It does mean, however, that they are losing control of their own field, the field of art, of restricted symbolical production (Pierre Bourdieu). While in the 19th century, intellectuals managed to construct art as a proper, closed domain in which only the in-crowd was allowed to judge, they have seen this autonomy become ever more threatened by 20th-century mass society. The main factor here was not the quantitative expansion of consumption culture, nor the intrusion of commerce into the field of art through the appearance of paperbacks and book clubs.