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View Full Version : The misuse of corporatism....



RadioRaheem84
18th December 2009, 20:29
Corporatism is probably one of the most ill used words by people only surpassed by fascism. I hear liberals and right wingers alike misuse the word. Naomi Klein (love her to death but..) used it in the Shock Doctrine. Milton Friedman uses the word to excuse capitalism from market manipulation and state coercion. It's supposed mean some dumb assertion that its the corporate and state power merging together. This is wrongly attributed to Mussolini who had a totally different outlook on corporations than what people think of today. His corporatism was one of where the economy was to be collectively managed by employers, workers and state officials by formal mechanisms at national level. It was influenced by the Catholic guild system.

Libertarians erroneously use the word and misrepresent Mussolini's quote as a way of excusing the flaws of capitalism and the faulty belief in perfect competition. Corporatism in the sense that they describe it is just what capitalism does.

As Oswald Mosley relays:
http://www.oswaldmosley.com/the-corporate-state.htm


The whole body is generally directed by the central driving brain of government without which no body and system of society can operate. This does not mean control from Whitehall, or constant interference by Government with the business of industry. But it does mean that Government, or rather the Corporate system, will lay down the limits within which individuals and interests may operate. Those limits are the welfare of the nation - not, when all is said, a very unreasonable criterion. Within these limits, all activity is encouraged; individual enterprise, and the making of a profit, are not only permitted, but encouraged so long as that enterprise enriches rather than damages by its activity the nation as a whole.

Die Neue Zeit
19th December 2009, 02:21
I like using the word, though. Corporatism today has three faces: a fascist and/or right-populist face on the right, a Liberal-Conservative face in the middle, and a "social-democratic" or left-populist face on the left. Social corporatism ("social democracy" plus Liberalism/Progressivism in the American sense) is a very real phenomenon:

As against the coalesced bourgeoisie, a coalition between petty bourgeois and workers had been formed, the so-called Social-Democratic party [...] A joint program was drafted, joint election committees were set up and joint candidates put forward. The revolutionary point was broken off and a democratic turn given to the social demands of the proletariat; the purely political form was stripped off the democratic claims of the petty bourgeoisie and their socialist point thrust forward. Thus arose Social-Democracy [...] The peculiar character of Social-Democracy is epitomized in the fact that democratic-republican institutions are demanded as a means, not of doing away with two extremes, capital and wage labor, but of weakening their antagonism and transforming it into harmony. (Karl Marx, 1852)

RadioRaheem84
19th December 2009, 02:30
Capitalism has so many faces when it co-ops the state! Wow.

Die Neue Zeit
19th December 2009, 06:09
Not all capitalist ideology is corporatist. I excluded, for example, both "libertarianism" and certain heterodox political economies (for example, the ex-Marxist Michael Hudson's "left Georgism," other incarnations of classical political economy today, and Post-Keynesians like Steve Keen).

LeninistKing
19th December 2009, 21:02
Beware of libertarian conspiracy-theorists in USA. They say that capitalism is good. and that USA is not a capitalist system, but a corporatist system. They actually brainwash their followers by saying that USA is not capitalist, and that only capitalism can save America. hahaha what a nonsense. :laugh:
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Holden Caulfield
19th December 2009, 21:06
Beware of libertarian conspiracy-theorists in USA. They say that capitalism is good. and that USA is not a capitalist system, but a corporatist system. They actually brainwash their followers by saying that USA is not capitalist, and that only capitalism can save America. hahaha what a nonsense. :laugh:
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Is that not what Nader et al also basically state?

RadioRaheem84
20th December 2009, 03:01
Beware of libertarian conspiracy-theorists in USA. They say that capitalism is good. and that USA is not a capitalist system, but a corporatist system. They actually brainwash their followers by saying that USA is not capitalist, and that only capitalism can save America. hahaha what a nonsense. :laugh:
.

Yeah, this is the interpretation I meant when I said I hate how libertarians misuse the term.


Is that not what Nader et al also basically state?

Yeah and Naomi Klein and other liberals. Basically because the US isn't Keynesian anymore.

What Would Durruti Do?
23rd December 2009, 06:00
Would it be a stretch to say that capitalism naturally co-ops the state and even a free market system would eventually extend its influence through the state?

Guerrilla22
23rd December 2009, 06:13
Yes the term is misused all the timme, along with nationalsim.

swirling_vortex
23rd December 2009, 14:42
Would it be a stretch to say that capitalism naturally co-ops the state and even a free market system would eventually extend its influence through the state?
No, I'd say that's pretty accurate. Any advanced economy today has some degree of state influence over it. The only free market country in the sense of the definition I can think of is Somalia and that's not exactly a shining role model for libertarian ideas.