Kornhauser, like other postwar mass society theorists, tried to specify the social conditions that sustain liberal democratic institutions (Kornhauser 7). He looked for the source of strength and the weaknesses in democratic political systems, looking for social structure. His central argument was that, since society is a mass society, it will be vulnerable to political movements which are destructive to liberal democratic institutions. Kornhauser defined a mass society as a society in which a mass of individuals are related to each other only through their relationship to a common authority, such as the state. They are not related to each other in smaller, independent groups (Kornhauser 60).
Kornhauser believed that for mankind to remain civilized, or to become civilized if they were not already, they must develop the art of associating together and improve as their conditions of equality improved. He believed that participation in civil society associations would help counter the alienation engendered by modernity. He believed that the Western public felt rootless, having been ripped from their traditional moorings by liberalism and capitalism, and they were searching for ways of belonging to something. This left them open to the persuasion of totalitarian movements. To counter these trends, civil society could help by providing an alternative set of linkages and communal bonds. As the public became released from the traditional bonds placed on them by social ties and mores, civil society activity helped to maintain order and keep them in check. Without the multiplicity of independent and often conflicting forms of association society usually had to hold it in control, people lacked the resources to restrain their own behavior. They developed feelings of dissociation and alienation and anxiety, which lead people to engage in extreme forms of behavior. Participation in civil society associations fostered the necessa...