Extending the public sphere made bourgeois theorists brand the people a fickle mass

Evidence

The `dialectic of the public sphere’, however, in reality turned out to be different from the one that Marx maintained merely showed the world what it was that it was fighting for. The public sphere had extended itself, but had thereby also become a battefield for competing interests which only diverged further and further from the ideal of using debate as a non-violent method of determining what was practically necessary for the general interest. Whenever the public sphere extended itself and included non-bourgeois social strata, the theorists of the bourgeoisie either disparaged the broader public as a mass which was dominated by momentary passions and incapable of identifying what was rational and true; or they redefined the public sphere as consisting of an experienced and responsible élite. Above all, however, the broader public sphere was deprived of power and had its function altered as much as possible, making it all the more, or confirming it as, what it was accused of being: immature, vacillating and impatient. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2370

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The bourgeoisie expropriated popular culture to legitimize its rule; Marx held that non-bourgeois strata could turn the bourgeois public sphere against its creators — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2367; Negt and Kluge oppose the bourgeois public sphere with a proletarian counter-sphere — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2758 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• The bourgeoisie expropriated popular culture to legitimize its rule #expands (0.80)
• Marx held that non-bourgeois strata could turn the bourgeois public sphere against its creators #responds-to (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2367
• Negt and Kluge oppose the bourgeois public sphere with a proletarian counter-sphere #responds-to (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2758
• Digital media seemed to finally fulfill the bourgeois public sphere’s equality claim #expands (0.75) — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 34