Volume 9, Number 12 · January 4, 1968
Who's Running This Show?
By Robert L. Heilbroner
Who Rules America?
by G. William Domhoff
Prentice Hall, 184 pp., $4.95
The Power Structure
by Arnold M. Rose
Oxford, 506 pp., $8.50
Is there an American upper class? Of course there is, although the admission may go against the American grain. (It is interesting to reflect that the only other country with as much difficulty in admitting to a class structure is the Soviet Union.) But is the American upper class a ruling class? That is, does it, by virtue of its social and economic position, also hold the reins of political power? That is a more difficult problem, for it is possible to contend that power in America is exercised not by a class but by various elites who may not be members of a superior class, and whose allegiance to or alliance with it may be temporary or subject to change. It is over this question that the two books under review differ sharply. G. William Domhoff argues in Who Rules America? that the upper class is a governing class; Arnold M. Rose maintains, in The Power Structure, that this is not the way power is exercised at all.
Review, 2925 words
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