Chrematistics
/ˌkriːməˈtɪstɪks/noun
The pursuit of wealth for its own sake, as distinguished from the management of a household or an economy.
The Greek roots
Literally: “the art of getting money”
The story of the word
Aristotle sets χρηματιστική against οἰκονομική in the first book of the Politics: household management has a natural limit because a family only needs so much, while money-getting has none, and he treats the second as a corruption of the first. χρῆμα comes from χράομαι, to use, so the Greek word for wealth begins as the word for a thing you need. Nineteenth-century critics of political economy, Ruskin among them, revived the distinction to argue that economics had quietly become chrematistics.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
In a sentence
He argued that a firm optimising only for share price has crossed from economics into chrematistics.