*I think the concept of "ruling" is being defined _far_ too narrowly or rigorously by almost all the posters in this thread. To best understand the structure of a modern capitalist nation one should adapt a definition of ruling class which takes in about 5 percent of the total population. The narrower definitions of "_ruling_ class" remind me of some instances of conspiracism. Such narrow definitions also tend to utilize too mechanical a notion of class consciousness. Class consciousness need not be and (at least in some of its aspects) never is conscious.
*I gather that in terms of net wealth the top 2% and the top 0.5% make up pretty distinct groups. But I don't think that either distinction should form the boundary of the ruling class.
*It would be a really bizarre notion of ruling class which included David Rockefeller but not John D. Rockefeller III. Also their sister. Also Mrs. Dodge who on the death of her husband in 1935 took the whole 50 million fortune and invested it in municipal bonds. So there is considerable variation even within the 2% or the 0.5% boundaries. A ruling class made up only of those who actively rule would be a pretty ineffective ruling class. You even need the window dressing assholes like Donald Trump and Paris Hilton.
*The ruling class could no more be a ruling class without Happy Rockefeller and Mrs. Aldrich than one without obvious big capitalists.
*And though I think on the whole income (as opposed to wealth) should not figure in class analysis, when pay passes some point or other it ceases to be wages and becomes a share of surplus value. So most of the top corporate managers are members of the loose sloppy ruling class I am envisaging. (Some groups in the population should simply be ignored when doing class analysis because in one way or another they have been declassed: cops & prison guards are obvious examples in understanding working class; perhaps Hollywood stars & high paid athletes are examples on the other end of the pay scale.
*The concept of "ruling class" is distorted by the unconscious image of a self-conscious group issuing direct orders. Rule does not operate like that. It would not/did not operate like that under in ancient persia or in rome under the emperors. There is always a ruling class of considerable greater size and internal complexity. This image overlaps the image of power held by conspiracists.
*I rarely disagree with Jim Devine, but in this case (a) I agree with Justin's comment and (b) think that the difference is more than terminological. "Power elite" tends to blur class analysis.
*Ascribing _a_ "class interest" as opposed to "complex of knowable, known, unknowable, unknown interests" does not begin a conversation, it moves us to a realm where very little of importance can be said. It is essentially a religious concept. The proposition that the Iraq War is against "The Interest" of capital or capitalist class or of "capitalists taken as a whole" is sheer mysticism and it can't be intelligibly discussed, argued etc.
*The Iraq war, however badly planned, ill-timed, and constantly bungled, probably corresponds as nearly as anything can to a bundle of core intersts of the u.s. ruling class; its intellectuals and corporate rulers have had a pretty clear consensus for 60 years that u.s. military hegemony in the Mideast is vital. But I think this is perhaps too mechanical. A drive for military hegemony in the mideast is the shape or mode of existence of u.s. imperialism; not to strive for military hegemony in the mideast is not to be. Hence it is neither in harmony nor in contradiction to class interests but is simply part of the metabolism as it were of u.s. capital.
*It's been several decades since I read Domhoff or _Millionaires and Mannagers* (by ?), and both clearly had their limitations from a marxist perspective. If I remember correctly at all, Domhoff put a good deal of stress on implicit, nearly 'unintentional' in the sense of not planned, methods by which the ruling class rules. Clubs. Parties. Schools. The Secretaries of Defense, State, Treasury, and the Attorney General usually come from ruling class circles, and I think the concept of circles helps ust to understand the ruling class better than narrow definitions of the criteria an individual must meet or whether those circles make formal decisions about this or that. Did the circles not exist, the whole internalculture of the ruling class would be different.
*The ruling class of course exists only through what Ted would call internal relations of it and the working class, but in this post I am abstracting the class from that whole and regarding the ruling class as the whole. (This process of abstraction is what the Chinese caught up in their "One divides into two, two don't combine into one." The classic instance of it is KM's critique of the Trinity Formula.) One cannot begin with the componets of either the ruling class or of capitalism as a whole and add them up into capitalism.
*Some of the attempts to define the ruling class in this thread belong not to a fundamental understanding of the capitalist ruling class as such but are parts of the sort of analysis of the class at a particular time and place under conditions of developed class struggle. Under those conditions, for example, 'rifts' in the class that are of mere academic interest now would become crucial. And one of my few uses of the term opportunism. At the present time attempts to analyze those (potential) rifts are nearly always at the service of opportunist policy recommendations (e.g., supporting Hillary Clinton of Howard Dean or Gore in 2008). They serve the empty hope of "making alliances" with some portion of the ruling class. That can only happen when the working class (or large and important sectors of it) have become conscious in the sense of actively struggling for socialism. But at the present time distinctions among Paris Hilton, the CEO of GM, the tenured staff of the Harvard Economics department, Marshall Field IV (whose main activity if I recall correctly is on the Board of Directors of the Chicago Art Institute) are nugatory, belonging to the realm of mere journalistic or academic gossip. Only under conditions of developed struggle does the identification and analysis of the internal structure of either working class or ruling class (a) become really possible and (b) contribute to political thinking.
*Under such conditions of struggle (and for the most part only under such conditions) will the real differences and relations between (using wealth percentiles as a metaphor) the 95th through 98th percentile (smaller capitalists, lesser rentiers, regional professionals) and the upper 2 percentiles become visitle and relevant. As Mao said, if you want to know what a pear tastes like you must participate in changing the world by biting into the pear; as KM said, the point is to change the world (and thereby arrive at an interpretation of the world, which is not achievable passively).
*The different elements among the roughly 5% I have posited _do_ intermarry, and not very many of them marry outside that 5%.
Carrol