Page 85 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

74 Chapter Two

Mass and Class Consciousness
Williams used the term, the long revolution, to denote the drawn-out process
whereby common people increasingly came to “direct their own lives, by
breaking through pressures and restrictions of older forms of society, and by
discovering new common institutions.” 85 Begun in the late 1700s, the long
revolution comprised three subsidiary revolutions, only two of which re-
ceived much scholarly attention prior to Williams. One was the democratic
revolution, whereby the franchise and other rights and freedoms—freedom of
speech, freedom to assemble, freedom to be represented on juries and in Par-
liament, freedom to be a parliamentary representative, freedom to unionize
and strike—were gained by common people through long and painful strug-
gle. (See, for example, Thompson’s The Making of the English Working
Class.) Second was the industrial revolution, backed by science and capital,
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which gave rise to (the idea of) the working class. Third was the cultural
revolution, which Williams defined as the extension of learning, including the
skills of literacy and other advanced communications, to classes other than
the elite.
Victories and accomplishments attained in the long revolution continue to
affect the lives of us all. For Williams, however, the long revolution had
stalled. Writing in 1961, well before Thatcherism, he observed “a serious
state of unbalance between provision for social and individual need. . . . It is
easy to get a sense of plenty from the shop windows of contemporary Britain,
but if we look at the schools, the hospitals, the roads, the libraries, we find
chronic shortages far too often.” 87 Also highly problematic, he noted else-
where, are escalating environmental stresses. 88 These concerns all involve
“collective goods,” transcending the wants and needs of individuals.
A significant factor impeding the long revolution’s continuance, according
to Williams, has been popular acceptance of the concept of the mass. As peo-
ple came increasingly to view themselves as part of the mass, their class iden-
tity weakened, and with it the collectivist desire which had motivated the long
revolution. Williams asked rhetorically, “If everyone is only out for himself,
why bother about social change?” To be in the mass is to be, by definition,
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outside of community, out of neighborhood, out of solidarity. 90
Without class consciousness, Williams continued, a new domination by
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elites sets in. Indeed, he proposed, the idea of the mass was created by elites
(“who work very hard at it, by the way”) and is absolutely required for the
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current organization of society. An elite-mass dichotomy means, essentially,
that the great majority of people are expected to do little other than express
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“a pattern of demands and preferences.” They are to be observers and con-
sumers. Their demands and preferences are gauged and assessed through
polls, focus groups, and other methods of market research, and if need be are