The Intellectuals and the Masses

Abstract

John Carey’s populist broadside, The Intellectuals and the Masses, related M-O to his central thesis in no uncertain terms:

Eliminating the humanity of the masses can also be effected by converting them into scientific specimens. This was the enterprise undertaken in the 1930s by Mass-Observation. Tom Harrisson … and his team of middle-class observers based themselves in Bolton (’Worktown’ in Mass-Observation code) and mingled with the natives, collecting data on local customs … Observers were instructed to use an impersonal notation when identifying human specimens. The formula ‘M 45 D’, for example, meant a man of about forty-five who looked or sounded unskilled working class (Category D).

Amateurish and innoccnt as Mass-Observation now seems, its employment of a scientific model for the purpose of segregating and degrading the mass had a sinister counterpart in the assimilation of the masses to bacteria and bacilli (25).