Ruling Class - Examples

Examples

See also: Pluralism (political theory), elite theory, Marx's theory of the state, and structural Marxism

Analogous to the class of the major capitalists, other modes of production give rise to different ruling classes: under feudalism, it was the feudal lords, while under slavery, it was the slave-owners. Under the feudal society, feudal lords had power over the vassals because of their control of the fiefs. This gave them political and military power over the people. In slavery, because complete rights of the person's life belonged to the slave owner, they could and did every implementation that would help the production in the farm.

Mattei Dogan, in his recent studies on elites in contemporary societies, has argued that because of their complexity and their heterogeneity and particularly because of the social division of work and the multiple levels of stratification, there is not, or can not be, a coherent ruling class, even if in the past there were solid examples of ruling classes, like in the Russian and Ottoman Empires, and the more recent totalitarian regimes of the 20th century (communist and fascist).

Globalization theorists argue that today a transnational capitalist class has emerged.

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