Arendt, Hannah. On Revolution. London: Penguin, 2009.

Excerpt:

“Wars and revolutions – as though events had only hurried up to fulfil Lenin’s early prediction – have thus far determined the physiognomy of the twentieth century. And as distinguished from the nineteenth-century ideologies – such as nationalism and internationalism, capitalism and imperialism, socialism and communism, which, though still jynvoked by many as justifying causes, have lost contact with the major realities of our world – war and revolution still constitute its two central political issues. They have outlived all their ideological justifications. In a constellation that poses the threat of total annihilation through war against the hope for the emancipation of all mankind through revolution – leading one people after the other in swift succession ‘to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entide them’ – no cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has deter- mined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny.”

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