Mass (sociology)
In sociology, mass refers to a large number of people who are concentrated in a relatively small space and who communicate physically with each other or who act as a collective together . The term is often used disparagingly ("stupid masses, massing"), on the other hand, masses as social movements can also bring culturally recognized values such as justice and equality into the consciousness of public opinion or actively enforce them politically as " revolutionary masses".
The term developed in the area of tension between the mass terms discussed by social psychology and sociology by Gustave Le Bon and Gabriel Tarde at the end of the 19th century and was picked up by sociologists such as Max Weber and Émile Durkheim . In the sense of Max Weber, the mass can be viewed as a “communalized crowd”, the other way around as an “individualized crowd”.
Definitions
In colloquial terms, “crowd” is often used synonymously with “simple people”, “uneducated”, “ working class ”, or more generally for “ people ” or “ population ”. Opposite terms are then “individual”, “significant individual”, also “the educated”. The German sociologist Max Weber made a three-step distinction between “masses”, “followers” and “elites”. The sociologist Vilfredo Pareto contrasts the “mass” with the “ elite ” and “reserve elite ”, similarly Charles Wright Mills differentiates between “mass” and “power elite”.
On the other hand, a second, sociological counter-term is also the “quantity”. While crowds often have (mostly spontaneous, but sometimes also planned) hierarchies (especially in the form of leaders and ringleaders), “crowds” are unstructured, only connected in a situational manner (e.g. all passers-by in a shopping street) and, in contrast to “ Masses ”do not have to act in a closed, active and intentional way .
Gustave Le Bon, the originator of the concept of the crowd, already in 1895 in his book Psychology of the crowds, the approach to differentiate between crowd and crowd : In the crowd there is a community soul, there is a collective "contagion" of feelings (English contagion ) , both are missing in the crowd. The crowd is described as irrational, in the crowd man acts relatively sensibly, in the sense of his individualistic interests. In 1901, the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde, in his work La opinion et la Foule, also distinguished so-called “heated” communal masses from “cold” masses; It is more or less a question of two different aggregate states of a human multitude: A "cold", individualized crowd of workers, in which everyone strives for their own goals, can therefore "heat up" and, in the intoxication of feelings, become an acting mass in the service of common goals (e.g. B. Strike crowd, revolutionary crowd).
In 1960 Elias Canetti pointed out in his work Mass and Power that the “blissful element” in the masses is the feeling of common power, hence the liberation from individualized life in the sense of a “war of all against all” ( bellum omnium contra omnes ) : The crowd removes the feeling of powerlessness and fear of loneliness from the people integrated in it, which is why they are visited so much. But because the crowd is also powerful and tends to overreact in the exuberance of emotions , it is feared and avoided by those who do not belong to it.
Sociological characteristics
Mass education can be associated with behavioral inhibitions and with a temporary transgression of social norms . On the other hand, organized and structured masses can also enforce norms and counter behavioral inhibitions, such as B. a jointly acting hundred of police officers or a company of soldiers. In revolutionary situations or social struggle situations, it is typical that differently organized and structured masses clash hostile: mass and counter-mass, norm-violating and norm-maintaining masses, conflicting masses in the service of old and new norms meet and enter into struggles.
The emotional attachment in mass can release both positive emotions (especially joy, security, high spirits generate. Eg at festivals, celebrations and games), and negative emotions such as hatred, greed and aggression produce (about the lynch mob , in Hetzmob or in the fight between two warring hooligan groups). Mass moods can change very quickly, especially in heterogeneous, unstructured masses, but this effect decreases with the degree of organization and discipline of the masses.
While Gustave Le Bon's outdated mass psychology claimed that the masses are fundamentally irrational and unpredictable, uncritical and suggestible, we now know that in the masses it is very possible to act rationally and wisely in the sense of common goals, and that the masses are by no means indefinitely suggestible and is incapable of criticism - as long as the mass emotionality is still within certain limits. A well-organized and well-structured crowd can act purposefully and according to plan if their actions are preceded by planning and a more or less flat or steep hierarchy has developed.
Whether acting in the crowd follows its own rules is controversial, because there are so many different forms of the crowd and just as many occasions for their get-together: A crowd that sways to the beat of the music and indulges in the drink has a sense of community and the emotional excitement has little in common with an organized mass of war that, drunk with victory, invades a foreign country.
