Image by Lea Kobal.
Introduction
The concept of the “ruling class” has long served as a central analytical tool in the social sciences, particularly in Marxist traditions.[1] This article traces the evolution of ruling class dynamics in the U.S., focusing on key historical fissures from the Nixon era to present as I try to examine both the ideological and institutional manifestations of class power. The Trump regime has brought back contradictions within the American ruling elite, revealing deeper tensions amongst institutions with power.
In the social sciences, the term “ruling class” typically refers to the group that maintains power and influence over civil society.[2] This group, often aligned with capitalist interests, exerts control through political authority, economic capital, and cultural dominance. Throughout American history, divisions within the ruling class have surfaced at critical moments. For example, on May 1, 1970, Robert B. Semple, Jr. of The New York Times described President Nixon’s military escalation in Cambodia as a military hallucination, suggesting it was detrimental to the interests of the ruling elite.[3] In the aftermath of Nixon’s controversial and careless response to the Kent State shootings, prominent journalists such as Tom Wicker of The New York Times and James Wechsler of the New York Post further exposed fractures within the ruling class.[4] The impacts of events like these and their coverage, were not lost on the powerful.
On May 6, 1970, during a peak moment of youth-led protests, Secretary of the Interior Walter J. Hickel sent a letter to President Nixon that was later published in The New York Times. In his message, Hickel emphasized the importance of listening to young voices, stating, “if we read history, it clearly shows that youth in its protest must be heard.” The letter defended SCOPE (Student Councils on Pollution and the Environment) and holds continued relevance in the context of more recent political developments, such as President Trump’s authoritarian and fascistic posture toward university leadership and the broader tension between youth activism and government authority. Just two days later under increased pressure, Nixon addressed the media about Cambodia, which coincided with the outbreak of the Hard Hat Riots.[5]
Also in 1970, writing for Intercontinental Press, journalist and socialist commentator Joseph Hansen authored a piece titled “Social Tensions in the U.S. Strain Two-Party System.”[6] A consistent critic of the contradictions within the American capitalist class, ranging from global imperialism and Cold War policies to domestic labor unrest and the civil rights struggle — Hansen pointed to President Nixon’s overt disdain for working people as a key factor behind the stoning of his car in San Clemente. Following a series of Nixon’s notably anti-labor and anti-peace speeches, the November 2, 1970 edition of London’s Workers Press characterized his rhetoric as “a programme for Bonapartist rule,” highlighting the fears of an increasingly authoritarian governance.[7]
Hansen further argued that “the causes for the widening division in American society stem from the efforts of the ruling class to maintain the capitalist status quo in the face of revolutionary pressures on a world scale moving toward socialism.” Throughout the 1970s, the sustainability of the ruling class became a prominent topic of discussion, particularly within Marxist and leftist intellectual circles. This era, characterized by heightened political radicalism and global unrest, exposed significant fractures within the ruling elite, fissures that were frequently observed and thoroughly documented.[8]
Literature Review of the Ruling Class Topic
Göran Therborn, a prominent Swedish sociologist and Marxist theorist, is widely recognized for his influential work on social inequality, political ideology, and the critique of systemic power structures. His scholarship encompasses both theoretical and empirical analyses, with extensive writings on historical modernity, the state, and global wealth disparities. Therborn remains a key figure in contemporary Marxist social theory, as he continues to make significant contributions to the study of ideology and structural inequality.
In 1976, while writing for The Insurgent Sociologist, Therborn authored, What Does the Ruling Class Do When It Rules? Some Reflections on Different Approaches to the Study of Power in Society.[9] Therborn opens his analysis with a fundamental question: “What is the place of power in society?” This inquiry extends beyond the issue of who holds power to examine how class rule is structured and exercised within capitalist societies. He contends that traditional approaches in political science and sociology have often neglected or obscured this issue, paralleling contemporary tendencies to conflate concepts such as the united front and the popular front, thereby possibly reducing critical distinctions in political strategy.
