Contemporary elites use the idea of freedom to confuse, mislead, and rationalize their power over large numbers of the world's people. Today's ruling class of big capitalists ensures that few of us learn much about their sources of wealth, power, and control. Elite rule has depended upon a widespread lack of freedom for non-elites, whose life-chances are circumscribed by elite power. This book is an enquiry into the origins and development of elite rule from its beginnings, through antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the development of capitalism in the early modern period. Still operative today are components or by-products of earlier elite class rule: religion, patriarchy, wars for empire, the enemy ""Other,"" and opposition movements like democracy. This volume traces these trends and countertrends, and explores their development as elites struggled to maintain their power against slave, peasant, and working class opposition.