Hannah Arendt: Reflections on Violence (1969)
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The final chapter of her book, "Origins of Totalitarianism," was added in later editions, and it is called "Ideology and Terror." Beyond criticism and explanation, I think it is a rare model with predictive power. The challenge with that book is that unless you are specifically interested in the history of antisemitism, the first 1/3 of the book is about it, and her general theory of totalitarian movements will get lost. I recommend reading the chapters of big theory books in reverse order, as the last thing the author wrote tends to be the thing they have thought the most about and is the most refined idea. (chapter is at: http://virtuallaboratory.colorado.edu/Origins/class%20readin...)
Regarding her views about violence, I suspect there may only be two true levers of political power, and these are force, and deception. Where one seems absent, the other is necessarily at work, and where one is renounced the other is tacitly advocated. When they start to form a synergistic feedback loop, you get totalitarian movements.
Glad to see Arendt here, hers is an important perspective.
I'm not saying this necessarily makes you wrong, but this is explicitly not what she thinks. In the version of this essay published in Crises of the Republic, she writes:
> It is, I think, a rather sad reflection on the present state of political science that our terminology does not distinguish among such key words as power, strength, force, authority, and, finally, violence – all of which refer to distinct, different phenomena and would hardly exist unless they did.
In other words, power is not reducible to some combination of "force and deception". In the edited version of this essay, she even defines each of these categories:
> Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together.
> Strength unequivocally designates something in the singular ...
> Force ... should be reserved, in terminological language, for the "forces of nature" or the "force of circumstances," that is, to indicate the energy released by physical or social movements.
> Authority can be vested in persons – there is such a thing as personal authority, as for instance, in the relation between parent and child, between teacher and pupil – or it can be vested in offices, as, for instance, in the Roman senate or in the hierarchical offices of the Church. (A priest can grant valid absolution even though he is drunk.) Its hallmark is unquestioning recognition by those who are asked to obey; neither coercion nor persuasion is needed.
> Violence, finally, as I have said, is distinguished by its instrumental character. Phenomenologically, it is close to strength, since the implements of violence, like all other tools, are designed and used for the purpose of multiplying natural strength...
Taken from http://www.fsmitha.com/review/arendt.html because I don't have a text version of this essay, but you can find it here https://monoskop.org/images/7/70/Arendt_Hannah_Crises_of_the... (154 of the pdf).
The point is that, for Arendt, power is not about coercion and it's not about deception or force. It's about consensus, shared opinions and judgements, and the proof of this consensus, which is a group of people's ability to act in concert.
I'm going to revisit it, as the idea of power being an artifact of free consensus of belief in a group, and not intrinsic to violence is hard to reconcile with some of her earlier observations, and indeed, physics.
Oddly enough, they want to specifically use the word "power" because of its existing reputation, i.e. its connotations with acts of non-consensual control. They may say something like "real power does not stem from violence, real power comes from a group and does not exist without group coherence." However, the only reason they're focusing on the word "power" is because they know what it implies and are using its reputation as a concept in order to lend credibility to their own ideas, which themselves usually contradict the agreed-upon meaning of the "power".
To be clear, this may not strictly apply to Hannah Arendt, but I see other people playing with the word "power" so frequently that I thought it was relevant to mention.
I agree with her that there's a distinction to be made between, on one hand, a group of people agreeing to follow a set of rules to accomplish some goal and, on the other, a slave driver forcing his slaves to accomplish that goal.
The idea that there is no real distinction here, that all power is based on coercion, was popular when she wrote the linked essay and it's popular today (as evidenced by the replies here). I used to think that way but I no longer do and, I have to say, it's quite a relief.
Your "two levers," I think are interesting in that coercion is, in my experience of popular political argumentation, allowed to sneak in via a societal focus on physical violence ("force" in your terms?).
Example: some leftists claim property violence is not violence because, paraphrasing, is does not harm the human body. Leaving aside the validity of this claim, the coerciveness of the act remains but is somehow able to pass the smell test in certain circles. I think this depends on one's perception of conflict, but that is a long discussion.
Meanwhile, as you imply above, deception is clearly coercion, but much more effective in the longrun than physical violence. Deception generates belief congruent with the deceivers' attempt to acquire (more) power, which, once established, requires less maintenance than fear.
Finally, there is nothing in the description of power as cited above that is necessarily free from coercion. If power simply means both individual and collective agency, then capturing agency via coercion is still an acquisition of power.
It took Massachusetts 3 years to open a recreational marijuana shop after a ballot initiative passed for legalization.
The problem is the executive have no ownership of the proposal and don’t feel any responsibility for it unless they were the ones campaigning for it. In a democracy the way to get something done is for someone to get elected on a platform to implement it and then own delivering it once in office.
I’m a Brit and Brexit is a classic example of the failure of referendums. None of the political parties wanted it and for several years after we had a Prime Minister who had opposed it. Result - years of confusion and recrimination. Even when it happens (actually it already has) there will be endless arguments about whether it’s a “real” Brexit. Elect leaders you trust and the let them lead. If you don’t like the results, vote them back out.
I'm not sure there's a better example of democracy than when people vote for something that it happens.
