
What Freedom and Revolution Really Mean - akbarnama
http://lithub.com/never-before-published-hannah-arendt-on-what-freedom-and-revolution-really-mean/
======
dragonwriter
I think Arendt critically misses the source of the disintegrator processes
that erode central authority and enable revolutions. All the factors that she
discounts as causes because they require central authority to break down
before they can lead to revolution are also _sources_ of that breakdown.
Disaffection among the masses, secret/conspiratorial and overt revolutionary
societies among the elites, etc., not only can exploit the breakdown of
central authority to engage in revolution, bur also provide the forces which
break down central authority and, particularly, which break down regime
control of the armed forces, which Arendt correctly points to as the most
decisive point.

This is a critical oversight, since much of the essay rests on this argument
that revolutions aren't caused by revolutionaries of these types, but instead
by the collapse of regimes which (implicitly) occurs independently of the
these forced rather than because of them.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I disagree. She is saying that, if the people aren't in a position to rule
themselves, "revolution" won't do much of anything useful. And adequate
economic circumstances/opportunities are part of being in position to rule
themselves (because in their absence, people are too willing to grab onto
anything that promises relief from hunger, no matter how unwise in the medium
to long term).

Now, you can regard "the people in a position to rule themselves" as "eroding
central authority", and you'd be at least somewhat right, because people in
that position don't _need_ central authority, and start to realize that they
don't. But I think she's right - if the people are not able to rule
themselves, all the secret societies, disaffection among the masses, and overt
revolutionary societies among the elite are only going to lead to a change of
masters.

------
meri_dian
Yes revolutions are tricky. It's important to realize that the American
Revolution was so successful in part because it was more Separation than
Revolution. The goal was to separate from Britain rather than to fundamentally
change the way Britain operated.

Walking away from a relationship is simpler than trying to change the other
person to suit your needs.

------
AnimalMuppet
"A comparison of the two first revolutions [American and French], whose
beginnings were so similar and whose ends so tremendously different,
demonstrates clearly, I think, not only that the conquest of poverty is a
prerequisite for the foundation of freedom, but also that liberation from
poverty cannot be dealt with in the same way as liberation from political
oppression. For if violence pitted against violence leads to war, foreign or
civil, violence pitted against social conditions has always led to terror.
Terror rather than mere violence, terror let loose after the old regime has
been dissolved and the new regime installed, is what either sends revolutions
to their doom, or deforms them so decisively that they lapse into tyranny and
despotism."

That's... not encouraging. I found myself thinking of the "Black Block"
protesters as I read that.

More broadly, the American Revolution (per her thesis) succeeded the way it
did because the people were not in deep poverty and misery at the start of it;
instead, they had substantial experience of governing their own towns. Those
are not easy conditions to export. The American experience is therefore not
likely to be applicable very many other places.

~~~
anigbrowl
Well it's not like French people had no clue of how to govern their own towns.
The primary differentiator in France at that time was that there were far-
stronger counter-revolutionary forces in place because they were incumbent
rather than managed from an ocean away. It was because of the existing
governmental structures in France that Napoleon was able to establish himself
as an emperor within only a decade of the French Revolution.

I know I've made the point over and over, but Americans really _really_ need
to stay conscious of the fact that they essentially got a whole continent for
free: the indigenous population of North America was both small and
technologically unsophisticated and never presented an existential threat to
the State or Federal government by the time of the American revolution. I
don't think there is anything _fundamentally_ exceptional about the American
experiment in systemic terms; it's just that few newly-constituted countries
have such vast and barely-contested resources available to them.

Things like the various land rushes and the super-rapid formation of so many
new cities during the 19th century don't have many historical parallels in
other parts of the globe because the conditions for them simply didn't exist.
The importance of free or cheap land is reflected today in some conservative
groups' intense lobbying for the Federal government to divest itself of its
still-enormous land holdings for private exploitation. There's lots and lots
of money to be made in exploiting virgin land.

 _That 's... not encouraging. I found myself thinking of the "Black Block"
protesters as I read that._

Objectively those people have been far more restrained than the various white
supremacists/patriot militias around the US. Black bloc people talk about
punching nazis, which sensed liberals to the fainting couch, while repeated
and specific murder threats are claimed (at least for legal purposes) to be
acts of free speech, as in this recent example:

[http://www.dailyrecord.com/story/news/crime/morris-
county/20...](http://www.dailyrecord.com/story/news/crime/morris-
county/2017/07/05/morris-plains-man-charged-death-threats-washington-college-
released-jail/451257001/)

I mean, I see your point but citing the black bloc types as an example of The
Problem seems like worrying about whether the rats in your basement have
fleas.

------
eternalban
> And no revolution was ever the result of conspiracies, secret societies, or
> openly revolutionary parties.

Preceded by:

> No revolution, no matter how wide it opened its gates to the masses and the
> downtrodden—les malheureux, les misérables, les damnés de la terre, as we
> know them from the grand rhetoric of the French Revolution—was ever started
> by them.

concluded with:

> Revolutions always appear to succeed with amazing ease in their initial
> stages, and the reason is that those who supposedly “make” revolutions do
> not “seize power” but rather pick it up where it lies in the streets.

I saw this first hand as a kid. These guys were well organized, well trained.
So the question for Hannah is this: do you honestly think you can just pick up
power on the street without preparations?

> Wherever these disintegrative processes have been allowed to develop
> unchecked ...

[http://flashbak.com/la-porn-revolution-the-filthy-sex-
propag...](http://flashbak.com/la-porn-revolution-the-filthy-sex-propaganda-
that-destroyed-marie-antoinette-38405/)

Hannah wants us to believe that that sort of concerted, very accurately aimed,
propaganda to diminish the _prestige_ of the French royal family was not a
"conspiracy".

