Milli mála - 26.04.2009, Síða 257

3. Elites, progress and democracy
There is one fact which, whether for good or ill, is of utmost
importance in the public life of Europe at the present moment.
This fact is the accession of the masses to complete social power.
[...]12 Today we are witnessing the triumphs of a hyperdemocracy
in which the mass acts directly13 […] This world […] furthermore
suggests to those who dwell in it the radical assurance that tomor-
row it will be still richer, ampler, more perfect, as if it enjoyed a
spontaneous, inexhaustible power of increase …14
These words are excerpts from La rebelión de las masas (The Revolt of
the Masses), which the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset
wrote in 1930, when the Bolshevik revolution had already taken
place, Stalin held power in the Soviet Union, and in many
European nations fascism was dominating the scene. Today one can
say that the political power of the masses and their revolt, which
Ortega y Gasset was afraid of, are far from being realized and the
perspectives of the mass-man have been considerably downsized.
Today one certainly cannot claim that the mass-man feels omnipo-
tent or that he thinks everything is allowed or possible. Least of all
he believes that the level of well-being he has reached is destined
to increase. On the contrary, Christopher Lasch claims that most of
the peculiarities which, in Ortega’s opinion, pertained to the mass-
man in the 1930s, today can be attributed to the above-mentioned
elites, which are mainly the alumni of institutions of higher learn-
ing which control the instruments of cultural production and
therefore define the terms in which the public debate takes place.15
In Lasch’s opinion,
STEFANO ROSATTI
257
12 José Ortega Y Gasset, La rebelión de las masas, Pinto Madrid: Mateu Cromo S.A., 2002 [first edi-
tion 1930], p. 47. See the English translation at http://www.globalchristians.org/politics/
DOCS/Ortega%20y%20Gasset%20-%20The%20Revolt%20Of%20The%20Masses.pdf, p. 1
(accessed January 20, 2009).
13 Ibid, p. 54. See The English translation at the same website, p. 4.
14 Ibid, p. 97. See The English translation at the same website, p. 24.
15 Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites, p. 26.
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