Class membership prevented the growth of personally responsible citizenry in the nation-state

Evidence

Membership in a class, although looser and never as inevitably determined by social origin as in the orders and estates of feudal society, was generally by birth, and only extraordinary gifts or luck could change it. Social status was decisive for the individual’s participation in politics, and except in cases of national emergency when he was supposed to act only as a national, regardless of his class or party membership, he never was directly confronted with public affairs or felt directly responsible for their conduct. The rise of a class to greater importance in the community was always accompanied by the education and training of a certain number of its members for politics as a job, for paid (or, if they could afford it, unpaid.) service in the government and representation of the class in Parliament. That the majority of people remained outside all party or other political organization was not important to anyone, and no truer for one particular class than another. In other words, membership in a class, its limited group obligations and traditional attitudes toward government, prevented the growth of a citizenry that felt individually and personally responsible for the rule of the country. This apolitical character of the nation-state’s populations came to light only when the class system broke down and carried with it the whole fabric of visible and invisible threads which bound the people to the body politic. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 753

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the mechanism by which class society produced an apolitical population — the mass base totalitarian movements would later mobilize.
• XREF: The ‘apolitical nation-state population’ is the precondition for the masses Arendt analyzes — links forward to the field’s questions about mass exclusion and statelessness. — connects to: Feudalism’s narrow circles suppressed both collective spirit and individual freedom — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 647; The class system coexisted with political equality and blocked republics; The nation-state’s claim to transcend classes deepened the state-society split.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 753

Broader Connections

• The class system coexisted with political equality and blocked republics #expands (0.80)
• Feudalism’s narrow circles suppressed both collective spirit and individual freedom #responds-to (0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 647