Corporativism

CORPORATIVISM. – The term c. may be understood to mean every theoretical tendency and every legislative and practical implementation aimed at organizing capital and labor in a unified manner, with a view to the prior and peaceful reconciliation of their respective interests. Unlike syndicalism, which is centered on a substantial antagonism of interests between the working and employing classes, c. seeks to overcome this antagonism a priori, through the organization of capital and labor within a unified institution.

The term derives historically from the corporations existing before the French Revolution, which were nevertheless organizations entrusted with predominantly economic functions, and in which the actual workers (“journeymen”), like apprentices, found themselves in a situation of hierarchical dependence, including for organizational purposes.

The evolution of these corporations took place in two distinct periods: the medieval period, that is, that of corporate autonomy, and the modern period, that is, that of administrative regulation (v. CORPORAZIONE).

The ideas proclaimed by the French Revolution led to the consideration of c. as something definitively superseded; but the emergence of the social question and the consequent appearance of socialist doctrines disproved liberal ideologies in the field of labor, and the organizational movement of the working classes rapidly gained ground in all industrially advanced countries.

Alongside the socialist doctrines and the trade-union movement inspired by them, a Christian social doctrine began to take shape. While it accepted the critique of economic liberalism with regard to the working class, it differed substantially in its reconstructive aspect, by recognizing private property and overcoming the premise of class struggle. Hence the emergence of a Christian c. (in part connected with medieval c.), which received considerable theoretical elaboration, especially during the second half of the last century.

This movement began in Germany, where, while Mons. G.E.F. Ketteler confined his reform projects within the framework of the workers’ cooperative, the abbot Francesco Hitze outlined a social reconstruction based on the intermediate institutions between the individual and the State, such as the family, the municipality and, above all, the corporation. More precisely, this would have involved the compulsory reorganization, by “estates” (Stände), on both the political and economic planes, of all categories of production; the various Stände would then have elected district Chambers, which would have designated the members of a national Economic Council entrusted with regulatory functions. As a member of the Prussian Landtag and the Reichstag, Hitze repeatedly sought to implement his theories: after various attempts, the law of 26 July 1897 was approved. It enhanced the status of craft corporations, recognized certain privileges for them, especially in matters of apprenticeship, and provided for the creation of compulsory corporations whenever these were requested by the majority of the trade concerned.

In Austria, corporate reorganization was advocated by Rodolfo Meyer, Alois di Lichtenstein and, above all, Carlo di Vogelsang, who, bearing in mind the social order of the Middle Ages inspired by the Church, advocated a reorganization of the State on the basis of professional “Bodies.” These bodies were to possess full autonomy, so that the institutions regulating economic and social life would be not the State, but the professional categories organized corporately. Vogelsang too intended to implement his scheme in all sectors of production, while acknowledging the particular difficulties of applying it to large-scale industry, where it was nevertheless deemed especially necessary as a guarantee of that “deproletarianization of the proletariat” which, through access to the corporate ownership of property, would make it possible to overcome the premises of class struggle. Through the work of the Catholic social activists, and particularly of Lichtenstein, the craft corporations, which had been abolished in Austria in 1859 but had not in fact disappeared, were officially reestablished by the law of 15 March 1883,

supplemented by the law of 23 Feb. 1897, which also provided for regional corporations for large-scale industry.

While in Germany and Austria anti-liberal and corporatist tendencies were found predominantly among representatives of the Christian-social movement, in France these tendencies were chiefly characteristic of the group centered on the Oeuvre des Cercles catholiques d'ouvriers, whose leading representatives were Alberto de Mun and Renato La Tour du Pin. La Tour du Pin may be regarded as the theorist of French Christian c.: while connecting himself with the formulations of Hitze and Vogelsang regarding the organization of society into professional bodies, and indeed devoting particular study to the reconstruction of professional representation in municipal, provincial and legislative chambers, he differed from the German-speaking Christian social activists in that he did not dispense with voluntary and differentiated associations of workers and employers. La Tour du Pin’s formula was “free corporation within the organized State Body”: that is, membership in the trade union, and in the grouping of trade unions corresponding to the corporation, was voluntary, whereas all those practicing a given profession belonged by right to the State Body, which was entrusted with broad representative and regulatory powers.

