Ch. 5, pp.224-227

May 4, 2025

Big thoughts this week. We’ve come a long way from Ancient Greece, Industrial Revolution worker housing, fieldwork, threshold spaces and the bureaucracy of Tokyo municipal housing provision and seem to be heading back to Ancienty Greece via participatory decision making. Yamamoto draws heavily upon the writings of Hannah Arendt once more, this time on On Revolution. I did buy a copy of The Human Condition but the thoughts are so dense I could only read it one page at a time. Once again, I’m in awe of Yamamoto both either of these books,presumably in Japanese translation, but more so for building his own structure of thought on the foundation they provided. I wonder what kind of books architects read these days? What kind of books do they write?

The Ward as a Community, The Ward as a Right/Power

Jefferson was also responsible for making an administrative system that was completely different from what his townships represented. These were what he called wards. Arendt writes “Jefferson was the only person who asked himself the question of how the spirit of the revolution could be maintained now that the revolution was over.” (Arendt, On Revolution, p.384) Persons other than him and who had participated in the revolution enshrined the source of power and public welfare into the constitution but did not realize their fundamental mistake. They did not enshrine in the constitution the wards and the town hall meetings that were fundamental to all political activity, and it was the weight of the constitution that was their death sentence. … As a result, the American constitution swindled the American people out of this asset of which they could be proud. (ibid. p.385) “For Jefferson, if there were not the ward system, there would not be a solid foundation for the republic. If Jefferson’s plan for an elementary republic were to be realized, then it would surpass the newest system of government that arose from the Parisian communes and sections during the French Revolution. (ibid, p391-399) Arendt writes of the fatal flaw of representative government as a governmental system from the weight of her experiences in the time in which she lived.

“All power comes from the people but the only time they can exercise that power is when there is an election. After the election, “all power is in the possession of the elected.” (ibid p.381) Such a system of power is what Jefferson called elective despotism.” (ibid. p.384) This is as bad as a tyrannical government fitting against its own people as the enemy. (ibid.) Jefferson proposed instead of a representative system, “a township system as a platform for a republic managed with freedom and durability.” (ibid., p400) He saw the township as a means superior to the mechanism of the representative system in terms of collecting people’s voices and having them heard. … Jefferson’s statements such as “Even if we begin for only a single purpose” and “The ward is the best tool for other purposes” (ibid., p400) are still extremely important for us today. We can only try it and see if it is possible to have a ward system instead of a representative system for the making of political decisions. Jefferson was of the mindset that it is better to try sooner than later.

Jefferson only wrote about the ward system in fragments, and only then in personal communications directed towards many different persons. Nevertheless, even from reading these fragments it is possible to gain a broad understanding of what he meant. The persons in them all had some sort of occupation. Wards were economic communities. Wards participated in decisions regarding diverse proposals. They formed committees to deliberate proposal specifics, and this means there were many such deliberative committees of which a resident could become a member of.

All residents could be part of the administration of a ward, whether for trials, security, patrols, education, social security, roads and other infrastructure, selection of jury members, and so on. The New England townships that were called wards were essential for government. “As far as a system for perfect autonomy goes, they were the best invention that has ever been thought of.” (Jeffersons, A letter to Samuel Kercheval, dated 12 July, 1816)

Arendt’s focus on Jefferson’s ward system was because of similarities it had with systems of deliberative assemblies that appeared at the time of the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and the Hungarian Revolution. “Communes, councils, the lete [?] German council of armed forces and workers, the Soviet council of workers, farmers and soldiers, and other such civilian organizations” (On Revolution, p.409) were all organizations with autonomous beginnings.” (ibid., p.399) This is, Arendt says “because they arose because they arose from regulations coming from the process of the(ir) revolutions. Therefore, this new system of governing has surprising similarities to the of Jefferson’s wards. (ibid., p408)

If we think of a type of administration that is suitable for the smallest rural village, I understand that it is the system of administration discovered for the economic liberation of workers. However, there is a contradiction between that form of administration and the concept of the proletariat in socialism or communism. The republic’s monopoly of power and violence is because the they have been centrally collected into the nation state to a high degree. From this I conclude that the commune councils formed by the people of the nation state were no more than temporary organizations born from the revolution.

(ibid. p.410)

“One hundred years later and the rise of Lenin brought practically the same change. (ibid., p.410) The Soviet council was clearly unable to resist the dictatorship of the Party and create a new harmony between the council and the government party system, and practically all were soon called upon to disband. This is because they threatened the monopoly that the Bolshevik party had on power. (ibid. p.411) Councils are autonomously formed by citizens. These autonomously formed councils have have the much the same organization as a revolutionary government and hence negate it. Hence the contradiction between revolutionary parties and councils. “From beginning to end, the activities [of these councils] have been at war with a single party.” (ibid.)

Hm. It might be a good time to read Hannah Arendt’s On Revolution. Thinking about it, it might also be a good time to re-read Erich Fromm’s The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. His thesis is that if a ruler can’t be universally loved, then being universally reviled amounts to much the same thing. His impetus for these thoughts was Adolf Hitler.

Another related thought is from the Russian Revolution and the civilian groups of architects self-organized into OSA (The Constructivists), ASNOVA (The Rationalists) and VOPRA (think the winning entry for the Palace of the Soviets competition). The three rival groups were forced to disband in 1932 and forced to consolidate into the government controlled All-Union Association of Architects.

The Constructivists
How Other Folk Live
Plan B

• • •

2025/05/03 Ch. 5, pp.224-227
2025/04/20 Ch.5, pp.221-224
2025/04/13 Ch. 5, pp.216-220
2025/03/30 Ch. 5, pp.210-215
2025/03/08 Ch. 5, pp. 208-210
2025/01/12 Ch. 5, pp. 201-207
2025/01/05 Ch. 5, pp. 195-200
2024/12/22 Ch. 5, pp. 187-195
2024/12/08 Ch. 4, pp. 179-186
2024/11/03 Ch. 4, pp. 175-179
2024/11/03 Ch. 4, pp. 169-175
2024/10/20 Ch. 4, pp.163-168
2024/10/06 Ch. 4, pp.159-163
2024/09/29 Ch. 4, pp.156-159
2024/09/08 Ch. 4, pp.152-155
2024/09/08 Ch. 4, pp.146
2024/08/25 Ch. 3, pp.135-1
2024/08/18 Ch. 3, pp.128-135
2024/08/11 Ch. 3, pp.120-128
2024/07/21 Ch. 3, pp.115-120
2024/07/21 Ch. 3, pp.108-114
2024/07/14 Ch. 3, pp.101-107
2024/06/30 Ch. 2, pp.92-100
2024/06/23 Ch. 2, pp.87-92
2024/06/16 Ch. 2, pp.78-87
2024/06/02 Ch. 2, pp.69-78
2024/05/05 Ch. 2, pp.66-70
2024/05/05 Ch. 2, pp.58-66
2024/05/05 Ch. 1, pp.46-55
2024/04/28 Ch. 1, pp.35-46
2024/04/21 Ch. 1, pp.23-35
2024/04/07 Ch. 1, pp.18-23
2024/03/31 Ch. 1, pp.14-18
2024/03/24 The Space of Power vs. The Power of Space: Preface pp. 7-11