7. Arendt on the Republic of Parties and Councils

Abstract

This chapter analyzes Hannah Arendt's intellectual relation with Rosa Luxemburg's work, including her critique of the American founding and her proposal for establishing a council system. It analyzes Arendt's most controversial, understudied, and misinterpreted work, On Revolution, which was conceived after her engagement with Luxemburg's critical essay on the Russian Revolution. It recounts Arendt's view on how the revolutionary spirit was lost and the government became mere administration at the moment when the founders focused on representation, and neglected to incorporate the township and the town-hall meeting into the Constitution. The chapter talks about Arendt's support of the council system as an alternative form of government aimed at the continual reintroduction of freedom as action in a public realm dominated by administration. It describes Arendt's proposal of the mixed constitution, in which parties are dedicated to administration and councils are dedicated to political judgment.