If you know nothing about Arendt, I imagine this book will be incomprehensible and at the same time seem really radical. Knowing a little bit about her, as I do, rather undermines that. Perhaps if you know a lot about her, you can swing back round to radical? That would be nice.

Arendt argues that the American revolution should have been the model for the 20th century revolutions in, e.g., South America and Africa, but instead the revolutionaries took the French revolution as their model. At the same time, she's not interested in pretending that 20th century America has anything to do with Revolutionary America (the best thing about Arendt, by far, is that she just doesn't say what you expect people to say. Defenders of the American Revolution today say that America is more or less a fulfillment of the 'founders'' intentions, but needs to be more like them (either by being more democratic, or by being more libertarian). Arendt says America today is really pretty unpleasant. Refreshing).

Why take the U.S. revolution as a model? Because it was not concerned with the 'social question.' The U.S. revolution, on Arendt's understanding, was entirely concerned with *creating* a strong state, which could hold together the various colonies, and provide an enduring space of political action. It was primarily a political, not a social, revolution.

The French revolution took place in a very different context: mass impoverishment. Once the revolutionaries had taken power, their attention was naturally diverted to this enormous inequality. They started to see themselves as defenders of The People--not a polity. And once you're on the side of the people, Arendt argues, you naturally accept no limitations on your own power. Hence, the terror.

Weird as this is, it gets even weirder when she explains why the U.S. revolution did not ultimately succeed: because poor people immigrated to the U.S. from Europe. Poor people don't care about 'politics,' so the space for discussion the founders set up was allowed to atrophy.

In other words, she wants to say that there can be no successful revolution where there are poor people. Why would you want a revolution where there are no poor people? So a self-chosen elite (her term) can talk about things rationally in a space set up for such discussions. What would they talk about? It's unclear.

How can Arendt combine great analytical rigor and an understanding of historical context (e.g., the American revolution could call on pre-existing legal and political systems at the state and municipal level, and needed only to replace the 'crown' as the sovereign, whereas the French revolution did not have such a history to draw upon, and felt the need to create everything anew, with terrible consequences) with claims as erroneous as her suggestion that the U.S. formalized and institutionalized the idea of political opposition (there is no 'opposition' in the U.S., as far as I can tell, whereas there is in Westminster-derived systems), and as horrific as "poor immigrants ruined America"?

As ever, her fear of structural *explanations* pushes her into political and even moral turpitude. The American revolution was not set up to deal with mass capitalist society, and so its institutions struggle in the present. But those concepts (mass, capitalist, society) aren't allowed into Arednt's analysis. To account for the failure of the American revolution--as interpreted according to Arendt's key concept of 'action'--she has to find an agent on whom to pin the blame. It must be the poor Europeans, because if you admit that there are poor Americans, you would have to explain how poor people came to exist in a country that, according to Arendt, lacked poverty until the 19th century.

Don't tell the slaves. ( )

LIBRARYTHING calls this another version, but thinking was a work in progress with Mrs Arendt, so this German translation of On Revolution is considerably reviewed by her and should -if anything- be called a second, revised, edition while keeping in mind that -if we had but time enough and love there would have been a third and fourth edition (in all probability). ( )

As difficult as [b:The Human Condition|127227|The Human Condition|Hannah Arendt|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328874274s/127227.jpg|462889], but it takes longer to pick up steam. Luckily though, Arendt keeps the momentum building until the end, starting around Chapter 3. Overall, Arendt spends too long discussing abstract philosophical ideas and linguistic origins and not enough time discussing the practical distinctions among revolutions, and what makes them work or fail. When she does this, the book becomes much more interesting, although any enjoyment is still hampered by the almost unbearably long sentences, each filled with as many as five different ideas punctuated by hyphens, colons, commas and parentheses.

Some sentences take several re-readings just to wrap your mind around everything she is trying to say. It is obvious the woman is brilliant (I've already used adjectives like "astounding" and "staggering" to describe her intellect in other reviews), but it's equally obvious that she either doesn't give a darn about bringing her ideas to a wider (read: "stupider") audience, or she's just not capable of adopting a more accessible writing style. I'm tempted to cite the former, just because [b:Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil|52090|Eichmann in Jerusalem A Report on the Banality of Evil|Hannah Arendt|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1283038161s/52090.jpg|1023716] did not suffer from the same shortcoming.

As far as content, I can only give a partial rundown since the entire book is so dense. Her discussion of the differences between the American and French Revolutions was illuminating and persuasive. She posits that the success of a revolution depends on 1) it being free of the misery surrounding an impoverished populace 2) its success in finding a sufficient authority to replace the deposed one. America got lucky, starting from scratch, and the success of their and any revolution was dependent upon a foundation -- in the American case, the foundation of a constitution and new form of government, which is something the French and most subsequent revolutions failed to do.

At the same time, The American revolution dwindled and the "revolutionary spirit" eventually died away because the founders did not do enough to protect it when enshrining the Constitution. She says they could have done this by protecting the political rights and freedom of the townships and town meetings. These small groups or "councils," she claims, are vital aspects that spring organically from any revolutionary movement and are the only outlet for true political expression by the common citizen. They therefore must be nurtured in a symbiotic relationship with the state if freedom is to be preserved.

The conclusion is particularly impressive, when she actually suggests a return to the ancient Greco-Roman political system in which not everyone votes, only those who are sufficiently interested in the political process. This government would inherently be both self-chosen and self-including. In this way, people not concerned with their public freedom are not forced to participate and can instead focus on their private lives, while people to whom politics does indeed matter will never be excluded from political decisions (as they inevitably are in our current representative system). I honestly don't know enough about political or revolutionary theory to agree or disagree with her authoritatively, and despite leaving herself open to charges of elitism I can say at least that her arguments are persuasive, even intuitive despite their complexity.

The ideas here are essential, but the packaging is unfortunately rather repellent. I would not recommend starting your exposure to Arendt with this book. Probably better to start with the far easier Eichmann, and then move onto the more important Human Condition. But this one is important nonetheless, especially for anyone interested in political theory or the concept of freedom. ( )

Arendt's examination of revolution as a phenomenon of modern politics. ( )

On Revolution is a classic analysis of a relatively recent political phenomenon. hannah arendt looks at the principles which underlie all revolutions, starting with the first great examples in America and France, and showing how both the theory and practice of revolution have since developed. Finally, she foresees the changing relationship between war and revolution and crucial changes in international relations, with revolution becoming the key tactic.