Corporatism

This article is about the general social theory. For business influence in politics, see Corporatocracy.

Corporatism, also known as corporativism, is a system of economic, political, or social organization that views a community as a body based upon organic social solidarity and functional distinction and roles amongst individuals. The term corporatism is based on the Latin word "corpus" meaning "body". Formal corporatist models are based upon the contract of corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labour, military, patronage, scientific, or religious affiliations, into a collective body. In contemporary usage, "corporatism" is often used as a term to describe politics dominated by the interests of business corporations (Corporatocracy).

One of the most prominent forms of corporatism is economic tripartism involving negotiations between business, labour, and state interest groups to set economic policy.

Corporatism is related to the sociological concept of structural functionalism. Corporate social interaction is common within kinship groups such as families, clans and ethnicities. Aside from humans, certain animal species are known to exhibit strong corporate social organization, such as penguins. In nature, cells in organisms are recognized as involving corporate organization and interaction.

Corporatist views of community and social interaction are common in many major world religions such as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. Corporatism has been utilized by many ideologies across the political spectrum, including: absolutism, capitalism, conservatism, fascism, liberalism, progressivism, reactionism, social democracy, socialism, and syndicalism.

Common types of corporatism

Early concepts of corporatism have been traced back to ideas found in ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and religions such as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism.

Corporatism in social relations

Kinship corporatism

Kinship-based corporatism focused upon clan, ethnic, and family identification has been a common phenomenon in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Confucianist group-based societies based upon families and clans in East Asia and Southeast Asia have been considered forerunners to modern corporatism. China has strong elements of clan corporatism in its society involving legal norms surrounding family relations. Islamic societies often have strong clan, tribal, that form the basis for a community-based corporatist society.

Corporatism in religion and spiritualism

Christianity

Painting of Paul of Tarsus.

Christian corporatism is traced to the New Testament of the Bible in I Corinthians 12:12-31 where Paul of Tarsus speaks of an organic form of politics and society where all people and components are functionally united, like the human body.

During the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church sponsored the creation of various institutions including brotherhoods, monasteries, religious orders, and military associations, especially during the Crusades to sponsor connection between these groups. In Italy, various function-based groups and institutions were created in the Middle Ages, such as universities, guilds for artisans and craftspeople, and other professional associations. The creation of the guild system is a particularly important aspect of the history of corporatism because it involved the allocation of power to regulate trade and prices to guilds, which is an important aspect of corporatist economic models of economic management and class collaboration.

In 1881, Pope Leo XIII commissioned theologians and social thinkers to study corporatism and provide a definition for it. In 1884 in Freiburg, the commission declared that corporatism was a "system of social organization that has at its base the grouping of men according to the community of their natural interests and social functions, and as true and proper organs of the state they direct and coordinate labor and capital in matters of common interest."

In the aftermath of the Freiburg meeting, corporatism grew in popularity and the corporatist internationale was formed in 1890 followed by the publishing of Rerum Novarum by the Roman Catholic Church that for the first time declared the Church's blessing to trade unions and called for organized labour to be recognized by politicians. Many corporatist unions in Europe were backed by the Roman Catholic Church to challenge the rise of anarchist, Marxist and other radical unions, with the corporatist unions being fairly conservative in comparison to their radical rivals. In response to the rise of Roman Catholic corporatism in the 1890s, Protestant corporatism arose, especially in Germany, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia. However, Protestant corporatism has been far less successful in being supported by governments than its Roman Catholic counterpart.

Rerum Novarum and the corporatists' recognition of workers' rights would gradually lead to the establishment of Christian democracy. It continues to be influential in Europe and Latin America, though in a number of countries its Christian ethos has been diluted by secularisation

Confucianism

Confucianism holds a corporatist emphasis on community, family, harmony, and solidarity.

Hinduism

Corporatism is present in a number of social concepts in Hinduism such as the emphasis of "harmony, consensus, and community". Caste associations in India have been founded on corporate organization. Hinduism's corporatist themes have influenced the economics and politics of India, as India is more averse to the individualistic pluralism and class conflict political and economic models of the Western world. Indian society favours a form of integral pluralism.

