Political corporatism
The development of studies on economic corporatism and the achievement of greater awareness of the implications of this in the field of economics were made possible thanks to studies carried out in the political field, particularly that done by Andrew Shonfield and Philippe Schmitter in the 1970s.
Despite the fact that politics and economics are interwoven and often overlap, it should be noted that a deep conceptual awareness of the meaning of corporatism arose as a result of research carried out within the sphere of political science. It was Philippe Schmitter who revealed the inconsistency of interpretations that confined corporatism to certain authoritarian regimes in the 1930s, and who disclosed the deep bonds and similarities between certain characters such as J.-C.L. Simonde de Sismondi, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Wilhelm Emmanuel Von Ketteler, Albert de Mun, Francesco Vito, Emile Durkheim, Charles Maurras, A. de Oliveira Salazar, Walter Rathenau, Georges Sorel, Pierre Mendes-France and John Maynard Keynes. He also emphasised the fact that corporatism affected many different countries (Schmitter 1974: 87-8, 99).Shonfield was the first to state that post-war corporatism came in two main different forms: (1) an intellectual, technocratic approach towards economic problems, paving the way to planned interventions, and (2) a new form of public ownership of the means of production which was fully controlled and widespread. As first proposed by Manoilesco and subsequently developed by Schmitter, we can see that there is a clear distinction between two main types of corporatism: (1) pure corporatism - in which the legitimacy and the functioning of a state mainly depend on the activities of a single, non-competitive and hierarchically ordered “corporation”; and (2) subordinate corporatism - in which structures resembling “corporations” are created and maintained as auxiliary bodies within a state which owes its legitimacy to other bodies and functions. The former may be identified as state corporatism (as in Spain, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Mexico and Greece, as well as in Italy during the fascist period, in France at the time of Petain and in Austria at the time of Dollfuss).
The latter can be seen as social corporatism with well-known examples in Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Norway, Germany, Great Britain, Canada and the USA (Manoilesco 1938; Shonfield 1965; Schmitter 1974).Manoilesco was an engineer and professor of political economy, as well as a banker and a minister, who devised a modern, lay theory of corporatism based on an analysis of the needs of populations. His theory went beyond the idea of corporatism as a pure intra-class system. He pictured corporatism as a system of peace and harmony, promoting a supranational European institution, which aimed to overcome national egoism and economic individualism.
In the context of political corporatism, some of John Maynard Keynes’s ideas should also be taken into account among the formulations of social corporatism described earlier. In particular, there are certain extracts in The End of Laissez-Faire (1926) which provide evidence of a widespread need for correctives in order to give a social objective to capitalism. Furthermore, he admitted that there were things that had to be done or not done in economic policy. Finally, there are some explicitly corporatist statements, for example, “I propose a return, it may be said, towards medieval conceptions of separate autonomies” (Keynes 1926 [1972]: 289). All this attests that Keynes was not explicitly anti-corporatist, as had already been acknowledged by two of his contemporaries, Joseph Schumpeter and Friedrich von Hayek.