New Vocabulary Words

Following Thursday (Jan 21, 2010) Supreme Court ruling in Citizens v. Federal Election Commission (the Hillary the Movie, first amendment case)—which by many accounts has opened the floodgates for corporate funds to influence (make that buy) elections—here are a couple of important words you will want to add to your vocabulary (practice them till they roll trippingly of thy tongue):

Corporatism [noun]: (From Merriam-Webster’s 11 Collegiate Dictionary) the organization of a society into industrial and professional corporations serving as organs of political representation and exercising control over persons and activities within their jurisdiction.

Corporatist [adjective]: What the anti-health care reform Tea-Party mob without knowing it.

 Corporatocracy [noun]:

(From NationMaster.com) government by corporations (industry) . . . describes a government bowing to pressure from corporate entities.

While anyone can become a shareholder in principle, in reality it is frequently only the wealthy who can afford to own enough stock to directly influence the voting (and hence the activities) of a corporation. Hence the corporatocracy might be considered somewhat synonymous with plutocracy, government by the rich. A plutocracy is a form of government where all the states decisions are centralized in an affluent wealthy class of citizenry, and the degree of economic inequality is high while the level of social mobility is low. ...

Some would argue that a real corporatocracy can only appear when (and if) a government makes it legal to bribe politicians. That quickly makes politicians very corporate-friendly, and makes it easy for corporations to pass laws as they see fit. Many people in the United States [and this was before the Supreme Court’s recent ruling] believe the allowance for campaign contributions has created such a situation and view the contributions that prompted the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as evidence.

Plutocracy [noun]:

 (From NationMaster.com) a form of government where the state's power is centralized in an affluent social class. The degree of economic inequality is high while the level of social mobility is low. This can apply to a multitude of government systems, as the key elements of plutocracy transcend and often occur concurrently with the features of those systems.

Plutocrat [noun]: Anyone who labels Obama a Socialist!

Vocabulary you can forget: Democracy, the word is now archaic.