The Revolt of the Masses

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The Revolt of the Masses is the English translation of José Ortega y Gasset's La rebelión de las masas. The original was first published in 1930; the English translation, first published two years later, was authorized by the author. While the published version notes that the translator requested to remain anonymous, more recent editions also record that its US copyright was renewed in 1960 by a Teresa Carey, and the US Copyright Office's published list of US copyright renewals for January 1960 [1] gives the translator as J. R. Carey.

In this work, Ortega traces the genesis of the "mass-man" and analyzes his constitution en route to describing the rise to power and action of the masses in society. Ortega is throughout quite critical of both the masses and the mass-men of which they are concerned, contrasting "noble life and common life" and excoriating the barbarism and primitivism he sees in the mass-man. He does not, however, refer to specific social classes, as has been so commonly misunderstood in the anglophone world. Ortega states that the mass-man could be from any social background, but his specifique target is the bourgeouis educated man, the señorito satisfecho (satisfied little prince), the specialist who believes he has it all and extends the domain he has of his subject to others, contemptuous of his ignorance in all of them. His summary of what he attempted in the book exemplifies this quite well, while simultaneously providing the author's own views on his work: "In this essay an attempt has been made to sketch a certain type of European, mainly by analysing his behaviour as regards the very civilisation into which he was born. This had to be done because that individual does not represent a new civilisation struggling with a previous one, but a mere negation. [. . .]"

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There are, above all, times in which the human reality, always mobile, accelerates, and bursts into vertiginous speeds. Our time is such a one, for it is made of descension and fall.

(From the Prologue to Frenchmen in the last revision)