The crowd is capable of creating social dynamism: in the negative case, this ranges from looting to pogroms and lynching, in the positive case, however, also from a peaceful demonstration through political resistance against tyranny - to the revolutionary proclamation of a new form of society, as was the case in the French Revolution of 1789. Here, however, it was not just the masses, but the structured, more or less systematic interlocking of masses, followers and leadership that brought the revolutionary dynamism and ultimately the success.
Not necessarily but often masses are guided by self-chosen - or at least collectively recognized - leaders and sometimes seduced into acts that they would probably not commit outside the masses, as individuals . A special case of such mass leadership is when the leader knows how the clenched Community solidarity of the mass and thus their powerful self-esteem to relate to. The leader then "embodies" the crowd, their goals and values, their thinking and their emotions; He presents himself as her “highest servant” and only becomes her master through this apparent submission . This can lead to the point that the extraordinarily pronounced mutual sympathy that the members of the masses showed for one another is now more and more concentrated on the leader: the masses begin to love and glorify their leader as a lover loves the object of his desire without criticism and glorified. This creates what Max Weber wanted to understand by the term “charismatic mass leadership”. The glorification of the Führer leads to the attribution of special “ingenious”, “wonderful”, even almost “divine qualities” or “gifts of grace” that enable the Führer to lead the masses and the “blind trust” (Max Weber) that one has in set him, justify. Imaginative legends, anecdotes and rumors of the masses, but also targeted mass propaganda by the Führer and his followers, confirm and consolidate such valuable attributions. The masses begin to believe in their leader , as in a salvific figure. Blind mass obedience to the point of "death" is sometimes voluntarily shown to the Führer and, once established, demanded by him as a matter of course . Charismatic mass leadership of this extreme form, which occurs most frequently in the case of religious, military and political leadership, is favored by the messianism of the masses, a special form of the “religiosity of the masses”. (Gustave Le Bon) When strong collective emotions predominate (such as fear of death or extreme confusion) and a low level of horizontal organization, the crowd develops a desire for clarity and leadership. Their will to survive is focused on the hope of a gifted leadership, the more so the more desperate their situation appears. If their self-esteem is damaged in this way, the crowd is convinced that they can no longer free themselves from a hopeless situation on their own , they are also ready to subordinate themselves, to recognize a higher value than their own. The bearer of hope is greeted like a messiah sent by fate. Salvation from adversity seems to be within reach, joy and relief spread, gratitude is shown to those who embody the “last hope”. The Führer skillfully exploits the suggestibility of the highly emotionalized mass and strengthens his supernatural nimbus by taking up the collective hopes of the mass and presenting himself as a messiah who was sent by higher powers to fulfill a certain mission .
The complex interplay of mass hopes and leadership opportunities of the charismatized only works as long as the leadership figure proves itself: If everything fails, if the charismatized all too obviously disappoints the overwhelming hopes of the masses, the legitimacy that he had gained as a mass leader quickly becomes apparent to him withdrawn again, the crowd follows and no longer obeys him and withdraws their affection from him. The instability of charismatic mass power lies in the possibility of rapid “disenchantment of the charism” in the event of a lack of probation. For this reason, too, charismatic mass leaders often try to combine their power with rational and traditional rule, which guarantees more stability and can also help over defeats and strokes of fate that charismatic mass power could hardly survive on its own. Paradigms of such entanglements of charismatic mass leadership with the rule of a rational and traditional character can be found across history: Alexander “the Great” gives an example, as does Gaius Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte. The twentieth century brought a particularly large number of charismatic leaders to power, such as Benito Mussolini, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Josef Stalin ("the steel one"), Adolf Hitler, Mao Tse-Tung and numerous lesser-known leaders.
