Twelve years after the publication of her The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951),[1] which looked at what she considered failed revolutions, Arendt optimistically turned her attention to predict nonviolent movements to restore democratic governments around the world.

During the American Revolution, on the other hand, the Founding Fathers never betrayed the goal of Constitutio Libertatis, the attempt to establish a public realm in which political freedom would be guaranteed for all.

Arendt believed that the leaders of the American Revolution were true "actors" (in the Arendtian sense) and that the US Constitution created "publics" that were conducive to action.

The leaders of the French Revolution, on the other hand, were too focused on subsistence (what Arendt called their "demands for bread"), as opposed to "action."

Critics of On Revolution include Eric Hobsbawm, who argued that Arendt's approach was selective in terms of cases and the evidence drawn from them.

He found further fault with how normative Arendt's conception of revolution is, describing its basis as "explicit old-fashioned philosophical idealism.