Summary Of "Social Aspects Of Mass Society" By William Kornhauser - UNIVERSITY SUMMARIES - E-book - ePub

We have summarized here the essential of this book by the author. POLITICAL ASPECTS OF MASS SOCIETY     INTRODUCTIONDemocracy is based on social pluralism and not on mass societies, but these should not be confused with modern society nor the "masses" with the working class. Totalitarianism, meanwhile, gets adherents of all classes. Mass analysis works for periods of political crisis, while class analysis works for times of political routine.
Neither should mass society be confused with industrial society, nor the working class with industrial society; and we must differentiate the mass society from the totalitarian society. Mass society creates conditions for democratic institutions to be vulnerable to totalitarianism, which is not the same thing. So that democracy is not lost, it is necessary to avoid: that the elites lose autonomy, and that the groups that are not elites have their own forms of organization, since if society is atomized, totalitarianism penetrates more easily, through charismatic leaders or matches.