Aspects of man's ability to be manipulated, the willingness to subordinate, the communal "absorption" in the crowd, have come to the fore in particular in religious disputes, in wars (see Hurray patriotism ) and in the mass cult of excessive nationalism and National Socialism . Heinrich Mann provided a prosaic description of the intoxicating August experience at the outbreak of the First World War in Germany in his novel Der Untertan :
- “Hurray, shouted Diederich, because everyone was shouting it. And in the midst of a mighty thrust of people who were screaming, he suddenly came under the Brandenburg Gate . The Kaiser rode through two paces in front of him. Diederich could look into his face, into the stone seriousness and the flashing, but it blurred before his eyes, he screamed so hard. An intoxication higher and more glorious than that conveyed by the beer raised him on tiptoe, carried him through the air. He waved his hat high above everyone's head in a sphere of enthusiastic frenzy, through a sky where our extreme emotions revolve. On the horse there under the gate of the victorious marches and with trains stone and flashing rode power. "
Similar scenes, which testify to naive nationalistic enthusiasm, the willingness to subordinate and the power rush of the masses, had also occurred in France and England. In the trenches of World War I, this initial enthusiasm slowly ebbed in the face of the enormity of industrial mass extermination, but did not disappear entirely. The community feeling of the crowd lasted longer than the frenetic enthusiasm for the war at the beginning. In the third year of the war, shortly before he was torn to pieces by a grenade, a young soldier wrote in a final letter to his parents:
"I endured some things out here and I will endure even more ... Without making a move, I carried my good friend Boye to the grave yesterday and many others ... We suffered losses in the hours of devastating, exhausting artillery fire ... We can all only do this because our home lies behind us like an inexhaustible fountain of joy, strength and love.I must above all mention our people, who are almost beyond praise, such as our paramedics Whizzing around in the heaviest fire, without a word of displeasure, with a few cheeky jokes and the feeling of doing something for the comrades, that was fabulous. Hardly a complaint from the wounded, calm and insight. You can be sure there are some things out here in filth and shudder that are brighter and more luminous than many works in peace. "(" Otto Braun, Aus nachlassen Schriften ", p.174.)
Hans von Hentig, who examined the behavior of the masses in times of war, defeat and mass collapse, was repeatedly amazed by his own research results:
“The fact that wars can last so long that they can be carried on after they have long been lost is related to the deepest urges of the masses to maintain themselves in their acute state, not to disintegrate, to remain mass. This (community) feeling is sometimes so strong that one prefers to perish together with sight, instead of recognizing defeat and experiencing the collapse of one's own mass. "
Therefore, the war of the masses, which is actually an instrument for maintaining and strengthening the state to be defended by all means, is a double-edged sword. In the event of a defeat in the war, as in Russia in 1917 and in Germany in 1918, the armed war masses did not dissolve as intended, but turned into defensive, revolutionary masses who no longer directed their guns towards the opposing nation but towards the new one Enemy judged: Against the former commanders, against the officers and generals whom they had just obeyed - and against their own government, which had failed to lead them to victory. Two major European revolutions were the result, the failed German Revolution of 1918–1919 and the successful Russian Revolution of 1917. Both together provided the decisive political impetus for the emergence of World War II and the decades-long division of the world into armed, pro-socialist and anti-socialist Power blocs in the "Cold War".
Rulers or those striving to rule almost always refer to the support of the masses for their legitimation , an expected elite behavior in democracies , in socialist states, but also in plebiscite leader democracies . The Gaponade is a special maneuver for diverting mass power into pleasant, harmless political channels . Here a political leader, a party or some other group of the powerful, which is hostile to the masses , in a revolutionary situation apparently takes the side of the masses and impressively declaims to represent their goals. The actual goal of the Gaponade, however, is to destroy mass power, to gain time, to dissolve - or at least divert - the masses. The Social Democratic Party of Germany came to power in 1919 through such a gaponade: Apparently it represented the demands of the German Revolution of 1918-1919, in fact it made a secret pact with the old military and economic powers, which it allegedly sought to eliminate, and fell to the revolutionaries Crowds in the back.
In the rising Marxism the mass of the proletarians was seen as a potentially revolutionary part of society striving for emancipation and as a possible carrier of a social revolution . It was precisely the reference to the interests of the working masses that distinguished the communist movement from other historical social movements . Karl Marx wrote in 1848: “All previous movements were movements by minorities or in the interests of minorities. The proletarian movement is the independent movement of the immense majority in the interests of the immense majority. "
According to Vilfredo Pareto , however, after a successful revolution the masses themselves never take control , but always a “reserve elite” or the revolutionary avant-garde that has brought the masses on their side and instrumentalized it. So changed z. For example, the “dictatorship of the proletariat”, which Marxist-style authoritarian socialism aspired to, all too often turns into a dictatorship over the proletariat: in this context the once highly praised revolutionary masses almost always became a “reactionary” enemy controlled by “foreign powers “Reinterpreted when it turned against the socialist nomenklatura in a new formation in order to assert its legitimate interests.
Causes of mass formation
Mass integration can be fun and create wellbeing . Therefore, a positive cause of mass formation lies in the desire to improve one's own feelings, to “experience something different”, to belong, to be there, to feel alive, to feel joy with others and to act out. In the crowd, the individual boundaries that determine everyday life and that separate people from one another are disappearing. The principles of a competitive trading company such as "One man's joy, another's sorrow", "One man's gain, another man's loss" do not apply to the masses, because the masses are alien to business and anti-individualistic. Life in the crowd is not a zero-sum game, it is more about experiencing success together, acting together, contributing to the well-being of everyone together.
