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Jose Ortega Y Gassett, The Revolt Of The Masses
Page 2
All this is equally valid for collective life. In it also there is, first, a horizon of possibilities, and then, a determination which chooses and decides on the effective form of collective existence. This determination has its origin in the character of society , or what comes to the same thing, of the type of men dominant in it. In our time it is the mass-man who dominates, it is he who decides. It will not do to say that this is what happened in the period of democracy, of universal suffrage. Under universal suffrage, the masses do not decide, their role consists in supporting the decision of one minority or other. It was these who presented their "programmes"- excellent word. Such programmes were, in fact, programmes of collective life. In them the masses were invited to accept a fine of decision. To-day something very different is happening. If we observe the public life of the countries where the triumph of the masses has made most advance- these are the Mediterranean countries- we are surprised to find that politically they are living from day to day. The phenomenon is an extraordinarily strange one. Public authority is in the hands of a representative of the masses. These are so powerful that they have wiped out all opposition. They are in possession of power in such an unassailable manner that it would be difficult to find in history examples of a Government so all-powerful as these are. And yet public authority- the Government- exists from hand to mouth, it does not offer itself as a frank solution for the future, it represents no clear announcement of the future, it does not stand out as the beginning of something whose development or evolution is conceivable. In short, it lives without any vital programme, any plan of existence. It does not know where it is going, because, strictly speaking, it has no fixed road, no predetermined trajectory before it. When such a public authority attempts to justify itself it makes no reference at all to the future. On the contrary, it shuts itself up in the present, and says with perfect sincerity: "I am an abnormal form of Government imposed by circumstances." Hence its activities are reduced to dodging the difficulties of the hour; not solving them, but escaping from them for the time being, employing any methods whatsoever, even at the cost of accumulating thereby still greater difficulties for the hour which follows. Such has public power always been when exercised directly by the masses: omnipotent and ephemeral. The mass-man is he whose life lacks any purpose, and simply goes drifting along. Consequently, though his possibilities and his powers be enormous, he constructs nothing.