From the early Republic, America has touted itself as a land without kings or nobles, however patrician the Founding Fathers might be in education, holdings and connections.

Throughout American history, the idea of dominant groups able to reproduce its control of wealth and power over generations has been a cause for alarm. Muckraking studies by Gustavus Myers and Ferdinand Lundberg and populist rhetoric decried any attempt to publicly condone the existence of an American upper class. Yet, the ability to rise to wealth is central to the American dream, whether embodied in Benjamin Franklin, John D. Rockefeller, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates or Vito Corleone. The tension between social mobility and social reproduction produces a convoluted discourse of perhaps nowhere more tortured than in describing an American upper class.

In fact, euphemisms underscore this ambivalence. Since the Second World War, for example, it has been easy to talk about “elites” in a way that conveys a synergy of expertise, intelligence or even style rather than a substrate of mere wealth; or scholars divide “political,” “economic,” “social” and “intellectual” elites as if these were parallel categories. Popular American sociology has also focused on status—and the markers of status that permeate consumerism in the late twentieth/early twenty-first century, when Gucci can be bought at outlet malls—rather than a Marxist analysis of power, which often has held sway among academics.

Such elites are also divided by race and ethnicity. Jewish, Catholic and African American elites—whether defined by political power, cultural presence or wealth—have established separate institutions, family associations and even vacation spots. While there are some indications of coalescence in government, corporations and other institutions, these families also underscore the general WASPish cast of American elites. Gender, too, has played a role—women’s positions have tended to be defined socially rather than politically or economically; not as founders or managers of wealth and power, but instead as mediators like Eleanor Roosevelt in relation to Franklin Roosevelt.

In the end, though, whether looking at tax reforms, Ivy League alumni publications or presidential politics, America has an upper class that Americans are ashamed to talk about. One way of avoiding this is through a belief in circulation of wealth—“Old Money” slowly disappears over time, “shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations.” While Puritan Boston seems distant, however, one notes that institutions like Harvard and family lines and foundations have continued over centuries. New money becomes old— Dupont, Rockefeller, Ford and Mellon—through shared political economic interests and shared social and cultural institutions. Education, marriage, patronage and foundations all mingle economic and cultural capital—one need only think of universities bearing names like Johns Hopkins (Quaker merchant), Vanderbilt (shipping), or Duke (tobacco).

This does not deny new resources, industries and opportunities—trade, oil and tobacco have given way over time to finance, computers and media. Hence, names like Gates, Annenberg, Turner, Spielberg, Trump and Eisner, among others, control resources, fame and increasing attributes of older upper classes, including roles of civic patronage, foundations and public service. Relations of power, money and celebrity in politics also underscore meshings of elites. Indeed, can upper classes be defined in national terms, given multinational corporate interests and cultural ties? Can Rupert Murdoch belong to the American upper class? His descendants? Issues from taxation to battles over government control of resources like media and computers to definitions of “approved” places, pedigrees and behaviors continue to bridge from old to new. Indeed, they suggest interesting questions that should be addressed to subsequent generations of new wealth and the reconstitution of upper classes.