is politically perhaps the most relevant part of our Christian heritage.
NB: You might want freedom from politics but politics, and politicians, affect you whether you like it or not
(324) Oskar Anweiler on the Hungarian Revolution: The councils were "striving for the most direct, extensive and unrestricted participation of the individual in public life possible"
(324) Oskar Anweiler on the Hungarian Revolution: The councils were "striving for the most direct, extensive and unrestricted participation of the individual in public life possible"
Rosa Luxemburg’s pamphlet on The Russian Revolution translated by Bertram D Wolfe, 1940
(326) René Char, Feuilles d’Hypnos, Paris, 1946 translated as Hypnos Walking: Poems and Prose, NY 1956
(326) René Char, Feuilles d’Hypnos, Paris, 1946 translated as Hypnos Walking: Poems and Prose, NY 1956
