CHAPTER XIII

THE STRUCTURE OF CIVIL SOCIETY:

Hannah Arendt on Revolution, Freedom and the Council System

NEMESIO S. QUE

            Revolution, freedom and the council system are three themes from Hannah Arendt’s political philosophy which are especially re-levant to a discussion of civil society. Revolution is political action par excellence; freedom is the ultimate aim of revolution; while the council system institutionalizes and preserves this freedom. It is a tangible, worldly reality, brought about by people acting together and parti-cipating in the public realm, where they interact with their peers in both word and deed.

REVOLUTION

            In On Revolution, Arendt observes that thus far revolutions have determined the physiognomy of the 20th century.1 Hence, we need to learn as much as possible from them, such as the joy of appearing in word and deed among one’s peers and the fulfillment of freedom that is inherent in action. Like a pearl diver who descends to the bottom of the sea to pry loose the rich and the strange, the pearls and the coral, and carries them to the surface,2 we should fathom revolutions in order to bring to light the spirit of freedom and public happiness, and the pathos of novelty, that emerge therefrom.

            Arendt’s discussion of revolution derives mainly from two events: first, the French Revolution--a tale of a revolution doomed by its attempt to solve the social questions; and second, the American Revolution--a tale of the success of political action which never lived up to its promise.

The French Experience of Revolution

            In 1989, France celebrated the bicentennial of the French Revo-lution. Calling it "Les Jours de Gloire" from the words of their national anthem, the French people recalled the emergence of the nation-state from the ashes of monarchic absolutism. Despite spending a fortune on this extravagant memorial (or perhaps because of it), the French could not quite match the powerful impact that the Revolution of 1789 had on the political world.

            Indeed, no event in world history has been studied as exten-sively and interpreted in quite so radically different ways as the French Revolution. For some students of the Revolution, it was a shining ex-ample of how absolutism brandishes its own destruction. For others, it marked a definitive stage in the development of liberal democracy. For Hannah Arendt, the French Revolution was a lesson in how a revo-lution fails when it pursues the social question and ushers in a reign of terror and violence, rather than laying the foundations for freedom.

            The Significance of the French Revolution. In focusing on the failure of the French Revolution and the violence that ensued, Arendt does not thereby minimize the impact that the Revolution has had for a people’s political education. For Arendt, the French Revolution was not a total failure. She acknowledges, for instance, that for a time at least the Revolution gloriously manifested the stirrings of freedom and public spirit. She points out that in the beginning of the Revolution, the participation of people in the political realm in the form of sociétes populaires and clubs was quite admirable and true to the spirit of free-dom and revolution. Through these societies, extensive debates and discussions of public matters were conducted to insure the survival of the new constitution and to foster the public spirit. Quoting Robes-pierre, Arendt says that the sole aims of the "societies" were:

To instruct, to enlighten their fellow citizens on the true principles of the constitution, and to spread a light without which the constitution will not be able to survive; for the survival of the constitution depended upon the public spirit, which, in its turn, existed only in assemblies where the citizens (could) occupy them-selves in common with these (public) matters, with the dearest interests of their fatherland.3

Thus, Arendt admits that even if the Revolution was eventually de-flected from its path toward political freedom, for a time it nursed "the feeble germs of a new form of government" that would allow people actively to be involved in their political self-determination.4

            But its promising beginnings notwithstanding, the French Revolution eventually degenerated into the terror and violence that devoured its own children. The Revolution that began by storming the Bastille ended up building its own.5 Revolutions have come to be per-ceived not as the acts of people, but "as an irresistible process" as the revolution’s "stream and torrent and current" replaced the actors themselves and their capacity for action as the agents of revolutions.6

            Arendt claims that it is unfortunate that the French Revolution has become the standard for revolutions. In its feeble beginnings, the Revolution was an image of societies and communes which sponta-neously constituted themselves as self-governing bodies. But later on, the same groups donned another character: they became pres-sure groups of the poor7 and informed their representatives in the National Assembly that "the republic must assure each individual the means of subsistence, that the primary task of the lawgivers was to legislate misery out of existence."8 The social question became the centerpiece of revolutionary action. This was unfortunate, Arendt claims, since no government of whatever form can possibly succeed in resolving the social question out of existence. The French Revolution failed despite its initial orientation toward freedom because it shifted its aim to the conquest of social problems. But what is the social question?

            The Social Question. Citizens and families reduced to begging for subsistence, beggars driven to extortion and thievery--that is the ghastly face of the social question. For Arendt, the social question is not simply a matter of deprivation. New Yorkers may be deprived of diet and deli food items, the latest in sports sneakers and clothing, but their deprivation does not amount to the social question. The social question has nothing to do with the lack of things we could very well do without. Rather, the social question, for Arendt, refers to the existence of poverty:

A state of constant want and acute misery whose ignominy consists in its dehumanizing force, poverty is abject because it puts (human beings) under the absolute dictate of their bodies, that is, under the absolute dictate of necessity.9

But the social question is not restricted to the ignominy of poverty and the need to eliminate it. The social question includes also human welfare, economic questions, busing, housing, etc.10 In other words, the social question refers to anything that touches the social sphere.

            Arendt’s understanding of the social question is actually linked with her notions of the private and social realms. The private realm is the realm of necessity and economics, a realm dominated by the im-mediate concern for the material requirements of daily subsistence. The social realm, on the other hand, is the enlargement of the private realm, the gigantic, nationwide administration of housekeeping. The social question refers to matters that are properly the concerns of the private realm. These are matters that can be dealt with adminis-tratively and that we talk about only within the confines of the private realm. Arendt says: "At all times people living together will have affairs that belong in the realm of the public--are worthy to be talked about in public."11 The social question is not one of them.