The first school of thought he analyzed was the liberal subjectivist or pluralist view advanced by political scientist, Robert Dahl. In 1961, Dahl approached the question of power and the ruling class from this perspective, sharply contrasting with Marxist theories. His most influential work perhaps, Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City, argued against C. Wright Mills’ notions of concentrated power, or a unified or cohesive ruling class that dominated social and political life.
Therborn assesses Robert Dahl’s pluralist theory, observing that it remains largely confined within the boundaries of liberal political ideology. As he explains:
Essentially, [pluralism] has been a debate within the framework of liberal political ideology and liberal political theory, accepting the liberal conception of democracy as the starting point and then investigating whether the contemporary manifestations of liberal democracy, in the present United States or in other Western countries correspond or not to that conception.[10]
In essence, he argues that Dahl’s framework fails to adequately address the role of structural inequality, thereby limiting its considerations of the deeper dynamics of class and power.
The second perspective he advances is the economic approach that attempts to explain everything about the ruling class and the state through a reduction of economics. It presumes that capitalist economies inevitably translate into political power, which is not the case. In Political Order in Changing Societies, Therborn cited Samuel Huntington on the importance of accumulating power:
The most important political distinction among countries concerns not their form of government but their degree of government. The differences between democracy and dictatorship are less significant than the differences between countries whose politics embody consensus, community, legitimacy, organization, effectiveness, and stability, and those whose politics are deficient in these qualities.
Huntington’s reductionist work reinforced the need for a better ruling class.
After critiquing the first two prevailing perspectives, Therborn proposed a third framework for understanding the ruling class: a “structural-processual approach.” Within this model, he advocates for a more nuanced, dialectical, and historically grounded Marxist theory of class power. “By determining the relations of production,” he writes, “the Marxist analyst at the same time determines if there are classes in the given society and what classes there are, because classes in the Marxist sense are people who occupy certain positions in society as basically defined by the relations of production.” His approach seeks to define the ruling class through a rigorous analysis of power and class relations, emphasizing that the ruling class is, by definition, the exploiting class. It is one that has historically exercised dominance regardless of the ideological or economic system in place, whether capitalism, feudalism, chattel slavery, apartheid, petty commodity production, or self-subsistence farming, explained Therborn.
Throughout the 1970s, Sociologist G. William Domhoff continued and expanded upon his ideas from Who Rules America?[11] In this 1967 book, he argued that the U.S. was not a democracy in the traditional sense, but rather, as historian Lawrence Davidson has advanced, a democracy of competing interest groups, dominated by a small, cohesive ruling class.[12] In other words, a corporate capitalist class that holds the actual political power. His analysis in this period was based on empirical research, focusing on the social networks, institutions, and patterns of behavior that sustain elite power.
In his, “Social Clubs, Policy-Planning Groups, and Corporations: A Network Study of Ruling-Class Cohesiveness,” Domhoff examined how the American ruling class is not only organized but also interconnected, utilizing a range of institutions and organizations that overlap in both membership and function. [13]This approach emphasizes how elites maintain power not only through individual leaders but through networks of social, economic, and political connections. Domhoff might also help, since his work was meticulously defined, to pinpoint where ruling class dislocation resides in the current political moment.
The U.S. Ruling Class & the Trump Regime
In the April 2025 edition of Monthly Review, John Bellamy Foster explained the premise of his latest book, Trump in the White House: Tragedy and Farce with a foreword by the late, great Robert W. McChesney. His article is titled, “The U.S. Ruling Class & the Trump Regime.”[14] Foster highlights the present after explaining the initial phases of conceptualizing the ruling class and its relationship to the state and neoliberalism and the U.S. ruling class, before making important observations about the more recent neo-fascist turn. Foster contextualizes the work of Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy’s Capital Monopoly:
In the early to mid-1970s, The U.S. economy entered a deep stagnation from which it has been unable fully to recover in the half century that has followed, with economic growth rates sliding decade after decade. This constituted a structural crisis of capital as a whole — a contradiction present in all of the core capitalist countries. This long run crisis of capital accumulation resulted in the top-down neoliberal restructuring of the economy and state at every level… which eventually led to deindustrialization and de-unionization… and financialization of the world economy.
