On Revolution

“For liberation in the revolutionary sense came to mean that those who not only at present but throughout history, not only as individuals but as members of the vast majority of mankind, the low and the poor, all those who had always lived in darkness and subjection to whatever powers there were, should rise and become the supreme sovereigns of the land.”

This sentence succinctly summarizes what Arendt considers to be the “plot” of the revolutions—the establishment of an entirely new form of government based on popular sovereignty. Although the French and American revolutionists were inspired by the example of the Roman Republic, unlike the Romans they sought to empower even the poorest of the unpropertied poor. The notion of equality as a birthright of all people was acknowledged only in the modern era.

“The sad truth of the matter is that the French Revolution, which ended in disaster, has made world history, while the American Revolution, so triumphantly successful, has remained an event of little more than local importance.”

Arendt believes the French Revolution ended in disaster because the Jacobins replaced institutionalizing political freedom with eradicating mass poverty as their chief goal. She believes that the French Revolution’s misguided idealism has captured the imaginations of later revolutionaries, to the world’s detriment. The American Revolution, on the other hand, did succeed in establishing freedom, but foreign intellectuals in subsequent generations ignored it—an oversight Arendt seeks to redress in this book.

“The Revolution had come to its turning point when the Jacobins, under the leadership of Robespierre, seized power, not because they were more radical but because they did not share the Girondins’ concern with forms of government, because they believed in the people rather than in the republic, and ‘pinned their faith on the natural goodness of a class’ rather than on institutions and constitutions.”

The Jacobins made the fateful error of embracing Rousseau’s belief in the innate goodness of people in the “state of nature” and his theory of the “general will.” Just as the King’s will had been law, so now was the people’s will, and there was no need to codify it in written documents or in the establishment of strong, democratic state institutions.