ICS Working Papers Nº2/2016

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ICS WORKING PAPERS 2016
edifice that had the state at its apex’ Under inter-war dictatorships, social corporatism
became synonymous with the forced unification of organized interests into single units of
employers and employees that were tightly controlled by the state and which eliminated
their independence: especially the independence of the trade unions. Social corporatism
offered autocrats a formalized system of interest representation with which to manage
labour relations: legitimizing the repression of free labour unions through the co-optation of
some of its groups in state-controlled unions, often with compulsory membership. Last but
not least, corporatist arrangements also sought to ‘allow the state, labour and business to
express their interests and arrive at outcomes that are, first and foremost, satisfactory to the
regime’.
Despite some dictatorships legitimizing themselves with a corporatisme d’association that
was closer to Social Catholicism, or which had some modernizing projects, the model adopted
by the great majority of dictatorships was much closer to fascist statism As one French
observer noted in 1942, after studying the practices of five European dictatorships,
‘corporatisme d’association is seen as the only true corporatism... and it does not exist!’ In
practical terms, the institutionalization of social corporatism in most dictatorships followed
models close to the proclamations contained in the Italian labour charter (Carta del Lavoro),
thereby demonstrating its primacy. State intervention, a large imbalance between business
and labour associations (with the former having greater influence and the independence of
the latter eliminated) and the creation of strong para-state institutions, was typical of almost
all the corporatist experiments. In fact, the elimination of free unions and their forced
integration into the state was the dominant characteristic.
However, during this period corporatism was also used to refer to the comprehensive
organization of political society beyond state-social groups relations seeking to replace liberal
democracy with an anti-individualist system of representation As Williamson noted, ‘what
did unite the corporatist was their indifference to the concept of democracy and democratic
norms’ and from this it was just a small step to corporations as a representational structure.
Corporatist theorists presented a reasonable diversity of the ‘organic basis of representation
drawing on the permanent forces of society’, in their alternatives to liberal democracy, but as
the Marquis de La Tour du Pin (1834-1924) noted, this representation must be ‘essentially
consultative’ The curtailment of this new legislature’s powers and the autonomy of an
executive with a head of government who is not responsible to parliament is an almost
universal proposal of corporatists in early-20th-century politics.
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