ABSTRACT
The concept of the ruling class is not exclusively a Marxist one. It has been argued by various schools of political theory and often by those who present alternative theories to those of Marx. What distinguishes the Marxist theory of the ruling class from other theories is its identification of the dominant economic class as the ruling class. In ancient society this was the class of slave owners, in feudal society it was the feudal lords and in capitalist society the class of capitalists: the manufacturers, mine owners, land owners, merchants and bankers. Marx saw the ruling economic class as dominating all social relationships, including the ideological and the political. The state was seen as the executive committee of the ruling class, as an apparatus for generalizing the interests of the ruling class. Thus every state represented the hegemony or dictatorship of one class over other classes. The feudal state represented the dictatorship of the feudal landlords over other classes, the capitalist state represented the dictatorship of the capitalist class over the workers, peasants and other petty-bourgeois elements.
