The revolt of the masses - by Jose Ortega y Gasset

Date read: 2023-05-07
Tags: The State
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Key ideas: Published in 1930, the book analyzes the phenomenon of the "mass-man".

NOTES

The mass is the average man

The minorities are individuals or groups of individuals which are specially qualified. The mass is the assemblage of persons not specially qualified. By masses, then, is not to be understood, solely or mainly, “the working masses”. The mass is the average man.

In this way what was mere quantity – the multitude – is converted into a qualitative determination: it becomes the common social quality, man as undifferentiated from other men, but as repeating in himself a generic type.

The mass is all that which sets no value on itself (good or ill) based on specific grounds, but which feels itself “just like everybody”, and nevertheless is not concerned about it; is, in fact, quite happy to feel itself as one with everybody else.

Imagine a humble-minded man who, having tried to estimate his own worth on specific grounds – asking himself if he has any talent for this or that, if he excels in any direction – realizes that he possesses no quality of excellence.

Such a man will feel that he is mediocre and commonplace, ill-gifted, but will not feel himself “mass.”

When one speaks of “select minorities” it is usual for the evil-minded to twist the sense of this expression, pretending to be unaware that the select man is not the petulant person who thinks himself superior to the rest, but the man who demands more of himself than the rest, even though he may not fulfill in his person those higher exigencies

The specialist is a learned ignoramus

The specialist “knows” very well his own tiny corner of the universe; he is radically ignorant of all the rest.

Here we have a precise example of this strange new man, whom I have attempted to define, from both of his two opposite aspects. I have said that he was a human product unparalleled in history. The specialist serves as a striking concrete example of the species, making clear to us the radical nature of the novelty. For, previously, men could be divided simply into the learned and the ignorant, those more or less the one, and those more or less the other.

But your specialist cannot be brought in under either of these two categories. He is not learned, for he is formally ignorant of all that does not enter into his speciality; but neither is he ignorant, because he is “a scientist,” and “knows” very well his own tiny portion of the universe.

We shall have to say that he is a learned ignoramus, which is a very serious matter, as it implies that he is a person who is ignorant, not in the fashion of the ignorant man, but with an the petulance of one who is learned in his own special line.

And such in fact is the behavior of the specialist. In politics, in art, in social usages, in the other sciences, he will adopt the attitude of primitive, ignorant man; but he will adopt them forcefully and with self-sufficiency, and will not admit of – this is the paradox – specialists in those matters.

By specializing him, civilization has made him hermetic and self-satisfied within his limitations; but this very inner feeling of dominance and worth will induce him to wish to predominate outside his speciality.

The result is that even in this case, representing a maximum of qualification in man – specialization – and therefore the thing most opposed to the mass-man, the result is that he will behave in almost all spheres of life as does the unqualified, the mass-man.

This is no mere wild statement. Anyone who wishes can observe the stupidity of thought, judgment, and action shown today in politics, art, religion, and the general problems of life and the world by the “men of science,” and of course, behind them, the doctors, engineers, financiers, teachers, and so on.

We observed a lot of this "stupidity of thought, judgment, and action" during 2020-2022.

That state of “not listening”, of not submitting to higher courts of appeal which I have repeatedly put forward as characteristic of the mass-man, reaches its height precisely in these partially qualified men. They symbolize, and to a great extent constitute, the actual dominion of the masses, and their barbarism is the most immediate cause of European demoralization.

Furthermore, they afford the clearest, most striking example of how the civilization of the last century, abandoned to its own devices, has brought about this rebirth of primitivism and barbarism...

The most immediate result of this unbalanced specialization has been that today, when there are more “scientists” than ever, there are much less “cultured” men than, for example, about 1750.

And the worst is that with these turnspits of science not even the real progress of science itself is assured.

Mass-man admires the State

The contemporary State is the easiest seen and best-known product of civilization. And it is an interesting revelation when one takes note of the attitude that mass-man adopts before it. He sees it, admires it, knows that there it is, safeguarding his existence; but he is not conscious of the fact that it is a human creation invented by certain men and upheld by certain virtues and fundamental qualities which the men of yesterday had and which may vanish into air tomorrow.

Furthermore, the mass-man sees in the State an anonymous power, and feeling himself, like it, anonymous, he believes that the State is something of his own. Suppose that in the public life of a country some difficulty, conflict, or problem presents itself, the mass-man will tend to demand that the State intervene immediately and undertake a solution directly with its immense and unassailable resources.

State intervention is the gravest danger that threatens civilization

This is the gravest danger that today threatens civilization: State intervention; the absorption of all spontaneous social effort by the State, that is to say, of spontaneous historical action, which in the long run sustains, nourishes, and impels human destinies.

When the mass suffers any ill-fortune or simply feels some strong appetite, its great temptation is that permanent, sure possibility of obtaining everything – without effort, struggle, doubt, or risk – merely by touching a button and setting the mighty machine in motion.

The contemporary State and the mass coincide only in being anonymous. But the mass-man does in fact believe that he is the State, and he will tend more and more to set its machinery working on whatsoever pretext, to crush beneath it any creative minority which disturbs it – disturbs it in any order of things: in politics, in ideas, in industry.

The result of this tendency will be fatal. Spontaneous social action will be broken up over and over again by State intervention; no new seed will be able to fructify. Society will have to live for the State, man for the governmental machine.

And as, after all, it is only a machine whose existence and maintenance depend on the vital supports around it, the State, after sucking out the very marrow of society, will be left bloodless, a skeleton, dead with that rusty death of machinery, more gruesome than the death of a living organism...

This is what State intervention leads to: the people are converted into fuel to feed the mere machine which is the State. The skeleton eats up the flesh around it. The scaffolding becomes the owner and tenant of the house.

When this is realized, it rather confounds one to hear Mussolini heralding as an astounding discovery just made in Italy, the formula:

“All for the State; nothing outside the State; nothing against the State.”

This alone would suffice to reveal in Fascism a typical movement of mass-men. Mussolini found a State admirably built up – not by him, but precisely by the ideas and the forces he is combating: by liberal democracy.

The idea of the police force in France vs England

It might be well to take advantage of our touching on this matter to observe the different reaction to a public need manifested by different types of society.

When, about 1800, the new industry began to create a type of man – the industrial worker – more criminally inclined than traditional types, France hastened to create a numerous police force.

Towards 1810 there occurs in England, for the same reasons, an increase in criminality, and the English suddenly realize that they have no police.

The Conservatives are in power. What will they do? Will they establish a police force? Nothing of the kind. They prefer to put up with crime, as well as they can.

“People are content to let disorder alone, considering it the price they pay for liberty.”

“In Paris,” writes John William Ward, “they have an admirable police force, but they pay dear for its advantages. I prefer to see, every three or four years, half a dozen people getting their throats cut in the Ratcliffe Road, than to have to submit to domiciliary visits, to spying, and to all the machinations of Fouche”.

Here we have two opposite ideas of the State. The Englishman demands that the State should have limits set to it.

Mentioned in

- Our Enemy, the State - by Albert Nock