Page 39 - Culture Society and the Media

CULTURE, SOCIETY AND THE MEDIA 29
the standards of mediocrity which the ‘reign of the masses’ is said to have
promoted, others fear that, politically, the power attained by the masses has
seriously threatened the viability of democracy to the extent that it has
strengthened the role which irrational forces, the so-called psychology of the
crowd, play in the political process. There are also those who consider that the
primary threat embodied by mass society relates to the masses themselves to the
extent that their atomization has rendered them vulnerable to manipulation by the
élite, the passive prey for whatever predators might be stalking the political
jungle.
Whilst an adequate treatment of the variations of stress and emphasis that have
characterized the mass society tradition cannot be attempted here, a brief
adumbration of its more central themes should suffice for current purposes.
(More extended surveys can be found in Bramson, 1961, Giner, 1976,
Kornhauser, 1960 and Swingewood, 1977.) Five such themes can be
distinguished:

The tensions of liberalism
Although he cannot be regarded as a mass society theorist proper, Mill’s fears
for the health of the body politic reflected that sense of increasing tension
between the ideals of liberty, equality and democracy which has come to typify
the liberal variant of the mass society critique. Mill’s central concern was that
democratic forms of government gave rise to the danger of a new form of
despotism—the ‘tyranny of the majority’. He consequently called for a series of
constitutional provisions which would curb and limit the power of the majority
by defining the spheres within which that power might be legitimately exercised
whilst retaining due respect for the autonomy and rights of the individual.
However, Mill was as much concerned by the moral authority exerted by the
majority as by its exercise of power in the formal or constitutional sense:

Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough:
there needs to be protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing
opinion and feeling: against the tendency of society to impose, by other
means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct
on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if
possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with
its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of
its own. (Mill, 1969, p. 9)

The concern expressed here, the fear of social homogenization, has been central
to the mass society outlook. Mill goes on to develop this theme in the chapter of
his essay On Liberty devoted to the subject of ‘individuality’ where he argues
that the differences between classes, regions and professions have been so
blurred by the development of the market, by popular education and by new