Unlike systems such as Democracy, Capitalism, Socialism or Anarchism, Plutocracy is not rooted in an established political philosophy. Plutocracy or plutarchy is a society that is ruled or controlled by people of great wealth or income. The concept plutocracy is widely used dyslogistically to describe or admonish against an undesirable condition. Gradually, black men were allowed to vote, later even women, of all people. This reinforced the idea that “democracy” was not really a core concern at the time. You also had to be a white male in order to vote and you may well have owned African slaves. You must prove that your wealth was above a certain threshold that you belonged to the land-owning class. For a person to vote, he had to own land. In other words, the qualification for voting was benched on vast ownership of land. From the incipient, one of the major criteria for enfranchisement in the United States of America was the mass acquisition of land and landed properties. History also has it that the United States was founded as a plutocratic state. The Italian city-states of the Middle Ages were good examples of plutocracies, and in many ways, they ran the show in medieval Europe. It was chronicled that early kings of Carthage were military leaders, and being a monarchical country, the Sovereign or Crown was generally available to the highest bidder. Other historic examples of plutocracies include the Roman Empire, some city-states in Ancient Greece, Merchant Republics of Venice, Florence and Genoa, and the pre-World War II Empire of Japan (the zaibatsu). There have been many plutocracies down through history, Carthage, Italian city-states of the Middle Ages were plutocracies. Viewing Plutocracy from the lens of history and collection of other governance concepts will reveal that the concept is as old as the evolution of man himself, governance concepts and political theories. “The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else, says that the present trend towards plutocracy occurs because the rich feel that their interests are shared by society”. Today, we shall x-ray how plutocracy, and facism differ from democracy.ĬHRYTIA FREELAND, author of Plutocrats said: When governance becomes the whims and infuriated schemes of a small powerful, wealthy minority that only listens to itself, unmodified by the normal checks and balances of a functioning constitutional democracy, it should be treated by the non-partisan as what it is, plutocracy or facism. BY: CHIEF MIKE OZEKHOME, SAN, OFR, FCIArb, LL.M, Ph.
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