Corporatism has at least two distinct meanings. Historically it has designated a form of social organization in which corporations, non-government bodies with great authority over the lives and professional activities of their members, have played an intermediary role between public and state. In origin this goes back to the medieval pluralism in which the great trade guilds or corporations controlled the activities of craftsmen and traders; at the height of their power the guilds represented a third force in society along with the church and the nobility.
Although the Industrial Revolution killed off this form of social organization, it reappeared at the beginning of the 20th century as a theoretical concept in the work of Emile Durkheim. It also found a political expression, more façade than reality, in the institutions of fascism in the 1930s and 1940s.
Franco’s corporatist design for Spanish society was the longest lived and perhaps most genuine, although Mussolini’s Italy also had serious corporatist elements. In its 20th-century version the theory suggested that people engaged in a particular trade—employers as well as workers—had more in common with one another than with people of the same class or status who worked in other trades. In Spain and Italy legislative assemblies and councils of state were therefore organized around such trade corporations rather than around geographic constituencies and the ‘capricious’ functioning of competitive elections. The convenience of corporatist theory from a fascist point of view was evident: it by-passed both class conflict and democratic elections. Durkheim had had rather different aspirations, looking to the corporations to introduce the moral training and social discipline needed to overcome modern anomie, since he regarded the state as too distant and emotionally neutral to be able to solve these problems.
The alternative modern meaning of corporatism (the increasing tendency for the state to work in close co-operation with major business corporations and trade unions) is usually distinguished from the older meaning by being labelled neo-corporatism.
This is the complete article, containing 324 words
(approx. 1 page at 300 words per page).
