Melbourne Anarchist Archives Index

General Schema for the Development of the Managerial Corporative State from the Modern State to the Corporative State (1966?)

Reasons for the development:-

  1. Reformist forces expressing themselves through state action.
  2. General economic control (fear of depression and inflation) to maintain the ruling party in power.
  3. Improvement of general political control.
  4. War and expectation of war.

Effects of the development:

  1. Administrative class increases in number.
  2. Opposition to government policies decreases in extent and effectiveness.
  3. Increased nationalist agitation as a prop to the government.
  4. "Closed" states divide world into rich and poor zones.
  5. A new type of class differentiation emerges in political and economic matters.

Roads to Corporativism:

  1. From Capitalism.
    1. Controls on the economy and action against inflation and depression.
    2. War, especially against other ideologies.
    3. Rise of oligopoly and collusion between government and extra-governmental agencies.
    4. Enormous increase in "middle-class", "white collar" and upper working-class categories, who are anti-free enterprise capitalist and anti-communist (or socialist), but who support democratic "socialist" measures.
    5. Arbitration and state intervention in the class war.

  2. From Communism.
    1. Nationalisation of property.
    2. Single party and elimination of opposition.
    3. Privileged administrative class, disposing of nationalised property.
    4. Fear of war against capitalist world.
    5. Development of special civilian and administrative arms - controlled mass movements and secret police - of government.

  3. From National Socialism.
    1. Government power over capitalists who are "out of line".
    2. Fear of the irrationality of the rulers; disappearance of the opposition.
    3. Controls over trade unions, churches and other voluntary associations.
    4. Development of special civilian and administrative arms - controlled mass movements and secret police - of government.
    5. Pure dictatorships and military governments develop as in 2 or 3.

  4. From Democratic Socialism or Labourism.
    1. Anti-capital laws.
    2. Increased social welfare apparatus.
    3. Some nationalisation.
    4. Union support at first but economic controls later extended to unions - "impartial" government.
    5. No real political opposition - government and opposition espouse almost identical internal policies and by necessity almost identical external ones - because of "national" interests.
    6. Interest in politics declines except on issues that are obviously mismanaged or on issues relevant to a militant minority.

Types of Corporativism

  1. Numbers of large bureaucratic organisations having self-interested leaderships with roughly the same basic interests and tending to interlock.
  2. A single bureaucratic state.
  3. A bureaucratic state with a few other large bureaucratic organisations supporting it.
  4. A bureaucratic, but less effective, state becoming more extensive and gathering other-large bureaucratic organisations to it by acquiesence or legislation.


[ Top of Page ] [ Melbourne Anarchist Archives Index ] [ Radical Tradition Contents ]