            The social question, Arendt asserts, is the reality that cor-responds to the biological process which, in self-introspection,

is the life process which permeates our bodies and keeps them in a constant state of change, whose movements are automatic, independent of our own activities, and irresistible--i.e., of an overwhelming urgency.12

When the French revolutionaries allowed the social question to be the Revolution’s primary aim, they unleashed a power so irresistible that all hope of founding freedom was simply overwhelmed. The French revolutionaries surrendered freedom to necessity, to the urgency of the life process itself.

The American Experience of Revolution

            In contrast to her rather gloomy presentation of the French Revolution, Arendt is hopeful when she talks about the American Revolution. After all, while the former was deflected from the course of establishing freedom, the latter "remained committed to the found-ation of freedom and the establishment of lasting institutions."13 In the speech Arendt gave when she accepted the Sonning Prize in Co-penhagen (1975), she expressed her admiration and hope for the American Revolution thus:

It is no small matter to be recognized for a contribution to European civilization for somebody who left Europe thirty-five years ago--by no means voluntarily--and then became a citizen of the United States, entirely and consciously voluntarily because the Republic was indeed a government of law and not of men. What I learned in these first crucial years between im-migration and naturalization amounted roughly to a self-taught course in the political philosophy of the Founding Fathers, and what convinced me was the factual existence of a body politic.14

            For Arendt, the American Revolution was vindication of free-dom, the capacity of people to act and begin something new. The American revolutionaries were able to focus on their political task of founding a body politic and a form of government, and hence, were more successful than their French counterparts. They were prepared for the task of founding a body politic, the pursuit of public freedom and the consolidation of power by the pre-revolutionary political experien-ce of the first settlers. The manner in which these first settlers built themselves up as civil bodies politic through charters and com-pacts was a fine example of people acting together by choice. No matter that these settlers needed to come together because of their fear of the perils of a new world, "the untrod wilderness, unlimited by any bound-ary, as well as the unlimited initiative of (people) bound by no law".15 The fact is that they found salvation in mutual trust. Out of this mutual trust, they were able to constitute themselves into political com-munities--communities that did not imply the division of people into rulers and ruled.16

            The first settlers bound themselves to one another by their words and promises. And they lived up to their original declaration of mutuality by "daily, participatory politics" in the form of town meetings, the fora of decision-making. "The political life of early America--without which the urge to declare independence and fight a war to secure it would have been unthinkable--was, then, the realization of the best political life."17

            According to Arendt, what the pre-revolutionary experience of the first settlers eventually taught the revolutionaries was that no revo-lution or political action can succeed unless it is a joint effort. The hope for the settler in his or her singularity lay in the fact that he or she is not alone but inhabits the earth along with others with whom he or she builds a world. Arendt says:

Action, though it may be started in isolation and decided upon by single individuals for very different motives, can be accomplished only by some joint effort in which the motivation of single individuals--for instance, whether or not they are an "undesirable lot"--no longer counts, so that homogeneity of past and origin, the decisive principle of the nation-state, is not required. The joint effort equalizes very effectively the differences in origin as well as in quality.18

Moreover, in this joint effort of the first settlers to constitute themselves into a political body, the revolutionaries also learned by experience the lesson of how power can be generated and kept in existence. Power, as the settlers experienced it, demands a plurality of people who are mutually related by means of promises and covenants and who ma-nifest this mutual relation by acting together. According to Arendt, it is thanks to this original experience of power, engendered by action and kept by promises, that the revolutionaries were helped to win the war against England and gain independence.19

            The Constitution of Power and the Body Politic. As we pointed out earlier, the American revolutionaries were not entirely unprepared for the task of founding a body politic, of consolidating power and of pursuing public freedom. The first settlers pledged themselves to one another and learned to govern themselves. They also experienced power firsthand in their townhall meetings where they debated, dis-cussed and decided all matters pertaining to their communities. Im-bued with this spirit of self-rule and public freedom, the revolutionaries faced the task of duly constituting themselves into a body politic. A Constitution was superbly devised which "not only assured that the benefits of independence would not be lost, but that they would be inherited and enlarged by later generations of Americans."20 Thus, the American revolutionaries had become Founding Fathers.

            Quoting Thomas Paine, Arendt claims that the constitution is "the act . . . of a people constituting a government."21 It is the sublime expression of mutual promise and self-rule. Parekh explicates Arendt’s insight into the positive character of the constitution when he points out that for Arendt:

A political community is basically like a voluntary "association", a "societas", a "partnership" or an "alliance"; and the constitution represents the con-ditions on which a political community is constituted and which a citizen must accept in order to become its member. In accepting it each gives the rest a "reliable pledge" concerning his "future conduct". His primary loyalty is to his fellow citizens, not to the government, and he owes it to his fellow citizens, not to the govern-ment, to observe its laws . . .22

            For Arendt, the constitution is more than a guarantee that government shall not infringe upon the civil liberties of the citizens. It is more than a handy written document that prescribes what govern-ment as well as citizens can and cannot do. The constitution, Arendt asserts, is really the foundation stone upon which the American nation stands in the sense that "the constitution making, that is, as a political event, is what founded this country."23

Freedom AS THE ULTIMATE AIM OF REVOLUTION

            In no uncertain terms, Arendt contends that the content of the public happiness by which revolutionaries are inspired and for which they aspire is freedom itself. If the French and American revolution-aries had anything in common prior to the diverging paths their revolu-tions took, it was a passionate concern for public freedom--participa-tion in public affairs. Both the French and the American revolution-aries were not just demanding reforms in their respective govern-ments; they were aiming for no less than freedom itself, which for them could exist only in public:

It was a tangible, worldly reality, something created by men to be enjoyed by men rather than a gift or a ca-pacity. It was the . . . public space or marketplace which antiquity had known as the area where freedom appears and becomes visible to all.24

