SOURCE: An introduction to The Ruling Class: Elementi d Scienza Politica by Gaetano Mosca, translated by Hannah D. Kahn, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1939, pp. ix-xxxvi.

In the following introduction to Mosca's The Ruling Class, Livingston provides an overview of Mosca's theory of elites.

I. Taine and Mosca: the Teorica

Gaetano Mosca's theory of the ruling class was evolved in its first form during the years 1878-1881, while Mosca was a student under Angelo Messedaglia at the University of Palermo. It occurred to him at that time to generalize the method which Taine had used in the Ancien régime. There, it will be remembered, Taine sought the origins of the French Revolution in the decadence of the groups of people that had ruled France during the golden age of the old monarchy, a class which he considered and analyzed under three headings, the crown, the clergy and the...