Foster is critiquing the ideological framework that has historically separated economic and political power in the U.S., when many are suggesting that this division is now crumbling. As capitalism faces deep structural crises, what Doug Henwood called an internal “rot,” the ruling class’s influence over both the economy and the state is becoming more direct, culminating in the rise of a right-wing, capitalist political order. Henwood might argue that dismantling the ruling class is a credible aim when undertaken from the left, but a very dangerous proposition when tackled from the right.
On the one hand, Trump flanked by fellow billionaires reveals that the ruling class is strong but when you see the cast of characters Trump uses to undermine apparatuses like the Washington Consensus and the Liberal World Order, ruling class rot is undoubtedly apparent. This challenge signals a shift away from the liberal-democratic ideals that once defined U.S. political life.
Further concerning the neofascist turn, Foster turns to Fred Block’s, “The Ruling Class Does Not Rule,” which contests the view that political power is held solely by a “ruling class” of wealthy elites. Instead, Block argues that power is distributed across various groups including the military, the media, and people interested in shaping policy. Block emphasizes that multiple actors and institutions influence outcomes and urges for a more nuanced grasp of domestic and global politics much like Domhoff.
Also in 2025, in the January-April edition of Current Affairs, Stephen Prager’s “The Grind Old Party” presents a vivid, biting polemic against the modern GOP’s labor policies, but he also serves a sharp commentary on fractures within the ruling class, especially among the conservative elite.[15] Prager essentially reminds the reader of how Vivek Ramaswamy’s downfall was catalyzed by a tweet. The far right had not rejected Ramaswamy’s ideas wholesale, but his H-1B stance clashed with nativist, racial and nationalist hierarchies central to Republican cult messaging.
The Ruling Class and Higher Education
As with earlier instances of ruling class fractures, college and university presidents have become increasingly politicized, often compelled to set aside their neoliberal priorities somewhat to preserve the integrity and stability of their institutions.
The recent New York Times article entitled “Trump’s Battles with Colleges Could Change American Culture for a Generation,” authored by Alan Blinder from March 20, 2025, examined the profound implications of Trump’s confrontations with higher education institutions.[16] The piece investigated how these conflicts may reshape American culture and the landscape of academia for the foreseeable future. Some of the key points of the piece included the threats to academic freedom and research, made in large part to impose ideological conformity on schools in pursuit of undermining intellectuality, and the creation of financial leverage as a political weapon. Institutions have experienced significant financial consequences as well as impacts on university sovereignty, including the cancellation of grants, the imposition of hiring freezes while showcasing an erosion of democratic values. Blinder’s analysis of the ongoing tensions between the Trump administration and higher education institutions reveals another indication of ruling class decay.
In his statement titled “The Promise of American Higher Education,” Harvard University President Alan M. Garber addressed the Trump administration’s demands and the broader implications for academic institutions.[17] He emphasized Harvard’s longtime partnership with the federal government, which has led to significant advancements in research and education. Garber rejected the administration’s proposals to audit the viewpoints of students, faculty, and staff, and to reduce the influence of individuals based on their political views. Garber simply stated that complying with Trump meant completely abandoning the school’s mission.
Reuters reported that over 100 U.S. university and college presidents have united in a joint statement condemning the Trump administration’s recent interventions in higher education. Leaders from elite institutions such as Princeton, Brown, and the University of Hawaii criticized what they termed “unprecedented government overreach,” emphasizing a willingness to engage in reforms but rejecting undue political interference.[18] The statement follows actions by the Trump administration targeting Harvard University for having a liberal bias and refusing to meet right wing demands, including freezing $2.3 billion in federal funding, and threatening its tax-exempt status and ability to enroll students from overseas.