            Freedom, for Arendt, is the ultimate aim of all revolutions. It implies the participation of citizens in the public realm where they appear and mingle with their peers in word and deed. It is more than just the capacity to interact with others; it involves the actual inter-course in debate, argumentation, decision-making that transpire among peers in a politically organized world. In other words, freedom is a demonstrable fact which can be experienced only in action. The raison d’être of action, Arendt asserts, is freedom; and the field of the experience of freedom is action.25

            For Arendt, the adequate story of revolution must include the spirit of freedom as participation in public affairs. But there is still the matter of constituting this freedom. Arendt says that revolution, on the one hand, and constitution and foundation, on the other, are like correlative conjunctions. Hence, revolutions do not only aim for free-dom; they must also "found and build a new political space within which the `passion for public freedom’ or the `pursuit of public happi-ness’ would receive free play for generations to come." It is in this aspect of revolutions that the American Revolution was found wanting. The American Revolution succeeded in consolidating power and founding a body politic, but it failed to found a realm of freedom where citizens are the masters of their own destiny and to "assure the survival of the spirit out of which the act of foundation sprang, to realize the principle which inspired it."26

            To further explain what she means by freedom, Arendt contrasts it with liberation. Like the social question, she also exempts liberation from the pursuit of freedom which is the mark of an adequate revo-lution. For her, liberties in the sense of civil rights are the results of liberation, but they are by no means the actual content of freedom, whose essence is participation in public affairs and admission to the public realm. If revolutions aim only at the guarantee of civil rights, libe-ration from certain regimes which overstep their powers and infringe upon old and well-established rights would be enough. In an endnote on the subject of liberation, Arendt lets us know unequivocally what she thinks about out tendency to reduce revolutions to acts of liberation:

There is perhaps nothing more detrimental to an understanding of revolution than the common assum-ption that the revolutionary process has come to an end when liberation is achieved and the turmoil and the violence, inherent in all wars of independence, have come to an end. This view is not new. In 1787, Benjamin Rush complained that "there is nothing more common, than to confound the term of `Ame-rican revolution’ with those of the late American war. The American war is over: but this is far from being the case with the American revolution. On the contrary, nothing but the first act of the great drama is closed. It remains yet to establish and perfect our new forms of government." We may add that there still is nothing more common than to confound the travail of libe-ration with the foundation of freedom.27

            In other words, for Arendt, liberation is but a first stage in the struggle for self-rule. Liberation may be the condition of freedom, but by no means does it automatically lead to freedom. Thus, liberation must not be confused with freedom, much less should it be over-emphasized to the detriment of the "quieter second stage of revolu-tion" whose aim is to found freedom.28 If it should happen that libe-ration becomes the be-all and end-all of human struggles for self-determination, then what is guaranteed is exemption from the abuses of power, but not the claim to a share in government. Arendt says that if nothing more than exemption from abuses of power or the guarantee of civil liberties is at stake:

Then the revolutionary changes of government, the abolition of monarchy and the establishment of re-publics must be regarded as accidents, provoked by no more than the wrong-headedness of the old regimes. Had this been the case, reforms and not revolution, the exchange of a bad ruler for a better one rather than a change of government, should have been the answer.29

            Revolution must aim for political freedom, that is, the right to participate in government, or it means nothing. Arendt is correct in stressing this important aim of revolution because we tend to be oblivious to it once we are confronted with the social and economic tasks at hand. While we do not think lowly of such tasks, it is quite true that sometimes we harness the energy of revolution solely toward them to the neglect of building up institutions that provide for par-ticipation in public affairs.

            For instance, it did not take long for Western capitalists, bent only upon exploiting new market possibilities, to descend like vultures upon Eastern European countries after the citizens of these countries finally gained entry into the political realm in 1989. These capitalists are of the one-track mind that revolutions are waged and won only for economic and social reasons.

            Arendt’s insistence on political freedom as the ultimate aim of revolutions serves to disenchant capitalist illusions regarding what revolutions are about. Revolutions, for Arendt, are a judgment on the dignity of the political, not the economic realm. Václav Havel, in his New Year’s Day address as President of Czechoslovakia, acknow-ledged the political significance and direction of revolutions of which Arendt is so mindful when he asked:

Where did young people who had never known another system get their longing for truth, their love of freedom, their political imagination, their civic cour-age and civic responsibility? How did their par-ents, precisely the generation thought to have been lost, join them? How is it possible that so many people immediately understood what to do and that none of them needed any advice or instructions?30

            Havel knows the answer to his questions. John Adams, sepa-rated from Havel by time but linked to him in the understanding of what revolutions stand for, provides the answer when he writes:

Wherever men, women, or children, are to be found, whether they be old or young, rich or poor, high or low, ignorant or learned, every individual is seen to be strongly actuated by a desire to be seen, heard, talked of, approved and respected by the people about him, and within his knowledge.31

Revolution is fueled by the passion to be seen and heard that can be realized in public discussions, deliberations and the making of deci-sions—in political freedom. Once again, Havel, who seems to be in dialogue with Adams and Arendt, expresses the same sentiment when he talks about what the Czechoslovak Revolution has in store for the citizens:

Let us make no mistake: even the best Government, the best Parliament and the best President cannot do much by themselves. Freedom and democracy, after all, mean joint participation and shared responsibility. If we realize this, then all the horrors that the new Czechoslovak democracy inherited cease to be so horrific. If we realize this, then hope will return to our hearts.32

THE COUNCIL SYSTEM

            In the beginning, the French Revolution was full of the promise of freedom; but it was soon overwhelmed by its concern for the social question. Instead of the dawning of a new era, there was only the twi-light of violence and terror. The American Revolution fiddled with suc-cess; it understood freedom and in its Constitution attempted to make freedom a genuine inheritance for generations to come. How-ever, this attempt ended in failure, for instead of constituting what was novel in the revolutionary spirit, namely, public participation which is the es-sence of freedom, and moving forward, it took a step back and con-centrated on civil liberties and representation in government. The American Revolution failed to come up with a form of government that would reflect the energizing spirit of freedom.

