ABSTRACT
This chapter pursues a different approach and examines the following principal lines of thought, their origins, epistemological strains, and influential ideas in the search for a theory of class: Pluralism, Instrumentalism, Structuralism, Criticalism, and Statism and class struggle. Political scientists generally allude to the pluralist character of Anglo-American politics. Several positions are evident among pluralists. One, often called an elitist theory of democracy, distinguishes between rulers and ruled but emphasizes changes in elite membership over time; Vilfredo Pareto called this a theory of circulating elites, and Gaetano Mosca's theory of ruling classes was similar. Although Mosca opposed Marxism and socialism, he also opposed democratic theory, which promised rule by the masses. Bourgeois conceptions of state, bureaucracy, and party, for example, may result in some of the misplaced emphasis on elite position that runs through the instrumentalist school, or they may result in the rigid categories of structure and institution that reveal the shortcomings of the structuralist school.
