Mass Society (redirected from Mass society and the United States)

Mass Society 

a concept used by non-Marxist sociologists and philosophers to designate a number of features of modern society. In sociology and economics the term “mass society” is associated with industrialization and urbanization, standardization of production, mass consumption, the bureaucratization of public life, and the spread of the mass media and mass culture.

Theories of mass society originated in the conservative aristocratic criticism of bourgeois democratic reforms in Europe and America in the 18th and 19th centuries. E. Burke (Great Britain) and J. de Maistre and L. G. A. de Bonald (France) expressed their opposition to the destruction of medieval social groups and corporations, without which, in their opinion, society would become a mass of isolated individuals. Clearly aware of the inevitability of a new order, A. de Tocqueville (France) used the concept of mass society to describe the developing bourgeois society from the standpoint of the relationship within it between freedom and equality. He showed that centralization and bureaucratization, which had been carried out in the name of equality in the fight against the feudal aristocracy, led to the bourgeois state’s control over all aspects of society and to the suppression of freedom. Beginning in the late 19th century the concept of mass society was developed in elitist criticism of “mass socialization” and “the tyranny of the masses” (F. Nietzsche and O. Spengler [Germany], J. Ortega y Gasset [Spain], and N. A. Berdiaev).

The emergence of fascism in Europe in the 1920’s and 1930’s caused a sharp change in theories on mass society. The aristocratic defense of the values of the elite against the “superdemocracy” gave way to a defense of bourgeois democratic rights against the unlimited rule of the “power elite” (K. Mannheim, E. Lederer, and H. Arendt [Germany]). These new theories failed to uncover the real socioeconomic causes and class essence of fascism, ignored the fact that a fascist dictatorship is the opposite of socialism, and intertwined criticism of fascism with anticommunism.

After World War II criticism of the authoritarian tendencies of state-monopoly capitalism from the standpoint of bourgeois and petit bourgeois liberalism and romanticism became the principal trend in theories of mass society. C. W. Mills, E. Fromm, and D. Riesman (USA) criticized various aspects of bourgeois society: economic, political, and social alienation; centralization of power and the decline of autonomous intermediate associations and organizations; the conformism of “mass” man; and the propagation of a standardized culture. Frequently, this social criticism turned into an indictment of modern state-monopoly capitalism. However, it made alienation into an absolute and denied the existence of social forces capable of destroying the sinister world of mass society.

Many bourgeois sociologists (T. Parsons, A. Etzioni, D. Bell, and H. Wilensky [USA]) opposed these concepts, underscoring their one-sidedness and their abstract character. They showed that the critics of mass society underestimated the importance of primary groups and organizations that are intermediate between the individual and the state, as well as the significance of the individual’s value orientations, which act as a prism, refracting his perception of the mass media.

In contemporary bourgeois sociology there have also been attempts to arrive at a “positive interpretation” of mass society (D. Martindale, D. Bell, and E. Shils [USA]). Heavily influenced by the doctrines of “people’s capitalism” and “the state of universal prosperity” and especially by the theory of a “single middle class,” the positive theory breaks with the intellectual tradition that engendered the critical concept of mass society. In analyzing the material foundations of mass society and its social and cultural institutions, the spokesmen for this school contend that, under the influence of mass production and mass consumption, economic, social, and political homogeneity is increasing and class differences are being eliminated. Thus, in the positive interpretations of mass society, social criticism gives way to a straightforward apology for bourgeois society.

The Marxist analysis of theories of mass society reveals their untenability and the ideological illusions and fictions underlying them. At the same time, it admits that they present a critique of bourgeois civilization and point out many important problems, such as the fate of social freedom, of the individual, and of culture in the modern bourgeois world; the significance of the mass media; and the role of primary and intermediate groups.

REFERENCES

Mills, C. W. Vlastvuiushchaia elita. Moscow, 1959. (Translated from English.)
Strel’tsov, N. N. “Teoreticheskie istoki i evoliutsiia kontseptsii ’massovogo obshchestva.’” Voprosy filosofii, 1970, no. 12.
Ashin, G. K. Doktrina “massovogo obshchestva.” Moscow, 1971.
Kornhauser, W. The Politics of Mass Society, 4th ed. New York, 1965.
Mass Society in Crisis, 2nd ed. Edited by B. Rosenberg et al. New York, 1966.

N. N. STREL’TSOV