A Definition Of Terms
Newman, William J.
THE POLITICS OF MASS SOCIETY, by William Kornhauser. Free Press. 1959. Of all the words employed by Socialists, Sociologists, Liberals, Political Scientists, Writers and Literary Critics, none...
...as ways of overcoming feelings of anxiety and 'futility...
...Our conception of mass society involves the following major proposition: a high rate of mass behavior may be expected when both elites and non-elites lack social insulation...
...What a joke...
...It is unfair to Kornhauser to leave off a summary of his book at this point, but since his conclusions raise an important issue one must pass over from assent to dissent...
...His answer is, No...
...It may ultimately be resisted but as of now almost all the forces in American society are working for it and almost none against it...
...The meaning of this beautifully precise theory for politics is given in Kornhauser's sections on the social sources of mass movements and the social composition of mass movements...
...Nor is it true that because people feel ineffective in public affairs there is a tendency towards a mass society, for that feeling is due to the complexity of public events, not to lack of formal opportunities to engage in political activities...
...He also makes it clear—and one is especially grateful for this assertion—that not democracy as such produces mass movements, but discontinuities in political authority...
...Most of the things this reviewer knows about America indicates that a galloping massification of the middle class is well under way...
...There is good reason to believe that the latter is true, that the American middle class today is aware of its own social impotence and is now simply reduced to making jokes about it...
...it is time for neatness...
...The Masses are The Others in their more rowdy moments...
...that is, when elites are accessible to direct intervention by non-elites, and when non-elites are available for direct mobilization by elites...
...On the other hand there also occurs at the same time a change in the relationship of elites to non-elites...
...An extreme example of the politics of such a society would be one in which management could directly influence the workers through, say, television propaganda and where the workers would act directly on management through riots, etc., all because the trade union, which in a plural society would intervene between the two, is now absent or has been rendered ineffectual...
...The evidence does not support the contention that the new middle classes are composed of atomized masses...
...Naturally, the culture-snobs have not been misusing the word only to protect High Culture...
...One result of the accessibility of elites and the availability of non-elites is pointed out by Kornhauser...
...is to say almost nothing...
...But at the same time new forms of organization, such as professional associations and civic groups, have been developing to take its place...
...For as social ties disintegrate and as social aliena304 tion increases, receptivity to mass symbols and the manipulation of leaders grows...
...Before doing that, let me say: this book should be read...
...Bostonians today exhibit "a state of mind characterized by feelings of distrust of politicians and the political process, and a belief that the individual voter is not part of the process, i.e., that he is an alien in the political world...
...They do not develop the will to lead, nor a firm sense of responsibility for leadership...
...He says No because not only Marx but Weber was wrong too...
...But what is that mass society...
...The weakness in his theory is its lack of criteria by which the meaningfulness or intensity of group life, of the intermediate institutions of a plural society, can be evaluated...
...In addition, he says, more and more of the population is becoming educated and going into professional occupations 305 while at the same time the elites are increasingly open...
...Members of elites are recruited from the mass and continue to be exposed to the values of the mass, so that even they tend to accept populist values...
...Are they not on the contrary more and more boring routines for already bored people...
...The central argument of this study is that insofar as a society is a mass society, it will be vulnerable to political movements, destructive of liberal democratic institutions...
...The middle class is now being made the victim of its own instruments and methods of mass exploitation...
...his mode of response to remote objects becomes direct...
...306 Thus "the majority of the Boston electorate, who are elementary or high school graduates, salaried, and employed in blue collar or white collar jobs...
...Indeed the loyalty of the steel workers to their union in the recent strike indicates that a huge joke is about to be played on the American middle class...
...The salaried middle-class man in America will shift jobs in a flash at the right price...
...A mass society, therefore, to Kornhauser is the opposite of a pluralist society, for it is essentially marked by an absence of pluralist features, i.e., of a meaningful intermediate group life of the kind which exists between the primary unit of the family and the all-inclusive unit of the nationstate...
...Of all the offensives of the culturesnob— and there are many—this ruination of a significant concept is one of his worst...
...For "mass" is in fact a significant concept in this century...
...Of all the words employed by Socialists, Sociologists, Liberals, Political Scientists, Writers and Literary Critics, none has been so abused as the word "mass...
...Not only, therefore, does any friendly person feel embarrassed to use such a phrase as "The Masses," but in addition the phrase has come to mean a group of people for whom one has a dislike...
...The suburb in which the middle-class individual has found a temporary camp...
...In his conclusion Kornhauser does not hesitate to ask the question, is America a mass society or on the way of becoming a mass society...
...there is rapid and unstable oscillation between activism and apathy—which result from the lessening of the "sense of reality, and responsibility to be found in concern for proximate objects...
...Come to Boston and observe social alienation in action...
...Correctly, because the viable concept of mass has been taken over by the culture-snobs who in America derive part of their inspiration from a fear of The Revolt of the Masses as it has been enunciated by the Holders of High Culture...
...Here The Politics of Mass Society is less satisfactory, mainly because sociologists have great difficulty in comprehending that events stripped of their context are without significance and prove nothing...
...As a result of this theory of mass society Kornhauser comes to the following conclusion about its danger to democracy: "The nihilism of the masses tends to be a greater threat to liberal democracy than the antagonism between classes...
