On Revolution

Arendt summarizes her argument thus far: Movements aimed at restoring ancient rights and liberties were transformed into revolutions in the 18th century because men of letters “dream[ed] of public freedom” in France and “tasted public happiness” in the colonies (132). Revolutionists in both countries agreed that the goal of revolution was to establish a republican government. She notes that the American war of liberation was immediately “followed by a spontaneous outbreak of constitution-making in all thirteen colonies” (132) and that it was the constitutions, not the Bill of Rights, that were revolutionary.

Many so-called revolutions fail because the initial phase of liberation from tyranny is followed not by the foundation of freedom, but by either permanent revolution—as in latter-day Russia and China—or by the establishment of some form of limited government, in which government power is restrained by civil rights, as in many European countries after World War I and in colonial countries that won independence after World War II. In the latter cases, constitutions were not the outcome of revolution, but were instead imposed after the revolution had failed, making them, “at least in the eyes of the people living under them, the sign of its defeat not of its victory” (135). A mere 15 years after the collapse of monarchical government during World War I, more than half of the countries in Europe had reverted to authoritarian rule.

The American founders were mistrustful of government power but also of the power of rights-bearing citizens under majority rule, which can result in the oppression of minorities (aka the “tyranny of the majority”). Much as the French revolutionists were inspired by Rousseau, the Americans were influenced by the 18th-century French philosopher Montesquieu, who argued that freedom requires not just protection from government oppression but the positive capacity to accomplish one’s goals. Montesquieu advocated the separation of powers, stating that only “power arrests power” (142).

The US Constitution established checks and balances by creating three separate branches of federal government; they also divided powers between the federal and state governments in such a way that neither federal nor state power would undermine the other. The great innovation of the American Constitution was that it established a new power center without taking away any powers from the states.

Arendt explains that while the American Revolution overthrew a limited constitutional monarchy, the French Revolution overthrew a despotic absolute monarchy. The French king was believed to rule by divine right, and his will was law. The French revolutionists simply substituted the nation for the king, making the national will both the “source and the locus of all power” and the “origin of all laws” (148). By contrast, the Americans clarified that power belonged to the people, but the authority to exercise that power derived from the Constitution, which was “an endurable objective thing” rather than “a subjective state of mind, like the will” (148). In other words, the Americans institutionalized an objective, external check on the people’s power.

Absolutism emerged in Europe in response to secularization, which eliminated religion as a source of legitimation for government power. Absolutism substituted the institution of kingship as the source of that authority, but this substitution would prove to be only a “pseudo-solution” because it lacked “a transcendent and transmundane source” (151)—i.e., the absolute monarch was seen not as a successor to the Church, but as a usurper. Thus the most perplexing challenge facing the revolutionists was to determine the source of legitimate power. The French revolutionary theorist Abbé Sieyès famously solved this problem by drawing a distinction between “constituent power” (the basis of authority within a legal framework) and “constituted power” (the exercise of political power).

Robespierre and his allies, however, declared the will of the nation to be both constituent and constituted power. The fatal flaw of this conflation was that “the so-called will of a multitude […] is ever-changing by definition, and that a structure built on it as its foundation is built on quicksand” (154), which Arendt believes explains the rapid succession of short-lived constitutions during and after the Revolution. Arendt distinguishes between “majority decision,” which is used “almost automatically in all types of deliberative councils and assemblies,” from “majority rule,” which is nothing more than tyranny of the majority or “elective despotism” (156). The unique feature of republican government is that decisions are made and implemented according to the rules spelled out in the constitution, which is not “subject to the will of a majority” (156). In other words, even a majority of Congress members cannot alter the Constitution simply by willing it to be so.

Arendt then goes on to emphasize, once again, that one of the great benefits of the American revolutionists was that the American colonists had experience in participating in self-governing bodies, whereas the French revolutionists and general population had no such experience. She describes the Mayflower Compact, which was drawn up on the ship and signed upon landing, whereby the Pilgrims joined together in a mutual promise “to ‘enact, constitute, and frame’ all necessary laws and instruments of government” (159). This compact set a precedent for subsequent colonists, who conceived of their own assemblies not as rival governments but as spaces to enact public freedom. The early colonists were thus the first to realize in practice the notion of a “social contract”: a mutual agreement by which individuals consent to form a community, or by which a people consents to be governed by a ruler.

From this historical experience the Founding Fathers understood that, even if most men were sinners—for unlike the French, the American revolutionists did not believe that man is inherently good outside of society—they could “bind themselves into a community which […] need not necessarily reflect this ‘sinful’ side of human nature” (165). They were inspired not by “a semi-religious trust in human nature” but by a belief that “common bonds and mutual promises” (166) could serve as a check on human nature, however flawed. They understood that the Roman principle of potestas in populo (“power resides in the people”) could serve as the foundation of government only in combination with the principle of auctoritas in senatu, (“authority resides in the senate”). Arendt will continue to explore this point further in Chapter 5.