In practice, the corporate idea, conceived in the form of a social patronage exercised by the employer toward his employees, received its most important realization in the Corporation chrétienne de Val-de-Bois, conceived from 1877 onward by Leone Harmel as an association formed among the families of employers and those of workers, and which served as the center of an entire complex of initiatives for the spiritual and material assistance of wage earners. These included a family-wage fund and a Conseil d'usine, representing an effective collaboration of the workers in the disciplinary and professional management of the enterprise.

Although medieval-type craft corporations still existed in France during the second half of the last century, and new corporations of the same type were established during this period, the Waldeck-Rousseau law of 21 March 1884 concerning the legal personality of professional associations instead adhered to the model of workers’ or employers’ trade unions, despite the efforts of Catholic deputies (particularly de Mun) to secure the possible recognition of mixed trade unions as well.

Conversely, in Belgium, during this same period, there was a return to organizations of a corporative type through the Guildes des métiers, among which that of Louvain was particularly important; it was founded in 1878 by the Catholic deputy Helleputte. As for Italy, it may be recalled that the motu proprio of 14 May 1852 issued by Pope Pius IX authorized the establishment of corporations; while a return to the corporative system was advocated by Catholic writers of the time, such as the Jesuit fathers Luigi Taparelli and Matteo Liberatore, and by various Catholic congresses, such as those of Venice (1874), Bergamo (1877), and Lucca (1887).

The encyclical Rerum novarum (20 May 1891; Acta S. Sedis, 23 [1891], pp. 641–70) confirmed the potentially beneficial contribution of associations to the solution of the social question, but, taking into account the prevailing orientation of the working classes and their representatives, admitted that professional associations might be not only mixed in character, but also composed solely of workers. Indeed, after the encyclical Rerum novarum, the Christian social movement itself tended to orientate itself more towards trade-union structures than towards corporative schemes.

This was so even though, especially in the German-speaking countries, the theoretical tendency was still towards a corporative reorganization, as is shown by the “Program of the German Catholics,” drawn up in 1896, which had some practical repercussions, such as the establishment of Chambers of Agriculture. L'Oeu-

vre des Cercles developed its doctrine around the formula “the free trade union within the corporatively organized profession,” but increasingly emphasized the free trade union, as is shown by the programmes it agreed upon, beginning in 1896, with youth organizations and with the movement for Christian democracy, which, in France, accompanied the beginnings of Catholic workers’ organizations.

In Italy, during the period preceding the First World War, Toniolo (v.) should chiefly be recalled. He was the founder of the ethical-Christian economic school and of Christian democracy, and advocated: the reconstitution of the proletariat as an organic class through the corporations, that is, through permanent representation; and, in general, a corporative organization of the classes, serving as the basis of the democratic constitution of the State. This Christian social order is more precisely defined in the “Programme of the Catholics in the Face of Socialism,” formulated by the Catholic Union for Social Studies in 1894 and also bearing the signature of G. Toniolo. In particular through Toniolo’s own initiative, the Catholic congresses held during this period repeatedly considered the practical implementation of the corporative order, at first chiefly in the form of mixed professional organizations and, later, chiefly in the form of distinct and opposed workers’ and employers’ organizations: thus, the Congresses of Pavia (1894) and Milan (1897) specified the organization of rural unions as “professional unions representing the class”; the Congress of Rome (1900) examined in particular Toniolo’s report on the subject “Professional Unions and Class Representation”; the Congress of Taranto (1901) focused its attention on professional unions or workers’ leagues, and such associations were advocated by the Congress of Bologna (1903) and by that of Modena (1910).

The period immediately preceding the First World War appears to have been characterized, in Italy as in every other country, not only by the progressive abandonment of corporative schemes, but also by the emergence of Christian trade unions which, although class organizations, recognized private property and private economic initiative, while limiting them from the social point of view, and intended, insofar as possible, to achieve their aims through peaceful means.

During the period between the two world wars, while the Christian movement everywhere took concrete form in trade-union organizations of considerable development, the corporative idea was constitutionally realized in certain countries in the form of an authoritarian organization of the professional and economic categories.

This orientation first emerged in Italy with the advent to power of the Fascist regime, whose trade-union organizations, because they denied the class-based premises, assumed the name of corporations when, until 1925, they operated in competition with the red and white organizations. Beginning in 1926, Fascist legislation proceeded to construct a corporative system based on the inclusion of economic aims among the aims of the State, and consequently on the institutional pre-eminence of general political and economic interests over the interests of individuals, whether isolated or grouped together.