People in the crowd have the opportunity to feel close to other people, actually strangers, without feeling hostility, competition, fear, distrust or aversion. Festivities give the opportunity to do so, as do sporting mass events that the masses attend or in which they are actively involved. It is not the desire to necessarily belong to the winners, but the principle of “being there is everything!” That is decisive. No real football fan changes clubs just because they are relegated to the second division, they stick together, even if the catastrophic defeat is there:
“You will never walk allone!” - this football anthem emphasizes the crucial.
On the other hand, there are existentially threatening, negative events that lead to mass formation. Social crises, religious disputes, inflation , famine , epidemics or military conflicts (including prisoner or refugee camps) often indirectly generate mass action - and at best promote the independent organization of the masses: because sometimes common mass reason can gain in importance compared to irrational mass emotions . One thinks of the organization of the masses in the form of plenaries, council systems, popular and army assemblies (e.g. in the republican Roman Empire , in Hellenic Greece).
With Jean Jaques Rousseau, who examined mass formations in the ancient Roman republic in his Enlightenment writings, the mass (multitudo) is even the sovereign who “sleeps” as long as there is rule and “awakens to new life” when the people go to the ballot box and is looking for a new government. According to him, mass events are always expressions of popular sovereignty, so the cause of mass formation lies in the desire of people to determine their own fate.
The famous enlightener attached importance to the statement that the relationship between rulers and ruled always contains hostility in a certain way and a deep feeling of mistrust and hostility is present here as well: When the masses awaken from their slumber, “the sovereign appears “The rulers in their impressive, manifested power, fear and panic often arise in government circles - police and military operations are a frequent defensive reaction.
Jean Jaques Rousseau judged astutely: The masses actually have a strong tendency to embody popular sovereignty and are mostly aware of this when they are constituted. (“We are the people!”) That is why the governments of all countries watch with eagle eyes and great skepticism mass events and mass organizations, which tend to escape their control. If anti-government forces succeed in a crisis situation in mobilizing concentrated mass power, for example in the form of a well-organized general strike or large-scale demonstrations across the country , the legitimacy of government action - which in representative democracies claims to be in the service of the majority - is obviously in Question; because the majority of the dissatisfied make it clear that they do not feel represented by the government.
In general, an important cause of mass action - and incidentally also for the charismatic phenomena mentioned above - is that crises cannot seem to be overcome by the tried and tested emergency measures that have usually helped to alleviate the hardship. (E.g. in the case of a devastating global economic crisis) In such extraordinary crisis situations, society can reach the brink of panic. The "grande peur" (Michel Vovelle), the great fear spreads in such times of need within the individualized crowd. The individual then typically seeks security, security and solidarity in the collective of the masses.
The historical appearance of people as masses is not just a phenomenon of the modern age , mass formations have existed since people lived together in larger groups above the clan. (in the tribe, clan, people) The difference between a traditional mass and a modern mass is that the modern urban mass, due to its relative anonymity, invites uninhibited, irresponsible action more than a traditional mass, in which almost everyone tends to invite everyone knows.
Elias Canetti ascribes the important processes of community involvement and development of power, the exercise of power and discharge to the masses . The human being in the crowd is suddenly able, thanks to his mass integration, to turn around the "sting of suffering" that once happened to him when he was weak and helpless and to let others suffer. The masses in this sense are vengeful and cruel when they punish the former rulers who are now defenseless at their feet. (The pioneers of the French Revolution, for example, carried the heads of their enemies impaled on pikes in a triumphal procession through the streets of Paris.)
Theodor W. Adorno criticized the industrially produced "mass entertainment" with his catchphrase of the " culture industry ". He sees an essential motivation for the “mass media” driven by the cultural industry in the ideological alignment of individuals with obedient consumers and subjects. Sociologically, however, it cannot be confirmed that the use of mass media automatically creates “mass obedience” and “conformity”, nor that the use of mass media always contributes to the communalization of the crowd within the mass. Mass media can certainly contribute to the massing; they can also help to dissolve masses into masses and to divide society. The smashing of government-critical, social mass movements by a concentrated, targeted and hostile media world, as we find it in 2018 in Turkey and the Russian Federation, can serve as an example for both processes.
For a long time, the scientific consideration of the masses suffered from the influences of speculative psychology a la Gustave Le Bon or Sigmund Freud and their numerous epigones. The mass psychology in this sense misunderstood the social and not purely psychological character of mass formations and blindly denied the essential part of the mass: the social formation.
