ture of thismysterious mass.Hislater references to formless multitudesmore
specificallypresent the mass asaphenomenon of disintegration and decline.
To what degree the masses always serveasastand-in for the proletariat is con-
firmed by definitions of the proletariat as boththe“human material of the social
entity of the mass”and“the multitude unified, the quantity transformed into a
subject.”²³Later distinctions introducedbyGeiger between the proletariat as
such (i.e., as an oppressed, excluded class), the organized workingclass (i.e.,
in the form of unions and parties), and the insurrectionist,terroristic, proletarian
masses(i.e., the communists) do not substantiallychangethe overwhelmingas-
sociation of the masses with the destructive (rather than constructive)forces of
social change.
The function of the modernmassesasastand-in for therevolutionary work-
ing class resonates even in Geiger’sdescription of mass phenomena that involve
different social classes. He pays close attentionto various kinds of multitudes,
from the spatial accumulation of large numbers of people asaudiences, crowds,
swarms,and mobs to their long-term organization involuntary associationsand
political parties. And he is acutelyaware of the close bonds forgedthrough what
he calls I-youand we-you relationships.At the sametime, his conceptualization
of the massesremains haunted byapolitics of public anger andresentment al-
ways threateningtoexplode in violence. His preoccupation with classifying
massesbased on composition, duration, and behavioronlyhighlights his unwill-
ingnessto address the underlying structural causes and effects. In trying to rec-
oncile these two sides in his argument,Geiger repeatedlyrefersto the centrality
of emotions in the making of proletarian identifications. LikevonStein and Som-
bart,hedescribes formative experiences that fuel the desire of the masses to put
an end to end their suffering.This transformative potential not onlyestablishes
resistanceand opposition as the organizingprinciples of mass formation, but
also indirectlyconfirms destruction as the onlylegitimate position of negation
through which the proletarian masses, placing themselvesoutside existing social
forms, can imagineanew kind of community for themselves.
To conclude, the masses in the nineteenth century emergedasacentral pre-
occupation of the social sciences inresponsetothe rise of modern democracies
and nation-states.FromLeBon’ssociological reflections on the soul of the mass-
es to Freud’spsychoanalytic theories of group identificationto Peuckert’sethno-
graphic studies on the emotional life of the proletariat,wecan identifyanumber
of recurringthemes: the characterization of the masses as dangerous and irra-
tional,their description as feminineand feminizing, and their denunciation as
Geiger,DieMasse und ihreAktion,40and 41.
The Threatofthe Proletariat and the Discourseofthe Masses 47