Commercial mass culture was produced for, not by, the working classes.

Evidence

As critics have pointed out, these had very different sources—the latter being produced, not by working-class people themselves but by the commercial classes for the working classes; and, as Raymond Williams noted in a very early review of The Uses of Literacy , “the equation of ‘working-class culture’ with the mass commercial culture which has increasingly dominated our century” produces damaging results … Such a mutually reinforcing relationship could no longer be assumed between the working classes and the new forms of mass culture; and this is the nub of the general judgment on cultural change that the book as a whole finally offers. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 143

Categorization

• XREF: Distinguishing ‘of the people’ vs ‘from the people’ parallels debates in cultural economics about authorship and audience. — connects to: Mass production really means producing the masses, not producing massively — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 227