"Elias agreed that the question of generations was important. But to talk of generations, as did Mosse, implied that class was something static, as the registrar-general conceived ofit when he counted heads, as a statistical class at a given moment. But in fact the whole concept of class was impossible unless it was understood to cover at least three generations. It was necessary to see class as a process. But when one tried to do this, one was confronted by a curious situation. On the one hand, there was the type of sociology which tried wholly to omit class and con- flict- Parson's harmonistic sociology. On the other hand, there was a type of sociology which was marxist in tradition and used the term class. But this latter type was very crude and needed replacing by a differently shaped concept of class. Germani's concept of mobi1ization dynamized this concept of class and gave it a different shape.

…

Elias felt that class analysis needed to be extended. It was not enough to take into account the social origin of the people who belonged to the particular movement. It was also necessary to examine the intellectual tradition with which people, of whatever class, identified themselves. There was a clear distinction between a working class tradition and thought or ethos, and a middle class tradition of thought. If this was understood, it was easier to see how and why a specific type of middle class tradition of thought and ethos was connected to nationalist ideology, which was in effect a middle class ideology; and how this led to a polarization between, on the other hand, an extreme working class ethos and, on the other hand, an equally extreme middle class ethos."

source:

Stuart Joseph Woolf: Discussion - Fascism and Society, in: idem (ed.): The Nature of Fascism, New York/N.Y./USA: Vintage Books, , S. 106-107, 111