            The form of government that best accommodates the revolu-tionary spirit, Arendt believed, is the council system. But it is this council system that the American Revolution, and as matter of fact, all modern revolutions fail to take with sufficient seriousness. What is the council system?

            Arendt observes that during the course of revolutions, a new form of government that resembles Jefferson’s ward system emerged with amazing regularity:

The year 1870, when the French capital under siege by the Prussian army ‘spontaneously reorganized it-self into a miniature federal body’, which then formed the nucleus for the Parisian Commune government in the spring of 1871; the year 1905, when the wave of spontaneous strikes in Russia suddenly developed a political leadership of its own . . . and the workers in the factories organized themselves into councils, soviets, for the purpose of representative self-govern-ment; . . . the years 1918 and 1919 in Germany, when, after the defeat of the army, soldiers and workers in open rebellion constituted themselves into Arbeiter-und-Soldenrate, demanding, in Berlin, that this Rätesystem become the foundation stone of the new German constitution; . . . the last date, finally, is the autumn of 1956, when the Hungarian Revolution from its very beginning produced the council system anew in Budapest.33

In all these revolutions, we are confronted with popular organs which clearly intend to survive the revolutions. This phenomenon impressed Marx and later Lenin who witnessed the spontaneous emergence of such popular organs: Marx during the French Revolution and Lenin during the first Russian Revolution in 1905. Unfortunately, they "never thought of them as possible germs for a new form of government." Both Marx and Lenin regarded them merely as "instruments to be dispensed with once the revolution came to an end."34

            If, as Arendt notes, nobody will be able to tell the tale of our century without stringing it "on the thread of revolutions," then, no doubt, nobody will be able to tell the story of revolutions without stringing it on the thread of the councils that sprang up again and again during revolutions. And if we are to be truly wise, so Arendt seems to suggest, we must take the council system of government seriously for it is the council system that truly preserves the revolutionary spirit, the spirit of innovation that is inherent in revolutions.

            For Arendt, the spontaneous emergence and repetition of the council system in revolutions indicate the need for providing a public space within which citizens can participate in political affairs. The council system is the form of government that best appropriates and founds the spirit of public participation. In this sense, councils clearly intend to outlast themselves as temporary organs of revolution.

Far from wishing to make the revolution permanent, their (the councils’) explicitly expressed goal (is) ‘to lay the foundations of a republic acclaimed in all its consequences, the only government which will close forever the era of invasions and civil wars’; no para-dise on earth, no classless society, no dream of so-cialist or communist fraternity, but the establishment of ‘the true Republic’ (is) the ‘reward’ hoped for as the end of the struggle.35

We might add that the council system incorporates within its structure the desire of citizens, which is manifest in their participation in revo-lutions, to act with their peers out of concern for their common world. In the council system, all those who wish to participate in government would have the opportunity to engage in those activities that constitute their freedom and give them dignity and greatness. Such activities include discussion which debates and decides common affairs and joint enterprises.

            Arendt envisages the council system as different from political parties; party membership plays no role. Parties usually have pro-grams that are "ready-made formulas" which demand execution but not action. Councils are bound to rebel against such programmes be-cause councils are primarily organs of action. The councils, through public discussion, debate, and decision-making, do not perceive a cleavage between archein (to begin, to lead) and prattein (to carry something through). There is no division between party experts who "know" and the rest of the people who are expected to execute the experts command. If there is such a division, the average citizen’s capacity to act and to form his or her own opinion would be left out of account. But it is precisely because in revolutions the citizens want to be seen with their peers and to have their opinions and ideas heard by them that the councils exist at all.

            The council system, as Arendt also envisions it, is the form of government that embraces and attempts to work out two apparently irreconcilable and even contradictory elements: innovation as well as concern for foundations and stability, both of which lie at the heart of every revolutionary act. For its very existence, the council system requires public participation in the form of discussions and decisions for the government of common affairs. And all those who participate experience "the exhilarating awareness of the human capacity of beginning, the high spirits which have always attended the birth of something new on earth".36 At the same time, though, this very act of beginning requires the further innovative act of founding itself in a structure that would make it stable and durable. Thus, what the council system embodies in a prominent way is radicality tempered by conser-vatism. The council system brings in the new by tearing down the old and builds up what is new in revolutions by preserving it.

            How might a government founded on the principles of the council system look? Arendt’s response to this question is to look into the specific examples of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Hun-garian Revolution of 1956. In both cases, councils sprang up every-where independently of one another:

Workers’, soldiers’, and peasants’ councils in the case of Russia, the most disparate kinds of councils in the case of Hungary: neighborhood councils that emerged in all residential districts, so-called revolu-tionary councils grew out of fighting together in the streets, councils of writers and artists, born in the coffee houses of Budapest, students’ and youths’ councils at the universities, workers’ councils in the factories, councils in the army, among the civil ser-vants, and so on.37

Eventually, these disparate and independent organs of action pro-ceeded to coordinate and integrate among themselves to form higher councils of a regional or provincial character, from which, finally, dele-gates to a national assembly were chosen. Thus, out of the coor-dinated efforts of independent councils to form larger leagues and alliances arose the federal principle. Moreover, there was the found-ation of a new body politic, "a new type of republican government" with central powers "that did not deprive the constituent bodies of their original power to constitute".38

