Mosca, Gaetano

(1858-1941)

An Italian political theorist and proponent of the theory of élite domination. In his most famous book The Ruling Class (1896), he argued that there are inevitably two classes of people, the rulers and the ruled. The former is a highly stable, privileged stratum, which enjoys wealth, power, and honour. In other words, he criticized Marxists who failed to explain the persistence of dominance, and liberals who assumed that the transition to industrial society would lead to the demise of rule by an élite separated from the masses.

While the ruling class may become heterogeneous as a result of increased social mobility and élite circulation, nevertheless, for Mosca it remains oligarchical. Even in communist societies, there is an organizational need for leadership, and in consequence élite dominance. Like Robert Michels , Mosca believed that liberal democracy was a sham, and its ideals could not be realized. It merely hides the inevitability of domination by the ruling élite. Mosca was particularly critical of the symbolic role of political leaders who convinced the masses to support them by means of various ‘political formulae’. Such self-justification perpetuates élite dominance. That said, he later acknowledged that industrial society consists of multiple social forces, at least some of which the ruling class must try to assimilate. These societies are not entirely closed where a range of interests must be accommodated: this hinders the development of an overly centralized bureaucracy. Mosca's theory has been difficult to substantiate-not least because his definition of the ruling class is rather vague (see, Pareto and Mosca, 1965). See also élite theory.