Ortega y Gasset, Mariategui, and the Historicity of Mass Revolution

• In Event: Revisiting The Revolt of the Masses in an Age of Global Populism

Abstract

This paper brings into conversation the thought of Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) and that of Peruvian philosopher José Carlos Mariátegui (1894-1930). Both influential thinkers and contemporaries, Ortega and Mariátegui have often been taken to offer two diametrically opposed approaches: Ortega’s, a liberal democratic indictment of mass rebellion, against Mariátegui’s Marxist celebration of it. This paper argues for an important shared ground in both their theories: the role of history. The first part of the paper examines Ortega’s arguments in Revolt of the Masses (1930), on the importance of a “historical conscience” and his critique of mass-men as devoid of one. The second part examines Mariátegui’s arguments in Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality (1928), situating Latin American socialist revolution as a turning to the past, particularly the indigenous past. The paper ends by examining the role of a history as either a constraint or enablement in mass revolutionary processes as it applies to diverse strands of populism in the Americas.

Author

• Angelica Maria Bernal, University of Massachusetts, Amherst