440

p The Doctor ends his speech with some reactionary rubbish. And this does not do credit to Ibsen, of course, who put the words in Stockmann’s mouth. But one must not overlook one jv.ost mitigating circumstance. The Norwegian dramatist set his hero against 441

p petty-bourgeois society, in which the "compact majority" was actually composed of inveterate philistines.

p Whereas in modern society, i.e., in developed capitalist society with its strong class antagonism, the majority, consisting of proletarians, is the only class capable of whole-hearted admiration for all that is truly progressive and noble, such a class is quite lacking in petty-bourgeois society. The latter has rich and poor, of course, but the poor stratum of the population is placed in social relations that do not arouse but deaden its thought and make it an obedient instrument in the hands of the "compact majority" of more or less rich, more or less prosperous philistines. At the time when Ibsen’s views and aspirations were being formed, the working class in the modern meaning of the word had not yet developed in Norway and therefore did not make itself felt at all in the social life of this country: it is not surprising that Ibsen did not recall it as a progressive social force when he was composing Doctor Stoekmann’s speech. For him the people was that which it is in fact in the classical countries of the petty bourgeoisie: a totally undeveloped mass, sunk in intellectual torpor and differing from the "pillars of society" that lead it by the nose only by coarser manners and less clean dwellings.

p I shall not repeat that Stockmann is wrong in explaining the intellectual torpor of the poor stratum of the population in pettybourgeois society by a "lack of oxygen”. I shall merely note that his mistaken explanation is causally most related to his idealist view of social life. When an idealist like Doctor Stockmann discusses the development of social thought and seeks to base himself on scientific grounds, he appeals to oxygen, to unswept floors, to heredity,—in a word, to the physiology and pathology of the individual organism, but it never occurs to him to pay attention to social relations, which are what determines the psychology of any given society in the final analysis.

p The idealist explains being in terms of consciousness, and not the reverse. And this is also understandable, at least when it is a question of the "chosen individuals" of petty-bourgeois society. They are so isolated in the social environment that surrounds them and this environment moves on at such a snail’s pace, that they have no real chance of discovering the causality between the "course of ideas" and the "course of things" in human society.

p It must be noted that in the nineteenth century this connection was first perceived by scholars—the historians and publicists of the time of the Restoration—mainly thanks to the events of the revolutionary period, which pointed to the class struggle as the main cause of all social movement.  [441•*  The "spiritual aristocrats” 442 of almost static petty-bourgeois society were fated to make nothing but the discovery, flattering for their self-esteem, that without them society would have no thinking people at all. This is why they regard themselves as the chosen ones; and this is why Doctor Stockmann calls them "human poodles".

p But be that as it may, the reactionary rubbish that creeps into the Doctor’s speech does not prove that Ibsen sympathised with political reaction. If in France and Germany a certain section of the reading public regards him as a proponent of the idea of the rule of the privileged minority over the deprived majority, it must be said to the credit of the great writer that this is a gross mistake.

p Ibsen was indifferent to politics in general, and, as he himself admits, hated politicians. His thinking was apolitical.  And this, one might say, is the distinctive feature of his thinking, which is in turn well explained by the influence of the social environment on him, but which led him to a series of most painful and most insoluble contradictions.

p What sort of politics and what sort of politicians did our author see and know? The politics and politicians of the very same petty-bourgeois society in which he all but suffocated and which he so mercilessly castigated in his works. And what is pettybourgeois politics? It is pathetic, narrow pedantry. What is a petty-bourgeois politician? A pathetic, narrow pedant.  [442•* 

p The “advanced” people of the petty bourgeoisie occasionally put forward broad political programmes, but they defend them limply and coldly. They never hurry; they follow the golden rule: "hasten slowly”. There is no place in their hearts for the noble passion without which, to quote Hegel’s splendid remark, nothing great is ever done in world history.^^123^^ And they have no need of passion, because great historical deeds are not their lot. In petty-bourgeois countries even broad political programmes are defended and triumph with the aid of small means, because due to the absence of sharply expressed class antagonism no great social obstacles are encountered on the path of such programmes. Political freedom is purchased cheaply here; but here it is also not worth very much. It too is permeated with philistine spirit, which in practice goes against its letter at every turn. Fearfully narrow in everything, the petty bourgeois is also terribly narrow in his understanding of political freedom.