Islam

Islamic contractualism has been promoted by Muslims who cite communal tendencies in the Qur'an. Islamic apologists claim that Islamic contractualism differs from corporatism in the Western world in that it emphasizes communal moralism rather than corporative formalism. Islamic contractualism is also different from Western corporatism in that it promotes meritocratic principle of status by achievement rather than status by ascription as in Western corporatism; but a careful examination of Islamic history raises doubts about this claim. Some critics claim that Muhammad emphasized individual confession and responsibility above communalism. Ibn Khaldūn, a famed Muslim scholar who studied organic corporate communities, on the issue of political power claimed that no power could exist without identity and in turn that no identity could exist without cohesion. His analysis fails to acknowledge the role of intolerance by Muslims for non-Muslims, and the widespread use of coercion as a method for achieving cohesion within an Islam-dominated society.

Corporatism in science

Penguins are known to reside in breeding colonies defined by corporate social organization.

Corporatist scientific interpretations of phenomena have occurred.

Biology

Cells in organisms are defined by corporate organization. The behaviour of individual cells is influenced by the actions of other cells, including during processes of division of cells. Corporate activity of cells can cause rapid organic growth of natural substances. An example of such rapid growth caused by corporate activity of cells occurs in animals with antlers.

In social psychology and biology, researchers have found the presence of corporate group social organization amongst animal species. Research has shown that Penguins are known to reside in densely populated corporate breeding colonies.

Corporatism in politics and political economy

Communitarian corporatism

Plato (left) and Aristotle (right).

Ancient Greece developed early concepts of corporatism. Plato developed the concept of a totalitarian and communitarian corporatist system of natural-based classes and natural social hierarchies that would be organized based on function, whereby the groups would cooperate to achieve social harmony by emphasizing collective interests while rejecting individual interests.

Aristotle in Politics also viewed society as being divided along natural classes and functional purposes that were priests, rulers, slaves, and warriors. Ancient Rome copied Greek concepts of corporatism into their own version of corporatism but also added the concept of political representation on the basis of function that divided up representatives into military, professional, and religious groups and created institutions for each group called collegios.

Absolutist corporatism

Absolute monarchies in the Middle Ages gradually subordinated corporatist systems and corporate groups to the authority of centralized and absolutist governments, resulting in corporatism being used to uphold social hierarchy.

In the aftermath of the French Revolution, the existing absolutist corporatist system was completely dismantled due to its support of social hierarchy and special "corporate privilege" for the Roman Catholic Church. The new French government saw corporatism's emphasis on group rights as inconsistent with the government's promotion of individual rights. Subsequently corporatist systems and corporate privilege throughout Europe were abolished in response to the French Revolution. From 1789 to the 1850s, most supporters of corporatism were reactionaries. A number of reactionary corporatists favoured corporatism in order to end liberal capitalism and restore the feudal system.

Progressive corporatism

From the 1850s onward progressive corporatism rose in response to classical liberalism and Marxism. These corporatists supported providing group rights to members of the middle classes and working classes in order to secure class harmony. This was in opposition to the Marxist conception of class conflict. By the 1870s and 1880s, corporatism experienced a revival in Europe with the creation of workers' unions that were committed to class harmony and negotiations with employers.

Ferdinand Tönnies in his work Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft ("Community and Society") of 1887 marked a major revival of corporatist thinking including sparking the rise of Neo-medievalism, rise of support for guild socialism, and causing major changes in the field of sociology. Tönnies claims that organic communities based upon clans, communes, families, and professional groups are disrupted by the mechanical society of economic classes imposed by capitalism. The Nazis used Tönnies' theory to promote their notion of Volksgemeinschaft ("people's community"). However Tönnies opposed Nazism and joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1932 to oppose the rise of fascism in Germany and was stripped of his honorary professorship by Adolf Hitler in 1933.

Émile Durkheim.

Sociologist Émile Durkheim advocated a form of corporatism called "solidarism" that advocated creating an organic social solidarity of society through functional representation. Solidarism was based upon Durkheim's view that human society as a collective is distinct in dynamic from the dynamic of an individual in that society is what places upon individuals their cultural and social attributes.

Durkheim claimed that in the economy, solidarism would alter the division of labour by changing it from the mechanical solidarity to organic solidarity. Durkheim claimed that the existing industrial capitalist division of labour caused "juridical and moral anomie" which had no norms, agreed rules, or frameworks to resolve conflicts resulting in a confrontational divide between employers and trade unions. Durkheim believed that this anomie caused social dislocation and claimed that under this "[i]t is the law of the strongest which rules, and there is inevitably a chronic state of war, latent or acute". As a result, Durkheim claimed it is a moral obligation of the members of society to end this state of war by creating a moral organic solidarity based upon professions as organized into a single public institution.

