Classes-in-themselves become forces-for-themselves through conscious organization.

Evidence

Both are characterized by the suspension of individual-personal differences. But in the first case, this suspension causes features to come to the fore which lie, as it were, above the individual character; whereas, in the second case, those are activated which lie below. For within a mass of people in sensory contact, innumerable suggestions and nervous influences play back and forth; they deprive the individual of the calmness and autonomy of reflection and action. In a crowd, therefore, the most ephemeral incitations often grow, like avalanches, into the most disproportionate impulses, and thus appear to eliminate the higher, differentiated and critical functions of the individual. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 345 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Common sense can be worked upon to transform it into conscious class struggle; Ideological change happens through class struggle, not through ideas alone; Ideologies act on people structurally through a process that escapes them (+13 more)

Related

• Crowds arouse sub-individual instincts while organized groups transcend individuals (similarity 0.85)
• Class consciousness is a self-destroying strategic artifice, not an inalienable identity. (similarity 0.79)
• Gramscian ideology links unconscious common sense to conscious mass organization. (similarity 0.78)
• Collective strategic consciousness is necessarily self-alienating. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Crowds arouse sub-individual instincts while organized groups transcend individuals #qualifies (0.85) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 345
• Self-consciousness depends on being recognized by another consciousness #expands (0.70)
• Ideologies act on people structurally through a process that escapes them #complicates (0.65)
• Ideology masks class by fragmenting people into individuals bound as consumers and citizens #corroborates (0.60)
• A group imagining actions shifts from spectator to potential doer #expands (0.60) — Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening, 326
• Institutionalization enables collective work while codification imposes a false orthodoxy #qualifies (0.55)