plutodemocracy

plutodemocracy

English

WOTD – 12 February 2012

Etymology

Blend of plutocracy +‎ democracy

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˌplutoʊdɪˈmɒkɹəsi/

• (file)

  Audio (US, Northern California)

Noun

plutodemocracy (plural plutodemocracies)

1. (politics) A deceptive pseudodemocratic government that is in fact a hypercapitalist plutocracy.
   • 1974, Maurice Duverger, Modern democracies: economic power versus political power, link

     The old ruling classes were no longer the major obstacles to the development of plutodemocracy; they were replaced by the new oppressed class, the proletariat, which was beginning to become sufficiently powerful to threaten capitalism.

   • 1977, Harold Joseph Laski, The American democracy: a commentary and an interpretation, link

     It can no more survive as a plutodemocracy than it could, before the Civil War, survive half slave and half free.

   • 1992, Asahi Shinbunsha, Japan quarterly: Volume 39; Volume 39, link

     If the people are the basis of money politics, then Japan must be a plutodemocracy.

   • 2010, Jonathan Littell, The Kindly Ones: A Novel, page 506

     Reds, sweeping aside the garbage of plutodemocracy, and dissolving the bourgeois parties, I remained stuck in France.

Related terms

• plutodemocratic

Translations

pseudodemocracy that is in fact a hypercapitalist plutocracy

Georgian: პლუტოდემოკრატია (ṗluṭodemoḳraṭia) Portuguese: democracia plutocrática f, plutodemocracia f

Spanish: democracia plutocrática f

References

• Encyclo.co.uk