~~~
publyjusz
What Arendt claims is not that revolutionaries are not organized, it's that
only with popular discontent they were able to succeed. This discontent is
caused by structural weakness and degeneration of ancient regime, and to a
large extent cannot be engineered. Which is shown by cases when either
revolutionary parties or foreign governments really wanted to make a popular
revolution artificially, put many resources and failed.

But truth be told, there were cases when power lied on the streets and was
left untaken by (often even organized) revolutionaries. The examples would be
Italy and Germany after WW1, when technically socialdemocrats could assume
power violently, but they chose not to for various ideological reasons.

Of course, it is in interest of ancien regimes, however we define them, to
make people believe that it's all secret societies. It starts at least with
the royalist "theory" of French revolution caused entirely by Freemasons and
such.

As to your link, demonizing a queen by itself is very far from delegitimizing
monarchy and autocratic government in general. It was even possible in such
prototypical monarchies as Byzantine Empire. But even you seem to concede that
there is no evidence for an "Antoinette porn conspiracy" and its existence is
something we need to guess. I'd say "sex sells" is an easier explanation here.

~~~
woodandsteel
I agree. A government can't be overthrown by revolutionaries, no matter how
clever and well-disciplined, unless it has already become greatly weakened
through factors such as poor leadership, technological and economic changes,
and religious disputes.

------
jancsika
> No doubt, it is obvious and of great consequence that this passion for
> freedom for its own sake awoke in and was nourished by men of leisure, by
> the hommes de lettres who had no masters and were not always busy making a
> living. In other words, they enjoyed the privileges of Athenian and Roman
> citizens without taking part in those affairs of state that so occupied the
> freemen of antiquity. Needless to add, where men live in truly miserable
> conditions this passion for freedom is unknown.

It's been awhile since I read about it, but I'm fairly certain Spanish
anarchism in the latter half of the 19th century developed among peasants and
factory workers living in "truly miserable conditions." They were concerned
with freedom as Arendt defines it: "admission to the public realm and
participation in public affairs."

~~~
68c12c16
I think, by _" men of leisure"_ as in

    
    
      "this passion for freedom for its own sake awoke in and was
      nourished by men of leisure, by the hommes de lettres who had no
      masters and were not always busy making a living."
    

Arendt means those people who participated in the American Revolution (1775)
and the upper middle class members in the Third Estate who pioneered the
French Revolution (1789). The Spanish anarchism and the Revolutions of 1848
could somewhat be viewed as some parts of a long series of consequences of the
French Revolution (1789).

I feel Her essay touches many points about various revolutions in Europe in
the second millennium and her emphasis may not just simply lie at the
beginning or the end of this lecture notes. There are quite lot of details and
points to argue here.

------
anigbrowl
Side note: I wanted to print this until I saw the preview. That's some
impressive user-hostility :-/

~~~
68c12c16
I printed the article using google chrome browser, with "simply page" print
option turned on, which should make it look much nicer...

You could get a copy of this printed article here :-)

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1x4blQ2dtdUeHdHT1JfSXExb0U...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1x4blQ2dtdUeHdHT1JfSXExb0U/view?usp=sharing)

~~~
anigbrowl
That's weird, I'm also using Chrome. I was surprised because it usually does
such a good job. Thanks for sharing your version!

~~~
68c12c16
I used an old version chrome to print the page (I have kept some vintage
softwares for old times' sake). That chrome version still has the "simplify
page" option on its print preview ...newer versions of chrome have removed
that option (perhaps the dev team thought that "revolution" would give its
users more "freedom"), as it has been reported here,

[http://techdows.com/2016/09/chrome-53-simplify-page-
printing...](http://techdows.com/2016/09/chrome-53-simplify-page-printing-
option-removed.html)

and complained here,

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12647276](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12647276)

------
woodandsteel
This is a marvelous piece.

------
hprotagonist
[http://uncannymagazine.com/article/after-a-
revolution/](http://uncannymagazine.com/article/after-a-revolution/)

> Here is a secret that is not a secret. Here is a curse that is not a curse.
> Revolutions are not redemption. They will not save you, just as ours did not
> save us back in 1896, or 1986, or 2001. > > It is not that revolutions are
> useless; it is that they are not enough. And, perhaps, that is what damns
> us: we give everything we have, blood and fire and all our screaming voices,
> and after that it is still not over—we still have to go on, to carry our
> country through the painful process of rebuilding and rooting out diseases
> infesting our systems and finding better ways to be just, and fair, and
> kind, which is an even longer, more difficult trial, for all that it is less
> lit by fire.