Modern mass sociology is a socially extraordinarily significant sub-sociology in development that must strive to refute judgmental and prejudiced stereotypes of the masses as enthroned by mass psychology. An appropriation of mass sociology by politics, regardless of form and content, is to be rejected and to be combated with all scientific means. This can be taken for granted. In fact, however, mass sociology (around the 1920s) and mass psychology (throughout the twentieth century) were often misused as compliant political tools - and both could be misused. Sometimes, based on pseudoscientific findings, fear of the "destructive, irrational and irresponsible" masses was stoked and warned of the immensely pernicious effects of "mass democracies", sometimes the masses were glorified as the originators of everything good and valuable. (Proletarian masses under socialism, military masses under aggressive nationalism and National Socialism)
In fact, masses as well as groups, figurations, networks or even communities and societies are to be viewed completely free of value judgments - otherwise one does not do them justice. For this it is and will be necessary to further develop mass sociology theoretically and to support it empirically and systematically. There is still a lot to be achieved here and some who set out to do it will not, quite unjustly, still feel that they are pioneers . This remains to be said in conclusion, even if a lot has already been achieved in the field of mass sociology.
Types of crowds
- Directed mass
The crowd has common goals for action that are clear to every member of the crowd. (e.g. demonstration mass)
- Hate speech
- The masses specifically strive to persecute, harm or physically destroy the enemy.
Mass of war
The war mass is the disciplined, highly organized armed mass according to rank and division of labor, which can survive for years. Here there is an esprit de corps and a comradely solidarity, but this is broken by the vertical principle of organization and rule. (See above)
Revolutionary crowd
The revolutionary mass is an armed, self-confident reversal mass that strives for radical far-reaching change in social conditions.
Solidarity, cooperative society, alienation from domination but also a sense of purpose and determination characterize the mentality of the revolutionary masses.
- Escape mass
- In moments of panic, the escape mass does not react sensibly, but reacts headlessly, the individual in it follows the multiplicity, regardless of whether it can escape the emergency situation or runs into its misfortune. According to Elias Canetti, the refugee mass is a mass that gradually disintegrates into a multitude of individuals who act with disagreement. (Example: the disintegration of the Napoleonic army on its retreat from Russia.)
- Prohibited measures
- The rebellion against discrimination and oppression creates a mass of prohibition. The prohibition mass is in the service of the insubordination of an existing order that is no longer recognized as legitimate.
- Reverse mass
- A previously oppressed crowd is called a reverse mass if it acts collectively against its oppressors in order to reverse the situation and gain power itself (also revolutionary mass, revolting mass)
Double mass
Two crowds of fans facing each other; Two army clashes; Organized order against the revolutionary masses, etc., it is crucial that both masses define themselves not only by themselves, but also by their mutual opposition to the other masses.
Organized and unorganized (spontaneous) mass
For example, army masses and organized revolutionary masses on the one hand, a loose party or festival mass on the other (differences in structure, leadership, ranks are evident).
Heterogeneous and homogeneous masses
The former are mixed with regard to different categories such as age, gender, origin, status, etc., the latter only include people with certain characteristics. (e.g. only women, only young people, only leftists, only Germans, only Muslims, only members of the lower class, only homosexuals, etc.).
Latent and concrete mass
If habitually and regularly meeting concrete masses dissolve physically, they are psychologically and socially latent, insofar as members of these masses are still meaningful and emotional , in their thinking and feeling, as in their actions and behavior from the mass mentality, from goals, Let the collective's ideas and images be determined. The revolutionary remains revolutionary, even if he is separated from the revolutionary masses in prison. Football fans feel they are part of a bigger whole, a we, even if they drive their vehicle home alone after the game. Even the fanatical Pegida supporter remains part of an anti-Muslim mass movement, even if he only feeds his goldfish. One thinks: the "fermentation" of the latent masses was an invisible but present prelude to numerous historical uprisings and revolutions.
literature
General:
- Gustave Le Bon : Psychology of the Masses . 1895 (masses are uncritical and unprincipled, therefore easily steerable and retuned, are steered not by reason but by images such as sensations or scandals, then able to achieve their goals with the greatest passion and violence; Le Bon was a co-founder of the so-called " Mass Psychology "and opponents of democracy and socialism).
- Gabriel Tarde : L'opinion et la Foule. Paris 1901 (determination of the imitation character of the masses, without ingenuity and own ideas, they follow the "laws of imitation" with dull uniformity).
