Hannah Arendt: power and violence

Yesterday, that PSCI class was on Hannah Arendt and the opinion that Habermaß had on her work.


I am sorry, but I am in a hurry. So I am afraid this post will not be comprehensive.

When I mentioned last week that Carl Schmitt had very clear (easy to understand) definitions for the main terms of his work this is even more true for Hannah Arendt. We talked about "Macht und Gewalt". (This might be the English edition but I am not quite sure.)

She differentiates between terms like strength, power, force, authority and violence because using those terms synonymously would imply that politics could be reduced to the simple question of who governs whom? She disagrees and give definitions of the terms.

She says that power can never be exercised by a single person (that would be strength or violence) but only by a group acting jointly. This means for states that the power can only come from the people. In democracies this is obvious but she explains why this would even more so be the case for a monarchy.

The monarch is only one. If his people decide not to follow his orders he will be killed. Only as long as a significant proportion of the people backs the monarch he can rule.

So, one could ask the question: What do I need power for if I can exercise violence?

Her point is you wouldn't be able to exercise violence for a long time. The monarch can't do anything if his orders aren't followed.

This ties into her analysis of the phenomenon of revolutions.

She says that whenever revolutionary violence met state violence then the state won.

However, successful revolutions happen when the state loses its means to exercise violence (meaning if army officers refuse to fire at the people).
The downfall of the GDR might be explained this way. The policemen just opened the border to West-Berlin instead of shooting at the crowd although they had received no order to let anyone through. Infact, people who had ben trying to come to West-Berlin had been fired at for more than 20 years at the time.

However, Arendt is not saying that revolutions are bound to occur whenever a regime is powerless. Regimes like that can last a while if there is no (organised) group who would claim the power and responsibility by acting jointly. She gives France as an example. (In the 1960s there was a student revolt which in her opinion could have overthrown the regime. But that had never been the intention of the students.)

Arendt's concept of power also is related to legitimacy. (this is obvious from the way she defines power in contrast to violence) The people are sovereign in Arendt's philosopy.

I'll have to run now. Maybe I'll post more later. Comments and additional info are welcome (as usual).