A Social Theory for Today
Kirkpatrick, Jeane J.
A Social Theory for Today The Politics of Mass Society. By William Kornhauser. Free Press. 256 pp. $5.00. Reviewed by Jeane Kirkpatrick TIME WAS, the legend goes, life was a simpler, happier...
...First, let us look at the author's contradictory use of totalitarianism...
...Early in the book, Kornhauser distinguishes between totalitarian movements and mass movements, totalitarian parties and mass parties, totalitarian societies and mass societies...
...One of the salient facts about McCarthy was his utter lack of interest in organizing his support...
...In his new study of The Politics of Mass Society, William Kornhauser, University of California sociologist, refers to this meaning when he says he hopes to "account for some of the major social factors that weaken democratic order by applying the theory of mass society to a variety of empirical materials...
...Unprotected and unrestrained, they are readily enlisted in mass movements—which are defined by Kornhauser as movements whose objectives are "remote and extreme," whose "direct" modes of intervention "abrogate institutional procedures" and whose organization "lacks an internal structure of independent groups (such as regional or functional units with some autonomy) ." Mass movements are not totalitarian, but are easily penetrated and captured by totalitarian cadres...
...Mass men are atomized, alienated and easily mobilized...
...Yet he remains mysteriously elusive...
...and (3) "to distinguish between mass institutions and totalitarian institutions, and to specify the relations between them...
...the data are irrelevant...
...These examples are cited to indicate Kornhauser has not succeeded fully in formulating and testing the theory of mass society...
...Later, however, he not only cites Communism and fascism as examples of mass movements and mass politics, but a very large part of his data on the characteristics of mass behavior and mass men is in fact data on the composition, structure and program of various Communist and fascist parties...
...Atomized, alienated, unprotected by intermediate institutions, unrestrained by ideology, lonely and purposeless he roams among us, with money in his pockets, time on his hands and confusion in his soul, a ready prey for demagogues, advertising and totalitarian movements...
...The identity of mass man remains mysteriously difficult to establish "operationally...
...He aims, in other words, at stating a causal theory of the relations between social pluralism, political democracy and totalitarianism so that its key propositions may be tested, and at testing these propositions against large number of "empirical" studies...
...As a political philosopher, he is a fully committed pluralist...
...But neither McCarthy nor his supporters conducted or advocated direct action against these or any other legal institutions...
...Since there has never been a theory of mass society, Kornhauser's first job is to distill one and state it in a form which will capture the rich and suggestive content of the concept and at the same time be amenable to empirical verification...
...Then came the machine...
...Such, in brief but not in caricature, is a composite theory of mass society, as advanced by such diverse scholars, philosophers and literateurs as Le Bon, Ortega, Mannheim, Lederer and Hannah Arendt, to describe the character and effects of the social revolutions of the last two centuries...
...The evidence and analysis presented in this book confirm the special vulnerability of modern democracy to mass politics...
...But he cannot have it both ways...
...His study is marred, however, by several basic ambiguities which have dogged theories concerning "masses" since they were first articulated in the 19th century...
...to emphasize the contention that totalitarian movements are organizations of masses...
...As a philosopher of history, Kornhauser is a qualified optimist and in-determinist...
...The survey measures activity, not activism, and, furthermore, measures activity of a sort encouraged by all democratic parties...
...then the authors data on totalitarian organizations cannot be used to verify hypotheses about mass organizations...
...Kornhauser has not formulated and verified a theory of mass society broadly enough to explain the rise of totalitarianism, or the social prerequisites of democracy, but he has written an exciting book with broad relevance for a theory of contemporary history...
...Three examples should illustrate this failure...
...Modern conditions "carry with them the heightened possibility of social alienation and enhanced opportunities for the creation of new forms of association...
...Industry replaced craft, cities grew up and slums replaced the solid stone houses on the green...
...Insolence replaced respect, comic books replaced poetry, popular songs replaced the metaphysical poets, suicide replaced the plague, and it became necessary to stand in line for theater tickets...
...Mass society is characterized by an abundance of mass movements...
...Whatever else it signifies for specific writers, it almost always refers to tendencies in the modern world which undermine freedom...
...It will enable him (1) "to distinguish between mass tendencies and pluralist tendencies in modern society, and show how social pluralism, but not mass conditions, supports liberal democracy...
...The ubiquitous utility of this concept—for critics and defenders of democracy, for analysis of individuals, classes and nations, for intellectual history and literary criticism—argues its pervasive if ambiguous relevance for contemporary society...