            Government that is based on the principles of the council system, then, does not preempt the capacity of the smaller and more local councils to act and make decisions. Indeed, government of this sort will also assume the shape of a pyramid, "which is the shape of an essentially authoritarian government." But unlike authoritarian govern-ment in which "authority is filtered down from above," the authority and power of the federally instituted government will not be generated at the top; power will build itself up from below and on each level of the pyramid. Councils or "elementary republics" will choose from among themselves their deputies for the next higher council. In this sense, deputies are selected by their own peers and hence their title rests "on nothing but the confidence of their equals" in the deputies’ commit-ment to the common good. Once elected and sent to the next higher council, the deputies find themselves again among their peers, and to-gether they discuss, debate and decide affairs affecting their com-munities.39

            What the council-based system of government emphasizes, and what authoritarian or highly centralized government accepts only at the risk of making itself irrelevant and superfluous, is the idea of power being generated on a more local level where people truly can be participants. The problems created by a highly centralized govern-ment can never be overstated. First and foremost, of course, is the fact that decisions are not really made by the people themselves but by go-vernment, specifically, the national government. The national govern-ment usually defends its decisions by claiming to be in touch with the people’s pulse through plebiscites and polls. But, as Arendt so aptly contends, the "booth in which we deposit our ballots is unquestionably too small, for this booth has room for only one".40 There is something wrong with a system that claims to base its decisions on dialogue with the people, but which actually requires only their consent without the benefit of the people’s discussion and debate of the issues involved. Second, decisions by local governments can never be implemented without the approval of the national government.

            It is understandable that in a highly centralized government decisions waiting to be approved are backlogged in some official’s bureau. Decisions that require being acted upon expeditiously are un-bearably retarded by the complex bureaucratic channels though which they have to pass. Third, in a form of government that filters au-thority downward, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint where responsibility lies and who should answer for anomalies in govern-ment: certainly not the people themselves, for after all they are never directly involved in government. Finally, in an authoritarian govern-ment, the door is wide open for political patronage and cronyism. People may not want the unelected officials appointed to rule them alongside their elected officials. But if all authority and power are filtered from the top down, then authority and power surely can be del-egated to certain people, competent, honorable or otherwise. Even crooks are given the mantle of authority so long as they help to prop up the authority of their political godparents. What is left out of this scenario are the people themselves, their capacity for action in the public realm, their freedom.

            And who shall take part in the councils or "elementary repub-lics"? Arendt does not think that every person must or should partici-pate in the councils, not because they cannot, but because not every-one really wants to.

By no means every resident of a country needs to be a member in such councils. Not everyone wants to or has to concern himself with public affairs. In this fashion a self-selective process is possible that would draw together a true political elite in a country. Any-one who is not interested in public affairs will simply have to be satisfied with their being decided without him. But each person must be given the opportunity.41

For reasons that she does not quite make clear, Arendt is convinced that politics has never been and will never be the way of life of the many. She claims that not all possess "political passions—courage, the pursuit of public happiness, the taste of public freedom, an ambition that strives for excellence"--even if such people are not as rare as we are inclined to think.42 In a sense, those who decide to participate in councils are self-selected. These are the people who, possessing political passions, gravitate toward the political way of life and who consequently will "not owe their power to political machi-nation or party bureaucrats."43 Just as those who voluntarily participate in councils are self-selected, so those who decide not to join are self-excluded. Respect for self-exclusion from the councils or from political affairs, Arendt claims, gives "substance and reality to one of the most important negative liberties we have enjoyed since the end of the ancient world, namely, freedom from politics".44

DIFFICULTIES

            At this point, a question often rises in people’s minds: Is not Arendt, the zealous proponent of popular participation in the political realm, being contradictory when she endorses some form of elitism in the council system of government? To answer this question from Arendt’s perspective one needs to compare her version of "elitism" with the form of elitism in government with which we are more familiar today.

            Arendt states explicitly that she finds the term "elite" a rather disturbing term. It is unfortunate that the term is also descriptive of the people who decide to participate in councils. However, Arendt insists that the term "elite" as it is applied to the council form of government should not bear the same connotations and implications the term might have when it is used to describe an "oligarchic form of gov-ernment, the domination of the many by the rule of a few." First, in the latter version of elitism, there is the objectionable implication that "the essence of politics is rulership and that the dominant political passion is the passion to rule or to govern." No such implication derives from the council system of government since here one moves among one’s peers in the public realm on equal terms. Everyone discusses, debates and decides public issues. No one is more intelligent, has better ideas, belongs to a distinctive family or possesses more pro-perty than others. Every idea or opinion that is presented to the body of peers comes without any preset distinction; on the contrary, what-ever merit an opinion might have is consequent to its being discussed by the body of peers.45

            Second, the elitism in government with which we are familiar today seems to endorse political activity only within parliament or congress, where indeed a representative moves among his or her peers but not among his or her constituents, "no matter how much of his time may be spent campaigning, in trying to get the vote and in listening to the voter." Arendt points out that there is an "obvious phoniness" to this type of dialogue with the people. The voter "can only consent or refuse to ratify a choice which . . . is made without him."46 Oftentimes, the relation struck between representative and voter is similar to that between the Madison Avenue advertiser and the consumer, between the seller and the buyer. Here, "Communication is never between equals but between those who aspire to govern and those who consent to be governed."47 Arendt’s council system, on the other hand, refuses to be inveigled into the ruler/ruled distinction. Thus, direct communication is stressed; people, not "rulers," come together in communicative action.

