José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955)
(Continued from Part 1 yesterday) Aron argues that the question of Europe, the unity of Europe, is the "central question which this book poses to us." Revolt of the Masses does stress the identity of Europe, which in the 1920s was far, far away from the European Union of today. For Ortega, this was connected with the need for Spain to raise itself to the level of educational and economic development of the rest of western Europe. In particular, Ortega believed that raising the level of Spanish education was vital, including promotion of the sciences.
Spain at this time still had a very large illiteracy rate, which is likely one of the factors that weighed heavily on Ortega's conception of the elite and the masses which he discusses in Revolt of the Masses. I say discusses rather than develops, because in my reading it remains a murky concept in this book. Aron himself recalls that the book had a very mixed reception on publication, which he first read around 1931 in its German translation. He recalls that it was unclear in the reception of the book among German intellectuals whether Hitler should be regarded as belonging to Ortega’s elite, or whether he should be considered a representative of "mass man" defined by such qualities as "primitive, violent, unprepared for a genuine culture". The fact that even today the correct interpretation would be difficult based on the text of the book itself is a measure of how unclear the concept was.
Ortega himself was never an admirer or sympathizer of Hitler. In the mid-20s, he was wrestling politically with the Spanish dictatorship of Primo de Rivero, which had taken power in 1923 in the wake of various labor and regionalist upheavals, including outbreaks of popular fury against the Catholic Church and the operation of what we today would call rightwing and leftwing death squads. Ortega was personally opposed to the Rivero dictatorship, which lasted until 1930. And Aron observes that it was clear in the book that "Ortega accepts the democratic revolution; that is, the progressive realization of the ideal of the rights of man as the principle of equality."
Still, Revolt of the Masses conveys a classical liberal distrust of popular government and popular culture. He looked to an elite to provide leadership, but Revolt doesn't make it clear what he thinks the appropriate role for this elite to play. Aron characterizes Ortega's basic concept in the book this way:
Le positif de cette conjuncture, c’est que la vie de l’homme moyen est maintenant constituée par l'ensemble des possibilités vitals qui, autrefois, caractérisait seulement les minorités dominantes. Le negative, c'est que l'homme-masse, l'homme sans qualification impose sa valonté, ses goûts, sa médiocrité.But, true to his classical liberalism, he doesn't place this in the class terms that define the political and social as well as economic elite. Which means that underlying his often intriguing observations in the book on elites and masses, there is the implicit assumption that the factual social elite is an elite by reason of their virtues.
[The positive side of this circumstance is that the life of the average man is now constituted by the conjunction of vital possibilities that in another time characterized only the dominant minorities. The negative is that the "mass man", the man without qualifications, imposes his will, his desires, his mediocrity.]
At the same time, Ortega recognizes that what Europe was experiencing in the 1920s was a failure of the elites in many ways. And he – in common with Marcuse'’s later work cited by Aron – recognized one of the symptoms of the negative side of "mass man" in the tendency to reduce science to the applications of technology, with a corresponding extreme specialization in education. As Aron puts it, Ortega’s "rebellion of the masses can also be understood as the desertion of the elite." And, "The masses just won’t obey an elite in which they do not believe. And neither will the elites believe in themselves when they cease to have a project [mission]. A nation needs a future just as much as a past."
Much of the unclear and unsatisfying nature of Ortega's Revolt of the Masses comes from his shrinking from the risks of revolutionary change, even thought he economic, political and cultural changes he wanted to see in Spain during the Primo de Rivera dictatorship implied revolutionary change in some form or another. Aron writes that Ortega's antifascism is not in doubt. But a change in the one fascist regime in power in 1924-6, or in 1930 when the book was published – Mussolini's regime in Italy – would have meant a revolutionary change in regime, as well, and likely not an entirely peaceful one.
But, for all his humane concepts and his support of parliamentary democracy and opposition to the Rivero dictatorship, as Aron puts it with reference to Revolt of the Masses, "Ortega is an anti-revolutionary" who "detested the revolutionary attitude." And, “Ortega, who detests revolutionaries, remains true to liberalism."
And this creates the dilemma that remains unresolved in Revolt of the Masses. Liberalism in its classical form demands rule by the people in the form of representative government. The aspect of liberalism that is committed to the dominance of capitalists in society is in tension with democracy. And the fascist movements, including National Socialism in Germany, largely rejected classical liberalism except for the dominance of capitalists part. How does one stay true to the humane and democratic values of liberalism, which for Ortega was an integral part of European culture, in the face of dictatorships while at the same time detesting "the revolutionary attitude"? Could the Primo de Rivero dictatorship have been replaced by the Second Republic in 1931 without some Spaniards taking a "revolutionary attitude", though that obviously didn't have to mean imitating the pre-1923 anarchists in Barcelona assassinating hated individuals? Could the peaceful and legal transition from the Franco dictatorship to democracy under a constitutional monarchy have taken place in 1975 without some kind of "revolutionary attitude" among the people and their potential leaders?
Tags: frankfurt school, frankfurter schule, ortega, ortega y gasset, raymond aron
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