This is a term often batted around to define Pres. Obama and his administration. It's generally used by the left to demean the President by suggesting that he puts corporate profit over that of the American people.
On its face, it's a perfect attack because the progressive movement has been built up over the years as anti-corporation and in most instances, anti-capitalism. When a politician appears to be pro-corporate or pro-capitalism, that person then loses credibility within the liberal faction.
Being a corporatist is bad. Obama is a corporatist and therefore he is bad.
It's no different than when Glenn Beck calls Pres. Obama a fascist. Fascism, we believe, is bad. Obama is a fascist and therefore he is bad.
But what exactly is corporatism?
It's hard to truly define what corporatism is because it's wide stretching. In fact, corporatism has been utilized in most dominant religions and political ideologies - even socialism, leftism and progressivism.
As written by Stanley G. Payne in his book
A History of Fascism:
Some leftist groups also developed variants of corporatist theory by the first years of the twentieth century. These might have been found among some of the revolutionary syndicalists in France and Italy as well as the "guild socialist" of Great Britain.
Of course, this rapidly changed as the right developed its own form of corporatism through state corporatism for economic organization.
http://books.google.com/books?id=9wHNrF7nFecC&lpg=PA39&ots=cZ1Uk9g4c-&dq=corporatism%20tenants%20of%20fascism&pg=PA39#v=onepage&q&f=false">1
So what is state corporatism?
Well corporate statism, a tenant of rightism, was really established in the mid-20s prior to the rise of globalization. Governments that developed corporate statism did so to mediate the political differences between the capitalists (the corporate entity) and the workers. One of the first corporate states was developed by Benito Mussolini in Italy.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/mussolini-fascism.html">2
This ties back to the attacks we hear from the right saying Obama is a fascist. Interestingly enough, it's the same attack Republicans have been using since the 30s toward Franklin Roosevelt:
To leftists the Depression represents the failure of market capitalism to protect the interests of the majority. The New Deal was simply
laissez-faire capitalism's replacement with corporate statism (a more systematic partnership between corporations and the government). Rather than empowering the masses,
for leftist scholars the New Deal represents capitalism's resilience and continued power. http://iws.collin.edu/kwilkison/Online1302home/20th%20Century/DepressionNewDeal.html">4
Other examples of history gone bad in this book are
Klein's recap of FDR's administration and the Marshall Plan. FDR is portrayed by Klein as anti-capitalist,
yet in fact he enacted Mussolini's corporatism (Industrial Boards) just like the original fascist. One would think that Klein would be leery of the business-government alliance Roosevelt engineered.
Mussolini recognized and publicly congratulated FDR for coming around to fascism. As for the Marshall Plan,
"the countries that received the most Marshall Plan money grew the slowest ... while those that received the least money grew the most." http://www.lewrockwell.com/jarvis/jarvis67.html">(Jeffrey Tucker, The Marshall Plan Myth.)
http://www.ozarkia.net/bill/anarchism/rants/DisasterStatism.html">5
Here we have attacks on Roosevelt from the right suggesting he was a corporatist - worse, a corporate statist. Doesn't that sound familiar?
Of course, many on the left would never suggest Roosevelt's New Deal was fascist or corporatist - even though back then many socialists objected to it because they did
believe it was too corporatist.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mifh7KL8klwJ:www.lejardinacademy.com/~awebb/apush/UNIT_11/Ch%252034-%2520Depression%2520%26%2520New%2520Deal/FDR2ndTerm%26Opposition.pdf+%22new+deal%22+%22opposition+from+the+left%22&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us">6
The use of corporatism to define the policies of a Democrat has been used since the beginning of corporate statism in the mid-20th Century. Like then, as it is now, it's a gross hyperbole that often is used without any true fact or understanding of the word.
To further develop the point - Ronald Reagan in the 1970s said this about Roosevelt, FDR and corporatism:
Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal. It was Mussolini's success in Italy, with his government-directed economy, that led the early New Dealers to say 'But Mussolini keeps the trains running on time.'
Reagan was known for suggesting New Dealers, and Roosevelt himself, were corporatist.
So corporatism is often used as a talking point for state fascism - especially corporate statism. This argument has been used for nearly 80 years to attack liberals, New Dealers and Democrats who supported Roosevelt's polices to thwart the economic depression. They're now being used to attack Pres. Obama. The difference is that most of the assault is now coming from the left.
This is truly the appalling thing about all of this. We're used to the right comparing Obama to Hitler and Mussolini and fascism. But now the left has fallen victim to the same tired argument used to attack progressive and liberal economic polices. They've been duped into buying into this word because the basic foundation for the word is ultimately corporate and anything with corporate in it must be bad.
Unfortunately, the word, specifically as it was established during the rise of corporate fascism in fascist Italy under Mussolini, goes deeper than what they actually believe it means.
This is do to the supposed populist bent of many progressives. But it's also tied to the faux-populism of the newly established tea party.
They, too, call Pres. Obama a corporatist. These are the same people who've been calling New Dealers corporatists since the Roosevelt era.
So the left is using a Republican and conservative talking point that's been around since the 1930s to attack Pres. Obama without a hint of irony.
And they suggest it's a relative and acceptable critique.
It isn't. It was trash in the 1930s when used to attack Roosevelt and it's trash now. We are not a fascist state. We are not a corporatist state. Any person who believes this needs to actually sit down and research what true corporatism is and its roots in attacking Democratic presidents.
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