            Third, the party system, Arendt admits, may have opened poli-tical careers to members of the lower classes. But even this has not enabled the "people qua people to make their entrance into political life and to become participators in public affairs." Thus, even if more people from the lower classes are venturing into the political realm, what we have is still a division between the few who constitute among themselves a public space, and the many who are outside the public space and not by choice continue to live in political obscurity. The problem, Arendt claims, lies not so much in the "factual rise" of an elite, but in the "lack of public spaces to which the people at large would have entrance." Lacking such public spaces in which citizens can dis-tinguish themselves politically, people tend to consider politics as a profession and a career alongside others which they can pick out of a university brochure.

            When politics becomes just one among many careers and professions available in the job market, then an elite will indeed arise but "according to standards and criteria which are themselves pro-foundly unpolitical".48 It is no longer the taste for public freedom and the public happiness that accompanies participation in public affairs that bring together those who find themselves in politics. Like careers in the business world, politics becomes just one more way of earning a living. To succeed in politics it is necessary to master the arts of salesmanship. One must know how to package and to sell oneself in order to become a politician.

            There is elitism in Arendt’s council system of government, but this version of elitism is different from the one elaborated above. Ac-cording to Arendt, the people who sit in the councils will be an elite of the people, sprung from the people themselves. They will not be nominated from above and neither will they be supported from below. Rather, they will select themselves, and, as we pointed out before, others will exclude themselves. Self-selection and self-exclusion, as far as the council system is concerned, will not be preempted by the lack of public spaces. Thus, we see that, as far as it goes, the council system and the establishment of public spaces for participation are organically linked to each other.

            It is this process of self-selection and self-exclusion in the public realm, a process that emerged in the formation of councils during revolutions, that was never given a chance by the failure to establish appropriate institutions. Arendt claims that nothing "could compensate for this failure or prevent it from becoming final, except memory and recollection;"49 hence, Arendt’s story of revolution.

            At this point in the discussion, we must raise an apparent contradiction emerging from Arendt’s critique of representation in government and her notion of the council form of government. From her scalding critique of the representative form of government, we get the impression that Arendt is against all forms/types of representation in the political realm. Recall some of her comments: Public freedom implies "to be participator in government" or it means nothing;50 "Once more, the people are not admitted to the public realm, once more the business of government has become the privilege of the few".51 And yet, in her outline for a council form of government, Arendt also sug-gests that some kind of representation be integrated into the system. For instance, the structure of government that is founded on the council system will have a pyramidal structure. At the base will be councils or elementary republics whose members will choose from among themselves deputies for a next higher council of a regional or provincial character. In this next higher level of councils, deputies again will be chosen as delegates to a national assembly.

            What are we to make of this apparent contradiction? We shall attempt to make sense out of this whole issue of representation in the political realm. Arendt is definitely against representation in the poli-tical realm if by representation we mean the kind with which we are familiar today. This is representation in which the citizens’ role in se-lecting their representatives is limited to electing them into or out of public office on election days. In this scenario, the citizens "participate" in government only on election day. And although groups of citizens converge in polling precincts at one time or another, they are not there as a collective acting in concert, but as isolated voters. In the current representative form of government, representatives are the only ones who have a measure of freedom as they are the only ones who will eventually be seen and heard among their peers. Moreover, in this kind of representation in government, the people themselves have the vestige of power only during election days; the rest of the time, power is handed over to the representatives who then manage and dispose of it as they see fit.

            The representation in government with which we are familiar today does not have a room big enough for popular participation. It is like a big corporation that opens its boardroom doors only to experts, managers and administrators who discuss, plan and decide matters to be executed by those who are outside. Oftentimes, we cannot help but feel that this "House of Representatives" is like a well-fortified space that is extremely difficult to penetrate. Thus, we have political dynas-ties that pass on their seats as if these seats were priceless heirlooms; we have representatives who seem to live and die in their positions.

            What brings about such situations in a democracy? We can only venture a guess. Only those who have managed to get into the House are able to shine in the public realm and consequently to be seen and heard year after year. It would be very difficult for a politically impas-sioned community leader from a small neighborhood to get elected as a representative; he or she lacks the wide and great exposure that entrenched representatives in the House seem to hug even when they do not deserve the limelight. Representatives manage to get elected to the House because they know how to play the rules of the game pres-cribed by their parties. Thus, unless one kowtows to the party program and pledges loyalty to the party above all, it would be difficult for one to become a representative of one’s community.

            Unfortunately, many of those who deserve to represent their communities are the first to refuse to compromise their political inte-grity and dignity to party demands. Thus, in the political realm, we con-tinue to leave untapped the best of political actors and the best in them. Truly, the public realm created and perpetrated by current repre-sentative forms of government is suffocatingly small; it keeps out more qualified people than it brings in.

            The council system does indeed imply--and Arendt advocates--some form of representation in government. Thus, Arendt is not against all types of representation. Perhaps she is aware that the direct or face-to-face democracy glorified in the New England town meetings or ancient Greek city-states is inoperable in any modern na-tion with millions of citizens. But the type of representation that Arendt advocates is radically different from the one we are familiar with today and which she rejects.

            We note, first of all, that representation in the council system of government is premised upon a prior foundation and institutionalization of a public realm in which people who possess political passion and who are inclined to gravitate toward the political way of life are able to distinguish themselves politically. Before any representation is possible in the council system, there must first be democratic spaces where people can move among their peers, discuss and debate public issues, and forge themselves into elementary political communities. It is within such communities that leaders emerge who are responsive to the needs and concerns of the community, and who, to lead the community, rely not upon their own individual strength and guile, but upon the concerted effort and collaboration of their peers. By the consensus of the members of such elementary political units, these leaders become representatives to a higher council. Thus, the representatives in the council form of government really spring from the people themselves; they are not nominated from above. More importantly, they do not owe their power to political machination or party bureaucrats. Consequently, their loyalties will be not to any party, but to the people themselves who selected them.

