Rodó, the Press, and the Perils of Intellectual Egalitarianism

A youthful poem anticipates Rodó’s defense of merit, intellectual excellence, and journalism’s civilizing responsibility.

The Uruguayan thinker José Enrique Rodó is universally known for his text Ariel or for Motivos de Proteo. Although he also ventured into poetry.
Around 1923, the poet and editor Antonia Artucio Ferreira (1889–1979) published The Uruguayan Parnassus, 1905–1922.
In her work, she included a poem by Rodó titled “The Press,” explaining: “I include the poems of Don José Enrique Rodó, convinced that they neither add to nor detract from the master’s work; there will be no shortage of those who read them with affection.”
This is Rodó at the age of twenty-three, offering his opinion on the public and the general attitude of the journalist of his time. It is worth transcribing a fragment.
“…The crowd is king: you shall humbly indulge it,
the crowd is the opulent Maecenas
whom one must lavish with honors…
You must study what gives it pleasure,
what flatters its refined palate;
pay it faithful and gracious homage…
Do you say it is foolish? ‘It is foolish, but it pays…’
The writer of the day must not forget it,
even if he writes gazettes rather than verses.
If one considers that, through loquacious pedantry,
since Lope’s time the rabble has gained much
and vulgar supremacy has increased,
who now dares deny it submission?
Who dares offend Equality
at the close of the Nineteenth Century…?
…It already smacks of aristocratic prejudice
to regard the opinion of the crowd
as less lucid and profound than that of the wise.
The plebeian tongue has already been unleashed
in resounding oration…! The World already obeys
Intellectual Communism…!”
Discépolo would say: “Jesus is worth the same as the thief.”
Because that is conceptually what Rodó means.
When he refers to “Intellectual Communism,” although the expression has a pejorative connotation, he is not referring to Marxist communism.
Rodó would die before the process that led to that disastrous experiment took place in Russia.
In fact, that verse anticipates a concern that would accompany Rodó throughout much of his work: the risk that democracy might degenerate into intellectual egalitarianism.
The thinker does not question the dignity of individuals or the democratic principle itself, but he does fear that public opinion may end up distrusting all authority founded on merit, study, or excellence.
That concern reappears, in more elaborate language, in Ariel.
There he criticizes the predominance of quantity over quality, utilitarianism, and mediocrity when the masses become the sole criterion of legitimacy.
In that sense, the “intellectual communism” of the youthful poem can be read as an antecedent of that critique.
He uses the word in its etymological sense of “making common,” but to warn that making intellectual judgment common may lead to the denial of hierarchies of knowledge.
It is an intuition that reappears today in highly current debates: should the opinion of someone who has devoted decades to studying a subject carry the same weight as that of someone who merely expresses an impression?
One hundred and twenty years later, a female legislator from the Broad Front (MPP) attempts, possibly without knowing it, to refute Rodó when she states: “If there is one thing I detest, it is the concept of meritocracy, because no one is born from the same starting point. It is disgraceful to think that through effort and sacrifice one can achieve great things.”
She does not seem to take into account what the Constitution of the Republic says: that persons, equal before the law, are distinguished from one another by their talents or virtues.
Rodó would reply that legal and political equality does not require abandoning recognition of intellectual excellence.
The written press was the only means of mass communication. Radio broadcasting began in Uruguay in 1922. And he says:
“But although the newspaper is, above all, an organ of information, it is also a commentator, a censor, a propagandist.”
The newspaper must define its opinion. And “impartiality” must be understood as “the tribute of respect and civility owed to all sincere opinions and all legitimate interests.”
He does not fall into the foolishness of maintaining that all opinions and interests are good. From that perspective, he calls for a “broad spirit of hospitality to welcome all opinions.”
Of course, it would first be advisable to define what is meant by “sincere” and “legitimate,” because otherwise the gates of Ilium would be opened to the enemy.
Rodó does not ignore that the newspaper is read amid urgency, nor the “ephemeral nature” of its substance.
For that reason, he proclaims that “the daily Press must be like the shadow of the social body: true and faithful like the shadow, and, like the shadow, light and fleeting.”
Rodó had excessive confidence that “the progress of customs and ideas [would lead], with accelerated momentum, to the establishment of that ideal of civilizing journalism” that he hoped to make a reality.
But for that, he needed each of the writers to participate in his moralizing enterprise.
One hundred years later, looking at the conduct of many media outlets and, in particular, of certain “investigative” journalists, the shadow seems heavy and, worse still, permanent.

Intellectual egalitarianism
Merit and excellence
The responsibility of the press

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