http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_capitalism
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The term corporatism has different meanings in
different contexts. Most notably, the historical usage
of the term is not the same as its modern usage. This
article deals with both types of "corporatism".
Contents [showhide]
1 Historical meaning of the term
2 Other European connotations of corporatism
3 Contemporary meaning of the term
4 Related Topics
5 External links
Historical meaning of the term:
Historically, corporatism or corporativism (Italian
corporativismo) is a political system in which
legislative power is given to corporations that
represent economic, industrial, and professional
groups. Unlike pluralism, in which many groups must
compete for control of the state, in corporatism,
certain unelected bodies take a critical role in the
decision-making process. This original meaning was not
connected with the specific notion of a business
corporation, being a rather more general reference to
any incorporated body. The word "corporatism" is
derived from the Latin word for body, corpus.
Ostensibly, the entire society is to be run by
decisions made by these corporate groups. It is a form
of class collaboration put forward as an alternative
to class conflict and was first proposed in Pope Leo
XIII's 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, which influenced
Catholic trade unions which were organised in the
early twentieth century to counter the influence of
trade unions founded on a socialist ideology.
Gabriele D'Annunzio and anarcho-syndicalist Alceste de
Ambris incorporated much of corporative philosophy in
their Constitution of Fiume.
One early and important theorist of corporatism was
Adam Müller, an advisor to Prince Metternich in what
is now eastern Germany and Austria. Müller propounded
his views as an antidote to the twin "dangers" of the
egalitarianism of the French Revolution and the
laissez-faire economics of Adam Smith. In Germany and
elsewhere there was a distinct aversion among rulers
to allow unrestricted capitalism, owing to the
feudalist and aristocratic tradition of giving state
privileges to the wealthy and powerful.
Under Fascism in Italy, business owners, employees,
trades-people, professionals, and other economic
classes were organized into 22 guilds, or
associations, known as "corporations" according to
their industries, and these groups were given
representation in a legislative body known as the
Camera dei Fasci e delle Corporazioni.
According to various theorists corporatism was an
attempt to create a "modern" version of feudalism by
merging the "corporate" interests with those of the
state. Also see neofeudalism.
This use of the term "corporation" is not exactly
equivalent to the restricted modern sense of the word.
Compare corporate state and militarism. Corporate in
this context is intended to convey the meaning of a
"body," as in corpus. Its purpose is to reflect more
medieval European concepts of a whole society in which
the various parts each play a part in the life of the
society, just as the various parts of the body play
specific parts in the life of a body.
Some elements of corporatism can be found still
existing today, for example in the ILO Conference or
in the Economic and Social Committee of the European
Union, the collective agreement arrangements of the
Scandinavian countries, or the Republic of Ireland's
system of Social Partnership.
Elements of corporatism may also be found in the
United States, where corporations representing many
different groups exist to influence legislation
through lobbying. There are corporations representing,
for example, organized-labor, educators, gun-rights
advocates, and business interests. While these
corporations have no membership in any legislative
body, they can often wield considerable power over
law-makers.
Other European connotations of corporatism
Not all European corporatism has been explicitly
Fascist. Corporatism also describes aspects of the
political institutions and philosophy of European
states like Austria, Sweden, or West Germany, in the
postwar era.
Contemporary meaning of the term
Today, corporatism or neo-corporatism is used in
reference to tendencies in politics for legislators
and administrations to be influenced or dominated by
the interests of business enterprises (limited
liability corporations). The influence by other types
of corporations, such as those representing organized
labor, is relatively minor. In this view, government
decisions are seen as being influenced strongly by
which sorts of policies will lead to greater profits
for favored companies. In this sense of the word,
corporatism is also termed corporatocracy. If there is
substantial military-corporate collaboration it is
often called militarism or the military-industrial
complex.
Corporatism is also used to describe a condition of
corporate-dominated globalization. Points enumerated
by users of the term in this sense include the
prevalence of very large, multinational corporations
that freely move operations around the world in
response to corporate, rather than public, needs; the
push by the corporate world to introduce legislation
and treaties which would restrict the abilities of
individual nations to restrict corporate activity; and
similar measures to allow corporations to sue nations
over "restrictive" policies, such as a nation's
environmental regulations that would restrict
corporate activities.
In another modern use of the term, which has appeared
in recent literature of political science and
sociology, "neo-corporatism" refers to social
arrangements dominated by tri-partite bargaining
between unions, the private sector (capital), and
government. Such bargaining is oriented toward (a)
dividing the productivity gains created in the economy
"fairly" among the social partners and (b) gaining
wage restraint in recessionary or inflationary
periods.
Most political economists believe that such
neo-corporatist arrangements are only possible in
societies in which labor is highly organized and
various labor unions are hierarchically organized in a
single labor federation. Such "encompassing" unions
bargain on behalf of all workers, and have a strong
incentive to balance the employment cost of high wages
against the real income consequences of small wage
gains. Many of the small, open European economies,
such as Sweden, Austria, Norway, Ireland, and maybe
the Netherlands fit this classification. In the work
of some scholars, such as Peter Katzenstein,
neo-corporatist arrangements enable small open
economies to effectively manage their relationship
with the global economy. The adjustment to trade
shocks occurs through a bargaining process in which
the costs of adjustment are distributed evenly
("fairly") among the social partners.
It is called neo-corporatism because it shows a number
of similarities with corporatism in the historical
meaning of the word (see above).
Free Market theorists like Ludwig von Mises would
describe corporatism as anathema to their vision of
capitalism. In the kind of capitalism such theorists
advocate, what has been called the "night-watchman"
state, the government's role in the economy is
restricted to safeguarding the autonomous operation of
the free market. However, many critics of free market
theories, such as George Orwell, have argued that
corporatism (in the sense of an economic system
dominated by massive corporations) is the natural
result of free market capitalism.
In the United States, some [1]
(
www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=3054)
claim that Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal
programs were an unprecedented jump towards a
corporate state. However, this ignores the long
history of narrow economic interests controlling the
decision-making process in America. In recent times,
the profusion of lobby groups and the increase in
campaign contributions has led to widespread
controversy and the McCain Feingold act. American
corporatism is evidenced in the close ties between
members of the Bush Administration and many large
corporations, such as Halliburton.
John Ralston Saul argues that most Western societies
are best described as corporatist states, run by a
small elite of professional and interest groups, that
exclude political participation from the citizenry.
Critics of capitalism often argue that any form of
capitalism would eventually devolve into corporatism,
due to the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer
hands.
A permutation of this term is corporate globalism.
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