ABSTRACT
In On Violence—published in 1970—Hannah Arendt exhorts her audience to forswear violent action in favor of participatory democracy, which she not only calls ‘the always defeated but only authentic outgrowth of every revolution,’ but also considers to be the latest instantiation of council democracy. Individual unicity is disclosed through how someone comports themselves, the words they speak, their reaction to another person. Action, insofar as it concerns the self-disclosure of the agent as a unique individual, deals with that what ‘goes on between men directly. Arendt argues that the difference between power and violence has been disregarded throughout the history of political thought. The historical narrative in which poiesis incessantly displaces praxis is the theoretical background against which Arendt reflected, during the 1950s and early 1960s, on the human capacity to begin something new. As perfect examples of non-violent power, the councils also defy the traditional assumption that a community derives its stability from the superimposition of rules or commands.