Portrait of John Stuart Mill

The creation of liberal corporatism has been traced back to English liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill who spoke of corporatist-like economic associations as needing to "predominate" in society to create equality for labourers and give them a voice in management through economic democracy. Unlike a number of other forms of corporatism, liberal corporatism does not reject capitalism or individualism, but believes that the capitalist firm is a social institution that requires its managers to go beyond achieving the bottom line, by recognizing the needs of their members.

This liberal corporatist ethic is similar to Taylorism but calls for democratization of the capitalist firm. Liberal corporatists believe that inclusion of all members in the election of management brings them into the process of management and in effect "reconcile ethics and efficiency, freedom and order, liberty and rationality". Liberal corporatism began to gain adherents in the United States in the late 19th century.

Liberal corporatism was an influential component of the Progressivism in the United States that has been referred to as "interest group liberalism". The support by U.S. labour movement leaders' advocacy of liberal corporatism of the U.S. progressives is believed to have been influenced by an attraction to the syndicalism and particularly the anarcho-syndicalism at the time in Europe. In the United States, economic corporatism involving capital-labour cooperation was influential in the New Deal economic program of the United States in the 1930s as well as in Fordism and Keynesianism.

Fascist corporatism

Fascism's theory of economic corporatism involved the management of sectors of the economy via government or privately controlled organizations (corporations). Each trade union or employer corporation would, in theory, represent its professional concerns, especially through negotiation of labor contracts and the like. This approach, it was theorized, could result in harmony amongst social classes. Authors have noted, however, that de facto economic corporatism was used in specific instances of silencing opposition and rewarding political loyalty.

In Italy from 1922 until 1943, corporatism became influential amongst Italian nationalists led by Benito Mussolini. The Charter of Carnaro gained much popularity as the prototype of a 'corporative state', having displayed much within its tenets as a guild system combining the concepts of autonomy & authority in a special synthesis. This appealed to Hegelian thinkers who were looking for a new alternative to popular socialist & syndicalist stances which was also a progressive system of governing labor and still a new way of relating to political governance as a whole. Alfredo Rocco spoke of a corporative state and declared corporatist ideology in detail. Rocco would go on to become a member of the Italian Fascist regime Fascismo.

Italian Fascism involved a corporatist political system in which economy was collectively managed by employers, workers and state officials by formal mechanisms at national level. This non-elected form of state officializing of every interest into the state was professed to better circumvent the marginalization of singular interests (as would allegedly happen by the unilateral end condition inherent in the democratic voting process). Corporatism would instead better recognize or 'incorporate' every divergent interest as it stands alone into the state organically, according to its supporters, thus being the inspiration behind their use of the term totalitarian, perceivable to them as not meaning a coercive system but described distinctly as without coercion in the 1932 Doctrine of Fascism as thus:

[The state] is not simply a mechanism which limits the sphere of the supposed liberties of the individual... Neither has the Fascist conception of authority anything in common with that of a police ridden State... Far from crushing the individual, the Fascist State multiplies his energies, just as in a regiment a soldier is not diminished but multiplied by the number of his fellow soldiers.

This prospect in Italian fascist corporatism claimed to be the direct heir of Georges Sorel's anarcho-collectivist, wherein each interest was to form as its own entity with separate organizing parameters according to their own standards, only however within the corporative model of Italian fascism each was supposed to be incorporated through the auspices and organizing ability of a statist construct. This was by their reasoning the only possible way to achieve such a function, i.e. when resolved in the capability of an indissoluble state. Much of the corporatist influence upon Italian Fascism was in part due to the Fascists' attempts to gain support of the Roman Catholic Church that itself sponsored corporatism.

However fascism's corporatism was a top-down model of state control over the economy while the Roman Catholic Church's corporatism favoured a bottom-up corporatism, whereby groups such as families and professional groups would voluntarily work together. The fascist state corporatism influenced the governments and economies of a number of Roman Catholic countries, such as the government of Engelbert Dollfuss in Austria and António de Oliveira Salazar in Portugal. Fascists in non-Catholic countries also supported Italian Fascist corporatism including Oswald Mosley of the British Union of Fascists who commended corporatism and said that "it means a nation organized as the human body, with each organ performing its individual function but working in harmony with the whole". Mosley also saw corporatism as an attack on laissez-faire economics and "international finance".