- Sigmund Freud : mass psychology and ego analysis . 1921 (mass formation as a form of narcissistic projection of the individual onto a fatherly leader figure as a collective ego ideal and associated with states such as infatuation and hypnosis; the masses are in love with their leaders and with themselves, know no self-criticism and allow criticism of theirs Leaders not too).
- Max Weber : Economy and Society . 1921–1922 Tübingen, 1972 (adopted the terms mass and mass communalization in sociology, but also allowed the mass to act meaningfully related to one another).
- Theodor Geiger : The crowd and their action. 1926 (sociological conception based on Max Weber, especially of the “revolutionary mass”).
- Siegfried Kracauer : The ornament of the mass. 1927 (the mass as a setback of modern rationality into mythical consciousness).
- José Ortega y Gasset : The revolt of the masses . 1930 (original: La Rebellion de las Masas , 1929. The author was close to the Spanish clerical fascists).
- Hermann Broch : Theory of mass delusions. 1948 (published posthumously 1979) (need of the masses for total satisfaction, relief and unambiguity, is expressed, inter alia, in messianism and in the glorification of the leader ).
- David Riesman : The lonely crowd. 1950 (original: The Lonely Crowd ) (simultaneous mixing and isolation of people in modern media society).
- Carl Gustav Jung : Present and Future , 1957.
- Elias Canetti : Mass and Power . 1960 (transcultural study on the nature of the masses as a power context; the masses liberate the individual from their individual powerlessness; the motive of mass integration is the urge to self-preservation, often also a need for revenge resulting from injustice suffered).
Investigations on mass phenomena and the like a .:
- Walter Hagemann: On the myth of the crowd. Heidelberg 1951.
- Serge Moscovici: The Age of the Masses. Frankfurt 1986.
- Sidonia Blättler: The Mob - The masses in the political philosophy of the 19th century. Berlin 1995.
- Hans Jochen Gamm: Leadership and Seduction. Munich 1965.
- Hans von Hentig: The vanquished - psychology of the masses on the retreat. Munich 1966.
- Klaus Beyme: Empirical Revolution Research. Opladen 1973.
- Albrecht Tyrell: Führer, befallen! - Testimonials from the time of the NSDAP's struggle Düsseldorf 1969.
- Werner Reichelt: The brown gospel - Hitler and the Nazi liturgy. Wuppertal 1990.
- Wilhelm Kornhauser: The Politics of Mass Society. Glencoe, Ill. 1959.
- Andrea Jäger, Gerd Antos, Malcolm H. Dunn (Eds.): Masse Mensch. The we - linguistically asserted, aesthetically staged. 2006.
- Wilhelm Reich : mass psychology of fascism. 1933.
- Angelika Schade: preliminary studies of a sociology of the masses. Frankfurt 1992.
- Paul Reiwald: From the spirit of the masses. Zurich 1946.
- Volkwin Marg (Hrsg.): Choreography of the masses - In sport. In the stadium. Intoxicated. Berlin 2012.
- Wilhelm Josef Revers : Personality and Measurement . Wuerzburg 1947.
Web links
- Harald Martenstein : Mainstream: The pull of the crowd. In: Zeit Online. November 14, 2011, accessed July 5, 2018.
- Stefanie Middendorf: "Mass". In: Docupedia contemporary history . November 5, 2013 ( doi : 10.14765 / zzf.dok.2.32.v1 ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gustave Le Bon : Psychology of the masses . 1895, p. 7 ff.
- ↑ See M. Günther, "Masse und Charisma", p. 240ff
- ↑ Hans v. Hentig, "Die Besiegten", p. 41
- ↑ See Sebastian Haffner, “Der Verrat. Germany 1918–1919 ”, in total.
- ^ Karl Marx / Friedrich Engels : Manifesto of the Communist Party , in MEW 4, p. 472.
- ↑ Vilfredo Pareto : Trattato di sociologia generale , 1916, German 1955: General Sociology .
- ^ See: the Hungarian uprising of 1956.
- ^ Rousseau's works in six volumes, vol. 3, p. 156
- ↑ Elias Canetti, “Mass and Power”, p. 156
- ↑ In this sense, as early as 1922 Ferdinand Tönnies in his Critique of Public Opinion (Vol. 14 of the Ferdinand Tönnies Complete Edition , Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2002).
- ↑ The last four terms according to Elias Canetti mass and power (Fischer TB, July 1980, pp. 49, 54, 57 and 60).