Origins | Plutonomics and Plutonomy

Etymology and Revival of Plutonomics and Plutonomy

The adjective plutonomic appears to have entered the English language in the 1850s. Its root, plut-, derives from the Greek word for “wealth” (ploutos), evoking Pluto—an alternate name for Hades, god of the underworld and “giver of wealth.” The suffix ‑nomic, from the Greek nemein (“to manage” or “to distribute”) in combination with the English adjectival ending -ic, yields the literal sense of “pertaining to wealth management.” Through the following decades, however, the term seems to have fallen out of use, perhaps eclipsed by the ascendant field of economics, which has steadily grown in both popular and scholarly prominence to the present day.

In the early 1990s, S. E. Harrison revived plutonomic and introduced plutonomics—plural in form but singular in meaning—as the name for a new science of wealth, one which takes the individual rather than the aggregate as its origin. The noun plutonomy was similarly employed to denote an individual’s current wealth dynamic within the framework of the fundamental theory, such that an individual’s plutonomy is roughly analogous to a society’s economy. These terms allowed the nascent discipline to distinguish itself from tributary fields, such as economics, business, and finance, while remaining consonant with their Greek origins.

Harrison briefly pursued publication of a periodical, Plutonomics, in 1997 to stimulate discussion of the new field. The author’s 2003–2004 social-media patents mention a “Plutonomics Institute.”  In 2006, the author published a brief exposition of the fundamental theory in a book of roughly eighty single-page entries, Plutonomics: A Unified Theory of Wealth. This work presents a “unified” system for understanding wealth phenomena across domains previously treated as separate disciplines—one that accommodates not only concepts traditionally related to wealth, such as money and property, but all manner of other wealth phenomena, from health and knowledge to charisma and social standing.

If readers encounter uses of plutonomic or plutonomy that predate the 1850s, please contact us with your findings.

Ruskin-Harrison Line of Thought

A 1902 biography of John Ruskin by Frederic Harrison (no known relation) employs the term plutonomic in passing during a discussion of Ruskin’s opposition to then-prevailing economic theories. Ruskin himself does not appear to have used the term, but elements of his commentary may be seen as precursors to several themes later developed in plutonomics, and S. E. Harrison expressly quotes Ruskin’s Unto This Last in Plutonomics.

Aside from the incidental word choice of Ruskin’s biographer, several points of affinity may be observed between John Ruskin and S. E. Harrison. Both sustained a lifelong engagement with the arts and spent formative periods studying Italian art and architecture. Each pursued a distinctly cross‑disciplinary mode of inquiry: Ruskin’s writings ranged across art and social criticism, architecture, geology, education, and political economy, while Harrison’s work integrates law, literature, economics, history, and philosophy. Both thinkers also demonstrated a pronounced concern with the conditions that enable individual agency and creativity, while resisting the reduction of human life—and, for Harrison, of all animal life—to instrumental or mechanical function. Such parallels underscore the extent to which plutonomics emerges from an ongoing intellectual continuity rather than a disruptive departure.

Mythic Imagery and Symbolism Surrounding Pluto

Regarding the ancient origins of the term, it is unsurprising that Pluto, god of the underworld, came to be associated with wealth, although some sources distinguish him from Plutus, a minor god of wealth. In any case, the concepts of wealth and the earth have long been intertwined: traditional symbols of wealth—from gold to diamonds—are drawn from the earth, and the necessities of life, including nutrition and oxygen, likewise arise from the earth and the organisms it sustains.