427

p “But the exploiting minority are not the better elements,” Doctor Stockmann would object. "We, the intellectuals, who live by our own, and no one else’s, intellectual labour and are constantly striving for truth, are the better elements."

_p Perhaps. But you, “intellectuals”, did not come out of the blue. You are the flesh and blood of the social class which gave birth to you. You are the ideologists of this class. Aristotle was most undoubtedly an “intellectual”, yet he was only erecting into a theory the views of the enlightened Greek slaveowners of his day, when he said that nature itself condemned some to slavery, and destined others to be masters.

p What sort of intelligentsia has played a revolutionary role in society?

p Only that which, in questions concerning social relations, has been able to join the side of the exploited majority and reject 428 tlie contempt for the crowd which is so often characteristic of the “intellectual”.

p When Abbé Sieyes wrote his famous brochure What Is the Third Estate?, in which he argued that this estate is the whole nation with the exception of the privileged, he was acting as a progressive “intellectual” and was on the side of the oppressed majority.

p But in this case he abandoned the viewpoint of the abstract difference between truth and error for that of concrete social relations.

p But our clear Doctor Stockmann strays further and further into the realm of abstraction, without even suspecting that where social questions are concerned the way to the truth is along a completely different path than that for questions of natural science. In connection with his reasoning I recall a remark made by Marx in the first volume of Capital about naturalists who try to solve social questions without a proper methodological training.

p These people, who think materialistically in their own field, are pure idealists in social science.

p Stockmann too turns out to be a pure idealist in his “scientific” reasoning on the characteristics of the popular masses. According to him, he has discovered that the masses cannot think freely. Why? Listen, but do not forget at the same time that for Stockmann freedom of thought is "almost the same" as morality.

p “But, happily, the notion that culture demoralises is nothing but an old traditional lie. No, it’s stupidity, poverty, the ugliness of life, that do the devil’s work! In a house that isn’t aired and swept every day—my wife maintains that the floors ought to be scrubbed too, but perhaps that is going too far,—well,—in such a house, 1 say, within two or three years, people lose the power of thinking or acting morally. Lack of oxygen enervates the conscience. And there seems to be precious little oxygen in many and many a house in this town, since the whole compact majority is unscrupulous enough to want to found its future upon a quagmire of lies and fraud."

p It follows that if the shareholders in the bathing establishment and the householders want to trick the patients,—and we already know that the deception was initiated by the shareholders’ representatives,—this is explained by their poverty, which leads to a lack of fresh air in their houses; if our ministers are the base servants of reaction by their malpractice, this is because the floors are seldom swept in their luxurious apartments, and if our proletarians are angered by ministerial malpractice the reason for this is that they are inhaling a lot of oxygen ... especially when they are thrown out of their homes into the street during unemployment. Here Doctor Stockmann reaches the Pillars of Hercules in an immense sea of confused concepts. And here one 429 can see more clearly than anywhere else the weak aspects of his abstract thinking. That poverty is a source of depravity and that it is wrong to attribute depravity to “culture” is, of course, quite correct. But, firstly, it is not true that all depravity is explained by poverty and that “culture” ennobles people In all circumstances. Secondly, however great the corruptive influence of poverty, a "lack of oxygen" does not prevent the proletariat of our day from being incomparably more receptive than the other social classes to all that is most progressive, true and noble at the present time. To s-ty that a certain society is poor is not to define how poverty influences its development. A lack of oxygen will always be a negative quantity in the algebraic sum of social development. But if this lack is caused not by the weakness of the social productive forces, but by social production relations which result in the producers becoming poor, while the appropriaters’ whims and extravagance know no bounds,—in short, if the reason for the “lack” lies in society itself, this lack, while stupefying and corrupting certain strata of the population, gives birth to revolutionary thought and arouses revolutionary feeling in its main masses, making them adopt a negative attitude to the existing social order. This is precisely what we see in capitalist society, in which there are riches at one end of the scale and at the other poverty, but together with poverty also revolutionary discontent with one’s position and an understanding of the conditions necessary for one’s liberation. But the naive doctor has not the slightest idea about this. He is quite incapable of understanding that a proletarian can think and act nobly in spite of the fact that he has no fresh air and that the floor in his dwelling leaves much to be desired in the way of cleanliness. That is why Stockmann, who never ceases to regard himself as a most progressive thinker standing "at the outposts of mankind”, condemns as nonsense in his speech the doctrine which states that the multitude, the vulgar herd, the masses are the pith of society ... "that the common man, the ignorant, undeveloped member of society, has the same right to sanction and to condemn, to counsel and to govern, as the intellectually distinguished few”. And that is why this representative of the "intellectually distinguished few" advances as the latest discovery a conclusion which was actually advanced long before by Socrates against democracy: "Who make up the majority in any given country? Is it the wise men or the fools? I think we must agree that the fools are in a terrible, overwhelming majority, all the whole wide world over. But how in the devil’s name can it ever be right for the fools to rule over the wise men?" At this one of the workers present at the meeting exclaims: "Out with the fellow that talks like that!" He sincerely regards Stockmann as an enemy of the people. And he is right in his way.

