fbpx
Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

The Corporatist Alternative

No, only a corporate regime can secure the right of each individual, not a single right for all, inasmuch as people have different functions within the association, but an equal respect for differing rights. This is the foundation for any social order worthy of the name. These were combined in such a way that they […]

No, only a corporate regime can secure the right of each individual, not a single right for all, inasmuch as people have different functions within the association, but an equal respect for differing rights. This is the foundation for any social order worthy of the name. These were combined in such a way that they were not the weapon of one group against another, but a protection of the interest of all, joined in harmonious solidarity, just as a sound constitution does not arm citizens as enemy parties, but unites them by making the public good truly the common good.

~ Rene de La Tour du Pin, On the Corporate Regime


Corporatism is not a single economic or social theory, and it has attracted a wide variety of sympathisers from syndicalists of the left to conservative Catholics and Romanian Orthodox. Corporatist ideas sometimes bear strong similarities to the social and moral vision of the Slavophile and Orthodox sense of sobornost, communion, which is also opposed to the atomisting tendencies of Western individualism and the sterile and oppressive socialism that arises to replace organic social relations. It was a significant feature on the intellectual scene in most conservative and Catholic authoritarian states of the twentieth century, and some form of corporatism was the frequent response of European conservatives to the moral and social anarchy of the market and the deadening hand of the progressive state.

La Tour du Pin was a late nineteenth century exponent of a form of corporatism allied with Catholic social teaching, and I will be returning to some of his comments about the contemporary French scene when they seem particularly pertinent to the ferment among conservatives on this site and elsewhere about an economic theory that is most consistent with conservative and Christian convictions. For those interested in reading this treatise first-hand in English, I strongly recommend the anthology of French counter-revolutionary writings, Critics of the Enlightenment, where La Tour du Pin’s essay appears. The volume is edited by Christopher Olaf Blum and published by ISI.

Advertisement

Comments

The American Conservative Memberships
Become a Member today for a growing stake in the conservative movement.
Join here!
Join here