John Carey’s book, The Intellectuals and the Masses, first published in 1992, critically explores culture’s canonized writers and artists and their self-proclamation of superiority, which society has seemingly learned to accept. Throughout, Carey argues that these intellectual greats actively seek to distinguish themselves from lower and middle classes, collectively termed as ‘the masses’.
The very term would seem to dehumanize this inferior majority, reinforcing the intellectuals’ air of authority, echoing the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche and the Superman. In the same way that his fictional prophet, Zarathustra, declares that man must evolve into superior beings, the canons portray themselves as such by belittling the illiterate, thus metaphorically placing them closer to God.
Nietzsche’s impact upon twentieth century writers becomes apparent elsewhere. Over the last several hundred years, concerns over population explosion have escalated, as the masses derive from this what has become known as, ‘the state’, from which they may obtain ‘material pleasures they desire’ (pp.4). This is a form of social power that Nietzsche declared would destroy the individual. Many intellectuals sought a leader to step forward from the masses, keeping them under control. This wish would later be granted in the form of Adolf Hitler.
However, the rise in population was not solely blamed for the ‘revolt of the masses’, (as phrased by Spanish philosopher, Ortega). The Education Act of 1871 lead to vast improvements in the country’s schooling system, producing more literate young people and thus blurring the intellectual division that had been established centuries before. The emergence of newspapers at the end of the nineteenth century typified this concern, allowing previously uneducated, uncouth people access to news and information, as well as an emerging form of entertainment that novelists could not provide; public gossip.
The intellectuals believed that education should be reserved for those most worthy. While this may be an elitist statement and the right to learn should be taken away from no one, their concerns are still relevant to some debates today. With rising averages at GCSE and A-Level and the increasing number of university graduates, some may argue that the education system has been devalued in recent decades and that change is needed to reassess it, perhaps by presenting fresh, new challenges to students.
The irrational revulsion for the general public extended to extraordinary lengths. The masses were viewed as ‘dead’, ‘soulless’ machines (pp.10) and that to eliminate them was to prune society. These ideas are chillingly echoed by some of the most famous writers of the century, Nietzsche included. D. H. Lawrence, for example, writes of building ‘a lethal chamber as big as the Crystal Palace’, before leading in ‘all the sick, the halt, and the maimed’ (pp.12); a terrifying foreshadowing of the Holocaust. The science of eugenics was also commonly discussed as a method of breeding out inferiority, while war was seen as a convenience for wiping out the weak and the feeble.
It is easy to see reflections of Hitler’s totalitarian state in such ideologies, and it is to this man that Carey turns as a case study, later in his book.
Adolf Hitler may be a worthy comparison to some past intellectuals, in so far as he too disregarded the talentless workings of the mass media and worried over its creation of ‘dangerous’ masses. He admired the likes of Swift, Mozart and Rubens and believed in a divine presence in the timeless greats of art. He used this as justification of his Aryan race, citing that most great artists were German; therefore God lived in most Germans.
The masses, he believed, shared the mentality of women and children. ‘Ruled by sentiment rather than reasoning’ (pp.203) and longing for male domination, they would readily accept anything presented to them through the means of communication most familiar to them; the media. Hitler then, although disgusted by how mass media created mindless mass movement, utilised German press, radio and cinema to weld these masses into a strong, unified nation that shared the same purpose. Although hugely hypocritical, his propaganda was tragically successful.
In his view, however, foreign masses were unworkable. The Jews, in particular, were dangerously rooted into society, in his mind seeking to spread Marxism and socialism and take control themselves.
Hitler’s final solution resulted in horrific extermination. The incineration of millions is a throwback thousands of years to the origins of the word, ‘mass’. The term, ‘massa damnata’, refers to ‘condemned masses’ that superior beings decided must burn in hell. In this way, Hitler was physically enacting the beliefs of the ancient Romans, which had filtered through the centuries, perhaps for the most part unknowingly, via the hands of the great intellectuals.
The consequences of this intellectual division had finally been realised, admittedly to the extreme. The intellectuals’ determination to distinguish themselves as a separate class reached a climax in the early half of the twentieth century. Perhaps warning signs may have been noticed in the birth of a new form of art, which sought to communicate its ideas in a fashion that even literate people did not necessarily understand. Modernism, as it became known, was a final effort in alienating the masses, allowing the intellectuals to discuss and debate in the confidence of only one another.
As Carey suggests himself, this mentality is not only damaging to relations in society, but is largely nonsensical. A key theme of the modernist movement is individuality and the need to express oneself. Yet, as presented in the book, the views of the canonized artists would seem to contradict this opinion. By classing those who read, listen to and admire their work as ‘the masses’, the individual is destroyed. In this way, the media may be necessarily viewed as not collectivising an expanding society, but providing it with a platform to share individual views and opinions.
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