Talk:On Revolution

Publication date

Goodreads has this book being published in 1956 (see: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/127232.On_Revolution, my wikipedia citation tool isn't working). I don't see any citations from reputable sources either way so I don't want to make an edit yet but can someone verify 1963 is correct? Jakesyl (talk) 23:15, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Hannah Arendt is More Nuanced

My sense is that Hannah Arendt's work is much more nuanced than indicated here. She did not think the American Revolution was necessarily successful as a revolution. Its success, if one may call it that, is that it was able to make a rather durable constitution, up to now at least.

She attributed this success to the Federal Constitution having been drafted by representatives from pre-existing bodies which had been themselves constituted by various covenants among the original settlers in the course of settlements, which furthermore drafted their own constitutions in the course of the Revolutionary War. That the federal constitution had been drafted by representatives of previously constituted entities rather than by professional revolutionaries had given the federal constitution an acceptance or legitimacy that was not shared by subsequent European revolutions. It was this that has made it durable.

The American case had unique historical circumstances due to the settler basis of the population and the settlers constituting their political entities in the form of settlement. The revolutions in Europe in contrast found themselves confronting deeply entrenched absolutist monarchies. Arendt was very aware there were deep flaws in terms of the American revolution which were not solved by the revolution. Inequality was not addressed. Instead of the peasantry that characterized rural labor in Europe and who played a dynamic role in European revolutions, there were enslaved people making up 1/5th of the population who were excluded from the subsequent constitution. Like W.E.B. Du Bois, Arendt identified this as a serious flaw in the founding of the republic which would undermine the freedom of the nation right from the start. While European revolutions tended to be aimed against the possessors of the land in the form of the nobility which tended to form a reaction to revolution; in the U.S. a militarily and organizational much weaker native population were the original property holders which was largely annihilated and are still being dispossessed. though it provided resistance it never was threat as a reaction that so often undermined European constitutions. In my mind, reaction in the US instead came from within the de-politicized private sphere as domestic private entities evolved into private corporations -- something Arendt addressed in her Origins of Totalitarianism. Where Arendt focused on imperialism in that book, books such as Arey McWilliam's 1935 "Factories in the Field" addressed it specifically within the United States.

Like in European revolutions, the American Revolution also switched from demand for political freedom, expressed in the course of revolutions and given form in popular committees, councils, communes, soviets, people's governments (jaana andalan in 1950-51 Nepal), etc., to emphasis on private rights in the drafting of its constitution. As said before these were excluded from national government in the US, and emasculated or eliminated in other revolutions.

Another significant difference that has contributed durability to the constitution is that protection of private rights has been introduction in form of amendments, allowing them to expand in their scope within the private sphere protected from the government by the constitution, as opposed to being integral elements of the constitution as the "Rights of Man" which then consumed it the constitution in a continuing revolution under the Jacobins and eventually across Europe; Cultural Revolution in China, and so forth (don't assume this is exactly Arendt's argument, but it is what I gathered from my first reading of Arendt).

For Arendt the major flaw in the drafting of the US constitution was that no role was given to the Federated units that had constituted it (as compared, for example the cantons, of Switzerland), effectively eliminating common citizens from a participator role in government. As noted above, political freedom was switched to private freedom in a bait and switch, so to speak. Arendt noted that Thomas Jefferson was the only one who had recognized the need to give a role to the federated units in the federal government, but in the end, while predicting there would be serious consequences for their omission, he went along with rest of the drafters. Due to this lack of political freedom in the sense of citizens being "participators" in their governance, the American revolution as revolution failed in its promises. All subsequent revolutions, by disbanding and repressing the councils, communes, soviets, people's governments, etc. that arise in the course of revolutions and not effectively incorporating them as the heart of government in the drafting of constitutions, has led all subsequent revolutions to fail in the promises and left very different paths not being taken, basically preserving the sovereignty of the absolutist state. Attempts of farmers following the American revolution and other groups in other revolutions to exert political rights have been repressed, sometimes bloodily -- following the revolutions of 1848 and 1871 in France some ten thousand workers were executed by the reaction each time. In Russia similarly following the 1905 and 1917 October Revolution. Arendt discusses, like Max Weber, that the role taken by political parties is very much to blame for this. Thus all these revolutions have missed out in offering an entirely different possibility from absolutist state sovereignty to humanity.

I've only done one reading of "On Revolution," and I haven't carefully read the particular arguments of her critics yet, so I don't feel qualified at this time to suggest particular edits to the article. I certainly would be putting much into Arendt's mouth while missing many other things. My sense of the Left critique of Arendt, as the Jewish critique of her work on the Jewish question, is that the Left criticism of this book is based more on reaction to sharp divergences taken by Arendt's own thinking from various orthodoxies, without carefully reading her work (if at all) and trying to fully understand her arguments or its nuances. As she describes herself, she is not a historian but a political philosopher. Certainly there are weaknesses and omissions, but the issues she raises are much more interesting rather than being solely a matter of success or failure of the American revolution versus the European ones. In the American revolution the possibilities were manifest from the start; in the European and post-colonial ones, they arose in the course of revolutions. In both cases they were sacrificed on the alter of state sovereignty embodied in political parties and bureaucracy. Stephen Mikesell Singing Coyote (talk 20:56, 8 February 2021 (UTC) Stephen Mikesell Singing Coyote (talk 00:13, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

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