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| -Land of the Free |
| The New Corporatism |
| 2020-12-02 |
| (The Z Man) In the industrial age, the power centers in Western societies were capital, the government and the workers in that order. Because money is power, the capitalists could exert influence over governments, so they were at the top of the power structure, but that had its limits. Government has the monopoly of force and must be responsive to the people, even in private government. Labor, of course, had numbers and even in the most repressive regimes, numbers count for a lot. Of course, there was natural conflict between labor and capital. Then as now, capitalists wanted to exploit their workers as much as possible. One solution to this was tripartism, which is economic corporatism. Labor, government and employers work together to form economic policy. Labor would be organized into unions, whose leaders would sit at the table with representatives from the state and industry to fashion polices that maintained social stability and economic prosperity. For most of Europe, this has been the explicit arrangement. In Scandinavia, what is often called socialism is actually corporatism. Workers get generous benefits, but the state protects business from competition. In other parts of Europe it is not as explicit, but the social contract is based on the cooperation of the government, business and labor unions. The irony is that this was the approach favored by fascist movements, but no one dares mention that bit of history. |
| Posted by:746 |