Consider what old-fashioned Marxists used to dub ‘the ruling class’.

In a loose and imprecise sense what they meant were the people who occupied the pinnacle places in society, the top politicians, bureaucrats, corporate elites, media barons, university chieftains, top scientists and medicos, the legal establishment, that sort of thing. Of course a great irony of ‘Marxism in action’ was that the new ruling class under communism was far more disdainful of the views of regular people and more invested with a condescending, self-interested noblesse oblige attitude than was the case with the elites they overthrew.