Unfortunately, the term “corporatism” is today often regarded in a pejorative way, on account of its association with Mussolini’s Fascist Italy. The corporations in Fascist Italy and certain other twentieth-century corporatist states were not truly representative, but rather organs of state control.

René de La Tour du Pin & 

the Renewal of the Social Order

by Joseph F. X. Sladky

In their headlong rush to tear down the infrastructure of privilege and exalt equality and liberty, the French Revolutionaries ripped apart the social fabric which had developed in France over the centuries. In the wake of their orgy of destruction, intermediate social bodies were weakened or abolished, amongst which were the corporations or guilds. In addition to promoting the collaboration of employers and workers, these institutions had also regulated wages, prices, and the quality of raw materials. They also monitored the methods of production and the quality of the finished product. They also took care of the religious, social, and economic needs of their members. At times, the corporations of the past had been guilty of abuses. Nevertheless, rather than reforming their abuses, the revolutionaries summarily annihilated them, inaugurating an era of individualism, with a menacing socialism in the offing. On March 2, 1791 the corporations were dissolved and on June 14 of that same year the Chapelier Law was passed, prohibiting workers to assemble, organize, or strike.

In the late nineteenth century, René de La Tour du Pin attempted to resolve the prevailing social problems by proposing a social system called corporatism. He maintained that intermediate bodies needed to be resurrected, nurtured, and put firmly in place to occupy the void left between the individual and the State, thereby establishing a firm solidarity between employers and workers engaged in the same line of work. Whereas Marx saw the relations between employers and workers as one of unceasing warfare, La Tour du Pin saw that they could be of mutual understanding and collaboration. His modernized corporations, rather than dividing men from each other, would unite them. Beyond this, the corporations would act as buffers, curbing both the centrifugal tendencies of the individual and the stifling heavy hand of the State.

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