...THUS KORNHAUSER refuses to apply his own theory to modern America...
...That is—and this point is the crux of Kornhauser's statement of the significance of mass society for politics—the elites are no longer insulated from direct mass action by the "people" (now the masses) as they were when the desires of the many were mediated through the groups of which they were members (e.g., a trade union...
...Hence arise certain aspects of mass behavior—the individual becomes concerned with things remote from his personal life...
...Professor Levin shows that all the forms of social alienation are present in Boston today and manifest themselves especially at election time...
...Indeed, the whole concept of masses as applied to twentiethcentury life has become so corrupt from lack of definition that to speak or write the word today is immediately to run the risk of identifying oneself as a snob—and quite correctly too...
...I challenge anyone to tell me what intermediate social institution exists to which the American middle class in America would have been as loyal as the steel worker was to his union...
...This review is hardly the place to argue the issue out, but I would indicate that his reasoning in regard to America is the result of a lacuna in his theory, and to point to some evidence which would lead to a contrary conclusion...
...perceives the political structure primarily in terms of the 'big guys' versus the 'little guys.' " But the upper income groups are no better off, for they "experience political alienation in the forms of meaningless, normlessness and estrangement more than in the form of powerlessness...
...That this picture of the nature of mass society contains important elements of truth can hardly be doubted...
...Kornhauser loves to summarize his 303 arguments, so one may give him his head for a moment...
...His book is less important for what it says about that impact than for the general theory which it postulates...
...That modern society is a mass society in many of its most important manifestations can hardly be doubted...
...For Kornhauser's book gives a concrete, logical, unemotional and—best of all— useful definition and theory of mass society...
...The elites become accessible and the non-elites available...
...There is also some disturbing empirical evidence which points to the growth of a mass society in America in Kornhauser's terms...
...It has been also one foundation for a fatigued but exquisite form of eliteism...
...WILLIAM J. NEWMAN 307...
...Kornhauser comes to his definition through the study of the impact of mass society on liberal democracy...
...In short, they have taken over the word to create and protect a privileged position for themselves...
...Even the corrupt chumminess of the local wards is disappearing in Boston as it becomes more and more inhabitated by a new middle class...
...But since that answer will not be good enough except for those who have the same instinct it is necessary to have a scientific definition...
...The corporation for which the middle-class individual works...
...For example, he points out that it is not urbanization as such which creates mass society but discontinuities in community life which may be caused by urbanization in certain circumstances (e.g., very rapid rates of urbanization...
...How does one know if all those associations of the middle class and its busy professional activities are significant group experiences...
...therefore, the easy attitude of moaning and gnashing of teeth will no longer do...
...KORNHAUSER GOES on to distinguish totalitarian society (inaccessible elites and available non-elites), plural society (accessible elites and unavailable non-elites), communal society (inaccessible elites and unavailable non-elites) from mass society (accessible elites and available non-elites...
...For when those groups (among which he includes classes) give way as places for significant behavior, then the individual has lost touch with the only form of "proximate" social objective open to him...
...A recent study of the political life of the "citizen" of Boston ("Political Alienation and Political Structure," an unpublished MS by Murray Levin) shows such an appalling degree of social alienation in that "city" that one can only despair of liberal democracy in such a situation...
...But whatever the result of the argument about the condition of American society, one must be grateful to Kornhauser for giving us the proper terms in which to argue...
...With the appearance of William Kornhauser's The Politics of Mass Society it can be said that the heavy grinding of the academic mill has for once justified itself...
...He points to social alienation "as the central problem posed by the theory of mass society...
...while insofar as a society is pluralist, these institutions will be strong...
...It may be granted that the property basis of social power and par...
...It is a city so inundated with corruption that the vote has ceased to have meaning...
...He further describes the structure of mass society in terms of the "weakness of intermediate relations, the isolation of primary relations, and the centralization of national relations...
...One must repeat that there is no longer excuse for an illiterate use of the phrase, mass society...
...At the same time, the elite can now reach the individual directly and manipulate him because there is no organizational filter between the elite and the many...
...Whether it has been applied to society, politics, civilization, or culture, or simply to The Masses, it has been used vaguely and without specific meaning...
...By instinct...
...For it seems possible that the middle class will become "massified" before the working class...
...If those definitions sound overly neat one is thankful...
...Weber was wrong because bureaucratization has not destroyed the pluralistic middle-class base in America...
...Marx was wrong because it is not in the most highly developed societies that unrest occurs...
...How DOES ONE KNOW that he is living in a mass society if he has no good definition of what a mass society is...
...We needn't go into that...
...Feelings of powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness, isolation and self-estrangement are all found to be typical of the Boston population (of all classes) as it faces the polling booth...
...ticipation is weakened by the shift from an enterpreneurial to an employee society...
...This can only lead to a lack of security and confidence in their role as leaders...
...Thus to say that "mass movements appeal to the unemployed...
...Nevertheless Kornhauser's emphasis on discontinuities in the social process and social life as the causes of mass society is certainly fruitful...
...As a result, members of the new middle class have high rates of participation in voluntary associations, political affairs, and community life...
Vol. 7 • July 1960 • No. 3
