Democracy at War With Economics

Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People" focuses on the meaning of truth from the perspective of the majority ruled by its democratically elected leadership versus the individual's rights. Dr. Thomas Stockman plays the role of the individual who intends to use his democratic right of freely expressing his opinion, especially when this opinion is based on scientific facts and concerns the health of his fellow humans. Hovstad, the editor at the newspaper "The People's Herald," "freethinker" inside and a radical at heart, who has the instruments to support the free expression of such opinions, political vocation and enough shrewdness to be able to manipulate and adapt to people and situations like a chameleon.

Hovstad is as representative for the discussion involving democracy and its flaws now as it was a century ago. Ibsen may have played with philosophical principals and ideas when he wrote the play, but the dilemmas he put on stage unfortunately proved to withstand the proof of time. Hindsight and a century of democratic experience did not make the world any wiser. Fortunately, over the last century, democracy remained the less flawed of all forms of government known to humanity yet, the moral questions related to it also endured. Individuals like Hovstad are like a cancer to democracy because they apparently are the voice of reason, but they are, in fact, the perfect tools in the hands of those without scruples.

Act III is revealing the causes of the actual damage individuals like Hovststad can inflict upon a community. Hovstad has high political aspirations and he is convinced that once he will accede to power, he will serve the public good well-intended. A short exchange of opinions and ideas related to community self-governing as opposed to the government of the whole country is particularly enlightening when it comes to assessing Hovstad's political aspirations: "Aslaksen. When a man has interests of his own to protect, he cannot think of everything, Mr. Hovstad. Hovstad. Then I hope I shall never have interests of my own to protect!"(Ibsen, act III).

As the editor of the town's newspaper, Hovstad has a vital role in using the instrument at his disposal as he saw fit to serve his community. The problem is, he has an Achille's heel and the Mayor, Peter Stockman, knows perfectly well how to use it to make him change his views 180 degrees. Polluted waters and a "plague spot" instead of soothing, healing water baths suddenly become insignificant when confronted with the possibility of getting all the householders turn against him for supposedly cutting their financial sources for a period of two years,. Moreover, taking money out of the community's pockets to change the faulty sewage system in order to prevent the bath waters to get polluted would mean that Hovstad's political career would end before it even started.

Hovstad has the power and the means democracy and the editorship of the newspaper is giving him to do the right thing and prevent people from getting ill. Instead, he decides to do the exact opposite. His political aspirations, as noble as they may appear to him, are his weakness. He will be easily convinced that the right thing to do was to prevent the truth from being outspoken. He will thus agree to treat the interests of those closer and more important for his political future, the townspeople, as primary compared to the interests of those who might get soaked in the polluted soup. He is the perfect political animal, who will accept any compromise for the so called greater good. Because he has the power to do the right thing and not risk anything he doesn't already have, he sounds as the most despicable of them all.