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Jose Ortega Y Gassett, The Revolt Of The Masses
CHAPTER VIII: THE MASSES INTERVENE IN EVERYTHING,
AND WHY THEIR
INTERVENTION IS SOLELY BY VIOLENCE
Page 6
The hermetism of the soul which, as we have seen before, urges the mass to intervene in the whole of public life, also inevitably leads it to one single process of intervention: direct action. When the reconstruction of the origins of our epoch is undertaken, it will be observed that the first notes of its special harmony were sounded in those groups of French syndicalists and realists of about 1900, inventors of the method and the name of "direct action." Man has always had recourse to violence; sometimes this recourse was a mere crime, and does not interest us here. But at other times violence was the means resorted to by him who had previously exhausted all others in defence of the rights of justice which he thought he possessed. It may be regrettable that human nature tends on occasion to this form of violence, but it is undeniable that it implies the greatest tribute to reason and justice. For this form of violence is none other than reason exasperated. Force was, in fact, the ultima ratio. Rather stupidly it has been the custom to take ironically this expression, which clearly indicates the previous submission of force to methods of reason. Civilisation is nothing else than the attempt to reduce force to being the ultima ratio. We are now beginning to realise this with startling clearness , because "direct action" consists in inverting the order and proclaiming violence as prima ratio, or strictly as unica ratio. It is the norm which proposes the annulment of all norms, which suppresses all intermediate process between our purpose and its execution. It is the Magna Charta of barbarism. It is well to recall that at every epoch when the mass, for one purpose or another, has taken a part in public life, it has been in the form of "direct action." This was, then, the natural modus operandi of the masses. And the thesis of this essay is strongly confirmed by the patent fact that at present when the overruling intervention in public life of the masses has passed from casual and infrequent to being the normal, it is "direct action" which appears officially as the recognised method. All our communal life is coming under this regime in which appeal to "indirect" authority is suppressed. In social relations "good manners" no longer hold sway. Literature as "direct action" appears in the form of insult. The restrictions of sexual relations are reduced. Restrictions, standards, courtesy, indirect methods, justice, reason! Why were all these invented, why all these complications created? They are all summed up in the word civilisation, which, through the underlying notion of civis, the citizen, reveals its real origin.