Elite Theory and the Global Class Struggle

Abstract

After the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the thesis that the class age was over and, even more so, the class struggle has spread. In this essay I propose to make some considerations on the problem of what Luciano Gallino called “the class struggle from above”. The historical period taken in consideration is the one that began in the seventies of the twentieth century, as a result of a neoliberal political will. The scientific perspective adopted is connected with the elite theory, understood in a broad sense. The essay first of all attempts to clarify the advantages that such an approach could bring to a redefinition of the general question of the class struggle. Secondly, it focuses on the manners of subjectivation by the organized minorities within the “transnational capitalist class”. Thirdly, it illustrates the main forms of power exercised by the organized capitalist minorities, with particular attention to what Charles Lindblom called “structural power”. Finally, it shows how and why structural power is both cause and effect of the erosion of the “political spaces” that ordered the modern world, up to the so-called “Thirty glorious”.

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