As nouns the difference between plutocracy and capitalism
is that plutocracy is government by the wealthy while capitalism is a socio-economic system based on private property rights, including the private ownership of resources or capital, with economic decisions made largely through the operation of a market unregulated by the state.
plutocracy
Alternative forms
* plousiocracy
* ploutocracy
Noun
(plutocracies)
Government by the wealthy.
A controlling class of the wealthy.
Quotations
* 1933 — , Essay XXIII: ''On Industrialism
*: Modernity is not democracy; machinery is not democracy; the surrender of everything to trade and commerce is not democracy. Capitalism is not democracy; and is admittedly, by trend and savour, rather against democracy. Plutocracy by definition is not democracy. But all these modern things forced themselves into the world at about the time, or shortly after the time, when great idealists like Rousseau and Jefferson happened to have been thinking about the democratic ideal of democracy.
Synonyms
* argentocracy (nonce word)
* tycoonocracy (uncommon)
Related terms
* plutocrat
* plutocratic
* plutodemocracy
* plutonomy
capitalism
English
Noun
(politics, uncountable) a socio-economic system based on private property rights, including the private ownership of resources or capital, with economic decisions made largely through the operation of a market unregulated by the state.
(economics, uncountable) a socio-economic system based on the abstraction of resources into the form of privately owned capital, with economic decisions made largely through the operation of a market unregulated by the state.
(countable) a specific variation or implementation of either such socio-economic system.
Quotations
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