...Kornhauser, like his illustrious antecedents, has trouble pointing to a man still outside a totalitarian movement about whom he can say without qualification: This is he, the man with all the characteristics I just described...
...They are different he says, because "totalitarian society requires an inaccessible elite" as well as an available population...
...To take a final example, activism is described as the dominant mode of mass behavior...
...We think we feel his threat to our institutions and values...
...Like many others, Kornhauser uses the term to designate qualities rather than quantities of men...
...The democratic antidote to alienation, he argues, is membership—not in an all-powerful state, but in a plurality of relatively autonomous groups...
...Swineherd father, cut down by plague in his prime, passed to swineherd son his animals, his God and his squire...
...Several key propositions are "verified" by reference to political events that lack the crucial characteristic attributed to them...
...This he attempts by first identifying, then combining the processes which writers who are identified as either essentially aristocratic or essentially democratic in perspective describe as crucial to the formation of mass society...
...but as Kornhauser correctly emphasizes, they by no means support the view that modern democracies must succumb to totalitarianism...
...McCarthyism as a mass movement," he asserts, "sought to attack policy and personnel of the Army, State Department, New York Times, and Harvard University, among other institutions...
...Birth, marriage, work, death and social relations were ordered by tradition grown rich in symbolism and beauty...
...Every man had his station, every station its duties...
...Again, either Kornhauser's theory is wrong or the data on the social, economic and psychological characteristics of McCarthy's followers are irrelevant...
...However, failure in so ambitious and comprehensive a task as undertaken in this study leaves room for important successes...
...can be identified not by his place in the social structure but by his lack of place...
...The Marxist analysis of modern history is further discredited, new light is cast on the effects of progressive bureaucratization, and our understanding of the causes and effects of social alienation is greatly increased...
...The difficulty arises when he attempts to relate mass theory to concrete political phenomena...
...The democratic problem is to maintain a social structure sufficiently decentralized to permit genuine competition among elites...
...A sense of this relevance probably accounts for the widespread tendency to use mass society as a synonym for modern society, mass democracy as a synonym for modern democracy, and so forth...
...This sounds well enough...
...If the theory is adequate...
...Despite its elasticity and ambiguity the concept of masses and mass men has a core of meaning common to its varied uses...
...He apparently feels that he has dealt with this basic contradiction by asserting in italics that he will "refer to totalitarian movements as 'mass movements...
...His formulation is: "Mass society is a social system in which elites are readily accessible to influence by non-elites and non-elites are readily available for mobilization by elites...
...But among the data used to support the proposition that totalitarian parties are "more activist" than democratic parties is a survey which demonstrates that of all major French political parties, the Communist party had a higher percentage of members who "sold papers, etc.," "sought support for the party," and "gave money...
...The most important of these is the indefinite referent of the key term, "masses...
...As a scholar, he has made an important contribution to the political sociology of democracy and totalitarianism...
...Reviewed by Jeane Kirkpatrick TIME WAS, the legend goes, life was a simpler, happier thing...
...This formulation, he asserts, offers "a diagnosis of certain underlying tendencies in the modern world, as well as a set of criteria for measuring the extent of these tendencies in specific cases...
...To the contrary, instance after instance is cited where the atomizing effects of industrialization or urbanization have been offset by the formation of new social groups which serve as the basis of pluralist democracy...
...Second, Kornhauser's use of McCarthyism as a "less extreme" mass movement provides another example of his difficulty of applying the theory...
...if the data are relevant, the theory is mistaken...
...If the accessibility of elites is one of the two defining characteristics of mass organizations...
...His restatement of the key propositions of a theory of mass society, so that they or their corollaries may be readily tested, results in some increased theoretical precision...
...Mass man emerged...
...We recognize him readily in the armies, the secret police and the top leadership of our totalitarian adversaries...
...We know, we think, his habits, his preferences, his ego structure...
...2) "to show how variations in the character of the individual's social relations influence his receptivity or resistance to the appeals of totalitarianism...
...Art was purer, sport was sportier, men were more masculine and women were ladies, God was in heaven, and any village priest could give precise directions for joining Him there...
...Whatever other qualities are ascribed to masses or mass men or mass society, they or it almost invariably figure as a threat to some liberty valued by the writer...
...With industry and cities came gin, sweathouses, labor unions, universal suffrage, atheism, literacy, feminism, divorce, social security, compulsory immunization, gerontology and eventually the 40-hour week...
...Furthermore, McCarthyism was no movement at all...
...Their characteristic mode of behavior is activist and extremist...
...A mass man, he tells us...
Vol. 43 • February 1960 • No. 8