Obviously, there are occasional problems, like the Swiss EU referendum which was approved but widely viewed as watered-down in practice, but it's worked very well in my opinion in other instances such as (in case you're curious about Swiss history) the formation of the canton of Jura.
Switzerland has another classic example of a failed ballot initiative. They voted in 2014 to limit migration from the EU, an initiative promoted by a party that was not in power. So again you had a government bound to implement a policy that was not their policy, which they were unable in practice to deliver. Who takes responsibility for that? It's just asking for trouble.
In California the legislature has been ham strung by a series of initiatives ring fencing spending on various areas such as education, and others limiting taxation in various ways squeezing the state budget. Of course give the electorate a vote on more spending and a vote on lower taxes, guess what happens.
Other than the fact that no nation-state/government was created by consent of "the people", there is a philosophical argument that consent to giving political power to "ruling class" or "elected officials" to be ruled over is impossible. In other words, consent excludes political power like consent excludes rape. Meaning you cannot consent to being raped being once you consent, it is no longer rape. The same thing with politics. Consenting to political power makes it no longer political power. It's like you need parental power to force your kids to eat broccoli, but no parental power exists to force your kids to eat ice cream because they consent to it.
Finally, nation-states/governments don't work in that idealized manner. Things works top-down, not bottom-up. Pretty much what you've been brainwashed to believe, it's not true.
> If you have a legitimate mandate from the electorate, you can get an awful lot done.
You can get a lot done without the mandate from the electorate. Getting a lot done has nothing to do with mandates but the effectiveness of the state organs.
> For governments without a popular mandate or support, or who are insecure in the support they may have, well, the result often isn't pretty.
Actually, governments "with popular mandates" are what you want to really worry about. It's those governments that tend to commit genocide, nuke cities and commit all kinds of horrors. When a leader starts claiming he has the mandate of the people, that's when you should watch out.
BTW, "populate mandates" are also created by force/deception.
>> If you have a legitimate mandate from the electorate, you can get an awful lot done. > >You can get a lot done without the mandate from the electorate.
Sure, but then you're into either using force or deception.
>Actually, governments "with popular mandates" are what you want to really worry about. ...
Genocides and mass murders can be committed by governments with popular mandates sure, there are many examples, but many of the more grievous examples are from totalitarian states. Soviet Russia, Communist China under Mao, Cambodia. I don't think democracy makes it more likely.
Yes popular mandates can be gained through under hand means, sure. We have to be careful, but I think your analogy to sexual consent is very apt. Even consensual relationships can turn out to be based on deception or abusive psychological domination. Consent isn't a simple moral binary issue, thanks.
Interesting ideas, but I'm not sold on the idea there was anything new beyond Tyranny/Oligarchy with a more focused sales pitch.
In this model, North Korea is still just a national tyranny, and even China's CCP is a national police state with colonial aspirations, but it hasn't metastasized into a transnational movement. Hitlerism and Stalinism were the result of movements that created totalitarian empires. Arendt's view was it was a new form of government that was an artifact of the 20th century.
Beyond being an overzealous fan of the USA (ironically on the grounds that it forces plurality as opposed to radicalism even though recent politics is slowly eroding this arguments). She also was pretty fking Racist, and while this may be hard for her fans to imagine, the quotes were pretty obvious when I was reading her works.
‘The right to free association, and therefore to discrimination, has greater validity than the principle of equality,” the context is for arguing in support of segregation in the US South - https://www.normfriesen.info/forgotten/little_rock1.pdf
"To force parents to send their children to an integrated school ) against their will means to deprive them of rights which clearly belong to them in all free societies-the private right over their children and the social right to free association. " - end of that same article!
Honestly, I like a lot of her writings but she was very flawed.
There are a lot of well thought out, interesting takes on the world in her writing, but there are also a lot of unstated assumptions about the world. Those assumptions seem fair-enough for the when and where of her writing, but they are not the same assumptions that a lot of us might hold today.
I agree with you that she was wrong about integration though it's more complicated than you're letting on. She raises interesting points in the essay you linked. There is an inevitable conflict between freedom (of association) and equality -- she's just on the wrong side of that conflict in this specific case.
I think her approval of the US had more to do with our substantial zionist political base/control. She was a major zionist player after all. If china or russia had a major zionist political base, she would have been raving about them.
> She also was pretty fking Racist
As I mentioned, she was a zionist. People who think they are part of a special chosen group better than everyone else, whether it is zionists, nazis, kkk, etc tend to be racists.
I found it fascinating when I read it years ago and, since then, I've been slowly reading through everything else Hannah Arendt wrote. It's astonishing to me that something like this was published in print. These days I think you're better off scouring the internet for blogs if you want to read something interesting and provocative.
Why?
The problem in the West is not typically printing something (at least after WWI and the end of most political censorship), but getting people (particularly influential / respected members of the elite) to read it.
I also strongly recommend Max Weber, if I’m not mistaken he originated the idea of “monopoly of violence” (or at least he was the one that made it famous). His ideas about domestication/rationalization are also worthwhile.
Very informative and a solid introduction.
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