While Law no. 563 of 3 April 1926 limited itself (Art. 3) to providing for central bodies linking employers’ and workers’ associations, with power to issue rules governing labor, Royal Decree no. 1130 of 1 July 1926 introduced the term “corporation” to designate a State body that brought together the national organizations of employers and workers belonging to a particular branch of production or to one or more categories of enterprises, and that was entrusted with the functions of reconciling disputes, promoting improvements in production, establishing employment offices, and regulating apprenticeships. The sixth declaration of the Charter of Labour, approved by the Grand Council of Fascism in 1927, confirmed this corporative scheme and transferred the corporations’ regulatory competence from the field of labor to the economic sphere in general.

In practice, the establishment of the individual corporations was preceded by that of the National Council of Corporations (Law no. 206 of 20 March 1930), as a representative body of all the categories of production considered as a unified whole, and invested both with consultative and with regulatory functions concerning welfare activities, the regulation of labor relations, and the regulation of economic relations. The corporations were established following Law no. 163 of 5 February 1934, which specified their consultative, conciliatory, and regulatory functions: regulatory functions for the collective regulation of economic relations and the unified regulation of production, and for the establishment of tariffs relating to economic services and performances, or to the prices of consumer goods offered to the public under privileged conditions.

The corporative order was subsequently given constitutional recognition, since, by virtue of Law no. 129 of 19 January 1939, the full members of the individual corporations, as members of the National Council of Corporations, were also, by right, members of the Chamber of Fasces and Corporations.

In Spain, chiefly through the efforts of Minister Aunos, a decree of 26 November 1926 established a national corporative organization, implemented through joint committees competent only in the field of labor and subject to strict State control. The corporative organization subsequently established by the national syndicalist order (instituted by the Francoist regime and deriving from the Falange’s 26 points and, above all, from the Fuero del Trabajo of 1938) consists of a system of vertical trade unions for each branch of production, centered on the individual enterprises, which, considered as a unit, represent the basic cell of the system.

The Portuguese corporative Constitution, approved by popular referendum on 19 March 1933 and elaborated by a group of decrees of 23 September 1933 concerning the economic and labor sectors, provided for the creation, alongside employers’ and workers’ associations, of corporations, that is, representative institutions of the various sectors of production. These subsequently contributed to forming the Corporative Chamber, existing alongside the political chamber but invested with consultative functions.

The Austrian Constitution, approved under the Dollfuss government on 1 May 1934, intended to create a federal State on a corporative basis: while laws of 1934 had regulated professional associations in a public-law sense, various measures issued from 1934 to 1936 established corporative institutions (Berufstände), which, realizing Vogelsang’s theories, were granted broad autonomy in the sector falling within their respective competence.

The encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, of 20 May 1931 (AAS, 33 [1931], pp. 177–228), on the fortieth anniversary of Rerum novarum, established the Catholic assessment of the various corporative systems implemented between the two world wars, and laid the foundations for the “restoration of the social order.” This restoration was intended to lead to a limitation of competition and, in general, to a regulated economy, not according to the criteria of economic supremacy, however, but according to the criteria of justice and charity. This, nevertheless, was not to result in the complete substitution of the State for the individual; and in this regard,

(from C. Pedrazzini, La farmacia storica ed artistica italiana, Milano 1935, p. 39)
CORPORAZIONE – Certificate of enrollment of Dante Alighieri in the C. of the Guild of Apothecaries – Florence, State Archives.

Indeed, the encyclical expressed reservations about the Fascist corporative system, on account of its “excessively bureaucratic and political character.” More precisely, the restoration of the social order was to be achieved not only through the action of the State, but also, and above all, through the action of the intermediate institutions between the State and the individual; and, in particular, through the professional associations, for which, in opposition to authoritarian systems, a regime of freedom was advocated.

While the Spanish and Portuguese corporative systems are still in force, the Austrian system was abolished in 1937 with the annexation of Austria to Germany, and the Italian system was definitively abolished by ordinances of the Allied Military Government (1943–45). At present, meanwhile, a trade-union system has been established solely as a matter of fact, one that dispenses with any corporative conception.

Luisa Riva Sanseverino