Neo-corporatism

In the post-World War II reconstruction period in Europe, corporatism was favored by Christian democrats, national conservatives, and social democrats in opposition to liberal capitalism. This type of corporatism faded but revived again in the 1960s and 1970s as "neo-corporatism" in response to the new economic threat of stagflation. Neo-corporatism favored economic tripartism which involved strong and centralized labor unions, employers' unions, and governments that cooperated as "social partners" to negotiate and manage a national economy.

Attempts in the United States to create neo-corporatist capital-labor arrangements were unsuccessfully pushed for by Gary Hart and Michael Dukakis in the 1980s. Robert Reich as U.S. Secretary of Labor during the Clinton administration promoted neo-corporatist reforms.

Asian corporatism

Asian corporatism, as described by Jonathan Unger and Anita Chan in their essay China, Corporatism, and the East Asian Model,

"...at the national level the state recognizes one and only one organization (say, a national labour union, a business association, a farmers' association) as the sole representative of the sectoral interests of the individuals, enterprises or institutions that comprise that organization's assigned constituency. The state determines which organizations will be recognized as legitimate and forms an unequal partnership of sorts with such organizations. The associations sometimes even get channelled into the policy-making processes and often help implement state policy on the government's behalf."

By establishing itself as the arbitrator of legitimacy and assigning responsibility for a particular constituency with one sole organization, the state limits the number of players with which it must negotiate its policies and co-opts their leadership into policing their own members. This arrangement is not limited to economic organizations such as business groups or trade unions; examples can also include social or religious groups. Examples abound, but one such would be the People's Republic of China's Islamic Association of China, in which the state actively intervenes in the appointment of imams and controls the educational contents of their seminaries, which must be approved by the government to operate and which feature courses on "patriotic reeducation".

Russian corporatism

On October 9, 2007, an article signed by Viktor Cherkesov, head of the Russian Drug Enforcement Administration, was published in Kommersant, where he used the term "corporativist state" in a positive way to describe the evolution of Russia. He claimed that the administration officials detained on criminal charges earlier that month are the exception rather than the rule and that the only development scenario for Russia that is both realistic enough and relatively favorable is to continue evolution into a corporativist state ruled by security service officials.

Here is some background. In December 2005, Andrei Illarionov, former economic adviser to Vladimir Putin, claimed that Russia had become a corporativist state.

"The process of this state evolving into a new corporativist (sic) model reached its completion in 2005. ... The strengthening of the corporativist state model and setting up favorable conditions for quasi-state monopolies by the state itself hurt the economy. ... Cabinet members or key Presidential Staff executives chairing corporation boards or serving on those boards are the order of the day in Russia. In what Western country—except in the corporativist state that lasted for 20 years in Italy—is such a phenomenon possible? Which, actually, proves that the term 'corporativist' properly applies to Russia today."

All political powers and most important economic assets in the country are controlled by former state security officials ("siloviks"), according to some researchers. The takeover of Russian state and economic assets has been allegedly accomplished by a clique of Putin's close associates and friends who gradually became a leading group of Russian oligarchs and who "seized control over the financial, media and administrative resources of the Russian state" and restricted democratic freedoms and human rights

Illarionov described the present situation in Russia as a new socio-political order, "distinct from any seen in our country before". In this model, members of the Corporation of Intelligence Service Collaborators [Russian abbreviation KSSS] took over the entire body of state power, follow an omerta-like behavior code, and "are given instruments conferring power over others – membership “perks”, such as the right to carry and use weapons". According to Illarionov, this "Corporation has seized key government agencies – the Tax Service, Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Parliament, and the government-controlled mass media – which are now used to advance the interests of KSSS members. Through these agencies, every significant resource of the country – security/intelligence, political, economic, informational and financial – is being monopolized in the hands of Corporation members"

Analyst Andrei Piontkovsky also considers the present situation as "the highest and culminating stage of bandit capitalism in Russia”. He believes that "Russia is not corrupt. Corruption is what happens in all countries when businessmen offer officials large bribes for favors. Today’s Russia is unique. The businessmen, the politicians, and the bureaucrats are the same people."