p He need only be confronted by a conflict that bears the slightest resemblance to the major, bitter clashes with which the life of modern capitalist society abounds and which under the cor- 443 rupting and enticing influence of the more developed countries now occasionally occur in the petty-bourgeois “backwaters” of Western Europe as well, and he will forget all about freedom and start ranting about order, and will proceed, in the most shameful fashion without the slightest pangs of conscience, to violate in practice the free constitution of which he is so proud in theory.  Here, as everywhere, the petty-bourgeois philistine’s words are at variance with his deeds. In short, petty-bourgeois political freedom bears no resemblance whatever to the mighty and indomitable beauty extolled by Barbier in his Iambics.^^124^^ It is rather a quiet, limited and petty Hausfrau.  [443•* 

p A person who is not content with domesticated albeit perfectly clean and “well-swept” prose will find it hard to conceive a passion for this respectable matron. He will more likely renounce his love of political freedom entirely, turn his back on politics and seek some other sphere of interest.

p And this is precisely what Ibsen did. He lost all interest in politics, and gave a very accurate portrayal of bourgeois politicians in the League of Youth and An Enemy of the People.

p It is interesting that still as a very young man in Christiania Ibsen published together with Botten-Hansen and Aasmund Olavson the weekly journal Manden^^125^^ which fought openly against not only the conservative, but also the opposition party. Characteristically enough, it fought the latter not because it was more moderate, but because it considered that the opposilion party was not energetic enough.  [443•** 

p It was in this journal that Ibsen published his first political satire, Norma, which depicts the type of political careerist later portrayed so vividly by him in The League of Youth (Stensgard). It is clear that already at that time he was struck by the lack of ideals behind the activity of petty-bourgeois politicians.

p But even in this war against philistine political intrigue Ibsen did not stop "being himself”. Mr. Lothar says that "the politics which he kept to then, as later, was confined to individual people, individual representatives of a given trend or a given party. It went from person to person and was never theoretical or dogmatic".  [443•***  But politics that is interested only in individual people and not in the “theories” or “dogmas” that they represent is not political at all. In going "from person to person" Ibsen’s thinking was partly moral and partly artistic, but it was always apolitical.

p Ibsen himself describes his attitude to politics and politicians very well in the following passage: "We are living on the crumbs that have fallen from the table of the revolution of the past 444 century,” he wrote in 1870, "this food has long since been chewed over and over again. Ideas also need new nourishment and new development. Liberty, equality and fraternity are no 1< nger what they were in the age of the deceased guillotine. Politicians persist in not understanding this. That is why I hate them. They want partial, completely superficial, political revolutions. That, is all rubbish. Only the revolt of the human spirit is important."’

p There are no grounds for drawing a distinction between political revolutions and others (probably social ones) that do not confine themselves to superficial details. The French Revolution, which Ibsen mentions here, was both political and social at one and the same time. And this must be said of any social movement that deserves to be called revolutionary. But that is not the point here. The important thing is that the passage quoted above provides us with an excellent explanation of Ibsen’s negative attitude to politicians. He hates them because they confine themselves to chewing the crumbs that have fallen from the table of the Great French Revolution; because they do not want to go forward; because their eyes do not see further than the surface of social life. This is precisely the reproach which West European Social Democrats level at petty-bourgeois politicians (the political representatives of the big bourgeoisie in the West no longer breathe a word about “revolutions”). And in so far as Ibsen levels these accusations at these politicians, he is quite right and his indifference to politicians testifies only to the nobility of his own aspirations and the integrity of his own nature. But he assumes that there can be no politicians who are not like the ones who were active in his petty-bourgeois country at the time when his views were being formed. And here, of course, he is mistaken; here his hatred of politicians testifies only to the limitations of his own horizons. He is forgetting that the makers of the Great Revolution were also politicians, and that their heroic deeds were accomplished in the sphere of politics.

The final chord here, as everywhere in Ibsen, is "the revolt of the spirit" for the sake of "the revolt of the spirit”, the passion for form quite irrespective of content.