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The term plutocracy is generally used as a pejorative to describe or warn against an undesirable condition. [3] [4] Throughout history, political thinkers and philosophers have condemned plutocrats for ignoring their social responsibilities, using their power to serve their own purposes and thereby increasing poverty and nurturing class conflict and corrupting societies with greed and hedonism.
Term Description Examples Autocracy: Autocracy is a system of government in which supreme power (social and political) is concentrated in the hands of one person or polity, whose decisions are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regularized mechanisms of popular control (except perhaps for the implicit threat of a coup d'état or mass insurrection).
Aristocracy (from Ancient Greek ἀριστοκρατίᾱ (aristokratíā) 'rule of the best'; from ἄριστος (áristos) 'best' and κράτος (krátos) 'power, strength') is a form of government that places power in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class, the aristocrats.
Oligarchy (from Ancient Greek ... Aristotle pioneered the use of the term as meaning rule by the rich, contrasting it with aristocracy, arguing that oligarchy was the ...
Articles related to aristocracy, a form of government that places power in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class, the aristocrats.At the time of the word's origins in ancient Greece, the Greeks conceived it as rule by the best-qualified citizens—and often contrasted it favorably with monarchy, rule by an individual.
A polity is a sort of mix of democracy and oligarchy: "A constitution which is a really well-made combination of oligarchy and democracy," Aristotle says, "ought to look like both and like neither." It tends to most empower the middle-class, and is most healthy if economic inequality is kept within reasonable bounds. [ 1 ] :
The aristocracy [1] is historically associated with a "hereditary" or a "ruling" social class. In many states, the aristocracy included the upper class of people (aristocrats) with hereditary rank and titles. [2] In some, such as ancient Greece, ancient Rome, or India, aristocratic status came from belonging to a military class. It has also ...
Ancient Greek political thinkers [5] regarded ochlocracy as one of the three "bad" forms of government (tyranny, oligarchy, and ochlocracy) as opposed to the three "good" forms of government: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. They distinguished "good" and "bad" according to whether the government form would act in the interest of the whole ...