            Let us note, secondly, another important thing about repre-sentatives chosen from councils: they are not among their peers only when they are in the higher councils. Strictly speaking, the members of the elementary councils of which they are representatives are also their peers. After all, it is among them that they distinguish themselves politically, by them that they are chosen as representatives, and for them that they must now exert their political excellence in the higher council. In other words, unlike the so-called representatives that we have today, representatives in the council form of government do not relate to and maintain a dialogue with their constituents only during campaign periods.

            We might say, then, that for Arendt, the council system combines direct democracy, i.e., participation of the citizens in the political realm which is made possible by the establishment of public spaces, with indirect democracy (representation). In this particular scenario, however, participation is a precondition and foundation for authentic representation in government. Whatever form representation in the council system eventually takes will always "be kept res-ponsible to its participatory foundations." Representation in the council system not only points to face-to-face democracy as its foundation, but also serves to develop and enhance further those organizational forms and strategies that sustain, rather than suppress, member initiative and participation.52 Without participation and public spaces in which citizens can distinguish themselves politically, no leaders can emerge who might be chosen to represent political communities. To put it differently, although Arendt makes a place for representation in the council form of government, representation should not overshadow or run roughshod over participation of the citi-zens in the political realm. Representatives do not co-opt the original power of the people by making political decisions unilaterally: they do not rule over the people, but act in concert with the people in self-rule.

            In his book, The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy, C. B. Macpherson presents an abstract approximation of a model that com-bines direct with indirect democracy that closely resembles what Arendt has in mind regarding representation in the council form of government:

The simplest model that could properly be called a participatory democracy would be a pyramidal sys-tem with direct democracy at the base and delegate democracy at every level above that. Thus one would start with direct democracy at the neighborhood or factory level—actual face-to-face discussion and de-cision by consensus or majority, and election of dele-gates who would make up a council at the next more inclusive level, say a city borough or ward or a town-ship. The delegates would have to be sufficiently ins-tructed by and accountable to those who elected them to make decisions at the council level reasonably de-mocratic. So it would go on up to the top level, which would be a national council for matters of national concern, and local and regional councils for matters of less than national concern. . . . What is needed, at every stage, to make the system democratic, is that the decision-makers and issue-formulators elected from below be held responsible to those below by being subject to reelection or even recall.53

RECAPITULATION

            Let us now summarize the story of revolutions as Arendt nar-rates it. Arendt’s story of revolutions takes the lessons of the deformed revolutions into account—their mistakes, undeniable gran-deur, and most importantly, their innermost promise. Rather than bringing the destruction of the ancient regime, revolutions are more likely the consequences of the breakdown of authority and the state apparatus. But even this breakdown is only one of the preconditions of revolu-tions. For revolution to come about, there must be people who are willing to pick up power from the streets, who are eager to organize and to act together for a common purpose. In acting together, revo-lutionaries experience public happiness in the transaction of public business. This is an indispensable experience in as much as delight in action helps the revolutionaries to translate their actions into a confidence in their ability to change and not just to reform things.

            The ultimate aim of revolution is freedom. This implies parti-cipations by citizens in the public realm where they appear and mingle with their peers in word and deed. While liberation is an important component of the struggle for freedom, it is not yet the actual content of freedom. Liberation, then, cannot be the end-all and be-all of re-volution. If liberation is taken to be the aim of revolution, then revo-lution would require not a change in government, but only a substitution of rulers—rulers who will perhaps restore the civil liberties that the deposed rulers infringed upon. But in this scenario, the citizens themselves are not guaranteed admission into, and partici-pation in, the public realm.

            Revolution is also characterized by the experience of beginning something new in the world, the unfolding of a new era. This experi-ence of novelty does not immediately manifest itself to the revo--lution-aries; but when it does, the revolutionaries find themselves at a point of no return.

            The revolutionary spirit, then, is permeated by freedom and the experience of novelty. But there is still the important and further task of constituting this freedom and novelty in appropriate institutions. The revolution must secure a new political space within which the passion for public freedom, the eagerness for new things, and the pursuit of public happiness can be given free play for generations to come. No revolution can be successful without the establishment of a stable abode for the revolutionary spirit. Revolution, after all, is both radical and conservative. At the same time that revolution ushers in a Novus Ordo Saeclorum, it also preserves what is new for future generations.

            For Arendt, it is government based on the principles of the council system that is called for by the revolutionary spirit. This proposition is not a mere theoretical construction; it is rooted in the experience of revolutions—the American, French, Russian, Hungar-ian, and more recent revolutions. The council system is the new form of government that truly accommodates the novelty, freedom, and public happiness that have been the moving spirit behind revolutions. The councils say:

We want to participate, we want to debate, we want to make our voices heard in public, and we want to have a possibility to determine the political course of our country. Since the country is too big for all of us to come together and determine our fate, we need a number of public spaces within it. The booth in which we deposit our ballots is unquestionably too small, for this booth has room for only one. The parties are completely unsuitable; there we are, most of us, nothing but the manipulated electorate. But if only ten of us are sitting around a table, each expressing his opinion, each hearing the opinions of others, then a rational formation of opinion can take place through the exchange of opinions. There, too, it will become clear which one of us is best suited to present our view before the next higher council, where in turn our view will be clarified through the influence of other views, revised, or proved wrong.54

Philosophy Department

Ateneo de Manila University

Manila, Philippines

NOTES

            1. Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: Viking Press, 1963; revised second edition (New York: Penguin Books, 1965), p. 11. (Henceforth, references to the text will be abbreviated OR.)

            2. Hannah Arendt, introduction to Walter Benjamin’s Illuminations, as quoted by James Miller in "The Pathos of Novelty: Hannah Arendt’s Image of Freedom in the Modern World", Hannah Arendt: The Recovery of the Public World (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979), pp. 184-185.

