In previous
modes of production, such as
feudalism (inheritable property and rights), the feudal lords of the manor were the ruling class; in an economy based upon
chattel slavery, the slave owners were the ruling class. The political economy of the
feudal system gave socio-economic and legal power to the feudal lord over the life, labour, and property of the
vassal, including military service. The political economy of a slave state gave the slaver socio-economic and legal power over the person, labour, and property of a slave. In
Marxist philosophy, the
capitalist society has two dominant social classes: (i) the ruling-class
bourgeoisie (capitalist class) who own the means of production as
private property; and (ii) the working-class
proletariat whom the bourgeoisie subject to the
exploitation of labour, which form of
political economy is justified by the
dominant ideology of the ruling class. The ultimate goal of this worker's state is the abolition of classes and thus of class rule itself. In the political economies of the former
Marxist-Leninist states, the
nomenklatura replaced the capitalist ruling class and control the means of production, allocate resources, etc for the society, per the directions of the party. They were the administrators of the
bureaucracy that executed the socio-economic functions of the state. The sociologist
C. Wright Mills identified and distinguished between the ruling class and the
power elite who make the decisions for modern capitalist societies. Likewise, to establish a society without social classes,
anarchism seeks to abolish the ruling class. Unlike the Marxist perspective, anarchists, such as
Mikhail Bakunin, seek to abolish the
state, because, anarchists believe despite revolutionary change, the (capitalist) ruling class would be replaced by another ruling class (party leaders), which is a political cycle that voids the social-change purpose of a
revolution. Questioning the existence of a functional ruling class in 21st-century societies,
Mattei Dogan proposes that the political and socio-economic
elites do not form a cohesive ruling class within their societies because of the
social stratification and the narrow specialisation of labour consequent to the globalization of the world economy. In contrast, for the 20th century, he identifies the combination of military defeat, political implosion and the presence of a charismatic leader as the drivers for the downfall of ruling classes in the
Russian Empire, the
Ottoman Empire, and later for the creation of
Vichy France. == See also ==