U.S. corporatism

See also: The New Deal and corporatism

See also: Corporate capitalism

In the United States, Republican President Ronald Reagan echoed Republican President Herbert Hoover and others who claimed that Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs represented a move in the direction of a corporatist state. In particular, these critics focused on the National Recovery Administration. In 1935, Herbert Hoover described some of the New Deal measures as "Fascist regimentation." In his 1951 memoirs he used the phrases "early Roosevelt fascist measures", and "this stuff was pure fascism", and "a remaking of Mussolini's corporate state". For sources and more information, see The New Deal and corporatism.

Franklin D. Roosevelt in an April 29, 1938 message to Congress warned that the growth of private power could lead to fascism:

The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.

From the same message:

The Growing Concentration of Economic Power. Statistics of the Bureau of Internal Revenue reveal the following amazing figures for 1935: "Ownership of corporate assets: Of all corporations reporting from every part of the Nation, one-tenth of 1 percent of them owned 52 percent of the assets of all of them."

Critics of the notion of the confluence of corporate power and de facto fascism included President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who nevertheless brought attention to the "conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry" in his 1961 Farewell Address to the Nation, and stressed "the need to maintain balance in and among national programs -- balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage."

Some authors also discuss modern American corporatism.

See also

• Corporate nationalism
• Corporate statism
• Crony capitalism
• Distributism
• Fascism
• Guild
• Neofeudalism
• Solidarism
• Quango
• Collectivism
• Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft

Sources

• Jones, R. J. Barry. Routledge Encyclopedia of International Political Economy: Entries A-F. Taylor & Frances, 2001. ISBN 978-0-415-14532-9.
• Black, Antony. Guilds and civil society in European political thought from the twelfth century to present. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1984. ISBN 978-0-8014-1690-3.
• Wiarda, Howard J. Corporatism and comparative politics. M.E. Sharpe, 1996. ISBN 978-1-56324-715-6.

On Italian Corporatism

• Constitution of Fiume
• Rerum Novarum: encyclical of Pope Leo XIII on capital and labor
• Quadragesimo Anno: encyclical of Pope Pius XI on reconstruction of the social order
• There is an essay on "The Doctrine of Fascism" credited to Benito Mussolini that appeared in the 1932 edition of the Enciclopedia Italiana, and excerpts can be read at Doctrine of Fascism. There are also links there to the complete text.

On Neo-Corporatism

• Katzenstein, Peter. Small States in World Markets: industrial policy in Europe. Ithaca, 1985. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-9326-3. Search text.
• Olson, Mancur. The Logic of Collective Action : Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. 1965, 1971. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-53751-4. Search text. Chapter-previews links, pp. ix-x.
• Schmitter, P. C. and Lehmbruch, G. (eds.). Trends toward Corporatist Intermediation. London, 1979. ISBN 978-0-8039-9837-7. Search text.
• Rodrigues, Lucia Lima. "Corporatism, liberalism and the accounting profession in Portugal since 1755." Journal of Accounting Historians, June 2003.

On Fascist Corporatism

• Baker, David, "The political economy of fascism: Myth or reality, or myth and reality?", New Political Economy, Volume 11, Issue 2 June 2006 , pages 227 – 250.

External links

• Corporatism. The Canadian Encyclopedia.
• The Economic System of Corporatism. Professor Thayer Watkins. San Jose State University Department of Economics
• corporatism, or corporate state, or corporativism, or corporativismo, or state corporatism (ideology). Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
• "Corporatist Ideology in Kemalist Turkey Progress or Order?", Corporatist Ideology in Kemalist Turkey Progress or Order? by Taha Parla and Andrew Davison, 2004, Syracuse University Press, ISBN 0-8156-3054-9
• "Mussolini on the Corporate State" by Chip Berlet, 2005, Political Research Associates; Somerville, Massachusetts, USA– includes study of alleged Mussolini quote on corporatism, and quotes from Mussolini texts on corporatism.
• "Economic Fascism" by Thomas J. DiLorenzo, The Freeman, Vol. 44, No. 6, June 1994, Foundation for Economic Education; Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, USA.
• 2 Mussolini autobiographies in one book. English. Searchable. Click on the result titled "My Rise and Fall" (usually the top result). Then use the search form in the left column titled "search within this book."
• The 1928 autobiography of Benito Mussolini. Online. My Autobiography. Book by Benito Mussolini; Charles Scribner's Sons, 1928. ISBN 978-0-486-44777-3. ASIN: B0017RTP5G.
• Corporatism by Jeffrey Grupp
• Global Food Security Threatened by Corporate Land Grabs in Poor Countries - video report by Democracy Now!