(photo: dbking)

(photo: dbking)

Now that the Supreme Court has decided that corporations have First Amendment rights, we need to examine our rhetoric–specifically the word “corporatism.” Many liberals been using that word to describe a government that sees its primary function as responding to the needs and demands of corporations and the financial elites that control corporations. The right also uses the word to describe President Obama and his administration, but with a different twist. The word comes from political science, where the three traits that define corporatism are:

an ideology of social partnership expressed at the national level; a relatively centralized and concentrated system of interest groups; and voluntary and informal coordination of conflicting objectives through continuous political bargaining between interest groups, state bureaucracies and political parties.*

Informally, this means that rather than publicly fighting for power and control of resources, the major interest groups thrash out their differences among themselves and present a united front to the public. Their agreement becomes law.

Interest groups include big money in its various manifestations, such as giant businesses, hedge funds, banks, and foundations. Government and its bureaucracy are also interest groups in this theory. Labor is an interest group. There are also private interest groups. These groups make the decisions, more or less secretly, and then implement them through government and the institutional practices of the interest groups.

William Domhoff explains the role of private interest groups.

The upper class and the closely related corporate community do not stand alone at the top of the power structure. They are supplemented by a wide range of nonprofit organizations that play an important role in framing debates over public policy and in shaping public opinion. These organizations are often called “nonpartisan” or “bipartisan” because they are not identified with politics or with either of the two major political parties. But they are the real “political party” of the upper class in terms of insuring the stability of the society and the compliance of government.

Private groups include Focus on the Family, the Sierra Club, NARAL and the Eagle Forum, which represent the interests of Christian fundamentalists, environmentalists, and pro- and anti-women’s rights groups. The power of interest groups depends to a large extent on the political party in power. Labor has no real power under Republican administrations, and anti-women’s rights groups have no real power under Democratic administrations.

Liberal groups and, to a much lesser extent, conservative groups, self-neuter to retain the personal power of their leaders. Jane refers to them as the Veal Pen. Rather than represent their members and small donors, these groups merely reflect the political wishes of the party in power, primarily the President. Only big money and government interests have real power. Thus, conservative and liberal definitions of “corporatism” converge.

Once the decisions are made, all of the interest groups, including the private groups, unleash their agents of influence on the public, that vast group that isn’t well-informed about the complexities of financial reform, health care reform, environmental reform, sustainable food, or energy. Uninformed people are easily manipulated by the tactics of the persuasion industry. Pushback from private interest groups is minimal; they live in the Veal Pen.

The Supreme Court has now explicitly authorized the use of private money to secure control of government. Now there will be no conflicts among interest groups. The consensus views of the conservatives who have all the money and corporate control will be jammed down our throats. We are going to put to the test these words of Franklin Roosevelt.**

The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.

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* Left Government, Policy, and Corporatism: Explaining the Influence of Partisanship on Inequality by David Rueda, World Politics, Vol. 60, No. 3 (Apr., 2008), pp. 349-389 Published by: Cambridge University Press, quoting Peter Katzenstein, Small States in World Markets (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985), 32.
**Wikipedia, citing Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Appendix A: Message from the President of the United States Transmitting Recommendations Relative to the Strengthening and Enforcement of Anti-trust Laws”, The American Economic Review, Vol. 32, No. 2, Part 2, Supplement, Papers Relating to the Temporary National Economic Committee (Jun., 1942), pp. 119-128.