WordNet
n. the class of people exerting power or authority
Wikipedia
A ruling class is the social class of a given society that decides upon and sets that society's political agenda by mandating that there is one such particular class in the given society, and then appointing itself as that class.
The sociologist C. Wright Mills (1916-1962), argued that the ruling class differs from the power elite. The latter simply refers to the small group of people with the most political power. Many of them are politicians, hired political managers, and military leaders. A common term used to refer to people who directly influence politics, education, and government with the use of wealth or power is the ruling class. In terms of Marxism the "ruling class" is typically seen as the Bourgeoisie.
Usage examples of "ruling class".
Britain may be fascized from without or as a result of some internal revolution, but the old ruling class can't, in my opinion, produce a genuine totalitarianism of their own.
And here it becomes evident that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an overriding law.
Herrenmann Ulf Reichstein-Markham muttered to himself, in the hybrid German-Danish-Bali-Dutch tongue spoken by the ruling class of Wunderland.
The inwardly precarious but outwardly splendid imperialism of the British ruling class in India, and the extensive and profitable possessions of the Dutch in the East Indies, filled the rival Great Powers with dreams of similar glories in Persia, in the disintegrating Ottoman Empire, and in Further India, China and Japan.
At the time, serious thought was given to prosecuting her, but the ruling class was equivocal about treason.
It supports a ruling class that lives as ruling classes have lived in all times while, beneath them, a semihuman mass of semislaves exists on the leavings.