brigs’s Reviews > The Origins of Totalitarianism > Status Update

I think perhaps the description was meant only for pre capitalist societies? but arguably they were even more subject to ownership and economic control being passed down through generations and limited to groups of people than modern capitalist contexts. im just not sure what she means by this.

either way, her definition of imperialism leaves something to be desired. framing it primarily as a political and often social phenomena is strange bc she literally does acknowledge capitalism requires endless expansion and therefore imperialism is a result of the need to expand outside the given state, but she denies it is an inevitable outcome of the economic model of expansion for expansions sake, which of course begs the question, how does arendt anticipate capitalism operating as it does economically without imperialism resulting from the need to expand? I dont think the marxist view of things reduces the role of ideology or racism and similar things have in politics, i think its just a matter of thinking about what causes what. ideology doesnt spring fully formed from the head of zeus, it must be a result of something... arendt treats economics and ideology as almost parallel.

it is not consciousness that determines life, but life that determines consciousness

Begs the question is a malaphor here. You have to stop misusing that.