More to the point, the basic theory is confused. At one point in the narrative, Arendt subscribes to an underconsumptionist theory of crises which leave in their wake excess capital and a mob of surplus people, both of which are exported to the colonies. Though Arendt quotes liberally from Luxemburg and Hilferding to establish theoretically the problem of excess capital at a late stage of accumulation, Arendt subtly shifts the focus to the mob, the refuse of class society, which she suggests has come to dominate the imperialist process.
Arendt thus implicitly negates Luxemburg's (flawed) attempt to locate imperialist pressures in the very foundations of modern capitalism; it is difficult to determine why Arendt praised her work so profusely in the first place.
Instead Arendt has found the spearhead of imperialism and eventually totalitarianism in the mob which itself finds support only in *sections* of the bourgeoisie--this was of course the very thesis Luxemburg wanted to destroy. Even here, however, Arendt is quite clear that it is the mob which is using and subordinating sections of capital, apparently haute financiers, to its own irrational power ends. (206)...
While Arendt would later champion in abstract terms workers' councils, support the Hungarian uprising and the Civil Rights Movement and criticize Zionism, here Arendt finds little time for a critical engagement with elitist theories of crowd psychology which seem ultimately to be the basis of her own analysis of totalitarianism.
As I already mentioned, [Franz] Neumann began a critique of this 'crowd' theory of fascism long before Arendt worked her own version of it out. From Stephen Eric Bronner's wonderful essay on Heidegger in *Of Critical Theory and Its Theorists*, I can only suspect that Arendt remains influenced here by the anti-democratic philosophy of her mentor. (For another wonderful critical essay of this tendency, see Norberto Bobbio, *The Philosophy of Decadentism*. Oxford, 1948.)
Of course there needs to be a careful discussion of exactly what sort of council democracy Arendt later idealized, and her political theory needs to be compared to the tradition of council communism represented by Pannekoek, Korsch and Mattick and discussed by Peter Rachleff in his *Marxism and Council Communism*. Brooklyn: Revisionist Press, 1976 and Mattick himself in *Anti-Bolshevik Communism*. Armonk: Sharpe, 1976.
I will conclude repeating myself-- I think Neumann's analysis is much superior. Including politically. If one reads him carefully, Neumann was clearly faulting the Communist and Social Democratic Parties first for their acceptance of the idea of socialism in one country which ominously sanctioned nationalist ideas among German workers and secondly their refusal to promulgate direct action, liberally defined, as the most effective weapons against fascism.
Moreover, though Neumann made a grave error in thinking the Holocaust impossible in 1942, he did provide an analysis of anti-semitisim on the one hand as reactionary Proudhonism and on the other hand as a spear-head of counter-revolution--which at the very least is more sophisticated than the simple 'scapegoat' theories Arendt wishes to dismiss. ________________________
In *On Revolution* Arendt discusses workers' councils in the stimulating last chapter "The Revolutionary Tradition and Its Lost Treasures"--which I read today in between other things.
It does seem at points that Arendt's argument is quite similar to Paul Mattick's defense of councilism against Leninism in *Marxism: last refuge of the bourgeoisie* or *Anti-Bolshevik Communism*, though I know of no political theoretic work comparing Arendt's political philosophy to the council communists--almost makes me wish I was still a political theorist. At any rate, I would recommend to Russell's former Leninist friend that he check out Pannekoek's writings as collected by Serge Bricanier and Mattick's works.
I do not have time to really think through a criticism of Arendt's discussion of workers' councils. My sense however is that Arendt as theorist is playing the same function that she attributed to conservative parties: "The enormous popularity of the councils in all 20th century revolutions is sufficiently well-known. During the German revolution of 1918 and 1919, even the Conservative party had to come to terms with the *Raete* in its election campaigns." (326)
I think Arendt comes to terms with the councils in this chapter by attempting to dilute them of their revolutionary implications.
Why do I say this?
1. I am quite uncertain what sorts of transformative activity Arendt is proscribing via her restriction of council activity to politics only (though of course Arendt's conception of politics is quite distinctive). However, why does she suggest that councils should not advance certain "social and economic claims"? Also, by arguing against worker management of factories what dehumanizing aspects of the despotism of capital is she building into her vision of a free society?
2. Arendt divides people up among those who will pursue political freedom, those who will administer to necessities and those who will simply claim the modern right of self-exclusion from politics. This vision seems quite impoverished compared to Marx's idea that by social cooperation we can minimize necessary labor time, on the basis of prior technological developments, and open up to humanity as a whole the realm of freedom in which the possibilities for the development of true social individuality will flourish. Arendt seems not only to maintain certain elitist and hierarchical divisions among people but also to fall quite short of Marx's radical vision of a *universal* leap into the realm of freedom.
3. Why is Arendt so certain that councils and political freedom in general will only appeal to certain elite workers? Why is it that that the mere mass of workers will never be interested in political freedom? This she should have asked herself. Perhaps mass workers will be interested in what Marx conceptualizes as the realm of freedom, though their sense of themselves *under capitalist conditions of production* may be at times too undermined for Arendt as they have none of those special skills which underpin the confidence and initiative Arendt takes as signs of the noble and truly political person.
Still the question of the freedom of the mass of humanity as the abstract,easily replaceable proletarianized labor we have become cannot simply be reduced to what Arendt reserves for us: the right of self-exclusion from politics. Perhaps for the mass worker there are important and interesting 'political' questions which do have "social and economic" content--in particular about what freedom would mean in terms of how social labor *as a whole* is organized and minimized. Also, what presently socially necessary work would simply be abolished in a new society; how much free time should people enjoy? I don't see why these questions would only attract the political interest of elite workers.
4. Arendt strongly criticizes the idea that councils are actually a form in and through which class struggle is fought; she explicitly dismisses Max Adler. While Mattick would also argue against the subsumption of councils to a Leninist party, he would not disagree that they are a form of class struggle. So this raises the question whether Arendt is dismissing more than overcentralism in her attempt to separate council politics from class struggle. This may include questions of the internal organization of factories. Moreover, there must be some way of coordinating our interdependent activities, and I don't think Arendt or for that matter Mattick ever take up this question systematically--the question cannot be dismissed as one only for Leninists or a simple crude question about 'class struggle.' This is now a major topic of debate on the marxism 2 line, however.
5. At times Arendt seems to suggest that the motivations truly political must have are so lofty that one wonders that her political theory serves not only as a counter-ideal to the Party destruction of the council forms in which the really noble workers come to realize themselves through speech and politics. One wonders in short whether this Athenian idea of democracy really only serves to devalue the everyday mass struggles, with all their manifest social and economic content. No doubt the final goal is one of free and equal participation among people and this will require new social and political organization if people are to gain such power--and Arendt must appreciated for having such vision to locate this fundamental question given the vulgarity of American political science. But that is the final goal, and there seems to be no room or appreciation for everyday struggle in Arendt's theory of the ideal political form.
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Arendt's critique of Marx in Human Condition; critique of Marxism conducted via a defense of workers' councils. On Arendt and Marx see essays by John Sitton and Bhikhu Parekh and Dominico Losurdo.
Rakesh