CORPORATISM

, also called Corporativism, Italian Corporativismo, the theory and practice of organizing the whole of society into corporations subordinate to the state. According to the theory, workers and employers would be organized into industrial and professional corporations serving as organs of political representation and controlling to a large extent the persons and activities within their jurisdiction. In actual practice, however, as the corporate state was put into effect in Fascist Italy between World Wars I and II, it reflected the will of the dictator rather than the adjusted interests of economic groups. Although the corporate idea was intimated in the Congregationalism of colonial Puritan New England and in mercantilism, its earliest theoretical expression came after the French Revolution and was strongest in eastern Germany and Austria. The chief spokesman for this corporatism, or distributism (as it was later called in Germany), was Adam Mller, court philosopher for Prince Metternich. His attacks on French egalitarianism and on the economics of Adam Smith were vigorous attempts to find a modern justification for traditional institutions and led him to conceive a modernized Stndestaat (class state), which might claim sovereignty and divine right because it would be organized to regulate production and to coordinate class interests. Its classes, or estates (Stnde), though roughly equivalent to the feudal classes, were to operate as guilds, or corporations, each controlling a specific function of social life. Mller's theories were buried with Metternich, but after the end of the 19th century they regained life. On the European continent they served movements analogous to guild socialism, which flourished in England and had many features in common with corporatism, though its sources and aims were largely secular. In France, Germany, Austria, and Italy, Christian syndicalists revived the theory of corporations in order to combat the revolutionary syndicalists on the one hand and the socialist political parties on the other. The most systematic exposition of such theory was made by the Austrian economist Othmar Spann and by the Italian leader of Christian Democracy, Giuseppe Toniolo. The advent of Italian Fascism gave an opportunity to put the theories of the corporate state into practice, for in order to gain power Benito Mussolini and his associates in 1919 at Milan needed the support of the syndicalist wing of the Nationalist Party. The Fascists viewed corporations as a useful form of social organization that could provide the vehicle for a broad-based and socially harmonious class participation in economic production. Mussolini's aim in adopting corporatist doctrines was to strengthen his claim to nationalism at the expense of the left wing of the centrist parties and the right wing of the syndicalists. The practical work of creating Italian Fascist syndicates and corporations began immediately after Mussolini's march on Rome in 1922. At first, Italian industrial employers refused to cooperate in mixed syndicates or in a single confederation of corporations. A compromise was therefore arranged that called for pairs of syndical confederations in each major field of production, one for employers and one for employees; each pair was to work out the collective labour contracts for its field, and these contracts would be binding for all workers and employers in that field. The confederations thus organized were to be unified under a ministry of corporations in the government, which would have final authority. This so-called constitution for the corporate state was promulgated as law on April 3, 1926. The formation of mixed syndical organs or corporations, which was the central aim of the corporative reform, had to wait until 1934, when a decree created 22 corporationseach for a particular field of economic activity (categoria) and each responsible not only for the administration of labour contracts but for the promotion of the interests of its field in general. At the head of each corporation was a council on which employers and employees had equal representation. The 22 corporations were the following: (1) grains; (2) fruits, vegetables, and flowers; (3) vineyards and wine; (4) olive oil and products; (5) sugar beets and sugar products; (6) animal products and fish; (7) lumber; (8) textiles; (9) metals and machinery; (10) chemicals; (11) clothing; (12) paper and printing; (13) building and construction; (14) water, gas, and electricity; (15) mining; (16) glass and ceramics; (17) banking and insurance; (18) liberal professions and arts; (19) marine and aviation; (20) internal transportation and communications; (21) theatre; and (22) hotels. To coordinate the work of these corporations the central corporative committee was created, which turned out in practice to be indistinguishable from the ministry of corporations. In 1936 the national Council of Corporations met as successor to the Chamber of Deputies and as supreme legislative body in the state. It was composed of 823 members, 66 of whom represented the Fascist Party; the remainder comprised representatives of the employer and employee confederations, distributed among the 22 corporations. The creation of this body was heralded as the completion of the legal structure of the corporate state. However, the autonomous corporations had barely begun to function, and the national council had barely begun to sit, when World War II broke out and the system broke up.