Why is it important to know the difference between mass and class? The chances are that there can be no conscious revolutionary practice without making this distinction. We are not playing around with words. Look. We are living in a mass society. We didn't get that way by accident. The mass is a specific form of organisation. The reason is clear. Consumption is organised by the corporations. Their products define the mass. The mass is not a cliche - 'the masses' - but a routine which dominates your daily life. Understanding the structure of the mass market is the first step toward understanding what happened to the class struggle.
What is the mass? Most people think of the mass in terms of numbers - like a crowded street or stadium. But it is actually structure which determines its character. The mass is an aggregate of couples who are separate, detached and anonymous. They live in cities physically close yet socially apart. Their lives are privatised and depraved. Coca-Cola and loneliness. The social existence of the mass - its rules and regulations, the structuring of its status, roles and leadership - are organised through consumption (the mass market). They are all products of a specific social organisation. Ours.
Of course, no one sees themselves as part of the mass. it's always others who are the masses. The trouble is that it is not only the corporations which organise us into the mass. The 'movement' itself behaves as a mass and its organisers reproduce the hierarchy of the mass.
Really, how do you fight fire? With water, of course. The same goes for revolution. We don't fight the mass (market) with a mass (movement). We fight mass with class. Our aim should be not to create a mass movement but a class force.
What is a class? A class is a consciously organised social force. For example, the ruling class is conscious and acts collectively to organise not only itself, but also the people (mass) that it rules, The corporation is the self conscious collective power of the ruling class. We are not saying that class relations do not exist in the rest of society. But they remain passive so long they are shaped solely by objective conditions (i.e. work situations). What is necessary is the active (subjective) participation of the class itself. Class prejudice is not class consciousness, The class is conscious of its social existence because it seeks to organise itself. The mass is unconscious of its social existence because it is organised by Coca- Cola and IBM. The moral of the story is: the mass is a mass because it is organised as a mass. Don't be fooled by the brand name. Mass is thinking with your ass.