The American class system is made up of many different types of people. From the highest to the lowest and all in between, they make up the fundamental society of the United States.

The class considered to be at the top of the hierarchy is the ruling class. The core of the ruling class are the owners of the means of production (Sweezy, p. 126). More generally, these are the people who are the large property owners. There are several peripheries to the ruling class, including smaller property owners, government and business executives, professionals, and many others (Sweezy, p. 128).

The ruling class is organized hierarchically with hundreds of smaller towns and cities at the bottom and only a handful of very large cities at the top (Sweezy, p. 133). More prominent members of the ruling class are located in large cities, such as Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, and N

The special-interest process deals with the various means by which individuals and corporations get tax breaks, subsidies, and procedural rulings which benefit their short-run interests (Domhoff, p. 7). This process is discussed most often when talking about Congressional committees, regulatory agencies, and governmental departments.

If every single adult American who owns $1 million or more in corporate stock came and sat in the Rose Bowl’s 104,696 seats, the stadium would still be half empty (Zeitlin, p. 143). This tiny proportion of the population, represented by barely more than one-twentieth of one percent of adults in the United States, encompasses a fifth of all the corporate stock (Zeitlin, p. 144). If what the wealthiest one percent of the population own were to be calculated, it would show them to own a seventh of all real estate, more than half of all corporate stock, and almost all the trust assets. Summed up, one quarter of the net worth of the entire adult population is being held up by the top one percent of the population of the United States (Zeitlin, p. 145). This power elite population uses many tactics in order to protect the fortune they value so much.

ew York City. These associates possess a greater level of influence due to not only their location, but also the sheer fact that the number of ruling class citizens in large cities far surpasses those in smaller locations.

While the ideology process is influential to the government, it has more of an effect on elements of the mass media. This includes public relations firms, books, speeches, and other various efforts through the mass media (Domhoff, p. 14). As Ben Bagdikian writes in his book The Media Monopoly, “A corporation dependent on public opinion…can call upon its media subsidiaries to help in what the media are clearly able to do – influence public opinion…” (Bagdikian, p. 30). Political intervention by big business and big media is concealed under seemingly apolitical reasons. Manuscripts and proposals for books, for example are received by publishers by the thousands every year and while only a handful may be published there are some that are rejected due to the opposition to the personal politics of the owner or governing board of the publishing company (Bagdikian, p. 36).

Through the ideology process, leaders of the ruling class create, disseminate, and enforce a set of attitudes and values that

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