plutocracy
/pluːˈtɒkrəsi
/noun (plural plutocracies) [mass noun]
1Government by the wealthy: the attack on the Bank of England was a gesture against the very symbol of plutocracy...
- It would replace democracy with plutocracy, letting the wealthy and big business make laws in their own interests.
- The danger is that plutocracy will prevail over democracy, that the free market will rule over the free citizen.
- Anti-immigrant hatred, urban violence, democracy subverted by plutocracy - these are not, the film shows, new developments.
1.1 [count noun] A state or society governed by the wealthy: no one can accept public policies which turn a democracy into a plutocracy...
- Today, more than ever, it resembles a plutocracy, a society governed by a handful of enormously wealthy individuals.
- The country today is a plutocracy, a society run in the interests of billionaires and millionaires.
- It is a plutocracy, not a democracy.
1.2 [count noun] An elite or ruling class whose power derives from their wealth: officials were drawn from the new plutocracy...
- Right now we have a small elite plutocracy and a whole lot of peasants - no wonder the current system is rotting from the inside. No free society can exist without a strong middle class.
- In the end, the financial plutocracy handpicked the president.
- A century ago the city was a playground for the New York plutocracy.
Derivatives
plutocratic
- Democratic trade unions are more representative of society than the plutocratic command structures of private corporations.
- Others married into the financial wealth of the City of London, allying the status of land with the new plutocratic wealth of finance.
- And when we consider the nation's current plutocratic and imperial trajectory, the prospects grow even more dim.
plutocratically
- The only yachts permitted into the marina are those belonging to guests or the island's owner, a billionaire German industrialist so plutocratically wealthy and security-minded that he demands complete anonymity.
- Indeed, especially when the new millennium arrived, it became clear that the Empire builders took great strides towards playing the role of plutocratically organized dictators in a not yet quite solidified globalizing Empire.
Origin
Mid 17th century: from Greek ploutokratia, from ploutos 'wealth' + kratos 'strength, authority'.