            3. OR. 240.

            4. OR, 249.

            5. OR. 48.

            6. OR, 49.

            7. OR, 244.

            8. OR, 242.

            9. OR, 60.

            10. See Melvin Hill, "Hannah Arendt on Hannah Arendt", Hannah Arendt: The Recovery of the Public World (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979), pp. 316-318.

            11. Ibid., p. 316.

            12. OR, 59.

            13. OR, 92

            14. Excerpt from Hannah Arendt’s Sonning Prize Acceptance Speech, Copenhagen (April 18, 1975), 013979, Arendt Papers in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

            15. OR, 167.

            16. OR, 168.

            17. George Kateb, "Representative Democracy", Salmagundi (no. 60, Spring-Summer, 1983), p. 37.

            18. OR, 174.

            19. OR, 176.

            20. John R. Alden, A History of the American Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1969), p. 508.

            21. OR, 145.

            22. Bikhu Parekh, Hannah Arendt and the Search for a New Political Philosophy (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1981), p. 164.

            23. From remarks made by Hannah Arendt at the 14th annual meeting of the American Society of Christian Ethics. Richmond, Vir-ginia, January 21, 1973. 011828-011829, Library of Congress.

            24. OR, 124

            25. Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought (New York: Penguin Books, 1977), p. 146.

            26. OR, 126.

            27. OR, 299.

            28. OR, 142.

            29. OR, 134.

            30. Václav Havel, "New Year’s Day Address," trans. New York Times, Without Force or Lies: Voices from the Revolution of Central Europe in 1989-90, ed. William M. Brinton and Alan Rinzler (San Fran-cisco: Mercury House Inc., 1990)), p. 279.

            31. As quoted by Arendt in OR, 119, from Discourses on Davila, Works (Boston, 1851), 232-233.

            32. Václav Havel, "New Year’s Day Address," p. 278 (emphasis mine).

            33. OR, 262.

            34. OR, 256.

            35. OR, 264.

            36. OR, 223.

            37. OR, 266-267.

            38. OR, 267.

            39. OR, 278.

            40. Hannah Arendt, Crises of the Republic (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972), p. 232.

            41. Ibid., p. 233.

            42. OR, 275-276.

            43. Parekh, Hannah Arendt and the Search for a New Political Philosophy, p. 170.

            44. OR, 280.

            45. OR, 276.

            46. OR, 276.

            47. OR, 277.

            48. OR, 277.

            49. OR, 280.

            50. OR, 281.

            51. OR, 237.

            52. Hannah Fenichel Pitkin and Sara M. Shumer, "On Participation," Democracy, 2 (1982), 51.

            53. C.B. Macpherson, The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 108-109.

            54. CUR, 232-233.

DISCUSSION

            Two dimensions appear for discussion. One might be termed horizontal or the various fields of concern such as health, education and environment; the other might be called vertical and concerns the pattern of representation or participation in decision-making.

            The first constitutes a series of spheres each with their own concerns, their own logic, their own participants and their own inter-ested parties. For instance, education concerns the formation of young people, it has a logic different from that of profit-making which characterizes the economic sphere. In the teachers and school staff it has its own professional participants, and in the parents it has a distinct set of interested parties. All of these differ from a commercial enterprise or a political party, yet it is necessary to mobilize these participants to bring their concerns and competencies into action and effective collaboration toward the formation of the students.

            The element of solidarity directs attention to these distinct interests, and promotes the active participation of all who are en-gaged, knowledgeable and concerned. Mutual participation and coo-peration of all, each in their distinctive sphere, is essential to enabling all to exercise their active freedom in the fields that constitute their lives.

            The vertical dimension raises the issue of how a large number of participants can take effective part. H. Arendt criticize forms of repre-sentation as progressively disenfranchising citizens from participation and hence the exercise of freedom. Her alternative is a council system in which the base is provided by multiple grassroots groupings ac-cording to people’s interests in, e.g., health, education and the like. From these are selected participants in councils which at ascending levels represent progressively broader regions.

            In this she reflects one aspect of the notion of subsidiarity, namely, that decision-making should be held close to the sphere and the persons concerning whom the decisions are being made. Dif-ficulties arise, however, when the decision-making concerns a broader area and a larger number of people. Then the attention, and hence time, required begins progressively to exclude broad, active participation so that the task is passed on to a specialized full-time cadre of decision-makers with specialized consultants.

            It was argued, however, that this model does not reflect the actual structure and practice of a free society. In fact the various areas of concern are populated not simply by individuals who designate a political representative for all matters, but by a myriad of professional societies and interest groups. These garner or develop the special competencies needed in order to identify concerns, to develop alternate modes of response and to present these adequately at the various levels.

            Hence, for example, a political party at a state or national level is hardly able to succeed with legislation on education which is not agreed to by the state or national education society, and the same is true of various commercial and environmental groups in matters which concern them.

            It would seem then that H. Arendt may have focused too exclu-sively upon the political order to which she made great contribution. But the issues of the broad and active exercise of freedom with which she was concerned may lie less in the political order, where the issue of representation cannot be escaped, than in what appropriately is termed civil society. It is this that is built upon the active free partici-pation to which H. Arendt was dedicated and which is implemented by the many professional, NGO, community and religious organizations. It is here that the two dimensions, horizontal solidarities and vertical subsidiarity, join.

            If, however, one distinguishes the political order from civil so-ciety and looks to the latter to bring forward the moral resources of the culture(s) of a people it is important to recognize that not all that humans do will be good. There have been good and bad political leaders and it is fully possible for units in civil society to take a short-sighted view of their interests, or even to oppose these to others, as with various commercial, professional or ethnic groups.