Democracy, Disaster, and the Politics of Great Enterprises

Abstract

This chapter traces the emergence of José Ortega y Gasset’s concept of the revolt of the masses and his critique of democracy. Rather than expressing familiar interwar fears of fascism or communism, the chapter argues that Ortega viewed the masses as dangerous because their egalitarian democratic idealism threatened the pursuit of elite-led “great enterprises,” with empire serving as his paradigmatic model. While Ortega claimed allegiance to political equality and liberal democracy, the chapter demonstrates that over the course of the 1910s and early 1920s he became increasingly worried about the spread of indiscriminate anti-elitist sentiments across Spain and Europe. The imperial dimension of this concern crystallized in the aftermath of Spain’s colonial defeat at the Battle of Annual, which Ortega interpreted as proof that the Spanish demos lacked the discipline and hierarchy necessary for collective greatness. Through careful reconstruction of these ideas and their development across a wide range of texts, this chapter thus shows how the politics of imperial loss gave birth to Ortega’s liberal critique of “excessive” democracy, understood as a form of popular politics that neutralized the conditions for national revival.