There are some great books and articles on this.
Corporatism is usually positioned by its advocates as "centrist", or "bipartisan", or "post-partisan" so strong opposition to corporatism has come from both left and right. It's worth taking in both perspectives.
Perhaps the earliest, and one of the best such books is James Burnam's 1941 book The Managerial Revolution. Burnham was a communist during the thirties who later renounced communism and went on to found National Review with William F. Buckley. But he had a falling out with Buckley (and the magazine) because of his opposition to the Vietnam War. Burnham's term, "managerial state" is still used by paleoconservatives rather than the term "corporatism" (which to paleocon ears is reminiscent of sixties radical-speak).
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Paul Edward Gottfried picks up where Burnham left off in his 1999 work, After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Managerial State. Gottfried shows that Burnham's gloomy predictions had come true, and that though American political dialogue still made reference to liberal, constitutional republican ideals, the republic had ceased to exist, replaced by a managerial mass democracy in which a false "left" and "right" engage in "debate" as a means of social control. Gottfried's book puts issues like the immigration reform bill of 2007 and the financial bailout of 2008 (in which the ruling class votes against the clear will of the people) in perspective.
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The best-known leftist critique of modern corporatism is Bertram Gross' Friendly Fascism. Gross names names and shows how the corporate state is reinforced by foundations, media, big business, and politicans. The weakness of this book, I think, is that Gross argues that this brand of fascism is a right-wing phenomenon, which it is not. Or not exclusively, at least.
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A leftist perspective on the cultural consequences of corporatism is beautifully laid out by Christopher Lasch in The Revolt of the Elites. Although it doesn't confront corporatism head-on, it describes the social consequences of the managerial elite that emerged to run it.
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Schivelbusch's Three New Deals is a fascinating comparative history of the "New Deals" in Germany, Italy, and the US during 1933-1939. He does not seek to demonize FDR or excuse Hitler or Mussolini, but instead seeks explanations for the vast popularity of corporatist authoritarian rule.
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Another worthwhile read (if you can find a copy) is Andrei Navrozov's memoir The Gingerbread Race: A Life in the Closing World Once Called Free. Navrozov claims that the US was becoming a society no less totalitarian than the USSR was, though by vastly different means.
Some interesting articles with further links:
econlog.econlib.org
econlog.econlib.org
books.google.com.
reason.com
independent.org
independent.org
frontpagemag.com |