p In demanding a radical reconstruction of the bathing establish- 430 ment the doctor did not, of course, wish any harm to the people. In this case he was an enemy not of the people, but of its exploiters. But having been drawn into the struggle against these exploiters, he unwittingly advances against them arguments which were invented by those who feared the rule of the people. He begins to talk, without realising it or meaning to, as an enemy of the people, as a defender of political reaction.

p It is interesting that in the second part of Bjornson’s drama Beyond Human Might a real and conscious "enemy of the people”, a born exploiter, the businessman Holger, expresses himself in the spirit of Doctor Stockmann.

p In a talk with Rachel (in Act II) he says that the world will be fine only when those gifted with intellect and will are allowed to act freely and when people stop heeding the Utopias and morbid fantasies of the mob and the masses. "It is essential to turn back the clock (sic!—G.P.) and give power only to those who possess courage and genius. I do not know when the struggle will end, but what I can tell you with certainty is that the individual will triumph, not the masses."

p In another passage—at the factory-owners’ meeting in the third act—he ridicules workers who, in telling "their stories with which you (i.e., the factory-owners.—G.P.) are familiar, say: ’We are the majority, we should have power”’. But Holger remarks that insects are also very numerous. "No, kind sirs, if thanks to voting or something else such a majority should come to power, a majority which does not know the meaning of order, which lacks the spirit of consistency, business proficiency, and, finally, all the traditions of intellect and art that are essential for our organisation, there would be only one thing left to us: coldly, decisively, we would answer them by shouting: guns to the fore!"

p This at least is clear and consistent. The good Doctor Stockmann would probably have condemned such consistency most vehemently. He wants truth, not bloodshed. But the point is that, he himself does not understand the true meaning of his lofty talk about universal suffrage. In his amazing naivete he thinks that the supporters of universal suffrage see it as a means of solving scientific questions, and not questions of social practice which are most closely connected with the interests of the masses and are solved contrary to these interests, if the masses do not possess the right to solve them in accordance with their interests. It is interesting that the anarchists too still do not understand this.

_p Even in the second period of his literary activity, i.e., when he renounced his former religious beliefs and adopted the viewpoint of modern natural science, Bjornson did not by any means abandon the abstract view of social questions entirely. But during this period he committed this sin far less than Ibsen. Although the latter does say in a statement made in 1890 that he was trying, 431 as far as his ability and circumstances permitted, to acquaint himself with "Social-Democratic questions”, only he had not had an opportunity of studying "extensive literature on the different socialist systems”,  [431•*  it is obvious from everything that " SocialDemocratic questions" remained totally beyond his comprehension, if not with respect to the solution of this or that one in isolation, then in respect of the actual method of solving them. With regard to method Ibsen always remained an idealist of the first water.  [431•** 

p This alone made him very liable to make mistakes. And this was not all.

Ibsen not only adhered to the idealist method of solving social questions, but in his mind these questions were always formulated in an excessively narrow way, which did not correspond to the broad range of social life in modern capitalist society. And this finally destroyed all possibility of finding a correct solution.