On Revolution (1963)

On Revolution is a 1963 book by the political theorist Hannah Arendt, who presents a comparison of two of the main 18th-century revolutions: the American Revolution and the French Revolution, where they failed, where they succeeded and where they diverged from each other.

She views the American Revolution as more successful than the French Revolution, yet criticizes modern revolutionaries' tendency to model their actions on the latter. However, she also highlights that even the American Revolution fell short of its promise to provide public freedom and public happiness for everyone. With this she means the opportunity to partake in politics and the joy gained from shaping its own environment. She proposes council republics as a potentially superior revolutionary aim to achieve public participation and collective self-determination.

History

Twelve years after the publication of her The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), which looked at what she considered failed revolutions, Arendt optimistically turned her attention to predict nonviolent movements to restore democratic governments around the world. Her predictions turned out to be largely true since those revolutions have been largely, though unconsciously, based on the principles she laid out.

Overview

In On Revolution, Arendt contrasts two major revolutions: the French Revolution, which ended in violence and terror, and the American Revolution, which established a more stable republic. She argues that while both aimed for freedom, they took vastly different paths due to their social and political contexts.

The core purpose of revolution is to achieve public freedom - the ability to participate in shaping one's political environment. This differs from private freedom (being left alone by the state) and requires first achieving liberation from economic or political constraints. Revolutions emerged only in the 18th century, enabled by Enlightenment thinking that society's structure wasn't divinely ordained but could be changed.

The French and American Revolutions diverged primarily due to their different circumstances:

Social Conditions: France had widespread poverty, making liberation from economic hardship the urgent priority. America's white population was relatively prosperous (though this ignored the enslaved population), allowing greater focus on establishing political freedom. Poverty, for Arendt, is detrimental to genuine politics (founded in ancient Athens), which has traits including public deliberation and persuasion. Poverty unleashes violence, as long as it subordinates humans to the urges of their biological necessity. Thus, it destroys the political realm from within.

Political Experience: American colonists had extensive practice with self-governance and local decision-making due to their distance from Britain. French citizens lived under absolute monarchy with little democratic experience. Moreover, in America poverty was not a central concern.

Power Structure: France's absolutist tradition led revolutionaries to centralize power, essentially replacing the king with "the people" while maintaining similar structures. America's experience with British constitutional monarchy influenced its focus on separated powers and checks and balances.

Values: French revolutionaries emphasized compassion, focusing on immediate relief of suffering. Americans emphasized solidarity, enabling more reasoned, long-term planning.

The French concept of the "general will" - the supposed collective will of the people - proved problematic as it required interpretation by revolutionaries who claimed to speak for the masses, leading to purges of supposed enemies of the revolution.

Both revolutions struggled with establishing lasting authority. Pre-revolution authority often derived from religion or tradition, but revolutions needed new sources of legitimacy. The American solution was founding authority - "we should have power because we created these rules together." However, this created a paradox: how to extend this founding experience to future generations?

Arendt argues that neither direct nor representative democracy fully achieves public freedom. Direct democracy is too volatile, while representative democracy limits citizen participation to voting. She proposes council republics as an alternative, with local councils sending representatives to higher levels of government. Such systems have emerged spontaneously in various revolutions but were typically suppressed by centralized party systems.

Comparison to other work of Arendt

In an earlier book, The Human Condition, Arendt argued that there were three states of human activity: labor, work, and action. "Labor" is, essentially, a state of subsistence: doing what it takes to stay alive. For Arendt, that was the lowest form of human activity (all living creatures are capable of this). "Work" is the process of creating: a painter may create a great work of art, a writer may create a great work of fiction, etc. For Arendt, "working" is a worthwhile endeavor. Through works, people may remember someone, and if one's work is great enough, one may be remembered for thousands of years. Arendt notes that people still read the Iliad, and Homer will be remembered for as long as people keep telling his stories. However, Arendt argues the Iliad is still read only because of its protagonist, Achilles. For Arendt, Achilles embodies "action." Only by interacting with others in some sort of public forum can your legacy be passed down through the generations; only by doing something truly memorable can a person achieve immortality.