The French Revolution as a demoted symbol
Although in the West the French Revolution has often been heralded as the most poignant portrait of revolution, this German thinker wrote that the French Revolution lacked effectiveness. For romantic reasons, the work has been regarded as if it were the truest form of revolution, feels Arendt, but in all actuality, she feels the American Revolution better captures the unification of an oppressed people around a certain belief.
The American Revolution as archetypal
The essayist suggests directly that the American Revolution should be commonly regarded as the archetypal instance of nationalistic revolution. This disagrees with Karl Marx's famous analysis of the French Revolution as the archetypal depiction of revolution in his Communist Manifesto. Arendt feels that the American Revolution more accurately captures the human spirit, because instead of division, the American Revolution succeeded because of unification around a true belief.
Bread as a motivator
By underscoring the panic of the French Revolution (the nation was in serious disrepair and people were literally starving in the streets), Arendt attempts to show that it isn't really even a revolution against a broken government, because the government wasn't even trying to help the people, whereas in the American Revolution, the class struggle was clearly evident, because British law kept the entire nation in a lower tier. The reader might notice that Arendt's argument here is actually begging the question.
Democratic Republic and the free market
Arendt clearly supports the American understanding of economy more than her Communist contemporaries, because Communism has its roots in Marx's analysis of the French Revolution. So, by re-orienting the conversation to place America's story in the center of "Revolution," the essayist hopes to show that the free market is ultimately the goal of a sensible Revolution. Again, technically, this argument is circular, but Arendt makes it nevertheless.
The motif of nationalism
In some ways, it feels that Arendt prefers the American Revolution because it instilled a fresh, new nationalism that helped the fledgling nation to survive their starting years. She shows that the French Revolution did not lead toward nationalism but toward pluralism and long-standing disputes among factions of the public. This book is regarded as highly controversial, because in reality, nationalism is a double-edged sword.