The conservative Forbes magazine critically analyzed Trump’s proposal for the American Academy. In a November 2023 opinion piece, education policy expert Frederick Hess described the plan as “an awful idea,” highlighting several concerns. First, Hess points out how an even less robust federal government, already known for its inefficiency, would have an even harder time running parts of the Trump “conservative” policy known as Agenda47.
Just as Hickel urged Nixon to avoid treating university presidents and students with suspicion and hostility, especially during the height of the anti-Vietnam War protests, Trump is Nixon-esque when it comes to higher education, student protesting, and Gaza. The Powell Memo unites Nixon to Trump across time and space. Hickel criticized Nixon for ignoring (and taunting) the voices of young people and academic leaders, warning that dismissing their concerns would only severely deepen national divisions. The ruling class is aware how university presidents are important intermediaries in the society, and they are careful to not lose control.
Conclusion
If the state and federal governments as well as high level elite institutions were not enough examples of ruling class divide look no further than conservative pundits Bill Kristol and David Brooks. Brooks, a columnist for The New York Times, wrote an essay spread semi-ironically on social media by the left, entitled “What’s Happening Is Not Normal. America Needs an Uprising That Is Not Normal.”[19] He stated, “I’m really not a movement guy. I don’t naturally march in demonstrations or attend rallies that I’m not covering as a journalist. But this is what America needs right now. Trump is shackling the greatest institutions in American life. We have nothing to lose but our chains!”
The Trump regime has intensified historical fractures within the American ruling class. The fallout looks grim and even includes the prospects for anti-elite violence, as the current Federal Border Czar threatened to arrest Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers (D) for “impeding ICE.”[20] Further, Elon Musk’s departure from the Trump administration could indeed signal or reflect deeper fissures within the ruling class, depending upon how you interpret the power dynamics at play.
By looking at historical precedents and contemporary analyses, from Nixon-era elite dissent to modern conservative critiques and university resistance, this fragmentation reflects a broader crisis in capitalist hegemony. As neoliberal structures weaken and authoritarian tendencies rise around the world, the ruling class appears increasingly unable to maintain unity, coherence, or legitimacy in the face of systemic challenges and popular unrest.[21] The fascism of the Trump era thus serves, not as an aberration, but as a stark revelation of the evolving contradictions within the U.S. ruling class.
NOTES
1. Gaetano Mosca, The Ruling Class, 1949. ↑
2. Civil Society Commission, 2021. ↑
3. New York Times, May 1, 1970. ↑
4. New York Times, May 7, 1970. ↑
5. Wahington Post, August 14, 2020. ↑
6. Joseph Hansen, Intercontinental Press, November 16, 1970, 971-974. ↑
7. Workers Press, November 2, 1970. ↑
8. Workers Press, November 11, 1970. ↑
9. Göran Therborn, The Insurgent Sociologist, Spring 1976, 3-16. ↑
10. Göran Therborn, The Insurgent Sociologist, Spring 1976, 3-16. ↑
11. G. William Domhoff, New Directions in Power Structure Research, Spring, 1975, 173-184. ↑
12. Lawrence Davidson, Foreign Policy, Inc., ↑
13. G. William Domhoff, New Directions in Power Structure Research, Spring, 1975, 173-184. ↑
14. John Bellamy Foster, Monthly Review, April 2025, 1-22. ↑
15. Stephen Prager, Current Affairs, January-April 2025, 15-19. ↑
16. Alan Blinder, New York Times, March 20, 2025. ↑
17. Alan M. Garber, Harvard Office of the President, April 14, 2025. ↑
18. Reuters, April 22, 2025. ↑
19. New York Times, April 17, 2025. ↑
20. Gregory Svirnovskiy, Politico, May 5, 2025 ↑
21. Edward L. Glaesar, Atlantic Council, March 5, 2025. ↑
