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They Rule aims to provide a glimpse of some of the relationships of the US ruling class. It takes as its focus the boards of some of the most powerful U.S. companies, which share many of the same directors. Some individuals sit on 5, 6 or 7 of the top 500 companies. It allows users to browse through these interlocking directories and run searches on the boards and companies. A user can save a map of connections complete with their annotations and email links to these maps to others. They Rule is a starting point for research about these powerful individuals and corporations.

A few companies control much of the economy and oligopolies exert control in nearly every sector of the economy. The people who head up these companies swap on and off the boards from one company to another, and in and out of government committees and positions. These people run the most powerful institutions on the planet, and we have almost no say in who they are. This is not a conspiracy. They are proud to rule. And yet these connections of power are not always visible to the public eye.

Karl Marx once called this ruling class a 'band of hostile brothers.' They stand against each other in the competitve struggle for the continued accumulation of their capital, but they stand together as a family supporting their interests in perpetuating the profit system as whole. Protecting this system can require the cover of a 'legitimate' force - and this is the role that is played by the state. An understanding of this system can not be gleaned from looking at the inter-personal relations of this class alone, but rather how they stand in relation to other classes in society. Hopefully They Rule will raise larger questions about the structure of our society and in whose benefit it is run.

Erstellt Maps zu Personen, Firmen, Institutionen usw. und lässt in interaktiven Grafiken anschaulichen werden, wer im Empire wie mitmischt: Hardt und Negri sprechen in ihrem Buch 'Empire' von einer dreischichtigen Struktur des globalen Zusammenhangs von Herrschaft. Die oberste Schicht (unified global command) besteht aus der Supermacht USA, einer ausgewählten Gruppe von Nationalstaaten (G7), verschiedenen 'Clubs' wie dem Pariser oder Londoner Club, dem World Economic Forum in Davos sowie einem vielfältigen Netz weiterer (informeller) Vereinigungen (heterogeneous set of associations). Die mittlere Schicht (network of international capitalist corporations) wird bestimmt durch die transnationalen Konzerne: sie organisieren die Kapitalflüsse, technologische Entwicklungen und Bevölkerungsbewegungen; die Konzerne 'teilen' sich diese Aufgaben mit einer größeren Gruppe von Nationalstaaten (general set of sovereign nation states) sowie vielfältigen lokalen und regionalen Organisationen. Die unterste Schicht des globalen Herrschaftszusammenhangs bilden die 'Mechanismen der Repräsentation' der Interessen des 'globalen Volkes', der 'Multitude': die politischen (parlamentarischen) Systeme der Nationalstaaten, die Vereinten Nationen, Nichtregierungsorganisationen und vielfältige Basisbewegungen, Initiativen usw.