Masses

The concept of masses is intricately interwoven with the concept of elites. Both concepts were introduced into the social sciences during the period of industrialization in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. With the demise of feudal society, new social categories emerged that defied the traditional classifications of the old corporative state. Just as modern elites do not coincide with traditional aristocracies, masses do not coincide with the third estate. Neither was the Marxist concept of class appropriate for grasping the socially heterogeneous composition of mass electorates and social movements. In this entry, the origins of this concept, its major proponents and critics, the respective empirical evidence, and its contemporary relevance are discussed.

Social philosophers and social scientists writing about masses have mostly referred to their large numbers and their lack of structure. The rise of masses was seen as a consequence of industrialization and urbanization. The German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies argued that the increasing division of labor would replace primary interpersonal relations with indirect, secondary relations, thus leading to an erosion of the traditional social bonds of family, kinship, and neighborhood. This development is aptly captured by his dichotomy of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. Since that period was also one of mass political mobilization and the political enfranchisement of ever larger parts of the population, the concept of masses also played a role in the political debate about the effects of universal suffrage. Earlier critics such as Edmund Burke and Alexis de Tocqueville had primarily raised concerns that this might impair the quality of political leadership and governance. The classic elite theorists Vilfredo Pareto, Gaetano Mosca, and Robert Michels instead argued that democratization, rather than increasing the political influence of ordinary citizens, would lead to a centralization of political power in the hands of a small elite. Mosca and Michels explained this with the inability of large groups to organize for effective political action and the personal and organizational advantages enjoyed by the elites. During the first half of the 20th century, the rise of communist and fascist totalitarian mass movements showed that some of the concerns raised by the older authors were not unfounded. However, when the success of representative democracy proved that most of their dire predictions did not materialize, the preoccupation with the presumed dangers of mass politics gradually subsided. Today, the term masses is mostly used interchangeably with ordinary citizens, mass publics, or nonelites.

In his 2002 book Against the Masses, Joseph Femia analyzed three major lines of reasoning against mass democracy:

• 1.
  The perversity thesis holds that democratization is not capable of achieving its main objective of transferring political power from a small aristocracy to the majority of the people but will instead achieve the opposite—namely, a centralization of power that makes popularly [Page 1502]elected elites even more dominant than the old aristocracy ever was.
• 2.
  The futility thesis emphasizes the inevitability of elite rule and argues that the natural inequality of human beings and the functional necessities of organizations will thwart any attempt to empower the masses.
• 3.
  The jeopardy thesis finally points to the conflict between democracy on one side and other important social values, in particular liberty, social cohesion, and economic development, on the other.

While the proponents of the futility thesis shared a pessimistic view of human nature and expected that both democratic elites and masses pursued particularistic interests, proponents of the perversity and jeopardy theses were critical of the political changes brought about by democratization. They believed in the superiority of the traditional republican model of government by a deliberative representative assembly elected by limited suffrage, whose members are primarily motivated by the intention to serve their country. They were therefore afraid that universal suffrage would require the formation of organized political parties and interest groups that would primarily pursue their particularistic interests. The observed shortcomings of representative democracy were thus compared with an idealized model of a predemocratic political order that had rarely existed in reality.

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