A second grand theme interwoven with Arendt's phenomenology
of human activities is therefore her account of the rise of a "la-
borers' society."
This theme of "the social" remains one of the most baffling
and contentious aspects of the book. Many readers have taken
offense at Arendt's derogatory references to social concerns, and
have also assumed that in criticizing the conformist materialism
of modern society, Arendt intends to recommend a life of heroic
action. But that reading misses the book's complexity, for another
of its central themes concerns the dangers of action, which sets
off new processes beyond the actors' control, including the very
processes that have given rise to modern society. At the heart of
her analysis of the human condition is the vital importance for
civilized existence of a durable human world, built upon the
earth to shield us against natural processes and provide a stable
setting for our mortal lives. Like a table around which people are
gathered, that world "relates and separates men at the same time"
(p. 52). Only the experience of sharing a common human world
with others who look at it from different perspectives can enable
us to see reality in the round and to develop a shared common
sense. Without it, we are each driven back on our own subjective
experience, in which only our feelings, wants, and desires have
reality.
The main threat to the human world has for several centuries
been the economic modernization that (as Marx pointed out) de-
stroyed all stability and set everything in motion. Unlike Marx,
for whom this change was part of an inevitable historical process,
Arendt traces it to the unintended effects of contingent human
actions, notably the massive expropriation of ecclesiastical and
peasant property carried out in the course of the Reformation.
For property (in the sense of rights to land passed down through
the generations) had always been the chief bastion of the civilized
world, giving owners an interest in maintaining its stability. The
great change set in motion by the expropriations of the sixteenth
century was twofold. For one thing, peasants with a stake in the
stability of the world were turned into day laborers entirely ab-
sorbed in the struggle to satisfy their bodily needs. For another,
stable property was converted into fluid wealth—capital, in
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